Nina’s been up to a lot lately, so we talk about quite a bit, including live coding on twitch.tv, online conferences, Python Tea (a new online version of the hallway track), Python on hardware, Adafruit, CircuitPython, tricking out your command prompt, working from home, and more.
Transcript for episode 115 of the Test & Code Podcast
This transcript starts as an auto generated transcript.
PRs welcome if you want to help fix any errors.
00:00:00 One of the great things about attending in person conferences such as Python is the hallway track where you can catch up with people you haven’t seen for possibly a year, or maybe even meeting people in person for the first time. Nina is starting something like the hallway track, but online on Twitch called Python T. And this episode kinda is like a hallway track with Nina and myself catching up. We’ve had her on the show before, once in 2018 and once in 2019, but she’s been up to a lot since then. So we talk about a lot of stuff, including live coding on Twitch, online conferences, Python T, Python on hardware Adafruit circuit, Python tricking out your command prompt and working from home, and a lot more. This episode of Test and Code is brought to you by Configcat.com. Config cat feature. Flag service lets you release features faster with less risk, and by Python Morsels level up your Python skills with challenges and expert advice and by listeners like you that support the show through Patreon. Thank you.
00:01:14 Welcome to Test and Code because software engineering should include more testing.
00:01:21 Welcome to Test and Code. On today’s episode, I have Nina Zac Renko. She’s been on two times before, so I’m welcome her back. But if people have just catching, just starting listening. The last time she was on was last April. So, Nina, who are you?
00:01:40 My name is Nina Zakirenko. I work at Microsoft as a cloud developer advocate, focusing on Azure and Vs code and making our tools and services better and easier to work with for developers everywhere.
00:01:57 Well, that’s pretty cool, but how has that changed since in the last couple of months, developer acted I think you were traveling a lot before, weren’t you?
00:02:07 Yeah, I was never huge on traveling, but I did do quite a few in person events. Actually, my last event was one that I helped organize, and I didn’t realize it would be my last, probably for this year and maybe for next. But that was Pi Cascades back in February.
00:02:29 Yes. It seems like forever ago now, but it was just a few months ago.
00:02:35 Yeah, a different lifetime, right?
00:02:38 Yeah.
00:02:39 I was definitely a little bit freaked out about my job at first because in person events were a big part of it. But I feel like myself and my team and my organization over the past few months, we’ve really been adapting to what the world looks like at the moment. And so that means more virtual content. We can talk about live streaming in a moment, more video recordings, more spaces to connect, more events that are being organized.
00:03:15 And we’re still learning lessons. We’re not 100% of the way there. There are still things that are missing from in person experiences, but we’re getting there. Yeah, I will say that I’ve been very busy.
00:03:34 Well, yeah, one of the things you’re doing is live streaming, so let’s jump into that yeah. So why did you start and is this something you just wanted to do yourself, or is this part of the developer advocate thing?
00:03:51 No, it’s something I wanted to do myself. And the timing was right, I suppose, because I got started back in, I want to say the end of January, maybe early February, and I did it because it looked interesting.
00:04:08 Susan Hinton is a fantastic life coacher who has been doing it for a really long time, and she was a huge inspiration for me, and it seemed like a new way to be able to do my work while actually interacting with an audience and being able to take questions for me personally. It’s also been really good motivation to work on some side projects that might not have otherwise seen the light of day. Because when I say that I’m going to work on a particular project and folks show up to hang out and to watch, then I have to do it.
00:04:49 I committed.
00:04:51 Yeah. I was going to work on this plugin, but I think I’ll just work on some email.
00:04:56 Exactly.
00:04:59 Yeah. So one of the things I’m curious about with Life coders, and it’s probably lots of answers to this, but is this stuff you’re working on, is it new or do you practice it once before you do the live version?
00:05:15 No, I don’t practice it at all. Which people get to see my process.
00:05:24 There have been streams where nothing is working and the whole stream is me trying to debug or troubleshoot or fix a test or whatever, and that just reflects what writing code is actually like.
00:05:38 If I did practice it, it would just be sugar coated.
00:05:41 That’s true.
00:05:43 It’s a good reality check. I never thought about that as using a live coding and sessions as a way to see what people’s day to day job looks like.
00:05:56 Coding is a lot of head begging, not the rocking kind, but against the table kind.
