good Monday morning today we’re having a
developer discussion with Charlie Girard
she’s a software developer front-end
developer like you and I but she has
this interesting side hobby that she
talked about at Nordic Gia’s which is
mind control in JavaScript so we talked
a bit about these brain interfaces that
has electrodes that you can read with
JavaScript API and we also talked about
how working with hardware can make you
less afraid of failure and we also
talked a little bit about how like the
importance of just jumping into things
without a purpose and not be too mindful
about like having an end goal because
that can be very very useful and when it
comes to learning new things if you’re
wondering what this space is around me
it’s because I’m in Amsterdam at the
moment on vacation and I’m I’m visiting
framer which were kind enough to lend me
their studio to record so that’s where I
am but before we get on with the
interview it is sponsor time today’s
sponsor is brilliant a problem solving
website that teaches you how to think
like a computer scientist if you are
interested in learning computer science
fundamentals binary trees quicksort big
ol that kind of stuff then instead of
just passively listening through video
courses brilliant has these interactive
challenges with increasing difficulty so
it feels a little bit like a game it’s
very satisfying use brilliant
org slash FFF when you sign up so that
they know that you came from also if you
are one of the first 200 people to use
that link you get 20% off if you get the
annual subscription that very magical
link is also in the episode description
that’s our sponsor on with the show
I am your host mpj you are watching fun
fun function and this is a developer
discussion with
Charlie Gerard so what I talk about is
mind control in JavaScript so it’s so
it’s basically using a brain sense so
they can buy online been in JavaScript
so being able to interact with web pages
or there is right there are brain
sensors there’s actually quite a few and
the price range varies and that’s also
what I like it’s like you don’t have to
invest that much money at first but of
course with the price comes different
types of quality so you can start with
something quite cheap just to get
started but then as what is cheap I
think the first one I bought was fifty
dollars what that’s super cheap
yes it is super cheap but it’s not that
great like when you want to get started
there’s like basically three different
senses so it doesn’t track that well
yeah but what can you do with it what
was your first hack what it gets is
level of attention and meditation so you
have a few games that you can play and
work on your focus so I think even if it
doesn’t track a lot of stuff you can
still train yourself to become more
focused and you have that feedback
straight away but I don’t know exactly
how I curate it is go if you want to get
started with that it’s pretty cheap and
then of course it gets a bit higher the
second one that I bought the one that
I’m talking about in my talk is called
the Emotiv EPOC and it has fourteen
different sensors around the head so
it’s a lot more and it can track more
things you can have access to what they
call performance metrics so it’s your
level of focus or boredom or excitement
and you can do things with that or you
have access to facial expressions so
looking left-right up-down blinking
smiling things like that so you have
access to that you mentioned 14
different sensors so you put like that
way you mentioned that you had gel okay
but how does that work how do how do you
get it through the hair or that’s
perhaps what the gel is well yeah
because you have brain senses where you
don’t have to use the gel but it’s it
always works better if you are bald or
if you have that much hair but usually
you
move them around so they touch the scalp
as much as possible how do you position
them well in them
the device is set up so that it fits and
then you kind of move them around a
little bit so it fits okay you have a
software that you can download any kind
of tells you where it should be it tells
you how well it’s connected or how well
he’s tracking so you can move them
around one more shell and stuff like
that yeah yeah but you can also have
access to some mental comments or some
thoughts don’t you train okay like what
with the Emotiv EPOC you have a list of
sorts of actions like pushing or pulling
or directions not going left to going
right and you train that and then once
once you have your data trained you can
then use that in applications so you can
track the live data and it classifies Oh
is the person thinking about going right
left and you can just use that in in
whatever you want really yeah how did
you get into this there is actually a
growing community in neuro technology I
think especially because the devices get
better and machine learning algorithms
are getting a lot more performance so
you can track more things so people see
it as an industry that’s gonna grow a
lot more but I I did not start with that
this is there wasn’t my first thought I
kind of always been interested in just
interactions and I don’t have a
background in computer science I did a
bootcamp no neither do it and they do it
neither dry yeah I learned to code in a
boot camp and when I was looking for my
first job I actually started with a leap
motion oh oh yes I have one of those
perhaps you should mention what the leap
motion is for the people let us know so
