Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I am interviewing a good friend of mine, Patrick Hill. Patrick is a developer at Whiteboard with me. He also runs a podcast called M of One. That stands for Master of One. You can check it out at mofonepodcast.com. Patrick is a lot of fun to work with. He also has a lot of really cool interests outside of development, so it's really fun to talk to him. I actually was on M of One podcast. Of course, you can find M of One in the show notes. I hope you enjoy this interview with Patrick Hill. So I was born and raised in West Philadelphia. I like to, I typically spend all my time on the court. And one day there were kind of like a few ne'er-do-wells and they were just obviously not up to anything good. And they started making trouble, you know, with me and my friends, like in my neighborhood. And because of that fight, my mom got really freaked out and she told me I had to move to Bel Air with my rich uncle. And so... What about your aunt? Oh, with my rich aunt and uncle. So... So when you pulled up to the house? Yeah, it was probably around, I don't know, seven or eight. And, uh... And I, I like, I don't know, called something, I yelled at the cabbie. Something, I was being like a dick. This was back in the day. What is a cabbie? Like the cab driver. So, because of where I was from, we called them cabbies. And I was like, yo, smell you later. And, uh... Did he think that was weird? Yeah. Well, he didn't really say much. He just drove off. And then, uh, yeah, and then just like turned around, stared at my freaking giant house. And, uh, there I was, like the king of Bel Air, you know? Yeah. Welcome, Patrick, to the show. Hey, what's up? Uh, not a lot, since I saw you like two hours ago. Yeah, no kidding. This is, uh, it's pretty familiar. Yeah, uh, I'm sure I mentioned this in the intro. You guys know I record those after I record the episodes, but Patrick and I, we work in the same room for, oh, well, eight-ish hours a day, depending on, you know, who leaves earliest. Sure. Which is typically, uh, you. But to be fair, to be fair, it's because you also typically get there well before I do as well, so. That's true. We have like a slightly offset eight-hour-ish workday. Yes. And then we both go home and continue coding, typically. Absolutely, we do. But I, so that actually is a perfect segue into the discussion about hobbies. You guys might notice that I'm a little bit more jovial with Patrick because, um, I have a chance to hang out with Patrick just as friends sometimes, which... Believe it or not, I actually do hang out with people just as a friend sometimes. But, um, Patrick has a lot of, well, I wouldn't say a lot of hobbies, but Patrick has hobbies outside of development that he enjoys participating in, including podcasting. Um, so Patrick, uh, actually had me on his podcast one time. It's called M of One or Master of One. Patrick, tell the listeners about that a little bit. Sure. Um, so... Sure. Sure. Sure. Specifically the Master of One podcast. It's, uh, it's me and two friends of mine, and we talk about, um, kind of the latest in pop culture, but it's pop culture as it pertains to the, uh, design world. So illustration design, the vinyl toy, uh, and then game world, and then also television and film. So we're not talking about like the latest royal baby, not that type of pop culture, but it's, um, but if, if you're into like illustration, um, vinyl toys, uh, great movies... Yeah. ...then, then that's what it's about. And so it's a, it's a weekly podcast and it's a little long-winded compared to yours. But, um, but no, thankfully lately we've had some really awesome guests on, so it's exciting to do. Now, what if I am also interested in royal babies? Is that not a... You're gonna wanna, you're gonna probably wanna find a second podcast to also listen to in addition to the third one, which is Dev Tea. Maybe there's actually like a royal tea podcast. That would be... ...right on point, I think. If that is one of the better puns I've ever heard you... Yeah. Yeah. You know, I only have a few opportunities for tea puns. I'm so impressed right now. Yeah. And it's totally organic, guys. We do not have a script. I promise you, we did not take the time to prepare a script for this episode. I can't guarantee you that he didn't take the time, but I didn't, so... Well, I can't, I can't predict anything that Patrick is gonna do, uh, at least on this, on this episode. Um, so, so yeah. The reason I ask that is because, you know, a lot of people, I think they worry a lot about balancing, you know, hobbies and their work life. And I'd be interested to know, you know, do you find yourself like mixing those two things and feeling like you need to separate them? Or do you think there's a pretty good... Because we had this conversation earlier this week... ...about how you, you know, you feel comfortable, you know, kind of working at almost any time, during the day. A lot of people feel like that goes directly against their, you know, ingrained rights as a human to work at night. Uh, I feel comfortable working any time of the day. Sometimes I work until 2 a.m. and sometimes I can't work past 3 p.m. Um, and it, it really just depends on the day. But, you know, how do you find hobbies mixing into that work-life balance, if you want to call it that? Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I, I have to kind of preface this by saying that I'm not a I do feel somewhat lucky that I enjoy my job as much as I do. I mean, certainly there are people that are in work situations that aren't enjoyable, but I have found in my position that work has become almost sort of a kind of perpetual thing. I'm always like in a stage of work almost. Um, so, and what I mean by that is sometimes I, I, you know, it hits 7 or 8 o'clock at night and I really want to jump, jump on a project and start working on it. You know, I want to get back to solving a puzzle. Um, and other times, um, you know, 8 in the morning, 9 in the morning or normal work hours, that's when I want to do that. So I find myself kind of working when I feel the most either motivation or, or when I also kind of feel like I'm really prepared for the process because in anything, especially with some of these like development challenges, you know, I don't feel like I can just jump in for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. I feel like I have to like carve out some time and I have to have some space and, and I have to kind of minimize it. I have to mentally feel up for it because it is a very mentally draining thing. And so I feel like to kind of segment that as I only get an eight hour shot at it and then I got to turn it off and go focus on something else. I feel like that that's, I'm limiting myself too much because maybe I'm only productive for four of those hours or five of those hours. Maybe that's, that's all kind of the mental capacity I have at that moment. And then maybe I get another wind a couple hours later. Okay, well I would rather, um, you know, I would rather wait and leverage that later and be productive later. I would rather split my time in half. Right. Sure. Then just say, well, I did what I could cut off and go do something else. So, you know, I do have the luxury of, I say luxury, um, it's not meant to be offensive. I don't have kids. Right. I don't have, so, you know, I understand that my life's a little bit different. I do have a wife. Sure. And thankfully she's very understanding. Um, but when it comes to even outside work, just balancing anything. So I, I podcast, um, I play drums. Um, I, I'm into some outdoor sports. So obviously like exercising. Um, and then. And then of course work life and coding. And then I do some freelance on top of that. I think with all of those things, I will say that I don't always enjoy, enjoy them. Right. It's not, I don't always code because I want to code and I don't, I don't always go running because I want to go running and I don't always, this is going to sound bad. Stay with me. I don't always spend time with my wife because I want to spend time with my wife. Okay. Like there are times that I don't want to do these things. Right. But I have set them as priorities and I have to be very deliberate. Right. I'm very deliberate about sticking with them. And, and because I know that ultimately like the end result of either, um, growing my relationship with my wife or growing as a developer or finishing a project, I know I'm never going to that end result I do want, but I'm never going to get there unless I'm willing, even when I don't feel like I get to put in that time. Right. So, so there's a little bit of a balance. So I say that, you know, I code when I feel like it, but to be fair, I don't always feel like it. You know, I would say for anybody that feels like they don't have the time, or they're too busy or they're too tired. I think you do. Okay. And I think you have to be intentional about the things that you care about. So a couple of really interesting things you pointed out there. Uh, one, I guess the most direct thing that I think is important for us to understand just in life in general, this is another one of those tips that you can go and tell, you know, your non coding friends. Uh, we are not, our identity is not what we feel. I can't remember exactly what the code, the quote is, but a famous philosopher said, we are not what we feel or something very similar to that. Sure. And, uh, he made the comparison to, um, you are to your feelings, uh, what, what the ocean is to its waves, right? The idea being that, you know, the waves do not define whether or not the ocean exists, right. Or, uh, or the nature of the ocean or even the temperature of the ocean in large, but rather the waves are just, something that, uh, the ocean experiences. Now, this is not the metaphysical talk that I want to have on this show. Um, but, but basically, you know, we have to define these things that we want as ourselves rather than the things that we are feeling in that moment that we want. Right. And that's the whole idea of defining those priorities. Another thing that I think is interesting about what you're saying is, you know, to be a, a craftsman or to be somebody who really, truly, does what they do with excellence, you have to be willing to understand that you can't put that into, you know, a time, like you're saying a constricted time box. Now, I don't think that means that you can't have a routine. Sure. And, and I also don't think that, you know, that means that you should abandon all priorities, right. In order to, you know, the opposite of what I mean is stay at the office for 16 hours. Right. And luckily, with software development, we have the opportunity to take this stuff home with us relatively easily, right. We can sit at our kitchen, kitchen table instead of trying to, you know, stay in the office for, for 16 hours a day. Um, so it's, it's interesting because this idea of the eight hour work week, you know, most people that you find who are really good at anything, um, they don't practice eight hours. Like they, don't do an eight hour day. It's, it is who they are. Right. Right. Um, so, you know, I think it's a worthwhile and it may not be who you want to be, um, to work all the time. You, you may not want your identity to be, I am a great web developer or a great software engineer. Um, that's something for each and every person to decide on their own. But if you do truly want to be great, consider what it takes to be great. And I think this is something that, um, you also have a lot to say about this. You did a talk today at whiteboard, um, about climbing Katahdin. Yes. No, that was good. I actually had been pronouncing that wrong for several years. So you're, you're already better than I am at it. It's actually really close to the word Kata. Uh, so I'm, I'm mixing up the two in my brain. I did an episode on Kata and I think I rerecorded it about five times, but anyway, Katahdin, um, you want to share it? A little bit about that story. Right. So I, um, no, we're, we are audio right now. And so people can't see me. So this, it's not going to have the full impact. Um, I used to be a, a much larger guy that I am now. Um, so I was, I was a 350 pound guy. I was a semester into my computer science major. And, uh, and I, you know, I didn't have any money in the bank much like