00:06:04 At first, making mistakes was really terrifying. Making mistakes in front of an audience and imposter syndrome and how everyone’s going to think I don’t know what I’m doing, but it hasn’t panned out that way at all. Folks are really friendly and supportive, and sometimes they help me troubleshoot. And it’s kind of fun in the way that pair programming can be when you’re working with someone that you gel with.
00:06:30 Yeah, except your pair programming with many.
00:06:33 Oh, that’s an interesting idea. Yeah.
00:06:36 Neat. So you kind of pick something you’re going to work on and you announce it at a time.
00:06:40 Then generally, sometimes I work on hardware stuff, sometimes circuit Python projects over the course of a few streams, I built a mechanical keyboard from scratch.
00:06:53 Oh, wow.
00:06:53 So that was really fun. But lately I’ve been working on a Flask app.
00:07:01 So writing Python, I think I’m about two or three weeks away from being able to deploy it. I’m not going to go into too much detail because we still have so much to talk about. But if folks want to tune in, they can catch me at Twitch. Tvnjaio and I stream twice a week. Generally Mondays and Thursday is around 430 P. M. Pacific.
00:07:24 Okay. How long are you stream? How long do the sessions go?
00:07:28 It depends. Usually between an hour and 2 hours.
00:07:32 Okay.
00:07:35 That’s a chunk of time that you’re committing to this, but if it’s projects you wanted to work on anyway, that’s cool.
00:07:43 Yeah. And it helps me commit to writing code because developer advocacy is not quite one to one with the engineering jobs that I was used to having. And I really have to carve out the time to keep the skills up while you’re coding.
00:08:01 While you’re doing this, there’s chat going on. Right.
00:08:06 That’s the part that I was worried about, that if I were able to do this, coding is a very focused exercise. Sometimes trying to interact with a chat at the same time.
00:08:21 Is there difficulty there?
00:08:24 Yeah, I would say that my first few streams were very awkward.
00:08:29 Okay.
00:08:31 As I was trying to juggle it. But you adapt. And the thing that I had to come to terms with was whatever I was working on, it would take me longer.
00:08:42 Sometimes I just wanted to I thought I would be productive or just get this feature out there or get this test out there. And it doesn’t really work that way. You can’t have the interactivity and be super productive, but the interactivity is what makes it fun, and it’s what both keeps me coming back and the folks who watch my stream coming back. And we’ve kind of started up this really nice little community of folks who like Python and have a lot of shared interests.
00:09:15 I have a discord server that I started, and it’s really lovely.
00:09:21 That’s cool. There’s a way for people to learn if they wanted to try. So this is definitely on my Sunday Maybe list of adding this to the pile of stuff I’m working on.
00:09:32 Yeah. It took me a while to learn and get proficient, and I very slowly built up my gear that I was using and how fancy things were. So some folks, I feel like, try to do it all right out of the gate, get the fanciest lights and all the best gear and the nicest camera. And you really don’t need that. You just need a reasonable microphone and. Okay. Lighting. Right. That makes a really big difference. And then you don’t need to know everything about the software. You can really just build as you go if you decide that it’s something that you want to stick with.
00:10:09 Okay. And it’s not expensive.
00:10:13 Most of the stuff is free. Right.
00:10:15 Not the gear, but like the software and stuff.
00:10:18 Not the gear. Yeah, but Twitch is free. You don’t have to pay the stream. Yeah.
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00:11:32 Well, another thing that we’re doing now from our laptops instead of in person is conferences.
00:11:40 Yeah.
00:11:41 And so my first experience with participating in a remote conference was Python, but yeah. What do you want to talk about with remote conferences? It’s a little bit of a weird thing.
00:11:54 It is a weird thing.
00:11:57 I have participated in a few meet ups and a few remote conferences, one being PyCon, which kind of decided to instead of having one live event, they’ve been slowly rolling out videos and slowly rolling out content on their YouTube channel.
00:12:17 And then the other conference that I spoke at was kind of the polar opposite of that. I belong to a team on Twitch called The Live Coders, and we put together a conference back in April, and there’s another one coming up in June, and that whole conference was live streamed on Twitch with chat enabled.
00:12:38 Okay, so that’s kind of the two spectrums, right? Submitting a prerecorded talk for Python and then just doing it live.