the leap motion is a device that you
plug to your computer and it tracks the
movement of your hands over it so it
knows if it’s the right hand or the left
hand it knows the number of fingers the
orientation and things like that
and you have access to all that data and
you can build interfaces or you can
interact with all the devices you can
move drones with it’s basically like
just a couple of infrared cameras right
and then they have a machine-learning
thing
on top of that which gives you like
positioning yes exactly so I started
with them and then when I kind of you
know got used to it I was like what
there has to be other devices as well so
I moved on and I used my own arm Bend
it’s an arm Bend so you wear um and it
has senses inside and it tracks the
activity of the muscle in your arm so
you have access to how you rotate your
arm and you also have access to some
pretty fine gestures like if you do that
that’s good like a wave right or wave
left and you have access to that and you
train it as well a little bit and you
can then apply that to robots or
interfaces and the thing is it is you
also have access to raw data so if you
don’t want to use they’re pretty fine
gestures I’m actually working on that
now but you can actually get the data
and train your own gestures by doing a
bit of machine learning so that’s my way
of learning machine learning but yeah
this is what I like just trying to not
be restrained to the keyboard and see
you know what else can you do to be able
to adapt to you as a person rather than
I have to be hearing from a laptop so
Wow then I say that’s amazing and but
you’re here at the JavaScript conference
it’s like this doesn’t seem like a
JavaScript thing it actually is yeah I
mean a lot of devices that you buy
actually have jaws grip frameworks that
you can buy for it so you can run you
can run a lot of JavaScript on a
hardware now so you can make your own
little robots and they you can control
them them in nodejs and you know of
course like the web and interface you
can do it in JavaScript so you can
really control a lot of things just with
one language which is something that I
really like I think it’s really amazing
and most of it is open source so the
things that you have mentioned here they
have a JavaScript API oh that’s so cool
yeah everybody can do it a bit more
question about you or your career like
how how did you get started with
software development so I have a
background
advertising so I study in France and at
the time I didn’t know I could be a div
like I really had no idea I thought it
was for the super smart people you do
see sort of super smart when you we
didn’t talk about that but perhaps that
is why yeah but perhaps that’s why
people believe it like once I sounds
super smart what everyone talks about
this well no that’s it’s accessible to
to everybody and so when I started
working in advertising I was managing a
team of developers and they liked the
load of work that they had to do it was
quite intense and I wanted to be able to
help but I didn’t know how and learning
after work was a bit hard because when
you don’t know how to learn then I had
no idea how to go about it so I decided
to quit my job and do a boot camp in to
learn to be a web developer and I
realized that I loved it this is amazing
you can really have an idea and you
write a bit of code and it’s there and
you made it yourself and that’s really
empowering and it’s exciting and from
there I just kind of like I love that
story I really I really really like
hearing stories from people that don’t
come from the neck oh Stanford Facebook
like I like I don’t want to put down
that line of progression that’s it’s
really cool that we have computer
science universities but like computer
science didn’t come from that when
Silicon Valley started out there was no
such thing as studying computer science
it was physics majors so at last in
Berlin and what’s the college’s comp
there was this talk about that a guy had
he was from forklift driver to
JavaScript developer and it’s like love
how especially JavaScript seems to just
suck people in from different walks of
life
is really I think it’s the language
that’s the most accessible for a lot of
people and a lot of people make fun of
JavaScript but actually love it I think
it’s like if you can get more people
into coding and being able to you know
be part of that environment now that’s
great like I think it’s awesome yeah I I
I would I have like this idea that I
would like to sit down and like really
dive into what it is about JavaScript
specifically that just makes it such a
pliable language for creativity it just
doesn’t get in your way yet it still has
a pretty good balance of quality so they
can use it in production great
application it just it’s not a toy
language but it allows you to like okay
get starting is what makes it the most
creative language as well I’m not sure
but I think it’s amazing people build
amazing things with JavaScript even in
terms of graphics in the browser I’m
like wow I would like to ask you about
like a some and some failure that you
had like some mistakes yeah it’s a
mistake you made that negative in fact
that you negatively and was only your
fault so it was not a like it’s not the
fault of someone else and the reason why
I asked question is that like the
channel is watched by like a lot of
different people but the persona that I
imagine most is a developer one year
into the first job and watching other
