Geeking Out with Adriana Villela

Key takeaways:Being able to see things from different perspectives allows you to open your mind to see and solve problems from different angles. It also allows us to reach others better.Life-long learning is a must in tech careers, otherwise we can't improve and evolve.How early recognition and support from Duffie's mom helped him learn to read with dyslexia.Spending time in Hawaii and California while growing up gave Duffie different perspectives that have served him well in his tech career.There are tools out there available for exploration, for those curious enough to learn about different technologies. You just need to bring your curiosity.Finding the right fit at a company is more than just overall company culture. It's also about team culture and having people believe in you and give you room to grow and succeed.Welcoming tech communities are those that have systems and supports in place to grow and nurture new contributors.How do you communicate effectively when the words you're using may be interpreted as a challenge? Let them know that you only seek to understand, and are relying on their expertise for that.Everything you've been through has set you up for success moving forwardDon't fall in love with your code; when someone builds on your code or ideas, take it as form of praise, and not as a form of criticism.When a company is acquired by another company, how do you keep the acquired employees from jumping ship? Keep them motivated, and ensure that there is a clear vision tying their work to the overall vision.An expert as someone who can take other people and make them proficient at a thing; not somebody who knows all the answers.Understanding a problem from multiple perspectives is a is a multiplier for your understanding and for your career.Make room for things to be hard. Not everything has to be easy for everybody.About our guest:Duffie Cooley is the Field CTO for Isovalent @ Cisco. He has been involved in the Kubernetes Community since 2017. He is an emeritus member of the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee and has helped lots of folks learn more about The Kubernetes Ecosystem and eBPF through tgik and eCHO office hours. His handle is mauilion as he grew up in Maui, Hawaii and likes big cats. If you see his face come say hi! He's usually carrying around a few cool stickers as well.Find our guest on:BlueskyLinkedInFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Star Trek IV: "We are looking for Nuclear Wessels" clipStar Trek IV: Scotty's "Hello, Computer" clipKaahumanu TheatreArch LinuxMotorcycle Engine Control Unit (ECU)IPython (interactive Python)"Billion Laughs" Kubernetes CVE (CVE-2019-11253)Jinja "unsafe"Zip driveNorthPoint CommunicationsCovad Communications CompanyDigital Subscriber Line (DSL)Graphical Network Simulator (GNS)Duffie's talk at KubeCon Amsterdam 2023Creative Whack PackDan Wendlandt, CEO and founder of IsovalentOpen vSwitchCilliumTetragonKubeadmAdditional notes:Geeking Out: Liz Fong-Jones on being a Field CTOTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada.And geeking out with me today. I have Duffie Cooley. Welcome, Duffie.DUFFIE:Thank you so much.DUFFIE:It's an honor to be here. You have such a tremendous, you know, history of podcasts so far. So I'm just really grateful to be a part of it.ADRIANA:Oh, thank you so much. And, Duffie, where are you calling from today?DUFFIE:I live in Alameda, which is not too far from San Francisco. It's right across the Bay Bridge.ADRIANA:I got to, like, nerd out with you when you said Alameda is. It makes me think of Star Trek IV. It is. It is the same place.DUFFIE:This is where the nuclear vessels were hosted.ADRIANA:So this is why I know of Alameda.DUFFIE:Another one that, people connect with is, what do you call it? MythBusters.MythBusters did a bunch of stuff, like, out on this, like. And you're like, where in the Bay Area did you find such a big, flat space to, like, crash semi-trucks? Here on Alameda out on the point. That’s where it was filmed.ADRIANA:Oh, that's so wild, I remember MythBusters. That was a great show.DUFFIE:It was. I love the whole premise. You know, it's like people having, like, the the, some challenging thing, and you're like, is it real? Did it really happen? All right.ADRIANA:Let's. Yeah. Yeah, and by the way, my my my final comment on Alameda and the Star Trek movies, I know everyone loves Wrath of Khan, but Star Trek IV still holds a place in my heart as the best one, because there is time travel and Scotty talking to an old Mac. So...DUFFIE:I remember seeing that movie for the first time I was, I, I grew up in Hawaii.ADRIANA:Oh cool.DUFFIE:That movie is one of the movies that I absolutely remember seeing in the Kaahumanu Theater, like in in Kahului in Maui. It's like, you know, there are a few movies where you like, really connect with a place in a time. And that's one of those movies for me.ADRIANA:That's so awesome. Cool. I have so many questions now about, like, growing up in Hawaii, but, I'm going to start first with our, lightning round questions. Are you ready? Tsk... icebreaker. Used to call them Lightning Round. But they're not lightning. Okay. First question. Are you lefty or a righty?DUFFIE:I'm a righty, but I am dyslexic, so jury's out.ADRIANA:Love it. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android? iPhone. All right. Next one. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?DUFFIE:Linux. All day. I've been a Linux on the desktop user for 20 something years.ADRIANA:Oh, damn. What's your what's your favorite distro?DUFFIE:My favorite distro. That's a tough one. I've been through so many. I think Arch is probably my current favorite because of the the community builds and everything else like that at work, however, when I'm at Cisco, I have to. I have to use Ubuntu, which I don't mind. It's a great distro as well, but but yeah, like for the, for the obscure kind of stuff that you need to make your desktop your own, I think Arch is really the great one.ADRIANA:Nice, nice. And, that is one thing like Linux does let you, play around a lot.DUFFIE:Almost to its detriment. Yes.ADRIANA:Yeah. That's true. My, my only, my only beef with with Linux and maybe it's improved. It's been a while... was like I couldn't get it to play with all the peripherals all the time. And when I used to have, like, you know, an iPhone that I had to connect to, to my computer to sync, or actually, before that, I had BlackBerry. I couldn't use the BlackBerry software to sync my BlackBerry in my Linux box. Sadly.DUFFIE:It's a challenge for sure. I mean, it's I was just recently. Speaking of geeking out, I'm also a motorcycle rider, and I was recently changing the programing of the computer that operates the motorcycle's fueling and electrical systems. And for that, I needed a Windows computer, because the only software that I could use to load the program onto the device that was doing the programing was the windows computer.And so I again remembered how to do this with Vagrant. I spun up a Windows 11 machine, figured out how to do a USB passthrough, because I'm not going to install Windows just to try this out. Right? Like...ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah.DUFFIE:You know like but yeah, I feel you on the on the challenge of like being able to having to deal with stuff that sometimes it's, it's-- Windows is the only way. And...ADRIANA:Yes. But also you're like updating software on your motorcycle. Feel like you buried the lede there.DUFFIE:Well, it's interesting stuff. I mean, just like with motorcycles, actually, with most fuel injected vehicles, especially recent ones, they have an ECU that's responsible for like good timing in the fueling.And and from the factory they come in this issue in this state where because of the way that the regulations work, they have to stay within a particular range of fueling and timing to remain underneath an emission thing, which does two things. I mean, I appreciate the emissions challenge, but the other part of it is that it causes the motorcycle to run very lean a lot of the time, which causes the motorcycle to run hot.And actually you end up in this kind of like weird bad loop where the motorcycle can't really operate at efficiency. So it's continuing to run badly. And and if it were to able to run efficiently, it would actually run significantly more efficiently then the computer program allows for it. And so that was the change I was making, was allowing for the computer to actually learn from the sensors on the bike how efficiently it's running.So it could actually do a better learning loop and operate correctly. Right. It's still in the the, the two that I put on this motorcycle is still a 50 state tune. If I had to go and get my exhaust checked, it would still pass.It's just that it allows the motorcycle to be unrestricted in how it fuels and times the bike so that it's still it's still being very efficient, but it's not being held back by that regulation on it.ADRIANA:Got it. That's very cool. Speaking of... so, like, what do you what do you write that in?DUFFIE:Oh, I'm not sure. I didn't actually write this one. So this is all like, I so basically what I get back is a program that looks like a map, right? It looks a little bit like a graph. And the units on one side are perhaps things like, measurements of oxygen and, and measurements of temperature and things like that.And on the other side we have like timing adjustment, like up or down and also fueling how much fueling. And you can think of this like a big heat map. Right. And what it's trying to do is it's trying to figure out a way to make it so that as you move through the power cycle of t

Key takeaways:The secret sauce to a successful podcast is consistency, connection, and continuing to show up.Podcasting work continues long after the recording is doneIf you keep showing up with that same level of honesty and value, you're not just building an audience, you're building a community.It's important to lead communities with clarity and care, by not just starting conversations, but also holding space for people.Good social media marketing isn't about going viral. It's about showing up consistently with something real to say.Social is a 2-way street. It's about posting and engaging with your audience.Every line in social media copy has a job to do, and it has to grab your audience's attention in 1-2 seconds.Platform fluency matters. What works in one social media platform might not work in another.Great copy is part psychology, part storytelling and part restraint.AI is a useful tool for writing, but it does not replace one's "writing voice".You can and should be repurposing content, because not everyone will see all of your posts all of the time.Being a working mom in tech means that there's no off switch. You have to communicate clearly, be efficient, and make peace with not being polished all the time.About our guest:Mandy Moore is a seasoned marketer, podcast producer, and storyteller with over 15 years of experience helping tech companies and creative brands build content that actually connects. She's the voice behind ExHotMess.net, a blog where she writes raw, real stories about recovery, resilience, and life in the messy middle. When she's not helping others find their voice, she's usually geeking out over astrology, audio editing, or a perfectly crafted sentence.Find our guest on:InstagramBlueskyLinkedInMastodonFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:On-Call Me Maybe PodcastMandy's LinkedIn post on the importance of writing with heartThe Happiness Lab (episode with Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General)Mandy's BlogTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Mandy Moore. Welcome, Mandy.MANDY:Hello.ADRIANA:Hey, I'm super excited to have you on here. And we have a really cool connection because, Mandy used to be the producer of On-Call Me Maybe, which is the podcast that Ana Margarita Medina and I used to do back in our Lightstep days, which feels like forever ago, but it wasn't like that long ago.MANDY:I love those days. I miss those days.ADRIANA:Yeah. They were. They were fun times. And where are you calling from, Mandy?MANDY:I am from calling in from York, Pennsylvania.ADRIANA:Awesome fellow east coaster. Love it. Cool. Well, let's launch into the icebreaker questions. Are you ready?MANDY:Sure.ADRIANA:Okay, let's do it. So first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?MANDY:I'm a lefty.ADRIANA:Oh my God, me too!MANDY:We've got some special skills.ADRIANA:We do! We do! And are you are you like a everything lefty or a, like some things you do right handed. Like I can't mouse left handed.MANDY:No. I'm ambidextrous, so I write left handed and I eat left handed. But like I do all sports right handed, and I cut right handed.ADRIANA:No way!MANDY:I, I, I do lots of things right handed.ADRIANA:That's so cool. It's so interesting to talk to, fellow lefties about, like, the extent of their of their leftieness.MANDY:Yeah, it's all over the place.ADRIANA:It is. Oooh, fun! Awesome. Okay. Next question. Are you an iPhone or Android gal?MANDY:iPhone.ADRIANA:Awesome. Fellow iPhone-er. For computers, do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?MANDY:Mac.ADRIANA:Same. Same. Do you have a favorite programing language?MANDY:No, I don't, I don't I'm not a programmer. I just work tech adjacent.ADRIANA:I love it, I love it, and it's so fun to like, meet all sorts of folks who are tech adjacent, and I’ve had a few on the podcast as well. So we will we will be digging more into that. Okay. Two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume your content using, through video or text?MANDY:Text.ADRIANA:And final question what is your superpower?MANDY:Ooh, my superpower is being able to tell a good story.ADRIANA:Ooh, fantastic. And so important, also, like in in the type of work that you do as well. Right.MANDY:Exactly, exactly. Lots of storytelling involved in marketing and content marketing, tech marketing, all that kind of stuff.ADRIANA:Well, awesome. I think this is a good segue to get into, your tech journey. Because as you mentioned, you're you're tech adjacent. So, what you tell us a little bit about that.MANDY:Yeah. So I didn't set out to work in tech. I was a single mom on government assistance, just trying to survive. And this was about 15 years ago. I answered a Craigslist ad from a software developer who needed administrative help, like answering emails and scheduling meetings and doing kind of easy stuff. So I answered that ad, and he hired me, and a few weeks, and he asked if I could edit his podcast, and I said, “Pod what?”I had no idea what a podcast even was, but I know that I needed, you know, the money and the work. So I spent a few... a weekend, heads down, figuring it out, playing with it, and, free software, open source software called Audacity. And, from there, I did such a solid job that he started just sending me referrals. And within a year, I went from food stamps to running a freelance business. So that... that one scrappy “Yes” you know, turned into a 15 year career in digital marketing, podcast production and content strategy, mostly in the tech and software space. So I've edited over 10,000 edit... or I've edited over 10,000 hours of audio, launched and grown shows, built social strategies, and worked with dev teams, founders and creators around the world.And I did it all while learning on the job, saying yes before I was ready, and never letting anyone else define what I was capable of.ADRIANA:That is so amazing, and I love the whole. Like your whole journey is incredible and you know it. It's it's cool because I feel like that's the kind of mindset that you need in, in software engineering is like being willing to learn and being able to learn quickly. So that's so that's, that's so awesome. And I and I think like another thing that you mentioned, which I really love, is that you, even though you didn't have the skills, you said yes to it and and you gave yourself the skills which you know, I, I've talked to so many women in tech who are like, I don't want to apply for this job because I, I need more time to build up my skills. And I don't think I have enough skills. And you're like, nope, I bet on myself. I'm doing this.MANDY:Yeah. You know, at first I didn't even realize I was building a career. I was just following the work. I, I kept saying yes to new challenges managing social writing, blog post, building content, calendars, learning SEO, editing more podcasts. You know, like every client taught me something new. And eventually I realized that I wasn't just survival anymore, that I was actually just really good at this. And over time, I carved out a niche working mostly with tech companies and dev focused brands. So I loved it because it blended creativity with systems. I could help founders find their voice and launch podcasts that actually connected, and create strategies that weren't just performative, but real.ADRIANA:That's great. And, you know, for the work that you've done on, on various podcasts, what what have you seen as like the secret sauce to a successful podcast?MANDY:The secret sauce to successful podcast. I really think it comes from being able to, you know, have consistency and connection, consistency and showing up, releasing on schedule and and keeping the quality high and having and connection and knowing who you're talking to and why they should care. You know, people think they need to be flashy or go viral, but the truth is, like, if you can speak directly to your niche like you're in their head, they'll come back. You know, that's what builds trust. That's that's what builds community. And, you know, here's what most people overlook. The work doesn't end when you hit publish. You've got to market the episode and slice it up and share it and quote it and turn it into social blogs, emails, whatever helps the content live longer than the 45 minutes in somebody's podcast app. You know, the best shows I've worked on have a clear voice, a strong point of view, and a host who gives a damn. You know? Yeah, you can't fake that.ADRIANA:Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. And, you know, it's it's cool because I learned so much from you, when you were producing On-Call Me Maybe for us, because I didn't know any of those things. And I remember even, like, that was my first time ever, ever hosting a podcast. And I was like, oh, my God, I am so terrified. And then when I started this podcast, I'm like, you know, I went from having a co-host to not having a co-host to and having to do everything myself, and it is so much work, and especially, as you said, to keep that content going even long past when the episode drops. Like, I swear I spend a lot of my time, you know, picking like, the perfect audiograms for my podcast. And it's like, every time I do it, I'm like, oh my God, this is like so much work. But then you, like, find that perfect quote and you're like, oh, it was so worth it.MANDY:Yeah. Now... people love the idea of having a podcast, but what they don't always love is the actual work that goes into making it good. You know, it's not just hopping on zoom and chatting with your friend for 45 minutes. There's prep and scripting and guest management and