00:12:47 Yeah, I kind of want to do, I don’t know, as a presenter. I really liked being able to do it ahead of time.
00:12:58 I enjoyed that part of it. Although all of it was new, I hadn’t recorded my screen before or recorded a presentation, so learning that was new.
00:13:09 There was another conference that was an internal company conference that we were going to do, and it turned into one of the streaming ones, like it was a live stream thing, although that doesn’t really work great when you do it around the world because the time zones are weird. Right. So I think both are a neat idea. But before, actually even six months ago, I would have thought live coding or live or online conferences are a neat idea, but probably aren’t going to get a lot of traction. But after this, I think there are more possibility. Like the meetup idea is kind of a neat thing because the Chicago Python meet up is they’re doing during those and taping them and getting them out there and doing them streaming so you can watch it live. And other meetups are doing that, too. It’s a neat idea that now suddenly it’s not just a regional conference or regional meet up. People everywhere in the world can watch, which is cool.
00:14:19 And participate. I gave a lightning tag. I write the code Seattle.
00:14:25 I don’t live in Seattle, but I was able to share with their community, and I really enjoyed doing that.
00:14:30 Well, that’s neat. That’s cool.
00:14:34 I think that it’d be fun as somebody giving a talk or interacting with the chat. I think somewhere halfway in between would be fun to do, like prerecorded sessions, but have them play out as if, like, all the people watching it, it’s an in order thing. And then the person that gave the talk could be in the chat answering questions while their old self is presenting. That might be an interesting idea.
00:15:05 Oh, that is interesting. I do like that, because during live coders conference, while I’m giving my talk, I can’t actually keep an eye on the chat. That would just be too much. And so we had moderators pulling out questions from the chat to ask after the talk wrapped up.
00:15:23 Okay. That’s actually a cool idea.
00:15:26 Does anybody do that with live streaming to have, like a moderator hanging out, answering while the live streamer? I guess you’d have to have a team of people, at least one other person working for you.
00:15:37 Yeah. They didn’t answer the questions necessarily. They just queued them up for the end.
00:15:41 Okay, cool.
00:15:43 So that I didn’t have to scroll through a whole chat log to look for questions. They’re all just kind of there for me, and I could focus on the question instead of the process.
00:15:55 Neat. And so you’ve got some other things coming up that you’re going to take this even further, right?
00:16:03 Yeah. So for Python folks who have attended in the past know that Microsoft tends to have a pretty big boost. And we have awesome swag. And the past few years we’ve been giving away Adafruit kits for completing hands on labs, and over the past few months, we’ve been working really hard to move that booth experience to a remote experience.
00:16:29 We’re going to have a big announcement on June 1. We’re going to have lots of demos available on the portal and hands on labs. We’re also going to have an Ada fruit workshop that I’ll share with your listeners. There’s going to be a little surprise there, so I can’t give it away, but I would recommend checking out the workshops.
00:16:52 Okay, cool. So this isn’t happening on June.
00:16:56 The announcements on June 1, is that right?
00:16:58 Yeah. The announcement and the launch is going to be on June 1.
00:17:03 Okay.
00:17:03 Until then, though, our team’s on Discord. So if you want to come hang out with us and ask questions.
00:17:10 You can do that at Aka, Ms slash Python Discord.
00:17:15 Okay. Neat.
00:17:17 Maybe I haven’t done that before I’ll check that out.
00:17:21 Yeah. This card is really blowing up these days.
00:17:25 This idea of doing a live stream with a guest. Can you tell me more about that?
00:17:31 Yeah. So what I really miss about PyCon is the Hallway Track and just conferences in general.
00:17:39 I think this Python would have been my 8th in a row.
00:17:44 Okay.
00:17:45 7Th or 8th.
00:17:46 Wow.
00:17:46 And yeah, I’ve managed to meet so many lovely folks in the community in that time. And you’re walking around the event and you see someone and you ask them what they’re up to, what they’re excited about, how they’ve been. And I haven’t really seen a way to do that or experience that virtually. And so I wanted to do that for the Python community. And so my goal is to start a weekly chat on Twitch, where I’m going to have guests from the Python community come on on Fridays, and we’re just going to chat and catch up. I’ll give them the opportunity to share their screen if they want to demo something, and then folks can come hang out with us and chat, too, and ask questions.