developers from that vantage point like
people always talk about their successes
and show their awesome brain scanning
projects and they’re like incredibly
impressive and it comes back to that
thing that you talked about like how you
feel like I didn’t even know that I
could be a developer because it seems
everybody seems so smart and amazing and
that is why I asked the question because
you know there’s a side behind it as
well yeah I think so if we if I just
talk about the type of stuff that I do
outside of
when I play with hardware you fail a lot
of times especially because debugging
it’s not like in the browser where you
get an error you know and define it’s
not a function or something you with a
hardware you just don’t know sometimes
you’re just in plug stuff properly and
you won’t tell you you won’t tell you
this choir is not connected to the right
pin you know just it’s out there in the
reality yeah and there’s like that’s why
what I’m talking about like now at
conferences that actually like as I said
it took me three years because I did not
know how to start and there’s a lot of
times where I put it on the side because
I was like I can’t do this I just don’t
know how to get there and I’ve had to
like try again and there’s a lot of
projects with Arduino where I just
realized month later that I was doing
the wrong thing and all of a sudden I
was just like oh I should have known
that and I think when you put your head
into something way too much you just
don’t realize that you’re going the
wrong way but otherwise at work I think
recently but it wasn’t good related but
I did something that was I had to we
have we’re using Google Drive as like an
internal platform to share knowledge and
stuff like that and I had to edit it was
really simple I had to edit a page
because we have internal talks about
front-end and I had to add one of the
talks that we recently add had and I
didn’t realize that was actually editing
the main page of our software
development group and I deleted
everything this is the second I deleted
everything sorry we’ve gotten this
conference yeah company so anybody who
would want to see that page it was gone
it was gone I don’t know who I don’t
know who saw that because then I was
dumb I mean how big is the company we
have like I don’t know and I was like oh
my god my name what like my name was
nobody but I knew and I was like
and it was totally gone and I was yeah I
was just like I just did one page boom
it’s gone but then like it I they
managed to put it back but they had to
do in my newly and I felt really bad so
I would not touch that again sometimes
it’s very simple it wasn’t even called
related it was just I couldn’t remove it
my changes and it was just gone
but I mean software development like it
it’s quite a little bit above it it’s
code like there’s a lot of known
coalition’s around sorry around software
development and just having a work I
want to jump back to something that you
talked a little bit about like hardware
how about how it’s different while a
software Suites like something that
exists in the browser you can expect
that in many ways and you get like
enormous amounts of feedback about and
so much debugging help how do you how
what what’s your thinking process as
compared to a person who has only worked
with software software and you a person
that is familiar with working with
hardware that exists outside in the
physical realm how does that change your
thinking process around support what
makes you like what thinking patterns
are different I think what I’m doing in
hardware that I didn’t always used to do
in software is you have a lot more of
preparation work that is you don’t you
don’t touch the code or you don’t touch
senses it’s more about thinking about
how the pieces are going to fit together
because you have to think in advance or
okay I have this idea of something I
want to build but what senses do I need
what programming language do I want to
use because you have to buy the fences
also and it takes time anyway so you
have time to think about the the process
and you probably have to think about
different ways to build the thing cuz
one of them is not gonna work I’ve been
breaking problems down into pieces a lot
more because you have to go slowly when
you do hardware you can’t just code
blindly because as I said when it fails
you don’t have an error message you have
some error messages which means that if
you have like this big chunk of things
that you’ve been working on
you have no idea which you don’t know
you won’t know if it is a software issue
if it’s not compiling you know that but
if it is not plugged in properly
sometimes you can also burn your
microcontroller because you create a
short circuit and you only know because
it burns and it smells weird
that’s all that’s the only way you know
so I think it’s about planning a little
bit more and I think I’ve one thing that
I really like that I learned from
playing with hardware is that I’ve
become a lot more comfortable failing
because you do fail a lot and you
understand that it’s ok and it’s part of
the process and you actually learn a lot
more from failing than from succeeding
all the time
so now yes from failing a few different
ways using hardware I know what not to
use I know what you know which way to go
and it has shaped yeah shaped the way I
am I kind of build my projects now yeah
I think that failure with hardware is
also like proper failure because in in