today. And, and, and I had decided, so I decided I wanted to through hike the AT. So Katahdin refers to, the mountain it's in Baxter state park in Millinocket, Maine. It is the Northern terminus of the Appalachian trail, which is the 2,200 mile trail that runs from Georgia to Maine. And that is for the typical North bound, um, through hike. That is, that is the culmination. That's the end of the hike. Okay. And I decided that I want to do a through hike. And I actually with, with that as my goal, uh, I was able to, within the course of three years, I graduated school. I was able to save up $7,000 and I lost a hundred pounds. Um, which, which was awesome. And I was able to actually go out and climb Katahdin. I didn't do like the AT, but I did go to Katahdin and then I ended up going out West and having other adventures. But, but since then it's, I found myself kind of realizing that I'm not sure that I have that same level of motivation, right? I don't know that if I started right now that I could lose a hundred pounds. Now, to be fair, I don't have a hundred pounds to lose, but still just imagining what it took, like the level of commitment and the level of dedication, the dedication took to do that. And at the time it seemed so easy. Like at the time it was, uh, it w it didn't seem challenging at all. And now I can't even imagine that much less doing all three of those things within such a short amount of time. And so what I realized is that I need to always have a Katahdin in my life. I need to have this, this big singular, well-defined goal sitting out there that I can work towards. And given that that goal is more important than everything else going on, right? That goal was more important than eating, right? That goal was more important than spending money. Okay. Um, given that I had this big, well-defined goal and given that that is the most important thing. Um, I think in that case, I I've seen the most like individual personal progression. Interesting. And I, I like this because, you know, it kind of flies a little bit in the face of, you know, the, the idea of having small attainable goals that we, we reach for each and every day, right? Or the idea that, you know, if you eat healthy today and then you do that over and over and over, then you can lose a hundred pounds, right? The reality is that falls apart when you don't eat healthy today, right? You don't eat healthy today because, well, it's just today, right? Because the stakes are low because you don't really have much to lose. But when you have Katahdin to lose, when you don't, you don't have much to lose, you don't have much to lose. And so I think that's a really good way to put it. If you don't eat healthy today, that puts you one step away or one day away from Katahdin every single time you do it, right? Whereas, you know, if I don't eat healthy today, well, I just failed once and I have another day tomorrow. Uh, and I think that idea seems, um, a little bit more motivating, right? To have something more to lose if you, if you fail at the small parts. Uh, absolutely. And, um, yeah, I, I completely agree with that. And, and I see people do this on the smaller level. They'll do something like, well, rather than borrowing this item, I'll buy it. So that way I have money tied up into it. And now I'm more likely to use it because I have an investment. Right. So like I've seen, I've heard of people doing that on like the money side of it, but, um, yeah, I just love this idea of just having something that's so large that, that you can't afford to fail. Right. That it's it in that way, it pulls it out. You know, the, um, and the other side of this too, if you're establishing one of these goals, um, you know, you mentioned eating and that, that really stood out to me. I, I tell people because I have experienced a weight loss. Uh, I tell people that, um, you know, if, if nine times out of 10, you, you fail at it, like if you take 10 days and none of them, you fail, uh, then you don't actually want to lose weight. You want, you want the results. You want to be thin. Okay. But you don't actually want to put in the work. You don't want to lose weight. If you wanted to lose weight, you would eat better. And, um, and so I think it's very important that when you're approaching something like this, you have to realize that you can't only care about the results. You have to be, you have to be up for the challenge. And so earlier we mentioned as a developer that if you want to be great in your craft, then you're going to be potentially willing to put in hours outside of your work segment. Um, and, and I think that's true. I think that we can kind of do what they do away with all these restrictions and, and just realize that being better kind of trumps it. Right. And if, and, and that's part of being up for the challenge and being willing to do what it takes. And so if you want to be better, and if you want to be better more than you care about, does this fall out of my eight hour workday, then you're going to have no problem working outside the workday. It's not going to be a fight. And if you don't, if you want to lose weight, um, and, and, or if you want to go climb a mountain and if that is more important than eating food, right. And then eating that bad meal, then you're not going to struggle with it. It's not going to be difficult. And, you know, I think you're going to progress a lot and it's going to be a lot easier. And I think that's part of the challenge. And I think that's part of the challenge. Yeah. And what I love about this though, is that we're talking both about balance, right. And about mastery. So we have this idea that, uh, you have this kind of overarching primary goal in your life, but you also have just naturally the time to balance things. So you have the time to have your hobbies. Uh, and so I think those can coexist. I don't think that what we're asking for or what the universe or what mastery requires is necessarily breaking yourself or breaking your back all the time. I don't think it's about that. I think it's about being willing to break your back when you need to. Right. And it's, it's not about, you know, did I put in a 60 hour work week