146: Unlocking the Secrets of AI in Tech with April Yoho

[00:00:05] Chuck: Welcome everybody to another episode of whiskey web and whatnot. I’m your co I’m your host today. Charles William Carpenter, the third, and my stand in co host for for everyone today is Adam Argyle.

[00:00:18] Adam: Hello. It’s nice to be here.

[00:00:19] Chuck: Yeah, thanks for coming and help me out, Adam. And our guest today is April. Yo, ho.

[00:00:26] April: Yohoho at a bottle of rum.

Booyah. For those who don’t know you, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

So, my name is April Yoho. I’m based out of the UK, originally from the US. I’ve been in tech for over 25 years. I’m currently a developer advocate for a well known company that hosts code in the cloud. I’m sure you can figure that out. Google me and I will appear somewhere.

So, yeah, I currently teach people about the cloud. I teach people about code and all the cool stuff in tech.

[00:00:54] Adam: tech.

I

[00:00:55] Chuck: love it. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, I know why you came, and it’s [00:01:00] because I offer free booze. So today we’re going to have the High West Double Rye, which is 92 proof. It is a blend of straight rye whiskies, ranging in age from 2 to 7 years, so it’s a minimum of 2 year. The mash bill is kind of undisclosed, but there’s a ratio of 95 percent rye, 5 percent barley malted some from MGP, which I’ll explain in a second.

And then the other blend is 80 percent rye and 20 percent malted rye from the the distillery itself. If you’re not familiar, MGP is just a, like, bulk distillery out of Indiana that sells all the rye to all the places, exactly. So, we’ll try and get some sound effects there. Right? Yeah. And I like the pour sound, so let’s see if I can pull this off.

Ooh.

[00:01:48] April: off. I think we should point out we’re in very classy plastic

[00:01:51] Chuck: Exactly. You should point that out. I know this will be a time where video is unavailable. We do do do do do do video for many of the [00:02:00] podcasts, but alas, we’re on the road. Maybe I should talk about that. Microsoft build. Thanks for having us.

[00:02:04] April: having us. Yeah.

all for coming.

[00:02:07] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:02:07] Adam: I’m looking at the blend and I’m like, that’s kind of like PRs were made into the barrel,

[00:02:11] Chuck: love the bottles. You know, these are all like hand blown and all of that fun stuff. And you won’t be limited to just one pour, so you can have whatever you like. So how it works is we’ll give it a little smell, a little taste. We have a highly complex rating system of 0 to 8 tentacles. The logo for the podcast is an octopus.

We throw one more tentacle in there because we’re engineers. We like things index based. So, we’ll go from there. Give her a shot.

[00:02:37] April: from there. Cool. Fruity

[00:02:39] Adam: fruity notes.

[00:02:40] April: like

[00:02:41] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, like dried fruits a little bit,

[00:02:43] Adam: bit. Yeah, apricots.

[00:02:44] April: to say, apricots in there.

[00:02:45] Adam: Wow, nice. What? Are

[00:02:47] Chuck: Are you trolling me

[00:02:48] Adam: I’m not,

[00:02:48] Chuck: Okay, so I,

[00:02:49] Adam: you, I’d say like

[00:02:50] Chuck: Robbie likes to make fun of me for saying dried apricots all the time as one of my note, like, fruit notes. He’s like dried apricots on this one also, or no? I think a lot of rye’s have [00:03:00] that. Yeah, exactly. I only have so many made up words. Let’s see. All right. Give it a sip already?

Alright.

[00:03:10] April: we’re ahead of you.

[00:03:11] Adam: spice.

[00:03:12] April: That is really good.

[00:03:13] Chuck: Is that in

[00:03:14] April: Is that in a rum barrel by chance?

[00:03:16] Chuck: but it does have nuances of rum. Yeah, it doesn’t say anything about it’s like being aged or finished in anything. It’s just a blend of two different ryes. But this guy is like really smart. The guy who started this distillery is like a chemist, and he just used all these like

[00:03:31] Adam: these, like, Like,

[00:03:32] Chuck: what he knows about chemical properties and like flavorings and things like that, and would like test a barrel in that way and start to say like these two melded together should give me this outcome.