software it’s kind of like ok doesn’t
compile okay it’s like a bit a little
bit frustrating but it’s more like
playing a computer game and it sounds
like yeah I’ll just load and there when
it comes to hardware it’s more like yeah
I just order a new controller yeah you
have to test if it’s not burnt or if you
try to build the whole thing at once and
then it doesn’t work you don’t know
which wire to replug so you have to go
all the way back down so that’s what you
have to go slowly and test every time
you plug in something new you have to
check if it’s working and then add in
and you have to go a little bit yeah
slowly is there anything that you would
like to before we wrap up that you would
like to remind people of or something
that you would like to Broadcom
basically something they would like to
think I wish Jimmy it’s more about not
being scared of experimenting and trying
things I know that most of the time yes
we are trying to build things that have
some kind of value to other people but
it’s like it’s not to me that’s not the
way I learned I like to create things
that might not have a purpose but
there’s an awesome amount of things that
you learn along the
and also especially with hardware I know
it can look scary because you have these
microcontrollers and you don’t know what
they do but it is really exciting and it
is really really empowering to see that
you can write you can use the same
language to actually make real things
move and not only an experience in the
browser and I get like so excited when I
get to build something that I really
wish people were not scared to try
because the excitement that you get it’s
it’s really awesome and I want more
people to feel it so yeah that’s that’s
amazing that’s I really really like that
don’t be don’t be afraid of starting
without a purpose and don’t be afraid of
like building things outside in there in
the real world and get stuck in there no
software safe software sandbox where we
can quick save in quick load so – in
order to follow you and like read up
more on you and make that keep tabs on
what you do what what do people do where
do they find you a post most of the
stuff I do on Twitter
[Music]
otherwise I write medium articles like
when I build something I usually posted
tutorials so people can do it as well
but usually I’ll share that on Twitter
so I think the main channel is just that
thank you so much for coming this is so
great it’s been a blast and that is it
if you’re interested in what Charlie
does you can find her at deb-deb Charlie
on Twitter that link is also in the
episode description also in our episode
description is our sponsor if you feel
like brushing up on binaries and Big O
and computer science fundamentals should
check brilliant out brilliant org slash
FFF if you are a first-time viewer
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I am mpj until next Monday morning stay curious
developer discussion with Charlie Girard
she’s a software developer front-end
developer like you and I but she has
this interesting side hobby that she
talked about at Nordic Gia’s which is
mind control in JavaScript so we talked
a bit about these brain interfaces that
has electrodes that you can read with
JavaScript API and we also talked about
how working with hardware can make you
less afraid of failure and we also
talked a little bit about how like the
importance of just jumping into things
without a purpose and not be too mindful
about like having an end goal because
that can be very very useful and when it
comes to learning new things if you’re
wondering what this space is around me
it’s because I’m in Amsterdam at the
moment on vacation and I’m I’m visiting
framer which were kind enough to lend me
their studio to record so that’s where I
am but before we get on with the
interview it is sponsor time today’s
sponsor is brilliant a problem solving
website that teaches you how to think
like a computer scientist if you are
interested in learning computer science
fundamentals binary trees quicksort big
ol that kind of stuff then instead of
just passively listening through video
courses brilliant has these interactive
challenges with increasing difficulty so
it feels a little bit like a game it’s
very satisfying use brilliant
org slash FFF when you sign up so that
they know that you came from also if you
are one of the first 200 people to use
that link you get 20% off if you get the
annual subscription that very magical
link is also in the episode description
that’s our sponsor on with the show
I am your host mpj you are watching fun
fun function and this is a developer
discussion with
Charlie Gerard so what I talk about is
mind control in JavaScript so it’s so
it’s basically using a brain sense so
they can buy online been in JavaScript
so being able to interact with web pages
or there is right there are brain
sensors there’s actually quite a few and
the price range varies and that’s also
what I like it’s like you don’t have to
invest that much money at first but of
course with the price comes different
types of quality so you can start with
something quite cheap just to get
started but then as what is cheap I
think the first one I bought was fifty
dollars what that’s super cheap
yes it is super cheap but it’s not that
great like when you want to get started
there’s like basically three different
senses so it doesn’t track that well
yeah but what can you do with it what
was your first hack what it gets is
level of attention and meditation so you