00:18:32 So I’m hoping to make it kind of a little bit like a streamed version of the Hallway Track. And the tentative title is Python T. I think that’s a really fun idea, right?
00:18:44 Yeah. Sounds neat, because that’s definitely true.
00:18:54 I guess I underestimated the power of the hallway Track at conferences, but it’s an incredible it’s a good opportunity to be able to just talk with people. And I guess just having some of that be able to be other people to participate in is a good idea. I think it’s cool.
00:19:17 Yeah.
00:19:18 Some impromptu see where the conversation goes, show some code off.
00:19:23 One of the things, I guess fun thing at the Pycons, people would come up and ask me questions like, hey, I’ve got this testing problem. Can you help me with that? And then we would just like sometimes just go and grab a table somewhere, try to find a sort of quiet spot and take a look at some code and work on things. Or somebody would show off a cool project. I love that idea.
00:19:49 Right.
00:19:50 Kind of neat.
00:19:52 Yeah.
00:19:53 Kind of like a live video podcast.
00:19:56 Yeah.
00:19:57 I’ll have to try to come up with some show and tell items to show up, please.
00:20:02 Yeah.
00:20:04 I would love to have you on as a guest.
00:20:06 That’d be fun.
00:20:10 Do you know when you’re going to try to get that off the ground?
00:20:14 I’m working on getting everything set up next week. Of course, that doesn’t make any sense in podcast time, but May 20 is my goal.
00:20:33 Okay, cool. Well, the show notes are updated, so as soon as we have a way for people to try to get to that. But it will probably be through on your Twitch Tvnjaio. People will be able to find it that way also. Right?
00:20:54 Right. Or if folks want to follow me on Twitter for announcements, that’s generally the best way to keep in touch with what I’ve got going on. And I’m on Twitter at Nnja.
00:21:05 Yeah.
00:21:09 Python T has already started, so check out the show notes at testandcode.com. One, one five for a link to the recorded first episode of Python T.
00:21:23 Oh, also fun fact about the show. I was like, oh, this is such a great unique idea. It’s never been done. And I was talking to Trey Hunter about it. He was a big part of the Python community, and he was like, yeah, I did something like this for years.
00:21:40 Apparently it was called Python Chat, and he didn’t have the interactive portion of it, but he did a weekly Python webcast for quite a while.
00:21:51 Okay.
00:21:54 Nothing is new, I think, is my point.
00:21:57 Okay.
00:21:58 And then there’s a note about Vs Code Team and the Python team or.
00:22:11 This all kind of rolled out of the same idea. But for the folks who work on products at Microsoft, it was always a really big joyful event for them to be able to come to Python and actually talk to their users. Right. And meet folks who are part of the community and get feedback and all of that. And we haven’t figured out a way to do that virtually either. And so I’m setting up a twice a month Q and A for the Python extension for Vs Code team.
00:22:44 Oh, cool.
00:22:45 Yeah. I love that it’s going to happen on the Microsoft developer Twitch. Not on my personal Twitch, but I’m going to bring in four members every two weeks who are going to be around to answer questions, maybe give some sneak peeks of upcoming features and upcoming releases.
00:23:03 Nice.
00:23:04 Yeah, nice. I’ll try not to be a troll.
00:23:09 Please don’t. We have moderators.
00:23:11 Okay.
00:23:13 There’s bouncers at this party.
00:23:16 Okay.
00:23:18 One of the things you brought up about doing on Twitch and some of your talks have been centered around hardware also. So you play with hardware as well, right?
00:23:31 Yeah, I do.
00:23:34 Yeah. So what have you been doing lately?
00:23:37 Well, I’m a little sad about this, but this year at PyCon, we were supposed to give out either for Pi badges with custom code on them that I worked really hard on.
00:23:48 So unfortunately, that’s not happening this year. Maybe next year.
00:23:54 The badge thing that you have on your Twitter profile picture is that the thing that you’re holding is a Pie badge. Okay.
00:24:00 Yeah, I have a whole repository. If someone does have a Pie badge, they can try it out.
00:24:08 There were Easter eggs and a little menu of different options that I kind of wanted to encourage folks to hack on. But given the state of the world, you might not actually have the hardware, or maybe you’re in a place where you might not be able to afford a device or hardware and you’re cutting your spending.