Yeah, it is, like, oddly sweet for a rye. It

[00:03:45] April: is, but I’ve, have you been to the distillery recently?

[00:03:49] Chuck: Not recently. I heard they expanded quite a

[00:03:50] April: They have, yes. I was there when they first opened many, many years ago in Park City. And, and for anyone that’s ever been to Utah knows they do measured pours. But in Park City you can get away with [00:04:00] larger pours because you’re uphill from the religious sectors that are in yeah.

Down, down the valley.

[00:04:06] Chuck: Yeah, that’s the, that’s the super tip. If you go to Salt Lake, just go up the hill, do a little skiing.

[00:04:12] April: Because they want to encourage tourism, right?

[00:04:14] Adam: tourism, right? Yeah,

[00:04:15] Chuck: Yeah, quite a bit there. What else do we have in here? There’s definitely some sweetness, almost like a toasty sweetness, like a toffee or something.

[00:04:23] April: a little toffee

[00:04:24] Chuck: Yeah, a little toffee with the apricots. Not much burn. For 92 proof, that’s not like super hot, but you know, it lets you know it’s there.

[00:04:31] April: like

[00:04:32] Adam: there. Getting like a raisin vibe as well. Also thought of a joke TDD, we know is test driven development, but obviously this was made with test driven distilleries. TDD whiskey, you know, I don’t

[00:04:46] Chuck: you go.

[00:04:46] April: Don’t quit your day

[00:04:47] Chuck: Right. Yeah. I mean, he’s applying for the, you know, for a permanent position here. We’re going to go on, on rotation with hosts or maybe you’ll take my gig. Who knows?

[00:04:55] Adam: I don’t know, you do so well. I can’t, I can’t do the mash bill. It’s too tight. You’re, you’re too on [00:05:00] point.

[00:05:00] Chuck: work for Google. That’s literally how I get that information. Most of the time.

[00:05:04] April: get

[00:05:04] Adam: You didn’t use AI? Tell me about this whiskey.

[00:05:06] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:05:07] April: this machine.

[00:05:08] Adam: Yeah.

[00:05:08] Chuck: nobody binks. Is that still a thing?

[00:05:10] April: So interestingly Bing is getting integrated to certain tech products right now for the Microsoft and GitHub landscape but also other third party products are getting pulled into that space with AI, so there’s some cool stuff where you can kind of get an AI answer, but then also go search the web, but not switch the context out of where you’re working, which is really important as a developer, because I will say from someone who’s been in tech for 25 years, I know, I don’t look a day over 21 context

[00:05:36] Chuck: so humble, too. Like, people tell you that all the

[00:05:38] April: Yes, every day.

[00:05:39] Adam: right? Yes, every day.

[00:05:41] April: Every single day. Context switching is hard, right? So we’re now seeing a lot of the third party integrations. Bing is one of them. Google is one of them as well. Just depends on who the hosting provider is. That’s hooked into that third party. But we’re seeing a lot more of that.

[00:05:53] Adam: more of that. Yeah, you’ll

[00:05:54] April: Switch your

[00:05:55] Chuck: you go. It’s not over. It’s not over for Bing. It’s just like we’re teams. But anyway, I [00:06:00] digress a little bit. We’ll get into these more technical things here. Let’s come back to the whiskey for a moment, and let’s do a little rating.

So, Adam, your first rating as a host.

[00:06:09] Adam: host. It’s quite good. I like the finish on my tongue. It’s lingering, it’s delightful. 8 being, you’d want this every day. Anytime you have whiskey, it’s an 8.

This isn’t quite an 8, this is very good though. 0 being, garbage, get it away from me. 4 run of the mill, or what’s the term y’all use? Yeah, something like

[00:06:28] Chuck: It’s like, it’s not bad. I would have it. I wouldn’t seek it. I wouldn’t grab it first. It may be good for cocktails even. That kind of thing.