Key takeaways:Coping with ADHD and leveraging it as a superpowerThe importance of effective communication (and how that got her working on Kubernetes)New contributors can and should call out more senior contributors when they are wrongIncrease in the student contributions in open source, specifically KubernetesThe importance of making tech connections with more senior folks, and how that helped Kat transition into cybersecurityPath to tech included being paid to watch horror moviesAbout our guest:Kat Cosgrove (she/they) is the Head of Developer Advocacy at Minimus, focused on the growth and nurturing of open source through authentic contribution. In particular, her specialties are approachable 101-level content and deep dives on the history of technology, with a focus on DevOps and cloud native.She was the Kubernetes Release Lead for 1.30 Uwubernetes, and currently serves as both the Release Team subproject owner and SIG Docs tech lead.Find our guest on:BlueskyLinkedInFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Google Fi WirelessMicrosoft ZuneWine (Windows emulator on Linux)Kubernetes release teamKubernetes Community Groupsk3sdockershimcontainerdDockershim Announcement (Kat's article on the Kubernetes blog)UwubernetesOpenTelemetry End User SIGMinimusUK House of LordsOpenUK Annual Awards 2025Blockbuster videoBlack Lodge VideoCode Fellows BootcampTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey everyone, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast, in which we dive into the career journeys of some of the amazing humans in tech, and geek out on topics like software development, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Kat Cosgrove. Welcome, Kat.KAT:Howdy.ADRIANA:And where are you calling from?KAT:Edinburgh, Scotland.ADRIANA:Ooh, exciting. Okay. Are you ready to dive into our icebreaker questions?KAT:Yeah, let's hit it.ADRIANA:All right, so first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?KAT:I am a righty.ADRIANA:Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?KAT:Android. I, had an I. The last iPhone I had was a 3GS. It died when I dropped it in the bathtub, and, I just, I don't know, I have a, Pixel 9 Pro.ADRIANA:How do you like that?KAT:I love it, but I I'm kind of chained to it. Or, like, I committed hard to the Pixel because I use Google Fi. Because I travel so much, that I don't want to deal with cell phone carriers that, like, charge you different rates for different countries for data and minutes, and Google Fi does not. So I'm, I'm locked into the Android Google ecosystem.ADRIANA:It's all about the lock in, right? With... cell phones. So. Yes.KAT:Yeah. Once they get you, you got.ADRIANA:Yeah. That's it. That's right. Yeah. Apple got me at the iPhone 3G. Yes. And I, I've not let go since. I had a BlackBerry before that. Which I loved until it started to like shut down in the middle of phone calls. And then I just got, like, pissed. I'm like, I'm switching. I don't care.KAT:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's how I rage quit. The iPod. I don't know what. Like, I'm cursed or like, my iPods were haunted, but, like, I had three iPods in a row that I had to take back to the Genius Bar to get replaced because, albums were skipping, like, albums that had been purchased from iTunes were skipping as if, like, I had ripped a bad CD or something. Kept doing it, and I gave up and bought a Zune. And I...ADRIANA:How was that? Because I almost bought one.KAT:I loved it, I missed them. The software sucked shit. Like the actual, like Zune desktop application was laggy and slow, but the actual experience using the literal device was incredible. I really miss it. I don't use my ph-- I hike a lot and I don't like to have. I don't use my phone when when I hike, but I still like to have music. If Microsoft would rerelease the goddamn Zune, I would buy one in a heartbeat, like so fast.ADRIANA:That is so cool because I, I totally considered one at the time and I remember too... like the Zune, had some advanced features even over the iPod. I think you could even do like, Bluetooth, like music transfer between Zune users, right? Is that...?KAT:Yeah. You could and, I think, I think I remember them, being able to handle, audio output at a higher bit rate. But it's it's been so long since I had a Zune. Like, I have no idea if that that's a correct memory or not, but also they just, like, looked cooler. I was very goth back then, and like, I still am, obviously. But I mean, look at me, but, the Zune came in black and white. I'm not. I'm come in black. So.ADRIANA:Well there you go. So endorsement for the Zune. That's so cool.KAT:It's a good technology. Let's go.ADRIANA:Right on. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?KAT:It depends on what I'm doing. This call is coming to you from my Windows desktop, okay. Which is a machine that I built for gaming, and also handles all of my big video calls. It's got a big camera mounted behind my desk and a ring light for, like, daily, everyday use. Browsing the internet, playing video games, Windows, Windows, Windows all the way. I actually think that it would be a pretty hard sell to convince me to use Linux as a daily driver in any situation. The user experience is still just like, not very good. And my primary reason for having a home desktop is playing video games, which Linux is just simply not good at. For any time that I have to write code, I use my MacBook. That... that I do prefer, like, I can do it on Windows, right?Like, WSL2 is fine, but I already have all of my dev environments set up on my MacBook, so I use that. But, most of the time if I'm on the computer, I'm on this Windows machine.ADRIANA:Ah! Cool, cool.KAT:Sorry everybody.ADRIANA:Hahaha. It's interesting though, because, you know, so many of my friends who are gamers, it's like, yeah, Windows. It's Windows for gaming or bust. Because can't... you cannot convince anyone to a game on a Mac, or on a Linux machine.KAT:No. Like some stuff you can emulate. Like like a bunch of older games have native support for Linux, or you can, you can run Wine or something like it to emulate Windows to run it, but it's not going to be great, experience-wise and like brand new Triple-A games. No, it's not going to happen.ADRIANA:Yeah. I feel ya. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?KAT:Yeah. It's Python. I, I do also know like Go and JavaScript and PHP, but, if I need to prototype something very, very quickly, Python may not be the best choice for like what I'm actually trying to do, but I can make it, do it, and I can make it do it pretty quickly. Like it's a good multi-tool language for me.It's it's not the first language I learned. So that's that's not why. It's just, it it feels very, very flexible. So I could prototype something in Python and then build it in a more ideal language later on. But if I'm just trying to bang something out real quick. Python.ADRIANA:I can so relate to that because, my I, I did Java for 16 years, so I learned Python later in life and... I find is... so nice to code in.KAT:It is! It's pleasant. It's like, it's like, it's pseudo code with valid and executable, right? Yeah. You can kind of just, giving it a lot of the time and you're going to be pretty close to writing valid Python. So yeah. Why not.ADRIANA:Exactly. Yeah. It's it's it's just it's absolutely lovely. And. Yeah, it's also like my nowadays like my go to whenever I want to fuck around with stuff. It's like, yeah.KAT:Somebody's got a library for that, you know.ADRIANA:Exactly, exactly. And it's one of those like it's, it's, I guess an old timey language by now. I mean, it's been around for a while.KAT:Yes. Since like 1996, I think. So it's like it's it's not quite a legacy language, but like it's definitely it's mature for sure. It's not geriatric, but it's mature. You can make it do damn near anything, really.ADRIANA:You really can! Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?KAT:That's like that's a difficult question. So I used to be a dev. I was a web developer, and then I was an embedded Linux developer, which does cause, like a very, very specific type of brain damage from which I have recovered, entirely. But when I started doing developer advocacy, I was working for, like, DevOps tooling companies. I was working for JFrog. So. Ops has made me a lot of money and given me like the financial freedom to, take care of myself and people I care about. So. So I like ops quite a lot for that. Like, now, obviously I work in cybersecurity, but, I don't know. I think I'm still going to have to go dev because ops doesn't allow me as easily to build stupid shit when I'm bored.ADRIANA:Yes, that is.KAT:And so like, on the one hand, financial freedom on the other, stupid shit.ADRIANA:Yeah.KAT:And the stupid shit does make me happy, so... I’m going to have to go dev.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah. And on the stupid shit, when I'm bored, it's like, you know, you can, sure you can spin up like a Kubernetes cluster in your Google Cloud, but it's going to cost you.KAT:It's going to cost you. It's going to cost you. That shit is not free. No. Whereas making a, I don't know, dumb fake conference and chucking it on Netlify is free as long as you don't get too much traffic. So it's, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna have to say dev for the fun factor.ADRIANA:Love it, love it. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?KAT:JSON? And I know that I shouldn't say that because I work in Kubernetes and we kind of like assume that everything is going to be YAML, but you can feed Kubernetes JSON as well. It doesn't doesn't have to be YAML. YAML bothers me because there isn't a consistent spec. It is like too easy to end up with something that's improperly formatted because there's like, invisible whitespace hanging out.ADRIANA:Yeah.KAT:That drives me absolutely bonkers. I ju

Key takeaways:Job hopping at a young age can help you better understand what you like and what you're good atDoing meaningful and impactful work keeps us engaged and not bored at work and hating our livesBurnout happens more often in tech than we care to admit, and one way to cope with it is by doing an activity that you're not good atNormalizing talking about mental health at work gives others a safe space to take care of their own mental healthTips for concentrating: activities with low cognitive load can help you concentrate better on primary activitiesDiscovering your own leadership style and what works for you helps you become a successful managerJumping off the IC track too early to get into management can hurt you as a manager in the long runAbout our guest:Denise is an Engineering Manager at HashiCorp and a professional margin-scribbler. She's been using sketchnotes and comics for the last few years to make concepts in engineering more accessible and fun.Find our guest on:MastodonBlueskyLinkedInFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Rails Active Record Query InterfaceSpaces vs Tabs debateVideo game music can help with attention spanAudioslave (supergroup)Broken Social Scene (supergroup)Neha Batra (GitHub)MySpaceBook: Work Won't Love You BackTranscript:ADRIANA:Okay. Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Denise Yu of HashiCorp. Welcome, Denise.DENISE:Thanks so much, Adriana. Very excited to be here.ADRIANA:I'm excited too. And where are you calling from?DENISE:I'm also in Toronto. We're neighbors.ADRIANA:Yes. Yeah. I always say on the podcast, I always get very excited when I have a fellow Torontonians on. We need, you know, we need to get some good representation in Canada.DENISE:Yes, yes, we are only 10% of the Cana... Actually, no, I think I think the GTA is 20% of the Canadian population.ADRIANA:AV: Oh, damn. That's. Yeah. DENISE:I mean, we are there's a lot of us, actually.ADRIANA:There are a lot of us. Well, with that, I think this is a great segway to get into our lightning round questions.DENISE:Let's do it.ADRIANA:Ready... Okay, let's let's see how lightning they are. They may or may not be. I roll with it. Okay, first question, are you a lefty or a righty?DENISE:I am right handed.ADRIANA:Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?DENISE:I have an iPhone. I don't really know how to use Android anymore, but every time I try to use my friend's Android phone, I end up calling her mom by accident. I just don't know how to use it. So I'm going to go iPhone for the, like, basic reason: I know how to use an iPhone.ADRIANA:And it's funny because my my mom, had, an Android for a hot minute because even though my dad had an... he had an iPhone for work. That was his primary cell phone. He decides he's going to buy my mom a freaking Android. My mom was computer illiterate. Like, who would any, like, any panic. Like, if she hit the wrong thing on a phone and it took her to a different screen, it would be. Like, oh my God, my phone is broken. I'm like. So she’d call me for tech support on her Android. And it's like, okay, if I if I'm there physically with your phone, I can probably figure it out. But like you calling me, I have an iPhone. I have no frickin’ clue what's going on here.DENISE:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not just her. I consider myself pretty, pretty tech literate. And I also struggle.ADRIANA:Yeah, it's a bit of. It's a bit of a maze. I ended up buying her an iPhone eventually because I'm like, oh, I can't deal with this. You have an iPad get... Let's get you an iPhone, mom.DENISE:Yeah, exactly. Exactly.ADRIANA:Yeah. All right, next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?DENISE:Oh, you know, I don't do that much development anymore, because I'm a manager now, but, for development, I think my brain is just most attuned to using Macs. I've developed in a Linux environment before, but, just having to think about every piece of software that you want to download does get in the way. I think. Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to I'm going to go with the, the boring answer here and say, Mac, I'm best at using Macs for development and otherwise, these days.ADRIANA:All right. Down for it, down for it. Yeah. Linux is fun. If you're, like, fiddling around, I find, I mean, I, I've, I've interviewed people who are like, yeah, Linux.DENISE:Yeah.ADRIANA:You know, I've had fun with Linux, but like, sometimes when all I need is for the damn thing to work...DENISE:Yes, exactly.ADRIANA:Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. Next question. What's your favorite programing language?DENISE:Ooh. I trained as a Ruby developer, so I feel like Ruby still has a place near and dear to my heart. I think Ruby is the most fun language to do little toy projects and do prototyping in. It's still like my brain's first programing language. So I think if I'm going to start a new project and I don't want to think too hard about what frameworks I'm going to use or like, if I want to just get straight to the part where I start solving the problem and writing tests and everything and seeing something working, I'm still going to choose Ruby for that today.ADRIANA:That's cool.DENISE:Yeah. I like Ruby. I don't actually, I haven't used that many programing languages. I'm not one of those polyglot people. So I've used JavaScript. Because I was a web developer for a lot of my career. Picked up Golang a couple of years ago. That was pretty fun. It's a good, nice, fast language. Very opinionated. Which is. Which is nice.ADRIANA:I appreciate that about Go.DENISE:Yeah. And I've done a couple of projects in Go. Everything in HashiCorp is in go. So I think, like, Go literacy is a great skill to have, especially if you work in the infrastructure ops space today and you're looking to build tools because there probably is already a Go package for the thing that you're trying to do that you can just import. I was a Rails developer for a bunch of years. Worked at GitHub, did some Rails at pretty serious GitHub scale for a little while. So I know that, sometimes when you have like a huge monolith and especially if you're trying to coordinate with like tons and tons and tons of different teams, and you want to make sure that every, you know, every single query that goes out is performant. Sometimes, like using you typically people use like Ruby in production. They're using Rails in production underneath that. So I think like some of the challenges I've seen with Rails at that kind of scale is, active record is just so magical. It's like the main thing you have to use when you're interfacing with with SQL databases, but when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong. And you spend a lot of time untangling the magic of active record. So that's my only kind of caveat. Like if I'm working on a real production system today, I think like there are definitely a number of scenarios where doing everything in Ruby, through everything in Rails, can slow you down at a certain point. But I think that probably is true for any programing language. code base large enough, there just is more coordination and more context switching that you're going to deal with, especially if it's, you know, ideally, it's not just you working on this model at this, you at like a couple dozen or a couple hundred other people.ADRIANA:Yeah, that's a very fair point, especially when you're working at such a large organization, which is like very jarring when you go from like small organization to large one where you're like, oh my God, I have to coordinate with all these people.DENISE:Yeah. Like my first job was in Rails and it was me and three other developers. And I remember, in the same day, I could say like, oh, I have an idea for something like, what if I built this new, you know, view for our teachers or whatever, and it's just like, go talk to the product manager, get him on board, explain why it's important. He's like, okay, cool, greenlit. Happy for you to spend a day on this. And within the day, you know, the features in production. So that's kind of fun and nice. But yeah, the bigger the company, the bigger the product, the bigger the code base. That's often not feasible.ADRIANA:Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. I, I worked I worked at a bank for 11 years and... let me tell you...DENISE:Yeah. And then banks and, you know, like, they have all this extra compliance and regulatory stuff that you have to make sure you're on the correct side of the line on for everything.ADRIANA:Exactly. Yeah. And I think, like for me, and like before I worked at the bank, I had worked, like kind of a medium-sized startup-y sort of company. And so, you know, I went from like, of course I have access to the Prod database to... You have somebody who manages the UAT database and somebody who manages the Prod database. And yeah, you can like mostly touch the Dev database, but we also have someone who manages that too.DENISE:Wow. Okay, so layer is on layers on layers of [...]ADRIANA:There were so many layers. And it was funny because I like purposely moved to a large organization because my thought was like, this is too disorganized for me, I need structure. And then I moved to this bank. I'm like. This is too structured for me. Yeah. Can't win, can't win.DENISE:Yeah. Well, I think. It's important to like one piece of advice that I always give people who are earlier career than me is like, jump around a little bit. You know, like you, the only way to figure out what kind of job you're going to enjoy is to experience all, you know, different types. So I often encourage people, like, if you're early career and you're, you know, you're looking at job hop because you feel like you're not learning enough or you feel like y

Key takeaways:Non-tech concepts translate to a tech worldChange is change, and how you navigate it, whether it's in a tech world or in a non-tech world is the sameThe importance of acknowledging peoples' feelings about change and address their concerns.The importance of explaing why the change is happening in order for others to embrace change more easilyThe importance of protecting your time, to maintain mental healthAbout our guest:Angela Blake is passionate about helping people create happy cultures and selves. She believes that we all have unique perspectives that are both valuable and useful. The most fulfilling work she's done is to draw out those perspectives, use them to improve ways of working together, and help people make positive, lasting change. In other words, she's a coach. :)Find us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Windows 95Windows 3.1Lotus 1-2-3ScrumKanbanTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Angela Blake. Welcome, Angela.ANGELA:Hi. Hi. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.ADRIANA:Thank you for joining. I'm super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?ANGELA:I'm calling from a very humid Toronto, downtown Canada. I said that in such an odd order, but downtown Toronto and that. I'm on the waterfront down here. Very busy. Very warm. I'm loving it.ADRIANA:Awesome. And the waterfront is honestly, like, one of my favorite spots in Toronto in the summer. Same name. Beat that.ANGELA:Yeah. Yeah, I live down here. I work down here. I'm a waterfront person.ADRIANA:Oh, that's so perfect. Yay! Hooray for sunny days. Cool. Well, we're going to get started with some, I will say, lightning round slash icebreaker questions.ANGELA:I'm ready.ADRIANA:Are you ready?ANGELA:I think I am, I think I am.ADRIANA:Okay, let's do this. First question. Are you a lefty or rightyANGELA:Oh, a righty. 100%. Always have been.ADRIANA:All right. Are you an iPhone or Android user?ANGELA:I have to say I'm an iPhone person. I have all of the, I would say Apple products, so to speak. I love the compatibility.ADRIANA:I'm with you on that. Yes, I too am a “All things Apple.”ANGELA:Yeah. Yeah I just I like that everything just connects with each other. I don't have to really do much as a consumer or a user. I know Android has, like some amazing abilities to, personalize and customize, etc., but I'm good with what I get from Apple.ADRIANA:I'm with you. It's funny because all people are like, you can't customize Apple. I'm like, yeah, I'm okay with that. I'm don’t want to spend my days doing that.ANGELA:Yeah, yeah, I can customize my background just enough for me. I'm. Yeah.ADRIANA:Good enugh. Good enough. I'm down. I'm down. Okay. Similar question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?ANGELA:Oh, I honestly might not go along with my last answer, but I like Windows. Okay. I think because I've professionally always used Windows. So I'm that's what I'm used to. Like, you know, the Office suite, the the just the the usability of it, I think is kind of what I grew up. You think, so to speak. So it's just the most natural version for me.ADRIANA:Yeah, I feel ya.ANGELA:I do. Yeah, I do. Sorry I cut you off a little bit there, but I do have a MacBook at home that my son uses because I'm just like, I’m not as proficient...ADRIANA:It takes some getting used to, I have to admit, because I, I grew up in Windows Land as well. Like, you know, when Windows95 came out, I'm like, “whoa”. It can’t get any better than this.ANGELA:You're taking me back in time.ADRIANA:I know, right? Yeah. I mean, I remember Windows 3.1, and I was like, you know, the first time I saw a mouse, my dad's like, do you want to see something cool as a kid? He's like, you want to see something cool? I can show you a mouse right here. And I'm like, oh, and then he shows it to me and it's like it's a pointer on a screen. I'm like, what the hell is this??ANGELA:Oh my gosh. Yeah.ADRIANA:Letdown!ANGELA:I remember being able to customize my pointer like, functionality. Like to have it like, do the drag. The, the effects and whatnot. And that was like just that was the ultimate. Or the little fire. Like, people were actually putting effort into what the cursor did. They might still be. But I, you know, I've moved on, I guess.ADRIANA:Yeah, I know what you mean. Like when this stuff was very novel. Like, I remember when I got my first, computer with sound, which I think it was like, I want to say it was like a laptop. My parents bought me to go to university, and this was like in 1997. It had sound and it was like, not, it was like a it had a sound card, but it was like, not the greatest sound.ADRIANA:And I'm like, I am going to make everything ding because I can.ANGELA:I can customize all these sounds. Yeah. Yeah. Once that one that came along. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.ADRIANA:And then you get tired of it.ANGELA:Yeah, now I’ve got my phone [...] everything. Yeah.ADRIANA:Yeah. Now my phone's constantly on silent. I can't even even stand, like, sounds coming from my phone. I'm like, no, this is so distracting.ANGELA:All notifications.ADRIANA:Yeah. Exactly.ANGELA:Exactly. Yeah.ADRIANA:All right, next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?ANGELA:Oh, golly. No, I am a non-tech person in a tech world. So the programing languages I will say are, literally a whole other language to me.ADRIANA:All right, fair enough, fair enough. And actually, I think that'll be a really cool topic to dig into in our conversation, because I think that's that's a really interesting, I think really interesting thing to talk about. Okay. Next question is, do you prefer to consume content through video or text?ANGELA:I you know what? It's a hard decision because I'm thinking video. It's coming across like, Reels. It's coming across YouTube. But text is so concise. I'm probably going to have to go with a video just for, like, the probably the amount of time I spend consuming video over, over text. Like, I do get emails, but like newsletters, etc. and I the ones that I do subscribe to, I enjoy. But yeah, I think video wins just for I don't know. Eyeball entertainment. Yeah.ADRIANA:Now do you prefer the short form videos or for the long form videos. Like what? What kind of [...]?ANGELA:I probably go to the shorter, the shorter form. So the shorter it is with, with some sort of value. Yeah. Like I'm not talking about cat videos and things like that. That's a whole other topic of conversation. But like if I'm, if I want to learn something and somebody creative like a short video, I do enjoy, the feature in, YouTube where they show you like the most commonly viewed section of videos so that you can just jump to the, to the part that you've, I guess they're looking for. I like I like that, like I want to save my time.ADRIANA:Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about that feature. Today I learned...ADRIANA:That's awesome. Oh. Very clever.ANGELA:Yeah. I don't know if it's a feature, but it's just like, you can see, like, at the [...]. I don't know if it's all videos. But yeah, you could see, like, it's like a bar and it shows you where the, most, I guess most common. Either it's either time stamps or it's the most common watching area.ADRIANA:Right. Right. Right.ANGELA:I said that so poorly, but you know what I mean?ADRIANA:Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?ANGELA:Oh. Oh. My superpower. I guess it depends who you ask. But you're asking me. I'm thinking. I have to say something, and you really make me. This is a tough one. I'm going to go with. I have pretty organized brain, so I don't know for certain. So I've developed systems of thinking because I forget things. And I tend as a human, as we all do. I have a lot going on, whether it's work things or, you know, personal life things.Going to concerts, planning, communications and my, you know, my job, etc.. Keeping track of all that, you know, it's not necessarily just all things that you can pop into your calendar. So I've over the years and I would say this isn't just something that I developed and it lived as it were originally iterated. I've, I've changed and shifted my, my systems over the years, but, I, I'm always kind of reorganizing my systems of organization.ADRIANA:That's awesome. That's awesome. So you're like, you're refining. Your system.ANGELA:Thank you. I love the way you put that. Yes.ADRIANA:I'm very, like, software oriented mindset. So I must say.ANGELA:I'm getting rid of the technical debt in my head.ADRIANA:There you go! Oh, yeah. I mean, it's it's like it's a thing. It's a trait of like, you know, personal growth. Personal development. As like, you learn better ways of doing things. You refine your system.ANGELA:Yeah. Yeah. And I love talking to other people about how they organize information. People have written books about it. Like, it, it's fascinating to to learn other systems and then I can use that to apply to my own, like, little personal systems.ADRIANA:That's very cool. It's funny because I think sometimes, like, we underestimate how hard it is to be organized because, like, I don't know about you, but like, you know, sometimes I'll come with like, come up with a categorization of certain things and I'm like, oh, but this thing can fall into here or here. I don't know what to do. And it causes me stress.ANGELA:Yeah. Yeah. Like, will I be able to find this later is basically the premise.ADRIANA:Yes.ANGELA:Of all organization. Like, am I going to know when I need to? Action this? Am I going to find it when I need it, etc.. Yeah. So...ADRIANA:Yeah.ANGELA:It can be stressful.ADRIANA:Exactly. Yeah. Especially like, I don't know if this happens to you, but for me