00:24:30 There’s a Vs code extension that was built by the Microsoft Vancouver Garage interns called the Device Simulator Express that allows you to be able to learn about hardware, microcontrollers, circuit, Python, all of the concepts without actually needing the device.
00:24:51 Oh, really?
00:24:53 Yeah.
00:24:53 That’s so cool.
00:24:55 Yeah. So the first batch of interns implemented the Circuit Playground Express, which is a native report. That’s pretty simple. It has LEDs buttons, the switch, a few sensors. The last batch of interns, though, expanded on that idea, and they added support for the microbit, as well as the eight of her Clue, which has a screen.
00:25:19 So, I mean, they did really fantastic work. I’m really impressed, and I think folks should check it out.
00:25:28 Oh, definitely. I’m totally going to check this out and play with it.
00:25:33 Even if you were going to order it, and even if you did order it, you might want to get started before you get the hardware in the mail and working. These pictures look great, though.
00:25:43 It looks like a really cool thing. I definitely need to try that.
00:25:48 I was just actually thinking that one of my excuses for trying to do so. Last year we got Circuit Playground Expresses, right. Or something.
00:26:00 Microsoft gave out something last year. These little circle things, right?
00:26:05 Yeah.
00:26:06 We were giving some kits out at the Microsoft booth, and then either fruit put one into everyone’s swag bag.
00:26:12 Yeah, that’s it.
00:26:14 So I ended up with two of them because of that, because I did the demo thing, and that was a really cool gift or giveaway or whatever. The little fruit box. Totally fun.
00:26:27 Yeah. But I’ve actually not tried not had much time to play with it. But if I convinced myself to do like live streaming or twitching or something, I might be able to come up with some time. That’s a good idea.
00:26:43 Anyway. Cool.
00:26:46 But what got you started with this? I mean, you’ve been doing interactive hardware and software for a while. How did this start with you?
00:27:00 So I started out a few years ago using Arduino and TNC and writing Arduino code, which is kind of a variant of C.
00:27:19 It was fun. I really like wearables and wearable electronics, so figuring out ways to just adorn something with LEDs or doing costuming.
00:27:30 But Circuit Python, I think I discovered that maybe two years ago. Now it just made everything a lot easier. It’s not quite as fast or performant, but the concepts are a lot easier to follow.
00:27:45 Adafruit puts out really nice libraries for their boards, and it’s a lot faster to write, at least for me. Already being familiar with Python people time wise.
00:27:58 It’S super fast to get started, especially with the interaction with code Editors and stuff. And it’s pretty fast to get started. It’s cool. Love it.
00:28:11 Also, the community is really nice.
00:28:13 Oh, yeah, this episode is brought to you by Python Morsels. There’s a difference between code that gets the job done and code that’s clean, maintainable, and something you’re proud of. But to get there, you have to practice. Imagine that you had a Python expert that could spend some time with you every week for practice. They’d give you a simple code challenge and let you try it. And after you worked on it for a bit, sit down and pair program with you, starting with a simple solution and then refining it into a thing of beauty. That’s really kind of what the experience is like with Python Morsels, but instead of in person sessions, they are through email, so you can practice and learn at your own pace. If you want to improve your coding style and expand your Python knowledge, and especially if you need to fit it into an already busy schedule, I strongly recommend trying out Pythonmorcels. Go to Test And Code. Commorcels and get your first month for free.
00:29:08 Let’s talk about terminal prompts.
00:29:10 Yeah, my prompt is pretty tricked out and it’s nicely styled. And unfortunately, every time I live stream or do a demo or give a talk where I’m showing my terminal, half the questions end up being how did you do that?
00:29:33 In fact, there’s already a comment on my Python talk that’s like, how did you do the autocomplete?
00:29:40 So I’m in the process of writing a blog post about my setup.
00:29:47 And to sum things up, I use Omicsh and Zshell.
00:29:53 Yeah, it’s not just snazzy for aesthetics. I also have quite a few things set up for productivity, one being syntax highlighting in my terminal prompt. I just set that up a few weeks ago and I love it.
00:30:10 Oh, wow, what does that mean?
00:30:13 So if I type a command that is Invalid, it will turn red before I even hit enter.
00:30:20 Oh, wow, that’s cool, right? I like it. I want that.