[00:06:37] Adam: 6, you know, maybe even a little higher.

It’s delightful.

[00:06:41] April: 4. it neat. Nice. Absolutely.

[00:06:44] Adam: float point, yep.

[00:06:45] April: think it’s got some nice finish to it, you’re right.

And it’s got some nice texture on it as well. Yeah. I really enjoy it. I enjoy it more than I thought I would. Yeah. And

[00:06:52] Chuck: It’s got some nice texture on it as [00:07:00] well. I really enjoy it. I enjoy it more than I thought I would. Even though I don’t eat leather, I don’t know why I know what that tastes like, but it’s my word for that. Yeah, I’m not getting any of those weird things that I don’t care for.

I think the price point on this bottle is great, too. I don’t know, it was like 40, 50, something like

[00:07:22] Adam: like that. Oh,

[00:07:23] Chuck: So, for 50, I would gladly pick this

[00:07:26] Adam: Yeah, that affects the

[00:07:27] Chuck: Yeah, I think so, because so many things are like 80 to 100 now for a distillery you’ve never heard of. Because they’re trying to do markup and have a business, and I kind of get that.

get that, but it’s too competitive to try and play that out. So, yeah, I, for me, I was gonna say 6. 5, you said 6. 4, I wasn’t trying to up you, one up you, I just like, you know, cut, cut, it’s 6. 42

[00:07:51] Adam: know, it’s 6.

[00:07:53] Chuck: with that, but anyway, yeah, I would recommend, I enjoy it, so we’ll kind of go there. We’ll do a couple of hot [00:08:00] takes because this seems like that might be fun for you.

[00:08:02] Adam: in the weeds

[00:08:03] Chuck: And then we’re gonna get, you know, in the weeds on some dumb stuff. Actually, I should add one. Okay. So the most recent one has been about, I don’t know if you’ve seen this on Tech Twitter or not, but whether to use let or const, or whether, like, const for variable assignment at all is, Appropriate, it doesn’t do anything like technically in there.

It’s just more of a readability thing. Do you have a preference between let or const?

[00:08:28] Adam: Const. Yeah. I think it’s

[00:08:30] Chuck: Yeah

[00:08:31] April: I think it’s just been consistent, for lack of a better phrase. And it works. It doesn’t break as much.

So, const.

[00:08:37] Adam: vote. I’m

[00:08:38] April: That’s my vote.

[00:08:39] Chuck: I’m good with that. Do you want to read one of these?

[00:08:41] April: to

[00:08:41] Adam: you know it. So, Tailwind or Vanilla CSS for you. Of course.

Yeah, huh. Tailwind. Yeah, nice. Easy. Next.

[00:08:50] April: Easy.

[00:08:51] Chuck: Yeah, this is an

[00:08:51] Adam: There’s

[00:08:52] Chuck: There’s really nothing hot about this so far. Get rebase or get merge.

[00:08:56] April: or Git merge? Ooh, rebase. [00:09:00] Rebase, every time.

[00:09:00] Chuck: Yeah, I mean, it’s the hard way for a reason, because you need to take your time with it, you know.

And I like readability and history.

[00:09:09] April: you

[00:09:10] Adam: TypeScript? You fan?

[00:09:12] April: enough. Enough?

[00:09:15] Adam: Enough. Alright, the next one is Inferred or Explicit Types. If you’re working in TypeScript, what do you want? Explicit.

[00:09:23] April: with infrastructure as code, so I’m going to caveat that. So things like Bicep uses TypeScript on the back end.

I don’t do a lot of Bicep these days, but having worked with that previously in a previous role explicit.

[00:09:34] Adam: explicit.

Nice. Can’t

[00:09:35] Chuck: Explicit. Yeah, can’t trust other people, really. Here’s a real hot one. Sidebar on the left or right in VS Code? I

[00:09:42] Adam: the right and I

[00:09:43] April: VS Code? It’s like we need an operating system setting for that that just sort of trickles throughout all the application sketches.