this week? It's about how did I progress this week? How well did I do this week? Yeah. So I completely agree. And I think you said that better than I did, which is ultimately, you know, I have a busy schedule. You have a busy schedule. I look at what you do and I just think like, how does Jonathan, like, how does he have time to even like, you know, get a drink out of the fridge? Right. Because he's always like scheduled something and always doing something. But I have a feeling that if you were to step back into evaluate your life or you're sitting at the end of the week, you're not thinking, oh, my life is so difficult and so hard. And it's so busy that you're just sitting there feeling fulfilled and glad that you get the opportunity to do what you do. And it just boils down to not, I have to put in so much work, but you get to because you're motivated to reach these higher goals. Sure. And so it really isn't necessarily difficult. And yet it doesn't have to be backbreaking. And I don't think it is if you've established a proper, good, big goal for yourself. I don't think it is backbreaking. You know, it's interesting you mentioned that because I've come into contact just by being in the podcasting world now. I've come into contact with a lot of people who they're, you know, they're not really interested in the job. They're just interested in the job. And I think that's a really good reason to get out of their job. And this is really common. And, you know, there's nothing particularly wrong with that. Let me first say that, that I respect a lot of these people a lot. I think that, you know, the work that they do is incredible. And a lot of them have a really good reason as to why they want to get out of their job, whether it's, you know, they want to spend time at home with their kids. So they want to run a business at home on their own. But the reality is I don't want to leave my job. Like a lot of people who work at a company, they don't want to leave their job. And I think that's a podcast might think that eventually, you know, Jonathan, eventually going to go full time, you know, and that's, that's just not, I, if anything, the opposite direction, like if this podcast were to ever come in the way of my full-time job, quite honestly, I love my full-time job, you know, and it's the thing that I'm invested in. And this, I'm not saying this because my employer has asked me to either. Like I truly enjoy the work that I do every single day. And so I think that that is a really important, thing to find, right. Is the thing that you actually wouldn't want to get out of the job that you don't want to leave every single time you go there, like at Monday rolls around and you actually enjoy it. And I don't think that that's unattainable. I also understand that, you know, not every job is going to be that way. And, you know, if you're in a job right now where you don't feel like that's your situation, then it's, it's not that you need to get up and leave your job. Right. A lot of times those kinds of feelings, can be fixed inwardly, uh, rather than, you know, the situation of your job. It could be something inside of you that is discontent with your, you know, your personal situation, for example, or maybe you have, you know, money management issues that make you feel like your salary is too low or something. Who knows, who knows what it is, or maybe truly there is a problem. So there's many different situations that could arise there. But the point is, you know, find a peaceful place. And that will allow you to work in a way that you don't feel like you need to have a clock running every single time you sit down. And that I think is, is really key to becoming a master at anything, right? Which I feel like goes back to the master of one podcast. You tied it together so nicely. It was just, it was just architected perfectly, wasn't it? Like I said, I didn't have a script, but you know, there's always a plan. That's good. Well, cool. I'm going to take a quick sponsor break and then we're going to come back and talk some more. 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Now, even if you aren't looking for a job, but you know another engineer or a designer who is, you can refer them to Hired. And if they accept a job on Hired, you will get a $1,337 bonus. That is a huge opportunity pretty much for anyone. So go and check it out. Hired.com slash developer T. So we've been talking about having a hobby, but also being able to become a master. We've talked about so many different things already. What else did we talk about, Patrick? We talked about setting giant goals for yourself and time management and doing what you love. It's really a very dense episode so far. Yeah, it's pretty wide. And I think we can kind of shift gears to education because this is something that the people who listen to this podcast are really passionate about. I'm passionate about it. One of the very earliest episodes that I did was with two other guys who work at Whiteboard as well, Cody and Nick, and they're designers. We talked about the value of a design degree now that they are in kind of the working mode, actually working at Whiteboard full time. So I'm interested to hear because you actually have a degree in computer science. Yeah. And this is there's a lot of, you know, questions about formal education versus self-education. I'm really interested to hear how you feel your computer science degree both helps you and hurts you. And then maybe some of the experiences that you had in your computer science degree that you would like you feel like were really important to maybe your personal development, but also to your job today. Absolutely. This is a very complex issue. Initially out of school. And probably for my first year out of school, I would have told you that the degree was worthless. That, you know, I did freelance while I was getting my degree. And in frankly, whenever I showed people projects to get jobs, I was showing them freelance work. I wasn't like showing them classwork. Right. And my classwork was very broad. I mean, everything from I would say web web development, I would say, you know, web development, which I do now was the