00:30:26 Yeah, it’s super nice. I also have indications for my get repositories. So if I have code that if I have untracked files or commits that aren’t pushed, I see indications of that.
00:30:40 Yeah, I know that zshell is I tried it like maybe a decade ago, so I guess I need to try it again.
00:30:48 Is Omi Zhell on top of Z shell or is it a replacement?
00:30:54 Okay, yeah, it’s on top of it. And it provides support for theming and plugins and a lot of customization.
00:31:03 Okay, is this available for pretty much all platforms.
00:31:08 Or is it just a Mac thing for Linux as well?
00:31:12 Okay, yeah.
00:31:14 Or Windows subsystem for Linux, whatever Linux shell you’re using.
00:31:20 Okay, so I mentioned that I’ve got like, what virtual environment I’m in.
00:31:35 I’ve seen people do have the branch that they’re working on, also things like that.
00:31:43 I don’t know how to do that, though.
00:31:46 Well, you’re going to have to read the blog post and it will be out by the time the podcast is out, so everyone who’s listening can check the show notes.
00:31:55 I haven’t read it yet because it doesn’t exist yet, but we’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah, I’m excited.
00:32:01 It’s nice. Yeah, I have tab complete set up for everything, not just files and directories, but commands and flags as well.
00:32:10 And then I have a lot of automation.
00:32:13 Okay, so the autocomplete.
00:32:18 I’ve been intrigued by people able to use that, too, so I know that some tools already have autocomplete in there, but having more of them around would be cool.
00:32:29 Yeah, it’s nice.
00:32:30 And you don’t have to memorize the stuff.
00:32:33 But one of the things I was curious about, do you have the VI mode so that you do J and K through your history?
00:32:44 No, I’m an Emax fan.
00:32:47 Okay, so the default is off in the Emax, which I don’t even know is it the arrows or something?
00:32:53 So if you want to do a quick search through your history, it’s command R for backwards and then command S for forwards. Sorry, control R and control S.
00:33:04 Okay.
00:33:04 I’m not even going to memorize that because it’s not me.
00:33:09 Do you use Emacs then?
00:33:12 I used Emacs for a long time. These days I use vs code with Emacs key bindings.
00:33:19 Oh, you do Emax key bindings on vs code? Okay. Interesting.
00:33:24 Yeah. So I’ve had people ask me, ask me why I use both by term and vs code off and on, but they’re just all VI because I do VI key bindings for both of them.
00:33:40 So it’s just an IDE. That’s a nice wrapper around VI as far as I’m concerned.
00:33:48 But Emacs vs code, that’s an interesting one. I didn’t know you could do that.
00:33:54 Yeah, just for editing and moving around.
00:33:59 Yeah, well, it’s hard to unlearn that if you’ve been programming for decades with all those key sequences, it’s hard to. And why would you want to try to unlearn that?
00:34:10 Right.
00:34:10 It works.
00:34:12 Anyway, one of the things, except for whenever I have to write, like an email in Outlook or something like that, I wish the Outlook had VIP bindings, so that would be cool.
00:34:29 There’s an app. I’ve never tried it for VI key bindings, but there’s an app called Carabiner that allows you to set up some global Emacs shortcuts for your Mac.
00:34:44 Some EMAC shortcuts work in Mac by default, I believe control A to go to the start of the line and Control E to go to the end of the line work out of the box.
00:34:56 Interesting.
00:34:58 That’s a cool idea. I just had to recently, I’ve been swapping back and forth with Windows and Mac so often recently, using the same keyboard that I had to remap the command key and the control key on my Mac so that I don’t have to memorize two series of copy and paste commands.
00:35:25 I have my Caps lock key remapped to control.
00:35:29 That’s an Emacs thing.
00:35:31 Okay. Yeah. Well, I’ve got one of the central keys remapped to escape, which is a VI thing because the little tiny escape key in the corner is just not good enough.
00:35:46 But anyway, nerd topics.
00:35:53 Well, now how about self quarantine? Self care?
00:35:56 Yeah.
00:35:57 What does that mean?
00:35:59 I don’t know. How are you holding up?
00:36:02 Well, I’m loving it, actually.
00:36:10 Working at home is great. I used to work like 3 miles away from I used to work 3 miles away from my house and now it was like ten minute drive and they used to joke that if traffic was bad it was twelve minutes.