Your

[00:09:54] Chuck: preference. Yeah, that’s

[00:09:55] Adam: It’s like we need an operating system setting for that that just sort of trickles throughout all the application [00:10:00] sketcher your folders that you’re navigating those have a left bar. It’s like I don’t want to switch between left and right and just try to memorize who does who. But if I had an operating system setting and I could just say, Hey, always do it on the right.

It might be kind of nice.

[00:10:11] April: Think Windows 11 does

[00:10:14] Adam: There’s

[00:10:14] April: Right. There’s another hot

[00:10:16] Chuck: Oh, I was going to say Right?

[00:10:18] April: I think Windows 11 does and I say this because I’ve configured

[00:10:21] Chuck: Judge, I

[00:10:22] April: I have multiple laptops.

I love Windows 11, and I think that’s one the configurable options

[00:10:27] Chuck: Are you saying that I should do more than just boot it up to play FIFA?

Yes. Because it’s basically what I do, it’s like, I tried every way possible to do gaming, PC gaming, not on a Windows PC. No shade, but you know, just is what it is. I already have these, can I make these work? No. The answer is no, you cannot. So I just, it’s mostly just

[00:10:49] April: back to it. I’ll be honest, I with my role, I spend a lot of time speaking and working with customers. And in that Windows 11 tiles, some of the automation in there, and development [00:11:00] and code.

Like, I don’t have any problem developing on my Windows 11 box anymore. Like, in the old days, it was a problem. I used to work on engineering teams, and I had a manager on a Linux machine just to be, you know, Open source and cool, but he had every problem under the sun. And Mac has a lot of problems with cloud native development that I’ve had to face, and literally on my Windows machine, I’m like, oh look, it works!

So yeah, Windows 11’s come a long way.

[00:11:22] Chuck: Okay, I should give it a real shot. I’ve gone down the Linux path a couple of times, and it is, it’s fun when you want to tinker. It’s not fun when you want to get things

[00:11:29] April: No, when you’re actually trying to work and be productive, it’s tough. And I do have a Mac or two in my office and I just, there’s something I can do really easily on a windows 11 device. I can’t do it on my Mac and I’m like, Oh, like Max, I think just were great when they came out. They’re great for years, but nothing has been groundbreaking for me to like use as my full driver, daily driver.

It’s kind of my, it’s my side piece. Now

[00:11:50] Adam: now. Nice. I’m stuck on 10 with my gaming machine. I have to flip a BIOS setting, and every time I get in there to try to change it, it says I can’t, and I’m like, but I’m, I’m the admin. [00:12:00] Let me, let me change, let me flip the bit, and

[00:12:02] April: let me

[00:12:02] Adam: stuck on 10. Yeah.

[00:12:04] April: the bit, and It’s

[00:12:05] Chuck: makes sense. Well, yeah, here,

[00:12:08] Adam: Oh, nested ternaries. Do you like question marks in your JavaScript? Pass. No. Nice. I

[00:12:17] April: question marks ever. Not the double.

[00:12:19] Chuck: Not the double? I like the null ish coalescing. That’s kind

[00:12:22] April: That’s kind of Yeah, okay. Yeah, fair.

[00:12:23] Adam: like the Elvis operand, also called the existential operator. The question mark dot where you’re like, maybe, maybe it has the property, you know?

Like, if it does, then move forward, you know? Yeah. Well, it kind of like goes through most of those things. Oh, what did I have? GraphQL. Was that a mistake? Okay.

[00:12:46] April: going to go with yes.

More problems than solutions.

[00:12:48] Chuck: Yeah, I think it’s one of those. It depends really like for a lot of things, maybe, but for some big stuff, I don’t know what kind of people worry about throttling or whatever.