About Tim Banks:Tim’s tech career spans over 25 years through various sectors. Tim’s initial journey into tech started in avionics in the US Marine Corps and then into various government contracting roles. After moving to the private sector, Tim worked both in large corporate environments and in small startups, honing his skills in systems administration, automation, architecture, and operations for large cloud-based datastores.Today, Tim leverages his years in operations, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering to advise and consult with the open source and cloud computing communities in his current role. Tim is also a competitive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. He is the 2-time American National and is the 5-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion in his division.Find our guest on:LinkedInBlueskyInstagramAbout Marino Wijay:Marino Wijay is a Canadian, Traveller, International Speaker, Open Source Advocate for Service Mesh, CNI, Kubernetes, and Networking. He is an Ambassador @ Civo Cloud, and Lead Organizer for KubeHuddle Toronto. He is passionate about technology and modern distributed systems. He will always fall back to the patterns of Networking and the ways of the OSI. Community building is his driving force; A modern Jedi Academy.Find Marino on:BlueskyFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Adriana & Marino's Observability Day EU 2025 talk

About our guest:Eromosele David Akhigbe is a Developer Advocate at StepSecurity, where he combines technical expertise with a passion for making technology more accessible and understandable. He’s also an active contributor to the OpenTelemetry community. A proud first-class graduate of Mechanical Engineering from Landmark University and a Decagon-trained software engineer, Eromosele is a strong advocate for open-source software and is committed to projects that democratize access to tech.He believes deeply in Africa’s potential to shape the future of technology and innovation. Outside of work, you’ll often find him playing lead guitar or engaging with communities that share his mission to uplift the African tech ecosystem.Find our guest on:LinkedInInstagramFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:OutreachyJuraci Paixão Kröhling on Geeking OutYuri OliveiraAdriana's blog posts on OpenTelemetryHenrik Rexed - IsItObservableSematextVSCode: Convert Tabs to SpacesAdriana's KubeCon talk on the Target AllocatorEromosele's blog post on the OpenTelemetry DemoMarino Wijay on Geeking OutSIG BobaContributing to OpenTelemetryKCD Ghana 2024KCD Nigeria 2022Apply to OutreachyOCamlWikimediaTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Eromosele Akhigbe. Welcome, Eromosele!EROMOSELE:Thank you Adriana for this opportunity. It's so nice to be here.ADRIANA:And I'm so happy to have you on.EROMOSELE:Thank you so much, Adriana.ADRIANA:Okay. So, where are you calling from today?EROMOSELE:Yeah, I'm calling from Lagos, Nigeria. So Nigeria, for some of you that don't know, is in Africa, is located at the western part of Africa. So yeah, that's what I'm calling from.ADRIANA:That's so cool. That's awesome. It's interesting. I've had, two people from Morocco on my podcast, but when I had them, they weren't in Morocco. So you are my first, like, person from Africa who's living in Africa, on the podcast. This is super exciting. Okay, so, I have so much to get into. But before we do that, we are going to start with the icebreaker questions. Are you ready? Okay. First question. Are you left handed or right handed?EROMOSELE:Right. Right handed.ADRIANA:Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?EROMOSELE:iPhone anyADRIANA:Okay. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?EROMOSELE:Mac. I'm currently using a Mac. No to Windows. I do not like Windows. Yeah. I'm a Mac user.ADRIANA:Did you. Okay, here's a question for you. Did you ever use Windows before? Because it's funny, I've talked to some people who are like, I've never even used Windows. I'm a Mac user through and through.EROMOSELE:No, I used to use like, Windows, when I started my tech career. And, it was the experience wasn't the best.ADRIANA:Yeah, I, I also for, for listeners of the podcast, they probably know... they've heard me talk about this many times, but also like I started my life with Windows, my tech life. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?EROMOSELE:Yes, I do, and it's Golang. And I also have a not so favorite programing language, although, you did not ask, which is, Java I'm not a fan of Java. I'm not I'm not a crazy fan of Java because of my experience. So my, my, my experience with Java was, the first programing language because, I, I was always, intrigued by programing since I was in secondary school. So I was intrigued, but I didn't have the, you know, the resource to learn at that time. So I was still my dad. And then one time he brought one IT guy from his company, and the guy came. And I think that after learning how to use the terminal, you know, and I learned how to change password using admin, you know, I learned about admin stuff. I was a very curious kid. So, you know, and I told the guy that I can hack your laptop, and the guy didn't believe because he was an IT professional. And I'm a young kid.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah.EROMOSELE:And he was like, I dare you to. And I did it. And he was shocked. I told him that okay, I'm really interested in programing. I would like to learn. And I think I believe strongly that it's because of what I did. Because I embarrassed him. He decided that the best language is for me to start with was Java. He gave me I would say the worst tutorials I've ever, you know watched and I you know trying it. I thought I was just a dumb person. I couldn't just like because how willing just to type hello world public main static. It sounded so scary and crazy to me. So, you know, I just decided that maybe programing wasn't my thing. When. When I had my friends talk about JavaScript, I was like, wait. If Java is this hard, this script of Java. So I just ran away from programing, you know,ADRIANA:Oh, wow. So that turned you off initially?EROMOSELE:Yeah, yeah. For like, four years.ADRIANA:Can you imagine if you’d been like completely put off by it. Like how? Like how different your life would have been? How did you end up learning Go?EROMOSELE:Yeah. So très interesting story. Yeah, so in 2022 I was in my because in my I was in uni... I was in uni and we're having like some kind of internship. By the way, I studied mechanical engineering. So I didn't study software engineering at all because I ran away from code. I was scared of code.ADRIANA:So yeah, dude. I like ran away from code in university too. I was like, I don't want to do this for a living. And then like in university, they fricking teach you how to code. And you're like, dammit!EROMOSELE:Yeah.ADRIANA:My degree is in industrial engineering. So I don't I don't have a computer science or computer engineering degree either. So there you go anyway. Carry on.EROMOSELE:So, we had an internship, and during that time I had a really good friend of mine shout out to him, by the way, his name is Isaac. And, you know, he just encouraged me that, okay. You don't want to program. Why not try DevOps, you know, and. Okay. DevOps. You know that. Okay. Sounds cool. Let me try it. Let me give it a try. And during that time I started learning DevOps. But the, the school I went to guess what decided teaching us JavaScript first. And I was like what. I'm back to programing again And I was so scared at first. But then I now realize that, wait a second, it's not that deep, you know? It's actually easy. It's not hard, you know, to code. And I'll say, like my passion for coding, you know, started, you know, dreaming again. But then I just because I went for my final year and I couldn't balance programing and final year projects, you know, things like that. So I had to put a pause. Yeah. And then December 2023, I decided to pick it up again, you know, instead of learning DevOps. And good was really nice course from... I can’t pronounce his name, but Abhishek, something like that. He's a really good guy, Udemy, then the life, my choice. My turning point was Outreachy. I don't know if you heard about Outreachy Adriana.ADRIANA:I have, I have, but for folks who aren't familiar with it, tell tell. Them tell our audience about Outreachy, yeah.EROMOSELE:Yeah, definitely. So Outreachy basically, it's like an initiative to encourage people that are in underrepresented communities, you know, to get into open source and open science. So it's not just for tech guys, also for, you know, science people. Like we have some projects about biomes, you know, microbiomes and things around that. So, I, you know, you know, show back story. When I went to apply for Outreachy, I was like, bro, nobody's ever going to pick me. But the beautiful thing about Outreachy is that is not based on experience like, you don't have to have a nice resume or like 20 years of experience or 3 years of, you know, what can experience. In fact, it's an internship and it's really, really nice. And kudos to the people that are, you know, pushing it. I applied for it, you know. I applied for it and I got it. I got into the first phase and that's how I got connected to the OpenTelemetry community. Yay!ADRIANA:Outreachy is not like, I know there's a lot of Outreachy people involved with the CNCF, but Outreachy is not necessarily a program of the CNCF. It's one that the CNCF is involved with. Is that correct?EROMOSELE:Yeah. So, so how Outreachy works is that Outreachy you know, accepts. So if you CNCF as a, as a organization can decide to sponsor an intern to work in an open source project. So that is how it works. Usually we have, OpenTelemetry you know, so you just have a little task that, you know, so on that is new, can come in and do you know, and gain experience with the community. So it's really, really nice. I think you also have, mentorship, something like that. So it's a similar kind of, you know, structure. So, that's how I got to meet Juraci and Yuri. Really awesome. There were awesome, awesome mentors. And I had to start learning Go because to contribute. Yeah. So I was I was forced to learn Go because to contribute OpenTelemetry or to OpenTelemetry is written in Go. Most parts of it, except the SDKs, is written in Go. So I have start learning Go from scratch, to learn about OpenTelemetry. But I read so many. I don't know if you can remember, but I read so many of your blogs at that time to like ramp up on OpenTelemetry. Even Henrik. Even Henrik, whose videos, were so... IsItObservable? That YouTube channel his videos were so helpful.ADRIANA:Henrik has great stuff.EROMOSELE:Yeah, really, really nice. Really, really practical, you know, and stuff. So because, those, those content was what helped me to ramp up my knowledge of OpenTelemetry. Through that knowledge, I was also able to speak in a conference, my first tech conference. You know, I was both a speaker and an attendee. Really interes

About our guest:Parveen Khan is a Quality Practice Lead at CFC, passionate about ensuring that delivering high-quality products is a shared responsibility. She enjoys working with teams to improve processes, tools, and methodologies that help create better products. Parveen is also an international speaker, sharing her testing experiences to inspire others worldwide. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her two children.Find our guest on:LinkedInFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:On-Call Me Maybe PodcastAna Margarita Medina on Geeking OutParveen Khan on On-Call Me MaybeObservability Mythbusters: Observability is NOT Only for SREs (Adriana's article on Medium, inspired by a conversation with Parveen)SeleniumThoughtworksCAC Group (insurance company)Parveen's BlogTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today. I have Parveen Khan. Welcome, Parveen.PARVEEN:Thank you. Thank you for having me.ADRIANA:I am so happy to have you on. And for for those of you who have been following this podcast, you may remember that our precursor podcast was, On-Call Me Maybe with my former coworker, Ana Margarita Medina, and Parveen was actually one of our early guests on On-Call Me Maybe. And I'm so happy to have her join me for Geeking Out this time around. And, Parveen, where are you calling from today?PARVEEN:Yeah. So. Yeah. Thanks. Again. Thanks again. Like, I remember, like, we I, Yeah, I joined you last time when you, when this podcast was the. And then again, we are meeting like again. So it's it's awesome. Yeah. I'm dialing from London. And. Yeah, I'm looking forward for a chat today. Geeking Out.ADRIANA:Yay. All right. Yes, yes, we will geek out on all things. And I should also mention too, like, when we first connected, through On-Call Me Maybe, it was when I was doing a piece on, how, Observability is not just for, for SREs, and it was actually inspired by a conversation that you and I had, when you reached out to me on LinkedIn. And then I was so like, I was so blown away, but, by our conversation, I'm like, I have to write this down as a blog post. And then it it turned into this, like, whole thing, and it was just amazing and so many awesome things came, came out of that conversation. So I'm very grateful that we had a chance to meet.PARVEEN:Yeah, absolutely. It was more of a intersection between quality and Observability and that conversation. Yes, absolutely.ADRIANA:That's right, that's right. Well, we'll dig into that shortly. But first let us start with our icebreaker questions. Okay. First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?PARVEEN:I'm a righty.ADRIANA:Okay. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?PARVEEN:Android.ADRIANA:Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?PARVEEN:I was a very Mac person, but now I'm okay. Like Windows. Fine. Like I'm very Mac person. Yes.PARVEEN:I prefer Mac.ADRIANA:Which one do you, end up using for work? Out of curiosity? PK: Windows. Is by choice or by, by by required by job.PARVEEN:Required by job. Yes.ADRIANA:Fair enough, fair enough.PARVEEN:If it was by choice, I would say, Mac. Please.ADRIANA:I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?PARVEEN:Yeah, I love, I love, I used to love working with Java. That's my first favorite and forever favorite language. Which I learned. And, I used to work and I used to enjoy writing, programs on it, and, like, I think Selenium when I, back in those days when I used to use Selenium, I think Java was my preferred language. And then I think a lot of other tools came in where you kind of like use different languages, like JavaScript, TypeScript. But I think Java, Java is my favorite programing language.ADRIANA:Awesome. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?PARVEEN:I prefer DevOps. Like both together.ADRIANA:Ooh. Love it, love it. Okay. Next one. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?PARVEEN:Tough one. Okay, I think I prefer JSON. Yeah, I prefer JSON. Yeah.ADRIANA:Cool. Okay. Do you prefer spaces or tabs? Not making it easy, am I?PARVEEN:Tab. Yes. Tab. Maybe. Is tab.ADRIANA:All right. All right, two more questions left. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?PARVEEN:Through text? I love reading.ADRIANA:AV: I’m with you. Like, yeah. Yeah.PARVEEN:Like hear video.s Then you have to be prepared, like carry your headphones and all that stuff. So, like text is like, you can open up everywhere, anywhere. Read. I love reading.ADRIANA:I agree, and distraction free. I get very distracted when I watch video.PARVEEN:Yeah, I'm not a good listener, I guess. Like, that's how I feel. Like I can't listen. I can't yeah, I can't listen to longer time, but I can read for as long as I can.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I'm with you, I'm with you I found the only way that I can, do video. Like, especially for learning is either, like, walking around the house listening to the video, so, like a podcast. Or if I'm, like, distracted. So I have, like, a treadmill in my home office and a bike in my home office. I'm like, if I'm doing one of those things, then it keeps my brain distracted enough that I can, like, concentrate on the video. More than if I was just sitting there.PARVEEN:Yeah, yeah. Is it? I can't really I feel like I'm just I'm just doing one thing like. Yeah, it's just makes me like I can't concentrate for a longer time. If it's a video. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.ADRIANA:It's hard. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?PARVEEN:Superpower? Superpower is at. I feel like I'm, I'm a very. I'm very open to learning always. And I ask for help. I don't shy away, like, you know, I don't feel like. Oh. Like what? What if, like, people think they. You know, what if they say no to me? What if, like, you know, people think that I don't know this, so I think, like, this is my superpower. This has helped me a lot in my career, I guess, like, you know, I, I, I just reach out to people. Let me I think I feel like I'm like, I'm lucky enough in that sense. Like, you know, I reach out to people and I ask them, I ask like, you know, I can reach out and say, hey, you know what? I love reading your article. Do you have a few minutes? I want to really chat with you. I just ask away people and I get time to speak to people. I'm. I feel like asking help is my superpower.ADRIANA:That is amazing. And it's the perfect segue into our conversation. And, you know, I, I just, I can't underscore enough, like, how important it is to ask for help. You make such an excellent, excellent point. Because we can, you know, it's so easy to I think as you get more senior in your career and people look up to you as having being the one with all the answers. And yeah, I think we need to get out of this mindset of not being the ones with all the answers. It's okay to not be the one with all the answers, and to stop being shy, scared, and to say, I don't know that. Like I'll even do stuff like, I'm sorry, dumb question. Can you explain this to me?PARVEEN:Yes, yes, absolutely. And I think somewhere like, you know, if you if you have that any kind of title or something, you feel like, oh people will think that they like, you know, you need to know everything. No, it's not like I feel like it's never, it's more about asking away those questions. Asking away for help and saying that, you know what? I might not know this. Like, you know, maybe let's let's, let's brainstorm. Let's understand what this is. And it's always about, working like it's not all about you knowing everything and you telling people, right? It's all about, how can you get different perspectives and how can you get, different solutions to it? Because if you were the only one know it knows everything. There is kind of like always everything is going to work in the same way of how you think about it. And then you will never have other perspectives and you will never have, you will never get to get more creative solutions to the problems that you're working on within the team.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah, I, I totally agree. And that's why, you know, it, it, it reminds me of like when how you and I met. Right? Yeah. You reached out to me on LinkedIn. I think you read one of my articles on Observability. And you're like, hey, I just want to have a chat.PARVEEN:Yeah, exactly.ADRIANA:It was such a great chat. Like, as I said earlier in, in the recording, like, you inspired me so much through our conversation because you opened my eyes to new possibilities that I hadn't considered before. And I think that's that's what tech is all about, is like being open minded, because we can't evolve without the open mindedness, especially in technology.PARVEEN:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's that. Yeah. See, that's the amazing thing, right? Like, I get to meet like, you know, one just one little like, you know, drop off message or like, you know, asking of it. And I... you get a lot of people, you build your network and I think right now again, these are the cool topic, right. Like networking is so, so, so, so important right now. And that doesn't mean that you have to meet or like it's not about meeting in person only. It's more about how do you build those connections, how do you build that support system. And it's not about like helping in the sense, like it's about how can you learn from each other? How can you support each other? How can you uplift each other? I think it's it's so important. So I think until unless you speak until unless you reach out until unless you take that first step, it's never possible. Like, you know, you never know whom to get connected. Like if you wait for an opportunity or if you wait for attending a conference, only then it beco

