Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and in today's episode, I'm not going to fool you at all. It's April Fool's 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 that 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 an April Fool's 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. We will talk a little bit more about a special offer that Linode is providing to developers for 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, and we have a special deal for you if you are interested in going. But to get there... 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, I'm going to be doing a challenge. So you, like I, are probably looking at all the hilarious April Fool's 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... A 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 story. 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. Right? And this isn't true across the board. This is more of one of those kind of soft definitions that developers are somehow disconnected from. From 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 developers that our 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 a seemingly illogically generous way. And this may require... It 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 tea community specifically. The people who listen to this show, you've listened long enough, most likely. Now, if this is your first episode. If this is the first episode that you're listening to, then go back and 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. And so I'm 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 developer tea at 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. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to answer that question. But I'm going to share them with you all. And I'm going to read a couple of those. So if you've been listening to this podcast, then you've probably heard this before. 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, encrypted disks. You can run a private Git 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 convinced you yet, then hopefully this next part will. Linode is offering you a $20 credit at checkout simply for using the code developer T20. And you can get that code automatically applied by going to linode.com slash developer T. 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 can click on the link here especially 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've 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 Tea almost 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. I'm going to share a few of the things that I've learned 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 Tea up and running. It has been an important facet of my routine. Matt. So this, thank you. I wanted to read it to the Developer Tea community because you all are a part of the development community. I want to thank you for all that you do. I want to thank you for all that you do. I want to thank you for all that you do. I want to thank you for all are actually responsible for Developer Tea just 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. And I want to thank you for all that you do to keep the 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 Tea in the morning while I'm out for a walk. 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 Tea, so 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 Tea community because without you, the show wouldn't exist. We wouldn't be able to have these conversations. We wouldn't be able to have these conversations. 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 the audience. So thank you again for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And until next time, enjoy your coffee. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. See you soon. Thank you.