have a few games that you can play and
work on your focus so I think even if it
doesn’t track a lot of stuff you can
still train yourself to become more
focused and you have that feedback
straight away but I don’t know exactly
how I curate it is go if you want to get
started with that it’s pretty cheap and
then of course it gets a bit higher the
second one that I bought the one that
I’m talking about in my talk is called
the Emotiv EPOC and it has fourteen
different sensors around the head so
it’s a lot more and it can track more
things you can have access to what they
call performance metrics so it’s your
level of focus or boredom or excitement
and you can do things with that or you
have access to facial expressions so
looking left-right up-down blinking
smiling things like that so you have
access to that you mentioned 14
different sensors so you put like that
way you mentioned that you had gel okay
but how does that work how do how do you
get it through the hair or that’s
perhaps what the gel is well yeah
because you have brain senses where you
don’t have to use the gel but it’s it
always works better if you are bald or
if you have that much hair but usually
you
move them around so they touch the scalp
as much as possible how do you position
them well in them
the device is set up so that it fits and
then you kind of move them around a
little bit so it fits okay you have a
software that you can download any kind
of tells you where it should be it tells
you how well it’s connected or how well
he’s tracking so you can move them
around one more shell and stuff like
that yeah yeah but you can also have
access to some mental comments or some
thoughts don’t you train okay like what
with the Emotiv EPOC you have a list of
sorts of actions like pushing or pulling
or directions not going left to going
right and you train that and then once
once you have your data trained you can
then use that in applications so you can
track the live data and it classifies Oh
is the person thinking about going right
left and you can just use that in in
whatever you want really yeah how did
you get into this there is actually a
growing community in neuro technology I
think especially because the devices get
better and machine learning algorithms
are getting a lot more performance so
you can track more things so people see
it as an industry that’s gonna grow a
lot more but I I did not start with that
this is there wasn’t my first thought I
kind of always been interested in just
interactions and I don’t have a
background in computer science I did a
bootcamp no neither do it and they do it
neither dry yeah I learned to code in a
boot camp and when I was looking for my
first job I actually started with a leap
motion oh oh yes I have one of those
perhaps you should mention what the leap
motion is for the people let us know so
the leap motion is a device that you
plug to your computer and it tracks the
movement of your hands over it so it
knows if it’s the right hand or the left
hand it knows the number of fingers the
orientation and things like that
and you have access to all that data and
you can build interfaces or you can
interact with all the devices you can
move drones with it’s basically like
just a couple of infrared cameras right
and then they have a machine-learning
thing
on top of that which gives you like
positioning yes exactly so I started
with them and then when I kind of you
know got used to it I was like what
there has to be other devices as well so
I moved on and I used my own arm Bend
it’s an arm Bend so you wear um and it
has senses inside and it tracks the
activity of the muscle in your arm so
you have access to how you rotate your
arm and you also have access to some
pretty fine gestures like if you do that
that’s good like a wave right or wave
left and you have access to that and you
train it as well a little bit and you
can then apply that to robots or
interfaces and the thing is it is you
also have access to raw data so if you
don’t want to use they’re pretty fine
gestures I’m actually working on that
now but you can actually get the data
and train your own gestures by doing a
bit of machine learning so that’s my way
of learning machine learning but yeah
this is what I like just trying to not
be restrained to the keyboard and see
you know what else can you do to be able
to adapt to you as a person rather than
I have to be hearing from a laptop so
Wow then I say that’s amazing and but
you’re here at the JavaScript conference
it’s like this doesn’t seem like a
JavaScript thing it actually is yeah I
mean a lot of devices that you buy
actually have jaws grip frameworks that
you can buy for it so you can run you
can run a lot of JavaScript on a
hardware now so you can make your own
little robots and they you can control
them them in nodejs and you know of
course like the web and interface you
can do it in JavaScript so you can
really control a lot of things just with
one language which is something that I
really like I think it’s really amazing
and most of it is open source so the
things that you have mentioned here they
have a JavaScript API oh that’s so cool
yeah everybody can do it a bit more
question about you or your career like
how how did you get started with
software development so I have a
background
advertising so I study in France and at
the time I didn’t know I could be a div
like I really had no idea I thought it
was for the super smart people you do