About our guest:Taylor Dolezal navigates the cloud native universe with a knack for puns and a keen eye for psychology. Living in the heart of LA, he blends tech innovation with mental insights, one punny cloud at a time. Avid reader, thinker, and cloud whisperer.Find our guest on:LinkedInBlueskyMastodonFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:The Comedy Store (Los Angeles)CNCFBlackberry StormBlackberry CurveJorge CastroPEP8 (Python)Elixir (programming language)OpenTelemetry for ElixirZig (programming language)Chris Aniszczyk (CTO CNCF)Atomic Habits (Book)OpenCost (CNCF Project)Linux Foundation Member SummitBob Killen (CNCF Sr. Technical Program Manager)Altadena Fire (California 2025)Transcript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have a very special guest, Taylor Dolezal of the CNCF. Welcome, Taylor.TAYLOR:Yo. Howdy, howdy, howdy. Excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.ADRIANA:Yeah, thanks for jumping on the podcast. And as we're recording this, you're in the midst of some really nasty wildfires in the LA area.TAYLOR:Yes. Oh, my gosh. It's been, literally a wild ride all around the city. But, thankfully, this this house where I'm at, everything's okay. Just a lot of ash, dust, debris, really uplifting to see the community rally with one another, to, on everything. Despite, you know, some people have lost homes. There's been some really challenging, really sad things that have happened. But seeing everybody jump in and want to help one another out, truly beautiful, seeing seeing everybody get so involved. There have been there have been things like the Comedy Store here, a big, like, world famous comedy place. They're having free shows and raising money. So like, things that I never would have expected Los Angeles to do, really, going forth and doing. It's beautiful. I love seeing that.ADRIANA:Oh, my God, that's so nice. And especially, you know, in the midst of all of the I don't know, there's just so, so much negativity in the world. It's so nice to just see, like a bright spot in the midst of this tragedy too. So yay, yay, humanity.TAYLOR:Like the sun. Yeah.ADRIANA:Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I, I do want to dig into that topic a little bit more, but before we get, going to that, I am going to subject you to my icebreaker questions. All right, here we go. Are you ready? All right, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?TAYLOR:Righty.ADRIANA:All right. Next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?TAYLOR:iPhone since 20--... 2009TAYLOR:Fun fact, I had a, black. I was one of the people that got the BlackBerry Storm with the one, like, way back in the day. I'm like trackball. No, thanks. Yeah. The price of adoption there. Not. Not a good one. I think all of those phones v1 ended up being returned, by the way. Fun fact, but uh...ADRIANA:Damn. Yeah, I, I heard they were, quite glitchy. I had, I had a pre-Storm BlackBerry. I think I had a BlackBerry Curve. And then it started, shutting down, spontaneously in the middle of calls, and I'm like, screw this. I'm going to. This is when I switched iPhone.TAYLOR:I, I was surprised to find when I worked at Disney later on, like 2016 to 2020, they had a RIM server there and they were supporting that. So there were still vestiges of BlackBerry around there.ADRIANA:Damn! What? That’s wild. Wow. The things that are still around, that's bananas. All right. Next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?TAYLOR:I'd say ooh, that's a tough one. I'd say I'd say it's like, yeah, I'm 55% Mac. I really like Linux and stuff like that. I do want to it's is 2025 the year of Linux on the desktop. You know, it's. I need to find that out for every year. I think we'll get there someday. But, George Castro, one of my coworkers, and Bob and GC have me contemplating moving to a framework laptop or something like that. So we'll see. But Mac, for right now, but Linux is looking pretty good.ADRIANA:I feel one day we'll get there with Linux. I had a Linux dedicated Linux desktop back in the day. But I had to dual boot it with Windows or at one point I had a of Windows VM. And because I couldn't, I couldn't sync my BlackBerry and then subsequently my iPhone to, to Linux. So like bye!TAYLOR:It's, I mean, it's really the ecosystem much like CNCF Haha. You know, but it's, it's, it's that. What's the interoperability look like. That's like I can do something on Linux, but will my Zoom program work tomorrow? I don’t know... You know, so.. Stuff like that.ADRIANA:Yeah I feel yeah. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite programing language?TAYLOR:I do, you know, it's I love all of my, languages just the same.ADRIANA:All your babies. Okay.TAYLOR:Which dog is your favorite? I don't have a favorite. I... Right now, I'm really deep into, what, like, early days. So I’ll give you a quick run, I promise. VB6, .Net, Visual Basic, then C-sharp, and then PHP, Ruby. And so I was moving through those, Python’s come up a bit. Not really my favorite, especially with PEP8 and the indentation stuff. So I love looking at a language and being able to, like, read it, really be able to grok, understand it. Go has been there for a while for me, but I lately have been taking a look at, Rust a little bit. The one that I keep I can't get away from for the past ten years is Elixir. Taking a look at that functional programing, I think that, you know, not trying to make such a thing, but I think that there's a lot there that we haven't tapped into yet. I see a lot of other people looking at Zig and these other things too, but I don't know. Everybody take a look at Elixir. It's a full stack. You get live updates and stuff like that. You don't to jump between back end and front end and JavaScript, it's you stay in the same language. Used in telco. And then just I like I like how stable that it is, despite how the world might not be. So.ADRIANA:That’s awesome.TAYLOR:That's fun.ADRIANA:And fun fact there's, OTel instrumentation for Elixir.TAYLOR:I was so excited to, like, see.ADRIANA:That's cool.TAYLOR:Difficult kind of thinking about your program as a flipbook rather than I just dot color. What are you. You know.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, you mentioned VB6. Nostalgia like that was my which I used in high school.TAYLOR:Did I start to date myself. Yeah. Oh yeah. Fax machines, VHS. Oh no.ADRIANA:Yeah. There's a, there's a very special place in my heart for VB6ADRIANA:I kind miss it. It wasn't, it wasn't bad. Cool. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?TAYLOR:Oof! I, yeah. Can I split the difference? I'd say. I think that. It's. It really depends on the day. I'm. It's not a cop out answer. I really I love distributed systems and just like, wow. Beautiful. Like what we've been able to put together, but, No. Yeah, I'd say no. I'd have to lean a little bit more towards ops. Dev is fun when accomplishing that task, but I love seeing it all composed and tied together.ADRIANA:Yes, I definitely feel ya. There's it's very satisfying. Okay. Next one I may maybe I know what your answer is based on previous comment. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?TAYLOR:I think yeah, I know, I just might come as a shock. I'm a big I like JSON. That makes a lot more sense to me. YAML is great, but again, same kind of,ADRIANA:You mentioned the spaces. The indentation. Yeah.TAYLOR:And in most parsers and stuff like that, you can go back and forth from JSON to YAML, which is, very helpful tip like JSON can be converted very quickly to YAML and back and forth, but but yeah, for yeah, my CNCF hat on, YAML, of course. But I guess not at home.ADRIANA:But also some like fun fact that, you know, like, I don't think most people realize also that you can write Kubernetes manifest in JSON. We just. Yeah, we default to YAML.TAYLOR:Exactly. It's like that's I think that what's what's the biggest secret that you that no one knows that you do. That's one of the ones I would say 100%.ADRIANA:Awesome. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?TAYLOR:Tabs 100%. We started we spun up the end user TAB. I thought that was enough of a sign to people. Give them their space to do great things.ADRIANA:I love it. Two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through text or video?TAYLOR:I'd say I, it's hard to be sitting on the couch during a cloudy day. Pretty rare here in Los Angeles. And then just, like, pour through RSS feeds and stuff like that. I love reading and that kind of clarity when it's something I don't understand. And I really want that, like deep aspect or like, please just explain it to me. You know, it's sitting down with a friend or video that's the best way to emulate that.ADRIANA:Yes. Oh, I like sitting down with a friend. Yeah, nothing beats that. Sometimes we forget to ask. I don't know, I get like, so caught up in my own problem solving. Like, I must figure this out myself. And then it's like, but. Or I could ask, you know, my friend here who's an expert in this area.TAYLOR:It's my favorite being able to sit down. It's I really love and respect to all the friends and people in the ecosystem that take the time and have the patience to sit down with me. I sometimes I feel bad because I'll treat them kind of like the I'll have immediate hot takes. I'll be like, why is it like that? You know? And then they're,ADRIANA:I love it. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?TAYLOR:Superpower? I'd say it's, I'd say I'd say sleep, question mark. When something is really interesting, it's at it. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. It's just that really takes the precipice and the focus. And yes, I think KubeCon, very rarely and not like, hey, this is a it's not a badge. It's not good to not get it. Don'

About our guest:Mariana Carvalho is a writer and career mentor. She was awarded as one of the El Mundo Boston Latino 30 Under 30 in 2022 for her efforts in Diversity and Inclusion in Brazil and Massachusetts and Mentor of the Year by WomenTech Network in 2023. In 2024, she co-authored the book “Women in Technology - How Diversity and Inclusion Will Change the Game in Organizations and Society”. She is the co-founder of Brazilians in Tech, a non-profit for women in Technology in Brazil. Mariana has 12 years of professional experience, the last seven in corporate America. Over the last six years, Mariana has mentored more than 200+ people from Brazil, USA, India, France, and Ireland. Mariana holds a Bachelor’s in Marketing, an MBA, and a Master of Science in Computer Science.Find our guest on:LinkedInThreadsInstagramTwitterWeb SiteFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Kaggle2048 GameWomen in Technology Publication on MediumThe Timeless Technology PodcastWiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Podcast)Radia Perlman on the Timeless Technology PodcastMary Allen Wilkes on The Timeless Technology PodcastDr. Gladys B. West & Dr. Carolyn Oglesby on the Timeless Technology PodcastESPM, São PauloTest of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)Ali Luna on the Timeless Technolgoy Podcast (part 1 and part 2)Historically Black College and University (HBCU)Additional notes:Aicha Laafia on Geeking Out (podcast & YouTube)Adriana's article on Medium based on her KCD Porto talkTranscript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery DevOps, observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. Geeking out with me today, I have Mariana Carvalho. Welcome, Mariana!MARIANA:Thank you. Thank you for having me.ADRIANA:I am super excited to have you, and always excited to have another Brazilian on the podcast.MARIANA:Yay.ADRIANA:It’s a treat. Being able to, like, connect with my culture. I think it's really important. I, I've, I've found in the last several years, the importance of reconnecting to your cultural roots, because I lived in such isolation from my cultural roots for a long time here in Canada. So it's been kind of nice to have that. So I love it when I meet other Brazilians.MARIANA:I me too. I mean, we can speak a little Portuguese too, but, you know, even though we speaking English, it's like we can see the culture in the way we talk to each other. You know, it it shows. So I love it.ADRIANA:Yeah, absolutely. And where are you calling from today?MARIANA:I'm calling from Boston, Massachusetts. So it's very cold here too.ADRIANA:Yeah. We are, we are definitely cold buddies. I think we both, both our cities have received a lot of snow as of the time of this recording. I think, Toronto about half a meter in, in like five days, which is a lot.MARIANA:Yeah. Same here. I was in D.C. last week, and it was also super windy and, many flights got canceled. I almost didn't come home. I know. It was awful, but we were safe and sound. And now it's so funny because I've been talking with my parents, and for them it's like almost 40°C. So the discrepancy is just so frightening.MARIANA:I don't know. Ai. It's frightening.ADRIANA:Yeah. It's wild like I, I'm originally from Rio de Janeiro, and I have family there who said right now, and we're recording this February 18th. So it's in the middle of summer in, in Brazil, 50 degrees and in Rio... 50 Celsius.MARIANA:Wow. Yeah.ADRIANA:I don’t, I can't even, I like I'm okay with 40. You know I it is my South American blood is okay with that. I'm not okay with -15. I'm okay with 40, but I can't even imagine 50. Like, that's scary.MARIANA:Yeah. It's changing so much and so quickly it feels that doesn't change quickly. But then all of a sudden then the extremes are the ones that I think it's wild to see. Yeah. Here and there. Right.ADRIANA:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know and it's something I'll, I'll probably dig into a little bit later because I know like I connected you with, with a writer recently on your Medium publication and she does a lot of writing on sustainability actually. And she's also been a past guest on Geeking Out, so I, I would love to talk about that in a little bit. But first we have our icebreaker questions. Okay. Are you ready?MARIANA:Let's do it. Yes.ADRIANA:First question. Are you a lefty or already.MARIANA:Righty.ADRIANA:Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?MARIANA:iPhone.ADRIANA:Me too. Yes, iPhone. All the way. Here's my iPhone.MARIANA:At home I have two iPads. I have a MacBook.ADRIANA:Yeah, yeah. Same. Same full. Fully integrated. Next question. I think I know your answer now. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?MARIANA:Mac. Yeah.ADRIANA:Okay. Next one. Do you have a favorite programing language?MARIANA:Oh my gosh. I think Python, but that's so funny because I didn't learn Python. Doing my master's degree. Oh, sorry. That. Should I just answer and not explain why?ADRIANA:Please. Please. No. Go ahead, go ahead. I love it. Okay. I always tell people you can go as deep or not as deep as. Because I think it's okay to get to know a guest. So go ahead.MARIANA:Yeah I remember learning Python during during my master's degree. My ex-boyfriend at the time, he taught me how to like how to program in Python. Like using Kaggle is a website I think was acquired by Google. It was so fun to sort out some of the data sets there. And I was like, okay, this is so. Not easy. But it was just so natural to do it, you know, to sort out and I don't know, just to just to really code. I think I had the most fun coding Python, but then after I finished school and up and then when I started working in corporate, I never used it any more. So it is kind of rusty right now.Yeah, but I remember it being very, very fun. I remember I created a little game that was I think the name of the game is 2048. It’s a game that, you know, so I remember that. It's so addictive. And I remember I made like I created this little game just in a sandbox. And I was like, okay, how can I, you know, try to use my technical skills in fun things.And I remember using Python for the data set on Kaggle that was sorting out numbers, of the female Nobel Prize winners. You know, I was like, if I want to learn something using a technical skill, I better use that on something that I have fun with. So and that's usually something that I recommend to people. It's like if you want to create a portfolio or if you want to do something using a programing language, or maybe like some people are like learning how to deploy on different infrastructure as a service, right?So like, how can you do that? Having fun? Just try just do that through a game or through something that you're going to enjoy. So you don't give up in the middle of the process. So.ADRIANA:I love that. I love that so much because that's my same philosophy. If you're doing something fun, you will get obsessed over it. And you will have that motivation to find a solution. And I also agree with you on Python. Python was not my first programing language, and I spent, for listeners, viewers of the show. I spent most of my career in Java, which I've said many times, on the show, but, I learned Python later in life and fell in love with it because, as you said, it's so pleasant to code in. So I can I can totally relate. Okay. Next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?MARIANA:I think dev.ADRIANA:All right. Cool. Next one. Do you prefer JSON or YAML JSON?MARIANA:I worked with JSON before, so that's the one that I.ADRIANA:Fair enough. Fair enough.MARIANA:Yeah.ADRIANA:And do you prefer spaces or tabs?MARIANA:Spaces.ADRIANA:Okay. And two more questions. Do you prefer consuming content through video or text?MARIANA:Oh, text I love reading. Writing full text.ADRIANA:I would have been surprised if you said, video because because you, you have a publication on Medium, but have never know. I've had people who are like, oh, I thought you like video more because you do the podcast as a video. I'm like, no. MARIANA:I'm.... You like creating video, right? But like to consume is different. Yeah, I love reading. I think it has more of the pause, and the video has a lot of the stimuli that I don't know if I like for long term, I, I prefer reading for sure.ADRIANA:I get too distracted by video.MARIANA:Yeah.ADRIANA:Like you said, stimuli. Okay. Final question. What is your superpower?MARIANA:Oh, I got my superpower. Well. I love connecting people with each other. That's something that I enjoy doing. And, I feel that is very altruistic. I don't know, I feel that I, I don't gain anything out of connecting people with each other, but I do because I, I genuinely care of, like, two things being put together. There's a book. I don't know. I don't know the name of the book in English, but there's a phrase that says the word changes when two things that that have never been together, they meet. It's something like that. Yeah. And I think it's beautiful because any encounter can really change the course of one's life. One’s life. So yeah, I love connecting people.ADRIANA:Oh, that's so great. Yeah, that that's such a great superpower. And I think it's such an important superpower. And I think it's like so important to like, for women in tech, having having those connections, being able to connect, other women to each other because I think we’re... sometimes it's hard for us to find each other. So to be able to connect each other and introduce people to other awesome people, I think is such a such a lovely gift to the world. So, yeah, absolutely.MARIANA:And I think you can do it. And I think you do that too. So it's it's a great gift. And what's your superpower?ADRIANA:Oh, mine. I would say it's picking up things fast and then writing about them, like. So learning things fast and then