Front enders can throttle your [00:13:00] API by including a field. They have no idea what the resolver is. Blah, blah, blah. It’s

[00:13:05] Adam: Kubernetes easy or difficult? It’s like snowboarding.

[00:13:09] April: snowboarding.

[00:13:09] Adam: a big

[00:13:10] April: learning curve.

[00:13:11] Adam: So snowboarding,

[00:13:12] April: snowboarding, once you nail it, easy, but it has a huge learning curve, and I think the biggest issue with Kubernetes is people are like, I’m a dev, I’m going to do Kubernetes, but they don’t understand the networking, the namespaces that’s where they get called out, so we see a lot of infrastructure folks afraid of Kubernetes and GitOps and all the ops’s, right and then once they pick it up, they learn it, they’re great, but it is that huge learning curve, it takes a lot of time and energy to learn it, but once you learn it, you’re like, great, nailed it, and then when it breaks, it’s another problem, but it’s, it’s, yeah, big learning curve, just like snowboarding.

Right.

[00:13:40] Chuck: whole snowboarding analogy

[00:13:41] Adam: Nice, love the snowboarding analogy. I always do one where it’s like, find a line. You know, like it’s your moment with the hill. There is no other, it’s just you and whatever you discover. Yep. Love it.

[00:13:52] Chuck: That’s a nice one. Although you talk about infrastructure as code. So is that code yaml or do you have like a preferred? Do you [00:14:00] use like terraform? Do you go down? Okay.

[00:14:02] April: So, I am a former HashiCorp ambassador, I say former, I was a HashiCorp ambassador for about four years,

[00:14:07] Adam: I just,

[00:14:07] April: just, I just kind of ran out of capacity to, to submit last year. So I do a lot of Terraform, I’ve done actually, if people, again, Google my name there’s tons of Terraform videos out there that I’ve done it’s actually technically in another name, April Edwards, but, you know, whatevs.

[00:14:23] Chuck: Yeah, it’ll all come together. Big

[00:14:25] April: meshes just so I do a lot of first infrastructures code. I’ve worked with bicep in its early days. I don’t touch arm of the 10 foot pole, a bit of YAML, again, more cloud native stuff with YAML. But yeah, I work with a lot of customers that are using Terraform or even bicep or you just Terraform 90 percent of the time for me.

[00:14:40] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:14:41] Adam: I don’t think I know what Bicep is, do you?

[00:14:43] Chuck: I mean,

[00:14:44] April: It’s the thing on your arm.

[00:14:46] Adam: Well, yes,

[00:14:47] Chuck: go ahead and

[00:14:48] Adam: ask. But, but the tool, this, this tool that keeps getting referenced, I’m, I’m like, I wanna know more, is

[00:14:52] April: the Microsoft cloud native, excuse me, Microsoft Infrastructure’s code language. It’s built on top of ARM templates. So when they started [00:15:00] launching templating in Azure with Infrastructure’s code, they went ARM and then they refactored with TypeScript and Bicep.

[00:15:06] Adam: I get it. Arm bicep is there, extensor and flexor, you know.

[00:15:10] Chuck: the word, extensibility.

[00:15:12] Adam: Nice.

[00:15:13] Chuck: it’s well named, so I think that makes a

[00:15:15] Adam: Yeah.

[00:15:15] April: And they’ve literally got a bicep as the logo. So cool

[00:15:18] Chuck: Yeah, so cool stickers are involved.

[00:15:20] April: like the HashiCorp Terraform stickers, they’re pretty cool.

[00:15:23] Chuck: pretty cool. Yeah, they are pretty cool.

[00:15:24] April: They are pretty cool. I’ve been really into the, have you seen the SST infrastructure as code stuff?

[00:15:32] Chuck: So it was basically like a wrapper around AWS CDK for the longest time, last few years. And that’s where I’ve mostly used it. Just launching lambdas, put them in API gateway, that kind of stuff. But they’ve done a full on refactor and they’re using Pulumi though. Okay, yeah, and they have this whole Pulumi, and Ion, and now you can do you know, Cloudflare, and all these other places.