almost the exception to the work I did. It was a very small amount. I did lots of mainframe like assembler and COBOL and all this great greatness. And, you know, and of course, there's, you know, just like, you know, software engineering classes and things like that. And, and, and so very little actually, I think only actually have like six credit hours or nine credit hours that are actually web centric. And so initially, I would have said, you know, I would have said, no, well, it you don't do it, it's just a waste of time and money, and you're better off to go take a seven week course somewhere. And, and, and I still, there's part truth to that. But it's not, it's not totally true. So now, the more I kind of separate from it, the more I begin to disagree with myself, and the more I kind of realize the value of the education, and I've been trying to think of the best way I could explain this. And I like to think about it as though, by going to school, all these dots were kind of, you know, they were kind of, you know, placed on a map or whatever. And now that I'm actually working, I get to start drawing lines between those dots. Okay, so I, so I have context for things that I don't realize that I have context for things. And it isn't until I start talking to someone or I'm introduced to a new problem, where suddenly I get to recall these things that, oh, wait, I did talk about this in a class. And at least I have a reference for this. Yeah, I may still need to go spend, you know, hours researching and learning and looking. So it's, it's not like the learning process is done. But I have a dot I can connect to. And so I realize now that that as that has actually set me up to be to be much more successful. And I do have much broader context than I would have had if I had just gone to school for one area. Sure. So I would say that the benefit had seemed fairly intangible. But as time progresses, I see more and more of the benefit. And to the point that I'm almost swinging the other way, where I feel like you actually should have formal education. Or at least you should have more in depth education than just web centric. You know, it's very easy to think that if I want to be a front end developer, then I just need some web courses, you know, right. And in the reality is, most of my work was done in Java. And there's a lot of application, it might be a it might be a structure, and it might be it, you know, an algorithm or a pattern or whatever that I'm pulling, but, but I'm constantly pulling stuff from that area of my education, even though again, it is not web centric. So, so in that case, you know, more and more, I see the benefit of the formal education. As far as specific times, it's helped me or it's, it's probably a little bit more difficult to pinpoint. So I will say that probably the this is my caution with formal education, so this is this is the other side of that coin. If I had only gone to class every day, if I had only turned in my homework, and then I left, right, and I go home, flipped on the TV and drink some beer and whatever, I would have not been successful when I tried into the job market. There's no way, okay, the only people that are going to be successful, this is a big statement, I'm making a broad generalization, but I believe in this are the people that are truly going to be successful are the people that put in time outside of their classwork. They're the people that when they go home, they tinker with something and they want to tear something apart, they want to, they want to build something new. For me, it was it was freelance work. That's what I did. I did. Frankly, I did lots of it for free just because I needed a portfolio. But my freelance work is really where I was able to hone skills, connect enough dots to where I could then be viable in a job market. Sure. So that that's the other side of that coin for me. But again, I'm not a freelancer. I'm not a freelancer. I'm not a freelancer. I'm not a freelancer. I'm not a I am a very big proponent of formal education. So I would say, you know, on that point, a lot of you, especially students who are, you know, possibly a place like Stanford or, or one of the more, like challenging degree programs, you're like, how in the world could I possibly spend time outside of class and labs and, you know, homework, doing anything else. And the reality of what Patrick is saying, I think, is that you have to be able to apply the knowledge that you're learning to something that has not yet been solved. In other words, some kind of project. Now, I've heard of programs that actually have these types of projects where you integrate the knowledge. And that's the point of the entire semester, for example. A lot of I know, specifically, Stanford does this. A couple of other programs are really intentional about having, you know, semester long, relatively open ended, projects that accomplish the same goal, but with structured instruction, right? So you have maybe a TA is looking over your project, and they offer the opportunity for, you know, code review or things that you otherwise wouldn't have access to if you're just doing your own, your own side project. I do think, especially for schools that don't have those that what you're saying is like 100% right on that you have to do something to integrate that knowledge to actually use it. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And I think that's a really important point. And because the reality of computer science or programming or, you know, software development, whatever you want to call this field, is that it's practical at the end of the day, right? Now, there are some people who would say, you know, that programming or, you know, a computer scientist versus a software engineer, that they're two different things. And, you know, it's kind of like a mathematician versus an engineer, where the mathematician is thinking more in abstract terms, but and the engineer is thinking in very, very concrete terms. So all of that to say, I think the most important part, the most important takeaway there is, you know, find a way to apply that knowledge and, and start connecting the dots. Because if you don't start connecting it, while you're at school, it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to connect it when you leave school. And for people in, I mean, for people currently in a computer science program, you know, I would say one of the greatest ways you can learn is to teach. Absolutely. I imagine most computer science programs out there, recruit people to tutor other students, I was a tutor for three years. And it sounds scary, like you would think walking into it, like, Oh, I've got to be a smart guy, so I can handle this. Jump out and just do it. Okay, because when you're forced to repeat what you've heard, when you're when you're forced to actually look for problems with people, and when you're like, when you're in that environment, that cemented a lot of my knowledge for me. And so that's something that potentially, you know, you can do your homework in your free time, you're around other classmates, you're probably getting paid to do it as well. So for the people that yeah, they don't feel like they have a lot of time outside of class, that may be a way that you can actually get involved around your classes, see a benefit, and still reinforce knowledge. So I would say any opportunity you have to teach other people what you've learned, even if you feel like it's not much, take that opportunity. Yeah. So one question that I have, you and I both have formal education, do you think that we are biased? So initially, like I said, I, for the first year after I graduated, I thought I wasted my time. And I think I'm more and more, again, seeing the benefit now, you know, I would like to believe I'm an unbiased person. But could a biased person say that they're unbiased? I think we may have just like entered some sort of loop and we can't get out of it. Right. You know, I would like to believe I'm fairly unbiased. Yeah. So, you know, I think there's, you know, I think there's, there's, I have friends right now that they're in a job, they can't afford to go to school. You know, where I went to school, we got Hope. And that was the name of like the Georgia, whatever. And so like, my, my tuition was paid for. I was very, but I understand. It's a funding program, right? Yes, it was great. And so, but I understand, you know, that there are people out there that that's not the case at all, right? Just to look at the college, they know that there goes $80,000. Right. So it was $100,000. Right. And I've got to pay for it in my pocket. So I understand that there's people that that school seems like a very impossible hurdle. Or there's people that, you know, they can commit this many months, but they can't commit four years or I understand those trade offs. And in those cases, especially, I would have no hesitation in saying, you know, do a program like Treehouse. But I would almost say, after the fact, still investigate other mediums and investigate other sites. I mean, this is a very broad subject. Right. And it's, I don't, I don't want to use the term wrong, but I think it's, it's not selfish, but I don't think you can just learn your one little piece of knowledge and just exclude everything else that's out there. Yeah. Because the fact is, what we do, even though it feels very focused, it has to play with a lot of other systems and a lot of different types of people use it. And, and I think you just have to have knowledge beyond your own to be effective. And again, even if it's just a small level of context or reference. Right. I don't think you're going to do the best work unless you're extending your reach beyond your immediate vision. Sure. Yeah, you mentioned something earlier about connecting the dots and about not seeing how something is relevant until significantly later. And I think that the same is true with cross-training, if you want to call it that, but looking at other fields. So, you know, I took physics in high school and I happened to actually have a really good, I did really well in physics. I had a really good grasp on physics pretty immediately, but I didn't really have an immediate use for it. Like I could do kind of math tricks to determine, you know, if I threw this ball or rolled it down this little hill that it would land in a cup. That was whatever, 3.2 meters away. That was as far as the physics actually was useful to me. But now that I'm, you know, in my career, I have the opportunity to use physics to do things like animations with more fluidity. Right. And that training, some of that stuff is coming back to me. For example, you know, kinematic functions. I know that that is a thing. Sure. Because I learned about it. Right. For sure. I have at least some context because I learned something that was, you know, relatively obscured away. And it's not just, you know, math and sciences. It's also things like philosophy. Right. Philosophy certainly comes into play on this podcast, as I said earlier, with the waves and the ocean, that quote. But even beyond that, just looking at the way that you do your job and informing the way that you choose to look at a particular problem. And there's so many different things that inform how we solve problems, even in computer science, that aren't related to computer science at all. Yeah. And let's not discount the fact. You have to send lots of emails. You have to talk to lots of people. There are communication skills. There are certainly group skills. There are English courses. There are all these other things that factor into your day to day that you don't even consider. Right. It's very easy to only look at my CPSC classes and make that judgment call based off those solely. But there are so many other things that I experienced in college that affect my day to day work interactions. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I've experienced the same. And I think that it's really important for, you know, the computer science community or the especially the web development community, but even software development in large to to be considerate of the wide range of ways that people learn. Right. Because it's very easy for us to discount. Well, really anything. Right. We can easily discount a seven week learning program as easily as we can discount a CS degree. And say both are irrelevant to something. But that's not true. Right. In either case, there's probably something relevant as long as it's not like, you know, some unqualified person who doesn't know what they're talking about telling lies. A lot of the time you're going to get something, even if it's just, you know, going on YouTube and seeing how somebody solves a problem. That kind of context is so important in this industry. So, you know, and it's also. We also have this kind of wrong way of looking at it, that it's either or. Right. And you started to allude to this earlier, but it's not just college and then I'm done. Right. If you choose to go to college and you get a four year degree and you invest that time and you invest that money and then you turn around and you feel like you've lost that time and money. Well, guess what? You still have the option of going through those seven week courses. That's totally, you know. It's within the realm of possibility for you. Right. And no matter what somebody tells you, four years. I wouldn't say four years is that long. What do you think about that? Oh, definitely. After it's over, it doesn't seem like that long. Maybe two semesters in, it was feeling pretty lengthy. Yeah. That's usually why people say avoid going to school because, you know, it's better to get into the industry early. But the big jump between 18 or 19 years old and 22. And 23 years old, it's not that big. Right. No. Yeah. And frankly, through experiences, both good and incredibly frustrating, just being going to a four year institution. Absolutely. That stuff affects. And I think positively, again, the interactions I have now. I mean, I, I, you wouldn't have wanted to talk to me when I was an 18 year old or 19 year old. You wouldn't have wanted to hire 19 year old me. And so, yeah, people are in a hurry. They're in a hurry to get places. And sometimes it's nice to just, you know, to take your time and not be so scared of the time it takes. Right. I mean, if that's the best thing for you, you should do it. But I want to real quick. There's like a caveat to all of this. Right. Which is that you're not going to walk out of a single one of these programs and be any good unless you're motivated to learn. That's the reality. Right. Like four years. Just because I endured four years. I'm not going to be a good developer. And just because I endure some intensive program for however many weeks or months doesn't make me a good developer. OK. Me wanting to learn me being up for the challenge. You know, frankly, I believe I would have succeeded in either program because that's the mentality I was going in there with. And so I think that it me personally, it's more of the attitude of the person taking the program than it is the actual program. Sure. I've mentioned this on the show before. I have a master's. I have a master's degree in digital media. And I viewed that master's degree as kind of a Katahdin. I'm looking back now. I realize that that I I set out to get the master's degree. Now, I realize, you know, some people would disagree with that strategy, but it was something that I wanted as an achievement that I was going after was to hold that master's degree because I knew it signifies something. Right. And it signified something to me. And so I was something I'm proud of, certainly. And I think that this is another, you know, aspect. Of college is if you want to go to college, that is something to consider. There's there's nothing wrong with you wanting to go and have a college experience, if you want to call it that. There's nothing wrong with you wanting to say, hey, I went to this college and that is a perfectly valid reason to go to college. This is something that we mentioned on the show with Nick and Cody as well. And that is, you know, we have multiple reasons for going to college. It's not just is it going to make me a better student? Better developer or not? It's is it something that I want to do in life or not? Completely. Totally valid reason to go to college. I actually nearly stopped going to college. And really, one of the only things that kept me in was just pride. I didn't want to. I didn't want to quit. And it wasn't because I had to have this degree. I mean, I changed my major three times. But there was there was kind of this. Yeah, I wanted to accomplish that. I wanted to walk across the stage. I wanted to. I wanted to. I wanted to. I wanted to have the picture and I wanted to have the diploma. And that was a really large component of it. It wasn't just, you know, I want to be smarter. Right. So that's something that like to use a completely different field of life, I guess. That's that's how I work out, actually. So like I walk into the gym and I have really specific goals for the things that I want to accomplish that day. For example, if I walk in and I tell myself that I want to run, I want to run a mile and a half or two miles that day. I don't do that. I don't do that. Whatever number it is. I'm sure some of you run five miles a day. I don't do that. But yeah, exactly. Anyway, if I if I go in thinking I want to run a mile and a half or two miles, I'm going to be disappointed in myself in some ways that I didn't own up to my own standard for the day. And if I walk in with no goals, then there's no level of disappointment. Right. Like there's no negative reinforcement whatsoever when I don't. I don't want to work out as hard as I wanted to. Right. So I think that that kind of perspective is important. Of course, it can also be placed in the wrong direction. Right. Like, for example, if I set a goal that was either way too low, like if I say I only want to run a mile today, but in reality, I have the ability to run three today. Or if I say something way too high. Right. Like if if I say I want to try squatting 400 pounds today, you got I'm giving you guys kind of a. Idea of my level of physical fitness. But if I say that I want to squat 400 pounds today and really I can only squat like 300, I might get hurt. Right. There's potential negative consequences to overreaching. If I say that I want to work a 60 hour work week, but I really only have, you know, 40 hours in me this week, then that 