About our guest:Autumn Nash is a Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Linux Security previously over four years at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a Software Development Engineer, I currently contribute to the Language and Runtimes team, specializing in the development and release of Amazon Corretto (Java) while actively engaging in the OpenJDK community. Prior to this, Autumn's role as a NoSQL Solutions Architect involved guiding organizations in selecting purpose-built NoSQL databases, utilizing Python and Java to unblock customers and contribute to educational content. In addition to her technical expertise in solutions engineering, back-end web development, and cloud computing, Autumn is proud to be a mom, bringing a unique perspective to the tech industry. She is also an alumni member of Rewriting the Code, further enriching her commitment to effective communication and education. Serving as the Board Chair of Education at MilSpouse Coders and as a Chapter Leader for the Greater Seattle Area, her advocacy for collaborative learning and community development extends beyond technology.Find our guest on:LinkedInBlueskyFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Hidden Figures (movie)Mary Jackson (NASA engineer)Katherine Johnson (NASA engineer)Katherine Johnson (building dedication)Milspouse CodersMicrosoft Software and Systems Academy (MSAA) - program for military veterans and retireesAmazon CorrettoHarvard Economist Claudia Goldin Nobel PrizeAngie JonesRewriting the CodeAdditional notes:Check out Autumn's podcast, Fork Around and Find Out, co-hosted with Justin GarrisonTim Banks on Geeking Out, Episode 7, Episode 8, and Episode 28.Transcript:ADRIANA:Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. and geeking out with me today, I have Autumn Nash. Welcome, Autumn.AUTUMN:I'm so excited to finally virtually meet you.ADRIANA:I know. I'm excited too. And. And you are. I. I think we should play the, you know, six degrees to Tim Banks game, because, like...AUTUMN:Is anyone not six degrees from Tim Banks?ADRIANA:I know Tim has introduced me to so many amazing people, and I'm so grateful that he made the intros and that we just, like, hit it off. Like, there's been so many people on this podcast that Tim has introduced me to who have, like, now become good friends, and I'm like, oh, I feel.AUTUMN:Like he is, like, the ambassador of cool tech people, you know?ADRIANA:It is so true.AUTUMN:So Tim, like, if Tim is like, you have to meet, like, I hate it when people are like, oh, you should go meet this person. And I'm like, oh, I think it'd be cool. But, like, if Tim is like, go meet this person, like, you know they're going to be cool.ADRIANA:I know, right? So, Autumn, where are you calling from today?AUTUMN:I am in Seattle.ADRIANA:Okay, well, are you ready to get into our. Are. Are we gonna say lightning round questions? I don't think there'll be lightning today. Are you a lefty or a righty?AUTUMN:Righty. Look, I am directionally challenged sometimes. I will still, like, do the L thing. And, like, I also can use both hands, but definitely mostly righty.ADRIANA:Awesome. Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?AUTUMN:iPhone. Team iPhone.ADRIANA:Me too. Team iPhone.AUTUMN:Okay, good. I was like, please be team iPhone. Like.ADRIANA:One thing I wanted to ask, because I think we were talking about this before we started recording because you said you have an art degree, and then you got. And then you got yourself into tech. So I'm curious, how did that. How did you end up in tech from. From an art degree?AUTUMN:This is, like, the craziest, longest story, but so I love these stories. I love, like, painting and art and, like, just all the intersections of, like, how art is almost like a. It can be like love, but it could be, like, a protest against things that are, like, going wrong. It can be like, art is just, like, being creative, and art is just such a huge part of my life. But let me tell you, getting a fine arts degree and a graphic design degree does not pay the bills. And I really like fancy coffee and food. And I finished my first degree and I remember like taking my son with me to go like, walk. And it was great, but I was like, I had my own graphic design business and it was just like such a hustle to make so little money and people didn't value, like, they're like, oh, I can go on Fiverr. And like, I'm just like, well, then go to Fiverr. Because, like, I got a whole ass degree and I don't want to do something for $20. Like, you know what I mean?ADRIANA:Yes. Oh, God, I can so relate.AUTUMN:I was like, I spent so much money on an art degree. I don't want to spend a lot of money to go back to school. And I need a job that's going to make a certain amount of money, but I want to, like, enjoy it. And like, when I was in, I graduated high school and I got tattoos on my wrist because I was like, this is my buy in to never take a, like, shitty job that like, I can't be myself at. You know what I mean?ADRIANA:Yeah. I love that.AUTUMN:I was like, I need a job that, like, I can show up with like tattooed and pink hair and ridiculousness. And I want it. Like, I think that the way that people treat you at your job, like I always told my little brother, I'm like, you have to find a job that requires enough skill, that makes you special enough that hopefully there's a buy in for them to treat you like somewhat well. Right?ADRIANA:Yep.AUTUMN:So I was looking and I was like, I need something that's not going to cost a lot of money to go back to school. So I found a school that was not very expensive, which I've gotten a lot of for the school I went to, but whatever. And I was like, I really want it to do with like computers because I love computers. And I want it to be like. I was like, I was in, in the time. At the time I was pregnant with my second son and I was like, I wasn't really sure where my marriage was going. And I was like, I'm gonna have these little kids and I don't want to leave them at home. So it either needs to make enough money that I can put them somewhere that I feel like they're safe. Yeah. But it needs. Or it needs to be from home where I can, like, know that they're like, okay. Yeah. And the other then. So I was living in Virginia because I was married to someone in the military at the time. And I was living in Virginia by the Norfolk base. But like in Suffolk, which that matters later, it's like down the street from Hampton, Virginia.And the movie Hidden Figures came out. And I've always loved computers. I've always been, like, super into, like, how things work. And I got an iMac when I was, I think, in like the third, third grade. And it was the most magical thing ever to me because it was the clear color ones and watching all the circuits and all of that. And then I had, like, this weird sickness in high school and I had to get. Leave my art academy and go to the technical academy. And I just got thrown into one that I didn't want. And it was like building circuits. And I was like, this is so lame. Until I started putting the circuits together and figuring out how to, like, solder them all.ADRIANA:Yeah.AUTUMN:And like, just the experience of watching like, of like your first computer come into your house and like, seeing the. In the. The outside, I mean, the inside of like, what the computer is and turning it on and learning about, like, you know, like, files and floppy disk and all of that. And then the experience of seeing how you solder those, like, pieces on and how, like, just it's all ones and zeros, you know. And then so I was going to school for graphic design. And then also I had to take another technology class which kind of like, was like. It was like Information Technology 101. But it was kind of a lot of that.Like, you know, like ones and zeros and how computers work. So fast forward, I was watching like, Hidden Figures. And I'd always been like, I don't know if I'm smart enough to go to school for, like, a computer science degree. And I think seeing like, Mary Jackson and like, Katherine Johnson and the fact that, like, they were brilliant, like, they were doing the work at NASA and like, Mary Jackson had gone to Hampton High School, which was right up the street from my house, right where my son was born. At the time I had actually had my son. And he's like, sitting in my lap, right? And I've got, like, a kid next to me watching this movie. And down the street from me, they wouldn't allow this woman who was a aeronautics engineer go to school while she's doing the job. But they wouldn't let her take night classes at that school to, like, further herself. They wouldn't let them go to the bathroom. And, like, it was wild because my son's fifth birthday, yeah. Was at that museum that is now the Katherine Johnson, like, space museum that's right down the street from, like, Langley. And I love space and all that, kind of. And I was just like, I love it so much. I love the Hubble telescopes and everything.ADRIANA:I love space too!AUTUMN:Girl, we were like, meant for each other. Like, so, like, it just kind of sunk in. Like, how am I gonna tell these little boys? Like, grow up and you can do whatever you want if I'm too much of a chicken to do what I want, Right?ADRIANA:Yeah. Yeah.AUTUMN:Like, how am I gonna, like, give them a life? Like, I just. I wanted my kids to have a better life. Like, I had such a bad childhood and, like, just. It wasn't like, what I wanted for my kids. And I want it to, no matter what, be able to give my kids a good life. Like, no matter what happens, whether I stayed married or didn't stay married, but I wanted to give them a life where I could still mom, you know? And like, I ju

About our guest:Whitney is a lovable goofball and a CNCF Ambassador who enjoys understanding and using tools in the cloud native landscape. Creative and driven, Whitney recently pivoted from an art-related career to one in tech. You can catch her lightboard streaming show ⚡️ Enlightning on Tanzu.TV, and she also co-hosts the streaming show You Choose! - a 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure'-style journey through the CNCF landscape alongside Viktor Farcic.Find our guest on:YouTubeLinkedInBlueskyMastodonFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Procreate AppMERN StackColumboCodezillas: The Universal Truth to Building Trust (Devoxx UK)Mutual Benefit (band)Love's Crushing Diamond (album: Mutual Benefit)Hack Reactor (software engineering bootcamps)Adriana on EnlightningLightboardSometimes, Lipstick is Exactly What a Pig Needs (Platform Engineering Day)Abby Bangser on Geeking OutViktor FarcicDevOps ToolkitChoose Your Own Adventure: The Struggle for Security (KubeCon)Additional notes:⚡️ Enlightning (YouTube)You Choose (YouTube)Transcript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today I have Whitney Lee. Welcome, Whitney.WHITNEY: Hello. I'm so happy to be here.ADRIANA: I am super excited that you were able to join and I want to get into this a little bit later, but we're like kindred spirits in some ways, like because we have photography in common. Although you did it way later than me. I mean, way longer than me. I'm super excited to have you join.WHITNEY: Yay. I'm joining you from Austin, Texas.ADRIANA: Awesome. So cool. So to get started, we are going to do some icebreaker questions.WHITNEY: Bring it.ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?WHITNEY: Presumably you mean which hand I write with. Not like which side of the bed I sleep on or I don't know which side of the car I drive on. I try to drive on the, on the right side when you do a steering wheel. So I'm, I'm right handed.ADRIANA: It's funny because when I was.WHITNEY: Yeah.ADRIANA: Oh, go ahead. Sorry.WHITNEY: Well, I write on the whiteboard as part of my, my job in the. It's switched in the camera. It's mirrored so it looks like I'm writing with my left hand to people. Yeah, but it's really just all mirrored. I'm writing like I'm not writing backwards.ADRIANA: It's funny because I was actually going to mention that because when you had me on Enlightning talks, I, I messaged you just before it started. I'm like, are you a lefty? I get so excited when I meet other lefties. I'm like, there's more of us. And yeah, I was wondering actually about writing on the Lightboard also on. I'm like, are you like really good at mirror writing?WHITNEY: It's hard enough to understand.ADRIANA: Because it totally looks like that in the videos.WHITNEY: Writing it backwards. Yeah.ADRIANA: I hear you. Okay, next question. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?WHITNEY: I am. I have given into the iPhone ecosystem and really like, it's kind of like all my family does it and I. So it's. I'm an iPhone girl. It's okay. No judgment either way though. Yeah.ADRIANA: Yeah. My, my family is also like all iPhone.WHITNEY: You get that one person in there who turns the, the chat green. They don't even know what they're doing.ADRIANA: This is, this is what wars are fought over. The. The Green Bubble. On a similar vein. And I think I might know your answer. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?WHITNEY: I. I use MacBook. MacBook Pros. Yeah.ADRIANA: Speaking to a fellow fan girl. All right, next question. Oh, yeah, go ahead.WHITNEY: I draw a lot. I've really gotten into the Procreate app. I guess it's on my iPad.ADRIANA: Yeah.WHITNEY: Still part of the Apple ecosystem. For a second, I thought it was any different. I'm not. Yeah, I'm a stereotype. It's okay.ADRIANA: Apple all the way. Woop woop. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?WHITNEY: Oh, YAML.ADRIANA: I'm sure there's some, like, YAML haters who'd be like, grrrrr.WHITNEY: Well, my. My story is that I changed careers into tech relatively late in my life and relatively recently. Only, like four years ago now. Um, so I. When I. I went back to school and I went to a boot camp, and in the boot camp, I learned JavaScript. Like, for a year, I. I did like, it's called the MERN stack, but I can't remember what it all stands for. Now. The R is React. Yeah. And Node and Express. Okay. And the M is Mon. Mongo. Anyway, this is not interesting. Yeah. And so I spent. I spent like a year, like, eating, living. Living code in the MERN stack and learning how to be an application developer. And then I immediately got a job as a cloud developer and then never touched any of that knowledge ever again.ADRIANA: YAML is your language. That's awesome. I do like YAML. I was actually, like, just before we did this recording, I was editing a JSON file and it was like, getting mad at me because the. The syntax checker was like, you need a comma. I'm like, god damn it. If it was YAML, this wouldn't be a problem. And also making me use quotes.WHITNEY: Rude!ADRIANA: Yeah, I know, right? Okay, next question. Do you prefer dev or ops?WHITNEY: Oh, I get. I. You know, ops. Based on what I just said, I think you could get that.ADRIANA: That's what I assumed. And I know the answer to this question. JSON or YAML?WHITNEY: Yeah, you tell me. You tell me about me. I like this better.ADRIANA: I know, right? Like, all your questions are like, already. Your answers are already answering subsequent questions. I love it. Okay, next one. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?WHITNEY: Spaces. I prefer when my. When my YAML is structure aware. Spaces, whatever. Yes, yes.ADRIANA: And then do you prefer to learn through video or text?WHITNEY: Oh, ironically, since I make videos all day long, I don't I don't learn through video. I like text. Yeah.ADRIANA: People have said to me, they're like, oh, you make videos, so you must like to learn through videos. I'm like, no, I like reading stuff. It's way faster.WHITNEY: Very much. And I can go back over that. Like a video. Like the second I miss something, like when concepts are built on top of each other, the second you miss something or tune out for a little bit and try to come back, you've lost the context. And it takes a lot, it feels like it takes a lot of focus or like, or a good presenter who's always coming back and reminding you the context or like drawings or something to keep that context there. But yeah, it's easy to lose context in a video or a talk.ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. It's funny because, like, I keep thinking back to like my university days where, you know, like, if the professor was talking about something really complex and then like, you zone. It's similar thing, right? You zone out for a second and you're like, and, and you're screwed for the rest of the lesson. Unless, you know, you're bold enough to like, raise your hand and ask questions and if the professor doesn't flat out dismiss you. And, and, and I, I just keep thinking, I'm like, I, you know, if it were me going to school now, like, I, I don't know if I could do it. Like, I would just zone out so much. I'd be like, I need to like, have some sort of, you know, recording or some sort of, you know, proper record of the thing so that I could like, rewind. I'm like, sometimes I feel like I wish our brains could have like, you know, a just in time Google search on conversations or rewind on conversations. Because, like, I don't know about you, but for me, like being ADHD, I'll be like having a conversation and then I'll zone out. I'm like crap!WHITNEY: What'd I miss? Oh no.ADRIANA: I feel so terrible.WHITNEY: Redoing the college years. Like, I might get distracted. But these days, like this version of Whitney, I don't mind seeming like I don't know or actually not knowing or admitting that I zoned out or just like being this like, like, like college version of Whitney would be very shy about asking that question. And present day Whitney would be like, that does. I don't like getting up and yelling. I don't understand. Explain it.ADRIANA: I, that's such a great point. And I, I couldn't agree with you more. Like, past me would have been like, just terrified would just sit there in confusion. And now I'm like, I do. I. I've described it as like the Columbo thing where you're like, you know, like, just for my benefit, can you, like, explain this? Because I don't fully get it. And for you kids out there who don't know who Columbo is, link in the show notes. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting how, like, wisdom and I don't know, like, just after a while you're like, I ain't got time for this. I just need to know.WHITNEY: It's true. No time for my. Time for. I used it all up. It's gone now.ADRIANA: That is perfect. I love it. Final question. What is your superpower?WHITNEY: Oh, what's my superpower? I. I guess it's in line with, with not being afraid to ask questions or also maybe being super empathetic too. When I am a speaker, like, I'm making the talk that I want to hear. So it involves, it's really fast paced, it involves a lot of visuals, it has a lot of, A lot of context. So if you zone out, you, if you come back, you. You have stuff to bring you back and let you know where you are. Yeah, I'd say that's it. It's about it. I just don't care, so. I don't care how I seem, so I care a lot about doing my best.ADRIANA: Yeah.WHITNEY: But I don't care what people think because I know myself and I did my best. If someone's judging me after that point, then that's a problem with them and not a problem with me. Like, it. So what. What was my answer and all of that? I just blabbed a lot. I don't. Empathy combined with not caring what people think c