see sort of super smart when you we
didn’t talk about that but perhaps that
is why yeah but perhaps that’s why
people believe it like once I sounds
super smart what everyone talks about
this well no that’s it’s accessible to
to everybody and so when I started
working in advertising I was managing a
team of developers and they liked the
load of work that they had to do it was
quite intense and I wanted to be able to
help but I didn’t know how and learning
after work was a bit hard because when
you don’t know how to learn then I had
no idea how to go about it so I decided
to quit my job and do a boot camp in to
learn to be a web developer and I
realized that I loved it this is amazing
you can really have an idea and you
write a bit of code and it’s there and
you made it yourself and that’s really
empowering and it’s exciting and from
there I just kind of like I love that
story I really I really really like
hearing stories from people that don’t
come from the neck oh Stanford Facebook
like I like I don’t want to put down
that line of progression that’s it’s
really cool that we have computer
science universities but like computer
science didn’t come from that when
Silicon Valley started out there was no
such thing as studying computer science
it was physics majors so at last in
Berlin and what’s the college’s comp
there was this talk about that a guy had
he was from forklift driver to
JavaScript developer and it’s like love
how especially JavaScript seems to just
suck people in from different walks of
life
is really I think it’s the language
that’s the most accessible for a lot of
people and a lot of people make fun of
JavaScript but actually love it I think
it’s like if you can get more people
into coding and being able to you know
be part of that environment now that’s
great like I think it’s awesome yeah I I
I would I have like this idea that I
would like to sit down and like really
dive into what it is about JavaScript
specifically that just makes it such a
pliable language for creativity it just
doesn’t get in your way yet it still has
a pretty good balance of quality so they
can use it in production great
application it just it’s not a toy
language but it allows you to like okay
get starting is what makes it the most
creative language as well I’m not sure
but I think it’s amazing people build
amazing things with JavaScript even in
terms of graphics in the browser I’m
like wow I would like to ask you about
like a some and some failure that you
had like some mistakes yeah it’s a
mistake you made that negative in fact
that you negatively and was only your
fault so it was not a like it’s not the
fault of someone else and the reason why
I asked question is that like the
channel is watched by like a lot of
different people but the persona that I
imagine most is a developer one year
into the first job and watching other
developers from that vantage point like
people always talk about their successes
and show their awesome brain scanning
projects and they’re like incredibly
impressive and it comes back to that
thing that you talked about like how you
feel like I didn’t even know that I
could be a developer because it seems
everybody seems so smart and amazing and
that is why I asked the question because
you know there’s a side behind it as
well yeah I think so if we if I just
talk about the type of stuff that I do
outside of
when I play with hardware you fail a lot
of times especially because debugging
it’s not like in the browser where you
get an error you know and define it’s
not a function or something you with a
hardware you just don’t know sometimes
you’re just in plug stuff properly and
you won’t tell you you won’t tell you
this choir is not connected to the right
pin you know just it’s out there in the
reality yeah and there’s like that’s why
what I’m talking about like now at
conferences that actually like as I said
it took me three years because I did not
know how to start and there’s a lot of
times where I put it on the side because
I was like I can’t do this I just don’t
know how to get there and I’ve had to
like try again and there’s a lot of
projects with Arduino where I just
realized month later that I was doing
the wrong thing and all of a sudden I
was just like oh I should have known
that and I think when you put your head
into something way too much you just
don’t realize that you’re going the
wrong way but otherwise at work I think
recently but it wasn’t good related but
I did something that was I had to we
have we’re using Google Drive as like an
internal platform to share knowledge and
stuff like that and I had to edit it was
really simple I had to edit a page
because we have internal talks about
front-end and I had to add one of the
talks that we recently add had and I
didn’t realize that was actually editing
the main page of our software
development group and I deleted
everything this is the second I deleted
everything sorry we’ve gotten this
conference yeah company so anybody who
would want to see that page it was gone
it was gone I don’t know who I don’t
know who saw that because then I was
dumb I mean how big is the company we
have like I don’t know and I was like oh
my god my name what like my name was
nobody but I knew and I was like
and it was totally gone and I was yeah I
was just like I just did one page boom
it’s gone but then like it I they
managed to put it back but they had to
do in my newly and I felt really bad so
I would not touch that again sometimes