20 hours could be burned. Right. It could be really bad for me. So all of that to say, there's not a really good. You know, there's not a really good framework for this. Right. We all have to kind of understand these different pieces and parts of the puzzle for each of us individually and be aware of when we are burning out and when we are, you know, overreaching. And then what is realistic for us? I concur. So I like to ask all of my guests two questions at the end of of an interview. The first question is, what question would you like to be asked? What question would you like to be asked more often? You know, I've been asking you questions and in reality, I never really asked you what you would like to be asked. And I think this is a really important question for for interviewers to ask. OK, so I'll tell you, but I don't actually have time to answer it because I assume that you're going to then maybe ask me the question. But I actually enjoy talking about my weight loss story. It's I think that there's a I learned a lot about. Setting goals, establishing vision, reinforcing vision, you know, challenges and carrying through with something. And and all that kind of feeds into the ultimate like Katahdin story that that's where it's kind of derived from. But but I think that any opportunity I get to sit down and kind of have that conversation with someone, I enjoy having that conversation. You know, it's a big point of pride for me in my life that I was able to accomplish that. And so that's what I enjoy talking about. It's just such a big subject. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we can cover that on this, but I would be definitely interested in talking, talking to you about it. And if if you guys actually the listeners of the show, if you want to hear that story, I could ask Patrick back on to the show to talk about that. We would probably, you know, frame that around the idea of of self-discipline and all of those things that go along with that. Incredible story. I've heard parts and pieces of it just being around Patrick. And I think it's a valuable. Story for anyone to hear, but especially Patrick being a developer, being able to relate that story to his, you know, first of all, his day to day work. Right. So it's kind of hard to keep health at the forefront of a priority list when you're sitting most of the day. Like if that's. That is our job. Yeah. We sit in a chair for eight hours. Right. And then we go to lunch with a client. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, we code all night. And so, yeah, it's. It's kind of a big subject. And so, yeah, that's a huge, a huge accomplishment. And if you guys would like to hear that story from Patrick, reach out. Let me know. And I might invite Patrick back on to to talk about. I might just do it anyway. Thank you. Maybe, you know, I really might just do it anyway, because I think it's such a cool story. So and then the second question that I like to ask, and this one should be a little bit easier and you should be able to answer this one fully. But. If you had just 30 seconds to sit down with a developer, regardless of their experience level, what advice would you give them? Well, use Google. You know, I would say, again, I think it's what I said earlier, that I would take every opportunity to teach someone else. I think that for me, that's been my my always the times where I've learned the most is when I've had to explain a concept. And that that that's reinforced things for myself. And on top of that, you're also giving back to the community you're a part of. Right. And so I think it's kind of this win win all the way around. So I would you know, it's very. So in other words, I'm encouraging constant learning, but through teaching. So that that's what I would say, do. Yeah, for sure. I can definitely echo that. I think that's a really important part of progressing and the concept of mentoring. And, you know. Investing in helping another person. There's so much that you can learn about that, both, you know, objectively about programming and about actually doing that work. But also as a human, you learn a lot about about communication skills, you know, and about, you know, dealing with another person and learning about their motivations and their desires. And those all are really important skills to have just as a human being. So I totally. Totally agree with you on that. This has been awesome. Thank you so much, Patrick, for for taking some time and and talking to me and all the people who are listening to the show. Hey, everybody. Thank you. I've enjoyed it. What's your Twitter handle so they can go and barrage you with tweets? I feel like you did this on purpose. I don't actually have Twitter. So I'll tell you where you can find me. You can find me on Instagram at the great Patsby with two A's. Because of my love of film, you can find me on Letterboxd at P Hill PhD. I like. To keep my my watched movie list for this year up. And then, of course, any of the at M of one podcast. So there's Twitter and there's Facebook and, of course, the website and one podcast dot com. You can find me all over that stuff. And M of one is also on iTunes. Is it on any other iTunes and Stitcher? Cool. So great. All right. Thank you so much, Patrick. Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. I appreciate each and every moment that you spend with me. Here on the show. I don't take you for granted. The audience is what makes this show what it is. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you or someone you know is looking for a job as a designer or a developer, go and check out today's sponsor, Hired.com. Incredible opportunities from over twenty five hundred companies offering salary and equity, both contract and full time. Just so many opportunities there. Make sure you use the special link Hired.com slash developer. Tea, which will actually double your signing bonus if you do end up getting a job through Hired. And don't forget that Hired also gives out a referral bonus if you refer somebody else. So refer them to Hired.com slash developer. Tea. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. And until next time, enjoy your tea.