About our guest:Austin Emmons is an iOS Developer at Embrace Mobile, a company that works on Observability for mobile applications and beyond. Austin has been developing for Apple platforms since the early iOS days. Outside of tech, he enjoys mountain biking, rock climbing, and taking his dog, Nacho, on new adventures.Find our guest on:LinkedInGitHubFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Objective-CSwiftLibbyReact NativeUnity (Game Engine)OpenTelemetry SwiftOpenTelemetry Semantic ConventionsJoin CNCF SlackOTel Client Side Telemetry SIG channel on CNCF SlackOTel Android SIG channel on CNCF SlackOTel Swift SIG channel on CNCF SlackNacho Bonafonte (Swift SIG maintainer)OTel End User SIG channel on CNCF SlackAdditional notes:Embrace Apple SDKEmbrace Android SDKTranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks! Welcome to Geeking out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Austin Emmons. Welcome, Austin.AUSTIN: How's it going?ADRIANA: Not bad. Super happy to have you here.AUSTIN: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.ADRIANA: And where are you calling from?AUSTIN: I'm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.ADRIANA: Awesome. Well, are you ready for the lightning round questions?AUSTIN: Yeah, let's do it.ADRIANA: Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?AUSTIN: Righty.ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?AUSTIN: I'm an iOS developer, so iPhone. I get tempted every, every time Google comes out with a new Pixel. I'm definitely tempted, but I have to say iPhone.ADRIANA: Cool. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?AUSTIN: Mac my entire life. And I got made fun of a lot in college when I showed up to computer science with a MacBook and I was just like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm dual booting Windows when I need to, but I would get out of that as soon as possible because I just, I would. Yeah, I had to hack together a lot of stuff just to get Java compiling and everything. And that was, that was fun. But yeah, definitely Mac.ADRIANA: Oh, damn, that's so cool. Yeah, I don't know, like, when I was in university, if there was like any. Anyone I ever saw with, actually. So when I was in school, there were very few of us with laptops and certainly not, I don't know of anybody who had a Mac at the time because I think they were like, also so expensive.AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I cut a lot of lawns the summers prior to save up for the first Mac. And when I say hack together some stuff, I just had to, you know, look on the other side of the Internet, I guess, to figure out the. The instructions did not come in the course syllabus like it did for everybody else.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so cool. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?AUSTIN: Swift. I really like. It's, it's, it's strict, very strict, but it's also very expressive. And if I need to write something quick or for some personal projects, Ruby would be my, my go-to. I've had a prior life as a Rails developer where I learned a lot of the server side stuff and so Ruby really, you know, opened my eyes to that. Yeah. And yeah, I find like throughout my career it's either like you're a Python shop or a Ruby shop. Somehow I've thread the needle to lean on the Ruby side of things, and now I'm at a Python shop. But I'm an iOS developer, so I don't have to focus on it too much.ADRIANA: Oh, that's so interesting. It's funny, I've had quite a few Ruby folks on this podcast and the thing that I always find with the Ruby folks is that they really, really love Ruby, which I think it's so cool. I think it speaks to the community.AUSTIN: It's a. It's just like, it's just simple to me. I don't know, like it just clicks of, okay, that makes sense. And it's maybe not as powerful, but the community for sure is there. Like, it's amazing. And then when you want to tear open somebody's gem or somebody's work, you. You can. And so, yes, it's open source to the fullest, I think, which is awesome.ADRIANA: That's very cool. It's funny, I was talking to someone because I. You. You were talking about like, you know, as Ruby being your go to if you want to like, throw something together quickly. And I actually had a very similar conversation with someone last week about this. Also interviewing for the podcast and she was saying like, you know, she knows a bunch of languages, but like the one that she always comes home to is, is Ruby. So I thought that was interesting and it's kind of cool hearing it from two people now.AUSTIN: Yeah, I mean, recommend it to anybody that's trying either getting into programming or even if you've been a seasoned programmer, just try it out. It'll change how you think about programming. But that's any language. If you try out a new. That's what I love about kind of taste testing new languages. It's just like, okay, how do you do a for loop? Even that could be so different. And it's still for loop, but it's just good enough. And Ruby, for me, it was actually the innumerable like package or, you know, they have so many tiny little algorithms or methods that you can use just to map and all those. It's like that was a whole new introduction to me of like, oh, one, I get these for free. That's awesome. One. And then again another, I can chain them together and really do what I need to. And now I go to other languages and I. That's like the first thing I ask for. Look at, it's like, okay, now I need to get back into that more functional type of programming.ADRIANA: Right.AUSTIN: Even though Ruby is. Is very object oriented. So, yeah, it's, it's a good language.ADRIANA: Cool. Yeah. And to what you were saying earlier too, I think it's interesting. Like, I think one of my favorite things about like tackling new languages is that compare and contrast. Right. Because you already, you have the experience like of a base language and it's always so interesting to see how different languages approach different things and how they have their nuances and, you know, if they're more verbose than other languages you've worked with and whatnot.AUSTIN: Yeah, I, I mean for most of my career I actually had to straddle iOS and Android and that was very similar. Where it wasn't just I'm working in two different languages and I have to compare and contrast. Java at that point and Objective-C on the iOS side. It was actually the platforms themselves. It's like, okay, how do I show full screen content? You know, iOS you call it a view controller. Android, you call it an activity at that point. You still can, but they've kind of shifted the thinking to fragments and, and compose now. And so it's like you had to stay along and be up to date with every change that the platform developers were making on top of the changes of the language. And I would always implement the same feature two or three times where it's like, implement it for iOS first. Okay, that works. Have to implement it for Android. It's the same feature but I have to do it slightly differently. But I did it in a way that I have this experience that I like a little more. Okay, what can I take from that Android side and actually come back to my iOS implementation and improve that a little bit. And if you have the time, that's really beneficial because it just stretches your brain out and yeah, I couldn't recommend it enough.ADRIANA: That's awesome. That's so cool. So I'm, I think I know the answer, but what, what do you prefer developing on more iOS or Android?AUSTIN: You know, I recently had, it's iOS but I recently had some work to do. It's probably a year, year and a half ago in Kotlin on Android and I had stepped away from Android for probably three or four years and then come back to it for just a really quick two or three month project, and I loved it. Kotlin and, what they've done, it's just, I don't know, so much more intuitive than Java. It really feels like it is a first party product. In the early days of Android, when I was in my early days, I guess you could feel that it was an open source project and you could feel that the design patterns that they were using were different depending on what part of the platform you're working in. Whereas iOS was, everything is very cohesive. You know the Apple platforms and the frameworks, they provide very common design patterns. And so you knew like it, you felt used to it even though you had never seen this before. So you know, transitioning from requesting some the device location to the device motion, you know, it's almost identical code. On Android, there might have been separate patterns that used and so I think nowadays Android has leveled up and those design patterns are more similar or at least maybe it's just the entire community developing these packages have everybody's leveled up and come together on how they like Android code to look right.ADRIANA: Oh cool, that's awesome. Definitely seeing an evolution in the right direction on that one.AUSTIN: Yeah, just established patterns I think would be the, the best way to put it is like those have started to actually like solidify and take shape. And I mean, nowadays it's 10 years, almost 15 years for these platforms. So they're, they're getting up there in terms of the maturity which is interesting. And now we have new stuff to go work on and we'll see what the next frontier is, I guess.ADRIANA: That's very cool. And by the way like I, I, I want to go back to like your mention of Kotlin. So my dad is, he's like a software architect and he's retired now but he has been like a huge proponent of Kotlin forever. So he always like goes on and on about how much he liked and he was like an early adopter of Java. And then his, his thought around Java was like oh it's, it's like it's an anti pattern to programming just because yo

Hey fellow geeks! A quick programming note. Starting in january 2025, we'll be dropping new episodes of Geeking Out every two weeks instead of once a week. Our next episode will be out on January 28th. peace out and geek out!

About our guest:Aicha Laafia Java Software Engineer with a love for coding, a taste for delicious food, and a heart for volunteering. Aicha is also a member of the Moroccan Association of Computing Science, a Women Techmakers and Girls Code ambassador, and an IAmRemarkable facilitator.Find our guest on:BlueskyLinkedInLinkTreeX (formerly Twitter)Find us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:KCD PortoIx-chel Ruiz on Geeking OutEnterprise JavaBeans (EJB)J2EEZ Garbage Collector (ZCG)Shenandoah Garbage CollectorJava Lombok ProjectKotlinDevoxx MoroccoDevBarcelona (DevBcn)Java ChampionsHorizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA)Vertical Pod Autoscaling (VPA)TAG Environmental Sustainability on CNCF SlackKube-GreenSQLITranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada and geeking out with me today, I have Aisha Laafia. Welcome, Aisha.AICHA: Welcome, Adriana. And welcome everyone.ADRIANA: So nice to have you on here and for a little bit of background. Oh, so first of all, actually, where are you calling from today?AICHA: Well, right now I'm from Lyon in France.ADRIANA: That's awesome. And you know, given that it's afternoon here in, in Canada when we're recording in Toronto, Canada, um, it's evening for you, so I appreciate you taking the time out of your evening, especially because you, you had an event that you were at earlier today that you ducked out of for this recording, so definitely appreciate that. And you know, I wanted to mention to our viewers slash listeners that the way that you and I met was really cool. We met at KCD Porto in Portugal in September of 2024. And yeah, I, I was keynoting there and then you came up to me after my keynote and we started chatting, and it was just so great chatting with you. I had like such an amazing time and, you were telling me your story, so I can't wait to get into that. But first, I have some lightning round slash icebreaker questions for you. Okay, you ready?AICHA: I'm ready.ADRIANA: Okay. I swear they're not terrible, they're not painful. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?AICHA: Well, I am a righty.ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?AICHA: I'm always Android girl.ADRIANA: All right. Do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?AICHA: Well, I preferred Linux, but I'm forced to use Windows.ADRIANA: Oh, that makes me cry. That makes me cry. Do you use Windows subsystem for Linux?AICHA: That's my hero, literally.ADRIANA: Yeah, that's what saved me too. The last time I had a Windows machine, I'm like, please let them have enabled it. Because that's the other thing. You get a Windows machine and like some companies disable it or don't allow you to like download the VMs, like the whatever Linux VM to run WSL.AICHA: Well, for me...that's the first thing I ask about is that give me the administration role in my. I have to take control.ADRIANA: Yes, yes, yes. Good call, good call. And I mean, you do dev work, you should have, you know, some, some sort of administrative access over your, your machine, right?AICHA: Indeed. And as I am you can say old school. I'm all more like comand type of people. Developers who use command more than like platforms or desktop applications. For me. I like to write things to see logs more than just to click on buttons.ADRIANA: For sure, for sure. I feel you. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite programming language?AICHA: It's obviously Java. I don't know like hesitate this question. Of course it's Java.ADRIANA: Of course. I love it.AICHA: I love it.ADRIANA: I think I told you Java was like I spent many years in, in Java, so Java and I were very good friends for a long time. I couldn't tell you what's new in Java anymore though. I'm so out of touch.AICHA: Well, there's a lot of things indeed. Like Java has been accelerating very, very fast and that's a very good news for us.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Like what? Okay, so my. I'm of the days of like EJBs and J2EE which I don't even know if that's like a thing anymore. What's, what's something cool in Java like that you're excited about.AICHA: Like right now it's still a thing, but they're working more like beans or Spring doing its work with more advanced features that's handling the beans. But for Java native, like we have the system that. For example, what I really loved is the ZCG like the garbage collection. Right now it's really advanced. Like for there is ?Shenandoah, for example that it doesn't care about what memory size you have. It's always accelerating, always taking care of your memory handling mechanism. Also like right now we don't have to type a lot of things. That's something that many people complain about Java. There are that there are a lot of new features. You get anonymous classes you can create. You don't have like really to do that big lines. You have like Lombok project that you. We cannot like really right now write all those getters and setters for our instance. You can just enable annotation. Getter. Setter.ADRIANA: Oh my God, yes. This would have saved me so much time. I remember like painstakingly writing all the getters and setters back in the day and you know like your IDE can like auto generate that stuff and all that if you, if you're nice to it. But yeah, that's, that's nice that annotations can help with that. Yay. Yeah, annotations. I think we're just getting started when I was getting out of Java. So yeah, it's been a while.AICHA: You missed the fun.ADRIANA: I know, I know I missed the fun. I missed the fun. I, I gotta ask because, because you're, you're into the Java world. How do you, have you ever played with Kotlin or Groovy?AICHA: Groovy? Yes. Because I didn't. Well, Groovy. Not that much because most of the projects I worked on they were mainly based on Maven, so but a lot of part we tried to migrate some Groovy there and see to replace it but it didn't work. Yeah. So I'm mainly like Maven. For Kotlin, I didn't have the chance to do it, but it's really my to learn list because I've heard a lot of people saying it's really advanced. Like it takes the basic of Java, it's based on Java, but a lot of you can use it on the mobile, you can use it on desktop, even programs in like it's more light, small. Like in terms of performance. I've heard a lot of good things.ADRIANA: About Kotlin, so yeah, I, I have as well. So yeah, yeah I, I, that's one I wouldn't mind trying out if, if I had time. I gotta, gotta find that time though to learn. There's like so many cool things to learn, I don't know where to start.AICHA: Indeed this is, and this is why like Kotlin and Python is on my 2025 like to learn lists.ADRIANA: Yeah.AICHA: With the machine in AI right now, every like service we try to integrate AI a lot to automate the things especially that communicate with people and a lot of handling processes we try. So I have to learn Python because even using Java in the machine learning there are some script or some integrated libraries that use Python. So we have to understand. Oh in that the new things about Java, we can handle machine learning with Java too.ADRIANA: That's cool. That's very cool. It's funny you mentioned Python because Python was like the language I learned after Java and I mean Python's been around for so long. Right. And I have to say like, I hope when you get around to Python I would love to know what your thoughts are. I always, I like Python. I think it's a very pleasant, pleasant language to, to develop in. So yeah. Yeah and yeah it's like so big in, in the machine learning space. It's wild. I love it. I love that it's like it's still alive and kicking.AICHA: Indeed. Like for me before I started with actually the first time I tried something like coding. It was a Linux script that was like in the middle school. My sister, she was studying a little bit of like tech. It was the tech. So and she was trying some scripting Linux. She was like try this. I. I still remember my first command. It was "ls".ADRIANA: That was my first Linux command too.AICHA: I didn't know what does do what does how it works but I tried. But like yeah, that's interesting. And then when I tried to look for like what I want to do. For backup story, I used to dream to be a psychologist.ADRIANA: Oh cool.AICHA: I could not find like a really good school there that have the like the domain that I want to study there in Morocco. So it was like I need to something that you can analyze a lot of things that have a lot of logics there. And I found the tech industry especially when I got to know that that's something that we will do it in the future. It's really developing. It's. It will become part of our life. I start to be more passionate, more curious about this and this is where I try. Yeah I will do. I will go to the tech industry but what I will do. I try to look for something. Tried front end, back end when I was a student. B ut I found myself more into backend especially Java. Like I start with the C language at first. I, I create some really interesting like I even built a mini game for 3D using C. Language C. Yeah, I even like in. Then I switch a little bit doing something that like creating the systems more and with Linux like kernel that's. That was my geek in phase there in school.ADRIANA: That's great.AICHA: Yeah. And then I was like I, I was introduced to Java and I can call it like falling in love first line of code because I love really the sense of being organized. There is a pattern, it's organized. If you miss something, you know what's going on, what you missed. And it's really mature, it's really robust. Like it's always about mechanism that handling a lot from errors to security and all that. And even like back there there was a lot of code. I was like oka

About our guest:Michael Levan is a seasoned engineer and consultant in the Kubernetes and Platform Engineering space who spends his time working with startups and enterprises around the globe on Kubernetes consulting, training, and content creation. He is a trainer, 4x published author, podcast host, international public speaker, CNCF Ambassador, and was part of the Kubernetes v1.28 and v1.31 Release Team.Find our guest on:LinkedInBlueskyX (formerly Twitter)Find us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Windows PhoneVulnHubAmazon Machine Image (AMI)Type 1 HypervisorKali LinuxPenetration (pen) testingBlue team (security)Red team (security)Microsoft Azure Resource Manager (ARM) TemplatesMicrosoft BicepCompTIA CertificationsPenTest+ Study Guide (CompTIA)Tanya Janca (@SheHacksPurple)Alice and Bob Learn Application SecurityBlack Hat PythonBurp SuiteMetasploitStatic Application Security Testing (SAST)Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP)Every Microsoft Employee is Now Being Judged on Security (The Verge)Transcript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Michael Levine. Welcome, Michael.MICHAEL: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.ADRIANA: Yeah, really excited to have you on. Where are you calling from today?MICHAEL: I am in New Jersey.ADRIANA: Ooh, fellow east coaster. Yay.MICHAEL: I know. Yeah, I'm. I'm actually. I'm in the process of thinking about getting out of here.ADRIANA: Oh. Yeah.MICHAEL: So, yeah, maybe Tampa or Austin. Those have been.ADRIANA: Oh, so somewhere warm.MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, those have been the two spots that I've been really thinking about lately.ADRIANA: Cool. I've never been to Austin, but I always hear good things about Austin, especially the food scene.MICHAEL: Yes. Yeah, I feel like I hear that a lot, especially like podcasts and stuff. Like, I'll be listening to just random podcasts. People will talk. Be talking about how great the food is out there. A lot of barbecue, obviously. 'Murca, and. And all that good stuff. So there's. There's a lot of barbecue and that type of food.ADRIANA: I am down for the barbecue.MICHAEL: Exactly.ADRIANA: Cool. Well, we will be starting off with our lightning round questions. Are you ready?MICHAEL: I'm ready.ADRIANA: Hey, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?MICHAEL: Righty.ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?MICHAEL: I think iPhone, because I've just been using it for so long. But I would argue, though, that will argue with myself that about twice a year I think about switching to Android.ADRIANA: Oh, yeah.MICHAEL: But it's just. I feel like I'm just so used to the ecosystem at this point, and despite being an engineer, I'm not, like, super interested in consumer technology. I just want stuff that just works. And I feel like, at least back in the day with Android, it was like you had to kind of play around with things to make it work in a particular way. Whereas with iPhone, it's just I open it up and I can use the stuff that I need to use and that's it. So.ADRIANA: So, yeah, I'm. I'm with you on that as well. I. I do like the. Everything works, Everything's nicely integrated, it plays well. Nice. And, you know, the. The folks who love Android, I think one of the reasons they love it is, oh, you can configure everything.ADRIANA: And my. My thought is like, but I don't want to.MICHAEL: Like, no, yeah, I'm doing that 90% of my day. I just don't want to do it in my personal time either.ADRIANA: Yeah, it's not fun to me. It was fun, like, I don't know...MICHAEL: Years ago.ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. When I was younger.MICHAEL: Exactly. Yeah. Like, I remember, like, I had Android phones and I was jailbreaking them, and then I had like the Windows phones when they were popular for three minutes and then, you know. Yeah. And then it was like, eventually I just had to switch back and just. I just wanted something that just worked, you know?ADRIANA: Yes, I am with you on that. Okay. Similar vein, do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?MICHAEL: Mac. But there are certain things that are irritating me that I'm thinking about going back to Windows. Like, you know, like, for example, I can't tell you how many times I build a Docker image, then I try to deploy it to a particular place, and I'm like, why isn't this working? And then I'm like, oh, that's right, because I'm building on ARM. Yeah, and then there's. Yeah, and then there's even, like. So I'm really into the security realm and stuff, and there are certain things that I can't do. So for example, there's this website called VulnHub, which is awesome. It's literally just a whole bunch of AMIs that are built with vulnerability.So let's say you want to test or practice something from a pen testing perspective. You can download these AMIs and then you can spin them up in VMware Player, VirtualBox or whatever you're using for your Type 1 hypervisor. But they're not ARM based.ADRIANA: Yes.MICHAEL: Like, I can't use them on my Mac and I have like my Windows box back there, which I can do it on, but I'm like, it's just a pain, you know? Or like, let's say like I'm speaking at a conference or something. It's like, I want to demo something, but I can't because of this. I just. Yeah. So I've been thinking about going back to Mac, which would be the first. Er. Mac Windows, which will be the first time in like six, seven years.ADRIANA: Oh, damn. Yeah, you make a very good point with the, with the Docker images and ARM. Like, that has caused me so much grief recently.MICHAEL: It's a pain.ADRIANA: Like, I can't even tell you. And. And then also, like, I don't know if this is still true. I haven't checked for a while, but I think, like, you can run VirtualBox on M1 Macs.MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. No, you totally can. Yeah. Like, even, like, I have. Yeah. I have VMware Fusion even on it right now because I'll like, I have a Kali VM, but Kali is like a pen testing distro that I'll run locally and stuff because it's not my daily driver. But like I can run those VMs. But if anything is built with AMD base 64 or whatever, it's all about the architecture.So even whatever the extension is for VMs, right, that AMI. You can exist, you could download it and stuff, but then it'll say, oh, you can't run it because your architecture. And you're like, yeah. Apple should have given an option like go Intel or go ARM. But yeah, so.ADRIANA: I definitely feel your frustration on that one. Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?MICHAEL: I'm comfortable and Go, but it depends on the use case. Right. So like programming languages to me are, are really nothing more than a tool to get a job done. Yeah. So like I'll use Go just because I, I enjoy it and I'm comfy in it. But from like a security perspective, a lot of Python and PowerShell, because those are like the two primary like scripting based languages. And from a security perspective, the majority, whether you're doing blue teaming, red teaming, purple AppSec, cloud sec, whatever, the majority of the time writing automation with your code. So it kind of makes sense to go the Python or the PowerShell route. I could do it in Go, but it's like nobody else is really doing it. So then it won't work in certain scenarios or people won't be comfortable with it in certain scenarios, so.ADRIANA: Oh, cool. That's. That's really interesting.MICHAEL: Yeah, Yeah, I love Go. I, I started out PowerShell, Python. I moved to Go years ago. I teach like Go training. So like I'll, I'll teach live trainings, teaching people Go. So I'm, I'm super comfy in that realm.ADRIANA: Yeah.MICHAEL: Yeah. Python or PowerShell, it's pretty much the way to go from a security standpoint.ADRIANA: Good to know. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?MICHAEL: Which one? I don't know. I, I'm, I think because of the way that my brain works, if I had to choose to just do one, it would be development because I'm very logistical, left side of the brain. Like, I like, I like research and I like logistical based jobs. So I think programming gives me more of that and I've done both. Like, I started out my career in systems administration and help desk and all that. Around the middle of my career I moved to software development. And then I just found myself somewhere in the middle. Right. Yeah, whatever you want to call it. Platform, SRE, DevOps, whatever. Whatever title is catchy nowadays. So, like, I've done kind of a little bit of everything and I've played with all different pieces of technology. But what I will say is, like, I don't think I can do one without the other anymore. Like, I wouldn't be a good developer if I didn't understand infrastructure. And I wouldn't be good at infrastructure and systems and networks and containerization and Kubernetes if I didn't understand development. So I. There's. I feel like the, the lines are so blurred in today's world that you really need both. But yeah, if I had to choose, like, what I was going to do, probably, like, writing code.ADRIANA: Awesome. And, you know, I love what you said there about, like, really the lines blurring and having to understand both. Because I so agree with you. And I've had, I've had arguments with people over this because in the past, like, when I was managing teams and I was hiring folks for my team, like, I was hiring developers for my team, but I needed them to, like, have an understanding also of, like, the infrastructure side of things, like how to containerize your applications. And I was really surprised by the number of, like, resumes that I got or even like, you know, if they made it to the interview process of people who had no experi