00:36:24 But now it’s like 45 minutes to get to work in like an hour to get back, which I don’t like because we moved out to Hillsborough. But working at home the commute.
00:36:38 I just have to make sure I’m awake by the time I get downstairs to sit at the computer. And I love it.
00:36:44 The kids are pretty good. My kids are old enough to where they’re pretty much on their own, but it’s nice to be able to be a referee once in a while.
00:36:59 But they’re having not much fun because they’re not used to having school be on a computer and so that’s tough.
00:37:11 And I’m fortunate enough to have a fairly big chunk of yard. So even if I don’t leave my own property, I can get outside and stuff.
00:37:23 That is lucky.
00:37:25 But how about you?
00:37:27 Well, I worked from home for a few years now, so that hasn’t really changed for me. What has changed though is so I have asthma and I’ve been taking a lot of extra precautions, so I haven’t even gone to the grocery store or anything like that. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to get my groceries delivered.
00:37:49 So a side effect of that is that every day has become blurs. Day?
00:37:55 Yes.
00:37:58 So you don’t do very much different on the weekends then it just sort of blends together.
00:38:04 I don’t know. I guess on the weekends it’s housework now or some relaxing, I guess. But it’s not enough to differentiate from my usual work week. And so I feel like my work weeks have just been blending into each other.
00:38:22 Yeah, I definitely feel that.
00:38:26 Yeah.
00:38:29 How about like personal interaction stuff?
00:38:31 Yeah. I live with a partner.
00:38:33 Okay.
00:38:34 So we’ve been annoying each other.
00:38:39 We moved in together in March and it’s still kind of new, but we mostly get along and I’m glad to have the support.
00:38:49 We are cooped up together, but I think last week I don’t know how days or times work anymore. I had a friend who had to pick something up and so I left it on my stoop and I waved at her from about 10ft away while she was in the driveway. And that was, I think, the most interaction I’ve had with somebody else in a while.
00:39:12 That was really exciting.
00:39:16 We live in a cul de sac, so we occasionally one of the neighbors have a fire pit. They have a metal fire pit. They’ll drag out to the middle of the cul de sac and then people can be outside and yell at each other from far away. Anyway, the burbs are an interesting thing.
00:39:32 Yeah, that’s hysterical. I would definitely say that I feel so grateful to have a job at the moment and have a role where I can successfully work remotely because I know a lot of people haven’t been quite so lucky.
00:39:47 Yeah, I am very grateful for that, too.
00:39:49 I wonder how it’s going to change the landscape when lockdown is over because I know a lot of companies were very against remote work and said that the company wouldn’t be able to continue with remote workers and collaboration would collapse and all of that. But it seems like that’s not actually happening and people are mostly as or even more productive than they were in the past because they don’t have to commute. And I wonder how it’s going to change the landscape because I feel like the folks who are not supportive might have lost some of their arguments.
00:40:26 My prediction is there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to do like, two or three days at home that they never did before.
00:40:37 There’s still some benefit to personal interaction, but there’s also a downside.
00:40:43 It will be interesting to see if more companies embrace it.
00:40:47 Yeah. Wouldn’t it be great if traffic kind of died down permanently?
00:40:51 Yeah. Or you could hire anybody from anywhere in the world and not have to depend on them to be wanting to move to wherever your company is.
00:41:03 Right.
00:41:06 Anyway, we’ll see.
00:41:08 Hopefully it will change. Well, it was so fun to get caught up on what everything you’re up to and I’m going to definitely check out your Twitch stream and looking forward to the weekly guest interactive chat things. I think that will be a lot of fun.
00:41:28 So cool. We’ll keep in touch.
00:41:30 Yeah. Really looking forward to setting that up.
00:41:33 And thank you for being on the show.
00:41:36 Yeah. Thanks for having me, as usual.
00:41:41 Thank you, Nina, for that fun discussion. Thank you Configcat.com for sponsoring Configat feature Flag service lets you release features faster with less risk. And thank you, Python Marshalls, for sponsoring. Level up your Python skills with challenges and expert advice and thank you to listeners that support the show through Patreon. Join them by going to testandcode.com support. All of those links and links to the items we talked about in the show are in the show, notes at testandcode.com one one. That’s all for now. Now go out and test something.