it’s very simple it wasn’t even called
related it was just I couldn’t remove it
my changes and it was just gone
but I mean software development like it
it’s quite a little bit above it it’s
code like there’s a lot of known
coalition’s around sorry around software
development and just having a work I
want to jump back to something that you
talked a little bit about like hardware
how about how it’s different while a
software Suites like something that
exists in the browser you can expect
that in many ways and you get like
enormous amounts of feedback about and
so much debugging help how do you how
what what’s your thinking process as
compared to a person who has only worked
with software software and you a person
that is familiar with working with
hardware that exists outside in the
physical realm how does that change your
thinking process around support what
makes you like what thinking patterns
are different I think what I’m doing in
hardware that I didn’t always used to do
in software is you have a lot more of
preparation work that is you don’t you
don’t touch the code or you don’t touch
senses it’s more about thinking about
how the pieces are going to fit together
because you have to think in advance or
okay I have this idea of something I
want to build but what senses do I need
what programming language do I want to
use because you have to buy the fences
also and it takes time anyway so you
have time to think about the the process
and you probably have to think about
different ways to build the thing cuz
one of them is not gonna work I’ve been
breaking problems down into pieces a lot
more because you have to go slowly when
you do hardware you can’t just code
blindly because as I said when it fails
you don’t have an error message you have
some error messages which means that if
you have like this big chunk of things
that you’ve been working on
you have no idea which you don’t know
you won’t know if it is a software issue
if it’s not compiling you know that but
if it is not plugged in properly
sometimes you can also burn your
microcontroller because you create a
short circuit and you only know because
it burns and it smells weird
that’s all that’s the only way you know
so I think it’s about planning a little
bit more and I think I’ve one thing that
I really like that I learned from
playing with hardware is that I’ve
become a lot more comfortable failing
because you do fail a lot and you
understand that it’s ok and it’s part of
the process and you actually learn a lot
more from failing than from succeeding
all the time
so now yes from failing a few different
ways using hardware I know what not to
use I know what you know which way to go
and it has shaped yeah shaped the way I
am I kind of build my projects now yeah
I think that failure with hardware is
also like proper failure because in in
software it’s kind of like ok doesn’t
compile okay it’s like a bit a little
bit frustrating but it’s more like
playing a computer game and it sounds
like yeah I’ll just load and there when
it comes to hardware it’s more like yeah
I just order a new controller yeah you
have to test if it’s not burnt or if you
try to build the whole thing at once and
then it doesn’t work you don’t know
which wire to replug so you have to go
all the way back down so that’s what you
have to go slowly and test every time
you plug in something new you have to
check if it’s working and then add in
and you have to go a little bit yeah
slowly is there anything that you would
like to before we wrap up that you would
like to remind people of or something
that you would like to Broadcom
basically something they would like to
think I wish Jimmy it’s more about not
being scared of experimenting and trying
things I know that most of the time yes
we are trying to build things that have
some kind of value to other people but
it’s like it’s not to me that’s not the
way I learned I like to create things
that might not have a purpose but
there’s an awesome amount of things that
you learn along the
and also especially with hardware I know
it can look scary because you have these
microcontrollers and you don’t know what
they do but it is really exciting and it
is really really empowering to see that
you can write you can use the same
language to actually make real things
move and not only an experience in the
browser and I get like so excited when I
get to build something that I really
wish people were not scared to try
because the excitement that you get it’s
it’s really awesome and I want more
people to feel it so yeah that’s that’s
amazing that’s I really really like that
don’t be don’t be afraid of starting
without a purpose and don’t be afraid of
like building things outside in there in
the real world and get stuck in there no
software safe software sandbox where we
can quick save in quick load so – in
order to follow you and like read up
more on you and make that keep tabs on
what you do what what do people do where
do they find you a post most of the
stuff I do on Twitter
[Music]
otherwise I write medium articles like
when I build something I usually posted
tutorials so people can do it as well
but usually I’ll share that on Twitter
so I think the main channel is just that
thank you so much for coming this is so
great it’s been a blast and that is it
if you’re interested in what Charlie
does you can find her at deb-deb Charlie
on Twitter that link is also in the
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