About our guest:Kayla is an engineer on the New Relic Ruby agent team and an active member of the OpenTelemetry Ruby community, where she's a maintainer for opentelemetry-ruby-contrib and an approver for opentelemetry-ruby. Outside of work, she enjoys cycling and tinkering in her garden.Find our guest on:LinkedInGitHubFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Apple IIeUnisys IconGitHub CodespacesOpenTelemetry Ruby (Core)OpenTelemetry Ruby (Contrib)Transcript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. and geeking out with me today, I have Kayla Reopelle of New Relic. Welcome, Kayla.KAYLA: Hi. Thank you. Happy to be here.ADRIANA: I'm super excited to have you on. And where are you calling from today?KAYLA: I'm calling from Portland, Oregon.ADRIANA: Awesome. I've had a few people from Portland. There's a big tech community in Portland, isn't there?KAYLA: Yeah, yeah. They. At one point it was called the Silicon Forest, but I don't know if it has that same reputation.ADRIANA: That's awesome. Are you originally from Portland, or...KAYLA: No, I'm originally from a small town kind of near Mount Rainier in Washington state, but kind of grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so.ADRIANA: Oh, cool. That's awesome. It's. You know, I always chat with people who, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and it's such a different vibe from east coast life. Like, it's so much more outdoorsy, focused in the Pacific Northwest, which I absolutely love. Like here, where I live, in Toronto, it's like, it's flat. So, you know, I go out west, I'm like, oh, it's...The mountains are so pretty. I so miss that.KAYLA: Yeah. Yeah. The times that I've lived other places, I. I miss seeing the mountains on the horizon. For sure.ADRIANA: Yeah. You cannot beat that. Well, awesome. Are you ready to do our icebreaker questions?KAYLA: Sure.ADRIANA: Okay, let's do it. Question number one. Are you a lefty or a righty?KAYLA: I'm a lefty.ADRIANA: Oh, my God. I always get so excited when I meet fellow lefties. Yeah. I love learning. I. I love identifying other lefties. I. I've mentioned this multiple times in the show, so if anyone's listening and bored of hearing this. But like, I always, I'm always like watching, you know, what hand people grab things with, and I'm like lefty. And I feel like it's the thing that only lefties will probably notice anyway.KAYLA: Yeah, yeah. Right. We're like a small enough percentage that it. It kind of catches you off guard. It's a little bit exciting.ADRIANA: Exactly. And I, I don't know if you do this, but like, my coat hangers go like my clothes hang in my coat hangers in a very particular direction compared to like right handed people or even like where I put my knives in the knife bl. In the knife block.KAYLA: Mm.ADRIANA: But yeah, that that's from like living in a house of, of right handed people where they outnumber me but I impose my will upon them.KAYLA: Nice. Nice. Yeah. Growing up there was always like a decent balance because my dad was also left handed. But you know, as an adult, like sharing a house with another with a right handed person, it's like the kitchen set up every time the. Where the cutting board is placed versus where the appliances are placed and the food.ADRIANA: It's like exactly how you turn, like. The handle for your frying pan. Like what, where it's oriented as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.KAYLA: And I've even looked at that sometimes when I've gone to like look at apartments or something. It's like, okay, where is the elbow space for?ADRIANA: Yes.KAYLA: Like, will it work?ADRIANA: Or even like something silly like sitting down to a meal. And if you're sitting next to a right handed person, you need to be on the outside so you're not like butting elbows when you eat, which right-handed people don't think about.KAYLA: Yeah, yeah, I know it, it like can cause sometimes a little bit of anxiety of like, okay, am I gonna get one of the two correct spots at this table?ADRIANA: Exactly.KAYLA: Yep.ADRIANA: And, and one, one follow up question on, on leftiness. Because I, I find like lefties. Well, I mean already by default, like, lefties hold their pencils like really weird. I hold mine extra weird to the point where, you know, I've had teachers like, you're not supposed to hold it like that. Who cares how I hold it in my writing? Yeah. Do you, Are you an extra weird pencil holder?KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah, I am. Yeah. Actually, let's see. So I hold mine. Yeah, I just kind of like balance it but have like an extra point.ADRIANA: Oh, nice, nice. And do you have like an extra callus. Yes. Yeah, the callus.KAYLA: And so whenever there were like standardized tests, this whole side of my hand would just be.ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, yeah, the smudge, the smudge. I used to have smudgy paper that I used to like... Under my hand over my notebooks to avoid that. Yeah. I had, for years I had a callus on my, on my left pinky. And it's gone. It's gone now because, I mean, I hardly ever write, but it was, I thought it was never gonna go away. I hold my pencil really funny. I have, I have a banana here that I'm going to use to demonstrate because my, my pens are like far away, but I, I hold. Oops. This is how I hold my pencil is like this. So yeah. Teachers would be like, what the hell, you can't hold it like that. I'm like, watch me, So anyway, well, thank you. Always fun to meet another lefty. Now do you prefer iPhone or Android?KAYLA: iPhone. Yeah. I grew up using Mac products so I feel like it was just kind of a natural evolution.ADRIANA: That's so cool that you grew up like that. I did not grow up using Mac products, but I became like a late stage convert.KAYLA: My parents were both teachers and the school district that they work for got a huge grant from Apple and so they actually got to like take an early computer home.ADRIANA: Oh my God.KAYLA: In the summertime. Yeah. So like when it wasn't being used, which was great. So yeah. So back in the like green and black little boxy Mac days.ADRIANA: I remember those. Yeah. I remember growing up like schools always had the Macs and it was like the, it was the Apple IIe before...pre Mac. And then, and then in my high school they had a, they had a Macintosh lab for like all the graphic design and then for like the computer class we had like a lab of Unisys Icon computers which I don't even know if they make those anymore but they, they ran Windows and yeah, that, that's what we use for computer programming.KAYLA: Nice, nice.ADRIANA: That's cool. Now did you get into computers because of your parents bringing home the max in the summer or was that like a later enlightening?KAYLA: Yeah, that's a good question. I think that that got me curious in them and like I liked, I was like early on the IT person for my family. So it was like learning, learning how to do those things. I had a great computer computers teacher to, in elementary school but I kind of drifted away from it in junior high and high school and was using more like using computers for like creative things like you know, Photoshop or like film editing. But ended up, yeah, circling, circling back much later because I, I was charged at one point with creating like Internet based documentary extras, like different things that you could use to interact with media and archives. And there was so much that I was always just asking this other engineer to do that it got me somewhat curious of like, I wonder if I could do this myself someday. And it wasn't until you know, I was kind of at this point where I was wrapping up a film project that I had been working on for a few years and wasn't sure if I wanted to go looking for a new one or make a career change that a friend of mine who was a software engineer encouraged me to look into that. And so that's kind of how I got into coding and started learning about it and enjoying it.ADRIANA: That's so cool. So your original background was more on the film end of things?KAYLA: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Documentary film stuff.ADRIANA: Oh, wow, that's so cool. I. I have to say, like, you know, having. Not that I'm a great editor or anything, but, like, editing video was something that terrified me, like, even 10 years ago, and now I'm like, okay at it. And I have mad respect for. For people who do video editing, because that is. That's a lot more work than just photo editing. Like, so much work.ADRIANA: So much work, so.KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah. Such a skill.ADRIANA: Yeah.KAYLA: And it's amazing how you can take the same footage and just edit it in different ways and have completely different films, completely different feelings.ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, that's true. It's all about, like, the context, right?KAYLA: Yeah.ADRIANA: Cool. That's awesome. All right, next question. I think you've answered it already, but do you prefer Mac, Linux, or Windows?KAYLA: Oh, yes. Yeah. So I would say, yeah, Mac is definitely where I feel most at home. I think Linux is really interesting, but I haven't had a chance to play around with it. And every time I'm using a Windows computer, it feels like I'm being forced to use my right hand. Like, I just. I can get to it eventually, but it just doesn't click in the same way.ADRIANA: Oh, my God, I love that.KAYLA: Last night, I was actually helping my aunt with her laptop, and she wanted to bookmark some websites and things like that, and it just. It took me like, an extra 30 seconds every time to be like, nope, this is where you click on this mouse and. Yeah. How you. How you right click and...ADRIANA: It's true. It's true. One thing I have to give credit to the Apple folks, like, when I switched from Windows to Mac, is I was surprised by how intuitive the shortcuts were because I'm a huge shortcut

About our guest:Ix-chel Ruiz has been developing software applications and tools since 2000. Her technical research interests include server side languages like Java, dynamic languages, client-side technologies, testing, automation and observability. Her humanities research interests include personal, professional and organisational development and transformation. Java Champion, Oracle ACE pro, Testcontainers Community Champion, CDF Ambassador, Hackergarten enthusiast, Open Source advocate, public speaker and mentor.Find our guest on:BlueskyMastodonLinkedInTwitter (X)GitHubSessionizeFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:Apache Groovy (programming language)Basel Java User Group (JUG)Apache Groovy Committee (aka PMC)Jochen Theodorou  (one of the Groovy core contributors)edX Online CoursesCodemotion Conference Madrid 2024Pascal (programming language)Softimage (company)Autodesk MayaJavaOne ConferenceQCon BrazilJavaLandJCrete Un-conferenceJChateau Un-conferenceJAlba Un-conferenceJalapeño Un-conferenceBaselone ConferenceDevoxx UK ConferenceJfokus ConferenceLian Li on Geeking Out talking about un-conferencesJava Champions Additional notes:Ix-chel's upcoming conferences/un-conferences: JNation, MAD Summit, DevBcn, JCreteTranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today, I have Ix-chel Ruiz. Welcome, Ix-chel!IX-CHEL: Thank you for having me. Thank you.ADRIANA: I'm very excited to have you on and tell folks where you're calling from and where you work.IX-CHEL: Okay, so I'm calling from Basel, Switzerland, and I work in Karakun. We are small consultancy company here in Switzerland and we also have offices in Germany and India, in several other places around the world. But we're still very, very small. And I still love that.ADRIANA: That's awesome. Yeah, I love small consulting companies because I feel like the projects are a lot more interesting that way too.IX-CHEL: Yes. It allows a closer relationship with the people that you work with, the teams that you work, and your clients. So it's. You are there to help them figure out something. And sometimes it's. It's actually systems and sometimes it's a totally different thing.ADRIANA: It's so true. That's so true. I. So I did consulting early in my career, but I worked at Accenture for four years, so I feel like. So I have the, like the big corporate consulting experience, which was. It was very interesting. It was very challenging. It led to early burnout. But I. I do admire, like, the smaller consultancies and I have a couple of friends who work at smaller consultancies and. And they quite like it. So.IX-CHEL: I joined that club.ADRIANA: Awesome. Awesome. Well, before we get started with the meaty bits, I'm going to get you started with some lightning round questions. Lightning round slash icebreaker. We'll see how if they go fast or slow. It's all good either way. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?IX-CHEL: I use both.ADRIANA: That's awesome. I love that. Okay, do you prefer iPhone or Android?IX-CHEL: I have to say that I have an iPhone. And at the beginning I had Dell machines, but then at work several years ago, they gave me a Mac and from there on, like, having Mac devices made life easier because everything was synchronized. So now I have four of my own devices. AppleADRIANA: Oh, you just answered my next question. If it was Mac, Linux or Windows. That's awesome. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I think, like, when I got my first iPhone, I was still on a Windows machine and I'm like, oh, my God, what is this nightmarish crap? And then, and then I got like an Apple. Like, I got a Mac with my iPhone and I already had an iPhone. I'm like, magic.IX-CHEL: Yes. Easy to use. Compatibility, consistency goes along the, like, a long way.ADRIANA: I completely agree. Yeah, I mean, that, that, that's why I'm part of the Mac cult. I like that everything plays nice together.IX-CHEL: Exactly.ADRIANA: Awesome. What is your favorite programming language?IX-CHEL: Java. I have to say Java, but in between. I mean, at this moment in time, you cannot say that you only love one language because you end up using a lot. So you're a polyglot by almost by definition. So I love Java, but I also like other languages. My second great love is Groovy because at that time, yes, at that time it gave me everything, like, less ceremony, more the dynamic part. So it was. And you could create magic in so little lines of code. So, yes. So Java, Groovy. I also have done a little bit of Go and many of JavaScript, obviously. Obviously. Full Stack developer.ADRIANA: That's cool. You know, I think you're the first person I've met who's liked Groovy. And, you know, I messed around with Groovy for a bit as well. Like when I first started getting into Jenkins and I wanted to do some more customization stuff. And I remember, like, other people dissing Groovy, but I'm like, but this is like less verbose Java because I was a Java developer for like 15 years and I'm like, this is less verbose Java. This is like super freaking cool. And I'm like, why are people, like, harping on Groovy?IX-CHEL: No, no, I mean, honestly, I remember. I remember my first session, it was in one Java one. And then this. The speaker was showing how to, for example, open Excel and do crazy stuff all programmatically, all from the Groovy console. And it was so easy. And I was like, oh, my God, I need that. I mean, because I'm coming from the, from the Ubuntu, like, shell and the command line interface, it's my life. So suddenly, like command line interface, but for applications that usually you're like, oh, my God, how many clicks do I have to do here to make things work? So suddenly, no clicks involved, and you were doing something incredible, and I fell in love. The funny part of that story is that my husband entered Groovy first and he was like, I have been trying to convince you of try Groovy. And you got convinced by that speaker and not by me.ADRIANA: It's always the ones closest to us that we don't want to listen to. It's like, yeah, for sure. They know what they're talking about. That's great. I love that. Oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead.IX-CHEL: Sorry. It's because. It's because we got into this. I'm hosting one of the core contributors of Groovy in the Basal JUG next month is Jochen Theodorou. He is part of the PMC of Groovy. He has been working on the internals on the compiler. I mean, I still very close to Groovy in my heart and with the people that I work with.ADRIANA: Oh, that's so awesome. That's so great. Yeah, it's funny because you don't hear too much about Groovy, and I'm very. I'm very pleased to hear that there. It's still like a very thriving community.IX-CHEL: Yes.ADRIANA: Awesome. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?IX-CHEL: Okay. As I told you, I started with Ubuntu when I was in high school. Like, honestly, I received. I actually was not Ubuntu. Ubuntu was very sophisticated years later. I started with the distribution in a CD-ROM, when you had to go to university to have people. And that time it was the. The university, the main university of Mexico, and they will burn you a CD-ROM and give it to you. That's how you distributed Linux at that time. So I hear. I'm dating myself.ADRIANA: Like, oh, my God. Yes, yes, yes.IX-CHEL: I totally.ADRIANA: Yes, I'm with you there. CD-ROM days.IX-CHEL: Oh, my God. So CLI, Ops and making to everything, Automate and scripts and everything. That's where I started. That's what pulled me into computers. But then I'm a developer, so you're asking me. For me, there is no separation because probably that's because of my background. So I cannot answer that question. Honestly.ADRIANA: You know what? I love your answer. And it's funny because I was having a similar discussion with people on this because I like, for me, the thing that attracted me to, like, the whole DevOps movement was the, like, oh, my God, I can use, Like, I like the hardware aspect of it. Like, I like infrastructure, it's cool. But I like coding. And I'm like, oh, you're telling me now I can, like, merge both of them. And the other aspect of it too is, like, as a software engineer, I think, like, for me personally, I think it's shocking when, like, you ask, you ask other software engineers, like, how to build, like, a Docker image of their code, and they're like, I don't know. That's what the DevOps engineer does. And I'm like, In my mind, I find that confusing because for me, DevOps was always meant to be like, no, we're supposed to know how to do this stuff. And now you're telling me that you're like leaving it to someone else, like you've inserted another layer of person to do a thing for you. And I'm like, shouldn't, shouldn't you be like remotely curious as to like how, how you build like the images you're going to deploy?IX-CHEL: I'm so with you there and let me paint you this image. And I think you are going to be a little bit scared, as I did when somebody make me realize that. He said, have you realized that now most of the people interact with their phones, that is their main interaction with a device. And have you realized that they don't even know how to organize or comprehend the concept of directories and files?ADRIANA: Oh my God, so true.IX-CHEL: So because I was telling him that I joined into one of these edX courses about data because I wanted to learn more about managing data, acquiring data and everything like that. And I was, I was complaining a little bit because I told him like the first five sessions it was about how to structure data in directories, like how in the hierarchy. And it was like, do we really need three sessions for this? A

About our guest:Abdel Sghiouar is a senior Cloud Developer Advocate @Google Cloud. A co-host of the Kubernetes Podcast by Google and a CNCF Ambassador. His focused areas are GKE/Kubernetes, Service Mesh, and Serverless. Abdel started his career in data centers and infrastructure in Morocco, where he is originally from, before moving to Google's largest EU data center in Belgium. Then in Sweden, he joined Google Cloud Professional Services and spent five years working with Google Cloud customers on architecting and designing large-scale distributed systems before turning to advocacy and community work.Find our guest on:BlueskyLinkedInTwitter (X)Find us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:All Things OpenGoogle Pixel 9 FoldSamsung Galaxy FlipBlue Screen of Death (BSOD)Blue Screen of Death T-shirtSilicon Valley - Tabs vs. SpacesSIG BobaLeigh CapiliThe Kubernetes Podcast from GoogleKaslin Fields (co-host of The Kubernetes Podcast)On-Call Me Maybe PodcastKubeHuddleHumans of OpenTelemetryLicence-master (LMD)NagiosSimple network management protocol (SNMP)Apache MesosOpenStackDEVOXX Conference (Morocco)Additional notes:Adriana's blog post on OpenStackTranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today, I have Abdel Sghiouar. Welcome, Abdel.ABDEL: Hello. I should have. I should have known so I could brought my American accent. So, hey, y'all.ADRIANA: Hey, y'all.ABDEL: Hey, y'all. I'll try. I'll try.ADRIANA: It's funny because the first time I heard y'all. So my husband worked in Jacksonville, Florida for a couple of years. He. He's in consulting. And one time I came down to Florida with him for. For the weekend because he had some work stuff to do. And we stop off at a gas station and they're. They're like, how y'all doing? I was like. I started. I. I think I started laughing because I'd never heard, like, "y'all" in real life.ABDEL: Yeah.ADRIANA: And I'm like, this is the most glorious thing ever. And I now just love saying "y'all". And my daughter bugs me about saying "y'all". She's like, don't say y'all. I'm like, "it's so much fun to say.ABDEL: It is. It is. I love it. So. So, yes.ADRIANA: A little sidebar. So where are you calling from today?ABDEL: I mean, I'm home, surprisingly, because each time I talk to somebody, they're like, you're home. You're always on the road. I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. So that's where I'm based. But, yeah, usually I am somewhere.ADRIANA: I know every time I see you on, like, on Twitter, I'm like, it's always a different city. You are definitely globetrotting.ABDEL: Yeah, I am doing the way I say it is. I'm doing DevRel the hard way.ADRIANA: Yeah, no kidding. But, you know, I have to say, like, we met in person last year at All Things Open. And I remember it was like, just before. It was definitely before KubeCon EU. And you were, like, giving me tips on. On, like, places to. To stay in. In Paris. You're like, don't stay too close to the conference venue, because then it's like, it's kind of a boring area. You want something that's a little bit further out so that it's closer to the cooler, touristy stuff. And I'm like, yes. So that was such great advice.ABDEL: And I think we ended up being in the same hotel now.ADRIANA: We did. We did. Yeah. Yeah. You recommended. You recommended a hotel to me, I'm like, that looks like a good spot.ABDEL: Yeah, I remember that we shared like a. We shared like a walk and we had some croissant on the way to. To KubeCon at some point.ADRIANA: Yeah, that's right. That's right. On one of the days we. We ran into each other. I'm like, ah, staying at the same hotel and running into each other. What are, what are the odds? Right?ABDEL: Yeah, no, that's. That was fun. KubeCon Paris was fun.ADRIANA: That was. I'm looking forward to the next KubeCon. Are you going to be. Are you going to be in Salt Lake City?ABDEL: I am trying, but yes, most probably, yes, because I got accepted. I have a talk. Accepted. So finally. Thank you.ADRIANA: Congrats.ABDEL: Thank you. And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully I'll. I'll be there. It's going to be fun. We are planning some stuff for the podcast and me and, yeah, me and the colleague were accepted and then Kaslin is going to be there. So it'll be fun.ADRIANA: Yay. That's awesome. Cool. I have many questions, but before. Before we get started, I'm going to start with the. With the lightning round slash icebreaker questions.ABDEL: Sure.ADRIANA: Okay. You ready?ABDEL: Sure. Go for it.ADRIANA: First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?ABDEL: I am a righty.ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?ABDEL: iPhone. I've been experimenting with the Pixel 9 recently, the Fold one. Because I'm getting old and I need big screens and I do have to admit I like it, but I am not ready to convert yet.ADRIANA: Yeah, so the folding one, that's cool.ABDEL: Yeah, Nine Fold. The new model. The. Yeah, the big one, that is cool.ADRIANA: You know, like, I actually miss my flip phone. As much as I love my smartphone, there is something so satisfying about, like, flipping.ABDEL: Yes.ADRIANA: Flipping your phone off, flipping your phone up to talk and then just closing to hang up and. Yeah, I miss those days.ABDEL: Yeah. Unfortunately, the Fold doesn't open that way. Right. It opens like a book, but it's still.ADRIANA: Oh, it's that kind of a fool.ABDEL: Yeah. Yeah. So I think. I think that the one that you're talking about, the only model that exists is the Samsung Flip, they call it.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking.ABDEL: But yeah, the Fold is like basically a big phone, but double because when you unfold it, it's like. Yeah, just a large. A small tablet, essentially.ADRIANA: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like a small tablet.ABDEL: Exactly.ADRIANA: Thing. I'd be curious to see one in real life. I don't think it'll make me convert from my iPhone, but I would still be curious to see it in real life.ABDEL: I am still on iPhone just because it's just so easy when you have everything Apple and so, yeah, we'll see. We'll see if I get. If I ever convert.ADRIANA: Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, well, that leads to my next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?ABDEL: I'm both a Mac and the Linux user. I've been a Linux user forever, since my start of my career. Like, I started with Mandrake, which then became Mandriva, and then eventually Fedora and Ubuntu and Debian, and then eventually a few years ago converted to Mac just because it's easier for work. But I still have a Linux laptop and I still use Linux daily. So Windows, I have never used Windows in my life.ADRIANA: Really? No way.ABDEL: If you put me in front of a Windows computer, I wouldn't know what to do.ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Lucky you.ABDEL: Well, I don't know. Yeah, sure. Lucky me. Thank you. I guess.ADRIANA: I'm sorry to the Windows people out there. No, I don't know. I've told a few people, I'm like, I have a bit of Windows PTSD. I grew up on DOS and then Windows 3.1 and the succession of the Windows. And then I discovered Ubuntu in the. I don't know, early. I want to say early 2000s. I had it running as a VM. I discovered Ubuntu and VMS at the same time. I'm like, "whoa".ABDEL: Yeah, you could run a VM? Yeah. If somebody gets offended, I have three words to remind you. Blue screen of death. Or that's more like four words.ADRIANA: You know, I have a blue screen of death T-shirt that I wear to conferences sometimes. And it's great when people are like, oh my God, that's so cool. I'm like, these, these are my people who recognize the blue screen of death, of course, and can relate.ABDEL: Yes, yes, exactly.ADRIANA: Absolutely. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite programming language? And if so, what is it?ABDEL: Um, I'm a Python developer. Always been a Python developer for a very long time. I picked up Go a few years ago. I am learning Rust, and if you would have asked me this question six months ago, I would probably not even mention Rust because Rust has this like, learning cycle where you are fighting Rust and Rust is fighting you for a few months. And once you get the heck that, like the heck out of it, it becomes actually enjoy, enjoyable to write code in it. So in order of if in in order, I would say Python, my preferred language, go, obviously, I love Go. And right now I'm really having a good time actually learning and coding stuff with Rust.ADRIANA: Right on. Yeah, I've heard, like, people who like Rust like Rust, but I always hear the learning curve is just outrageous. Yeah. I have not dipped my toes into Rust-land. I'm with you on the Python thing. I love Python. I came up in the Java world, did Java for a really long time, 15, 16 years. And then a friend introduced me to Python. I'm like, how could I be introduced to Python in such like a late stage of my career? But it's all good. And then I'm like, I've fallen in love with Python. It's like such. I don't know, it's like a nice. I. I think it's a pleasurable language to code in.ABDEL: You know, there is one thing I, I really like. There is one thing that I really appreciate about Java, which existing go that makes me appreciate Go even more, is chaining functions. Like, you can chain functions like, you know, in Java with the way. Chain functions with the...ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, the dot. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.ABDEL: And that exists in Go, and that's really amazing. It makes code so easy to read instead of like having to use variables to capture the output of one function to feed into another function. It's just one long line. It's just super amazing. Well, long, no pun intended for Java, but you get the point, right?ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. I do agree. That's nice. I think it's fun fr

About our guest:Riaan has worked for Multi-National companies in Portugal, Germany, China, United States, South Africa and Australia.Certified Hashicorp Terraform InstructorHashiCorp Ambassador 2021, 2022, 2023Creator of Hashiqube - The best DevOps Lab running all the Hashicorp productsHashiCorp Vault and Terraform CertifiedCertified Hashicorp Vault Implementation Partner10+ years relevant DevOps experience with a strong focus on Automation and Infrastructure / Configuration in Code.Find our guest on:X (Twitter)LinkedInYouTubeGitHubBlogFind us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow Links:VersentTelstraUbuntu LinuxInstalling Ubuntu on Macbook ProMark ShuttleworthVSCode Dev ContainersHashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL)AWS CloudformationPuppetMagento%20and%20Symfony.)systemdHashiQube12 Rule for Life, by Jordan PetersonNever Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within, by David GogginsNSW Maritime and Road ServicesHashiCorp AmbassadorWiproHashiTalks 2024VagrantTerraformVaultRedHat Ansible TowerApache Airflow with DBTServianVault AssociateTerraform AWS EKS BlueprintsHashiCorp Core ContributorMitchell Hashimoto (HashiCorp co-founder)Armon Dadgar (HashiCorp co-founder)HashiCorp BUSLHashiTalks Deploy 2023TerragruntOpenTofuAzure BicepHira(HashiCorp) Boundary(HashiCorp) Waypoint(Windows) NT 4Gentoo LinuxVagrant Docker ProviderAnsible AWXTranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, y'all, welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela. Coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And geeking out with me today is Riaan Nolan.RIAAN: Good morning, Adriana. How are you? It's good to see you. Happy Australia day. It's Australia day in Australia, so happy Australia day. At the moment, I'm working for a consultancy in Australia called Versent, and they've recently been bought by Australia's biggest telco, Telstra. So I'm a consultant for them. I do DevOps and HashiCorp stuff.ADRIANA: Amazing. So you said you're calling from Australia? Where in Australia are you calling from?RIAAN: I'm on the east coast in Brisbane. Brisbane, Australia, in Queensland. The state is called Queensland.ADRIANA: Awesome. And significantly hotter than the crappy rainy weather of Toronto today. We are at a balmy 3C. And you are at what temperature right now?RIAAN: Oh, my goodness. I'll tell you right now, weather. It's 25 degrees C right now...26 degrees C. It's 7:00 in the morning and it is going to go up to 30 degrees C today.ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Hey, my kind of weather, it's lovely.RIAAN: I tell you, it is so beautiful. We've got so many birds here, and thankfully I've got a pool here where I rent this property.ADRIANA: Oh, that's nice.RIAAN: If it gets too hot, I just jump in the pool.ADRIANA: That is very nice. Super jelly. Super jelly. That's cool. Well, are you ready for our lightning round questions?RIAAN: Yeah, sure. Let's see what you got.ADRIANA: All right. Yes. This is a get to know you better icebreaker sort of thing. Okay, first question. Are you a lefty or a righty?RIAAN: I'm right handed.ADRIANA: Awesome. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?RIAAN: I am on Android. I prefer Android.ADRIANA: All right. And do you prefer Mac, Linux or windows?RIAAN: Strangely, I'm the type of guy that used to run Linux on a Mac on my MacBook air. Yeah, Ubuntu.ADRIANA: Nice.RIAAN: Made by Mark Shuttleworth, who's from South Africa. But it just became a little bit difficult with all the changes. Work takes over. And so I've recently, well, not recently, about five years ago, switched to MacOS on a Mac.ADRIANA: Oh, nice. So you were running like Ubuntu natively on a Mac. It wasn't a VM, it was like...actually...RIAAN: I can't sometimes with the new stuff that doesn't work. But my old little MacBook Air that I got from Germany runs Ubuntu dual boot.ADRIANA: Oh my God, how cool is that. That's amazing.RIAAN: Because KDE is just such a great desktop. And it's got so many customizations and Windows gestures that it just makes your day to day and your working incredibly easy.ADRIANA: Very cool. And now you're like, no, now it's MacOS on the Mac.RIAAN: Now I've become not lazy, but when something breaks on my Mac because I work as a consultant, so I get a company PC and then sometimes I'm on Windows, sometimes I'm on Linux, sometimes on a cloud thing. So now I'm just the default OS with dev containers. So I use VSCode's dev containers, which means I just need VSCode and Docker and the rest I do inside of the container.ADRIANA: Nice.RIAAN: I really keep it so simple and so easy nowadays.ADRIANA: That's awesome. Hey, that is the way to do it. To keep it simple. We overcomplicate our lives. So, awesome.RIAAN: Yes.ADRIANA: Okay, next question. What's your favorite programming language?RIAAN: Listen man, I must come from systems administration. So I like Python and I like Bash and scripting. And then of course HCL is my favorite. And I used to start off with PHP back in the day on PHP, but I've since moved away from it. I used to do a little bit of PHP in Magento, but I'm just really in love with the infrastructure stuff and the DevOps. So I don't even know if you can call YAML and Cloudformation and HCL programming languages. You probably can't. So I'm a script kitty. Let's call me a script kitty, you know.ADRIANA: All right, I love it. Okay, next question. Related. Do you prefer dev or ops?RIAAN: I love both. And I really like the synergy. I used to do Puppet stuff, and when I discovered Puppet, I was like, wow, this is incredible. And then along came Cloudformation and I could just code something in Cloudformation and in the user data, pass it off to Puppet, and then do all of my stuff in Puppet. And that was the "Aha!" moment. We have finally arrived.ADRIANA: Nice.RIAAN: I like. What's that cake? A red velvet cake. It's a mix between the two and white chocolate, vanilla and chocolate. I love it so much.ADRIANA: Awesome! I love it! Okay, another one. And I think I have an inkling of what your preference is. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?RIAAN: To tell you the truth, I hated JSON when I started with Cloudformation, but it didn't support YAML. So I wrote so much cloudformation that I loved JSON. I started loving it. But what's more readable and easier for the users. I mean, I do like YAML. It is just so beautiful and simplistic and easy to read. So it's like your kids. Let's say I've got two kids. I love them both equally. The JSON is the kid with red hair and YAML is a beautiful dark brunette kid with hazel eyes. I love them both equally.ADRIANA: I love that. I love that. Now, what if you threw HCL into the mix...as a Hashi guy?RIAAN: I love HCL. It's the fastest growing programming language and you can use it everywhere and it's just so flexible and just so forgiving. The shorthand if else. It's just such a great. That's probably what I'm going to start my son off. He's almost ready to start learning something and I think I'll start him off with that because it's really powerful if you can write a little bit of HCL and deploy it, and there you've got ten virtual machines. Yeah, that will just be the thing I'm going to start him off with.ADRIANA: That's very cool. Speaking of programming languages, so my daughter is like a perpetual artist. Like, she's just born artsy and my husband and I are both in tech. And she was like, "I'm not learning how to code." And I'm like, "But you're a great problem solver. You would be a great coder." But I'm like, "I won't push it on you because you do you." And then she took like, I don't know why, but she took a computer class in school this year and learned Python.And she's like, and she's like, "Mom, I hate to admit it, but I love coding." And she's just wrapping up her semester and she's like, "I'm going to be so sad that there's no coding next semester because I really enjoy the daily coding challenges." And I'm like, that's vindicating.RIAAN: People always say, oh, well, you get the creativity kind and then you get the. But I really think that programming and DevOps stuff is a very creative art so much. It's not the boring essay type of stuff. And even the typing is also a creativity outlet. I really think there is a place for it.ADRIANA: Oh, yeah. And honestly, I think software engineering is such a creative profession. It's just creative in a very different way than. You're not painting on a canvas, a traditional canvas, but the IDE is your canvas.RIAAN: Yes. And you have to use your imagination when you run into a bug, you have to kind of walk it through and I wonder, what is it now? Yesterday I got a bug where HashiQube wouldn't start and I was like, is it the new Vagrant version? And then I'm like, what could it be? Could it be Docker? It turns out it's the Docker. The new Docker at 25.0 doesn't let Vagrant start. And you have to be creative. Where should I start looking now?ADRIANA: Oh my God. As a sidebar, let me tell you, every time there's a Docker update, I am like shaking in my booties because I feel like every Docker update causes my system to melt down and I can't run an update. I have to actually nuke Docker and then reinstall it and pray that other stuff that was relying on Docker is still working.RIAAN: And then yesterday with that bug, I go read the Docker change log and they had some problems with the systemd update. So the Docker developers must be like, every time there's a systemd update and I can't even just update it, I have to nuke my whole thing. It's amazing how dependent we are on each other's work. It's like this ecosystem.ADRIANA: Oh my God. Yes.RIAAN: It relies on other components.ADRIANA: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next question from our series. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?RIAAN: I like spaces. I love spaces. Tabs give me that feeling where somebody walked over your grave. When I see it, I'm just like..."Ugh!"ADRIAN