So they’re planning to to embrace other cloud providers, [00:16:00] too. So, be more Terraform like. I didn’t know if you were familiar with with that

[00:16:05] April: like. I didn’t know if you were familiar with that framework.

[00:16:17] Adam: knows the programming language,

[00:16:19] Chuck: you’re stuffed.

[00:16:20] Adam: And most ops folks

[00:16:21] Chuck: learn

[00:16:22] April: Could learn Terraform pretty easily so the barrier to entry was a lot lower And that’s why I started working with Terraform because you’re getting customers into the cloud There are multiple clouds and there are data centers, and you’re going right How do we refactor your infrastructure into code?

Terraform it was easy to pick up on so I think it’s been an easier model for folks to learn

[00:16:37] Chuck: Yeah, is it fair to say that you do a lot of work in helping engineers or, you know, coders with doing features and whatever else, getting more into the dev ops, like bridging that gap between the ops and

[00:16:49] April: more into the DevOps, like bridging that gap between Ops [00:17:00] and Devs. Automate this and then infrastructure’s code fell in and then I started going further down the stack and languages and refactoring apps into cloud native and it just became a natural progression.

So very much DevOps practices culture and all that good stuff. It

[00:17:14] Adam: Yeah,

[00:17:15] Chuck: It is very confusing, though, and there are so many tools available, so it’s kind of, like, hard.

It’s choose your own adventure, except for you don’t even know the title of the book sometimes. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:17:26] April: you want is an end state. You just don’t know how to get there.

[00:17:28] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I find that a challenge from time to

[00:17:30] Adam: Oh, yeah, you look at the list of logos for CNCF and you’re just like, what is the 20 something logos? You’re like, I thought it was gonna do something simple with just one Kubernetes thing. No, no, it’s not that easy

[00:17:42] April: it’s not. And I think the big thing with Kubernetes as well, everyone’s like, well, I can go Kubernetes and do this thing.

And I’m like, or do you need to containerize or maybe refactor an app not to Kubernetes? And that’s the hard discussion to have with customers because they hear Kubernetes like we want all the Kubernetes. And I’m like, yes, however. Yeah,

[00:17:57] Chuck: Yeah you have to know how to [00:18:00] run the Kubernetes.

Yeah, and then like Helm, Helm charts and stuff being like that layer on top to kind of give you the stack of all those things that you want together. Again, very cool, super powerful, unless you just kind of don’t know what you’re doing. Yes,

[00:18:13] April: Yes, and hard to, in an enterprise environment or production environment, it’s maintaining it. And it’s getting all your folks up to speed on it, how to do it, and all the overhead that’s involved as well.

I think all the cloud providers have been really good at,

[00:18:25] Chuck: good at

[00:18:25] April: Giving people other options. So it’s not just Kubernetes. It’s, you know, do you need a simple web app in a place? How do you do that? Can you automate a process into like a lambda function? Azure function? I don’t know. Google uses. I’m sorry.

[00:18:37] Adam: It’s all good. It’s not about Google

[00:18:39] Chuck: they’re called something, though. Yeah,

[00:18:40] April: Yeah. What is Google?

[00:18:41] Adam: it?

Oh, for, oh, like just a function you can anonymously call? I don’t know their official

[00:18:46] Chuck: know what Vercel calls them, though, too. No.

[00:18:48] Adam: started on Google Cloud as UX engineer, but I don’t, I don’t know this term for this, Anonymous, the lambda function.

[00:18:55] April: automation thing,

[00:18:56] Chuck: serverless, I don’t know. Yeah, I kind of like that, even though it’s on a [00:19:00] server.

[00:19:00] April: it is. It’s someone else’s computer, but it’s, it’s running a minute containerized. Yes. I

[00:19:04] Adam: containerized. It might have been a flex. I think it was called flex because it would adapt to whatever it was that you’d given it, and it would serve it serverless.

[00:19:12] Chuck: I feel like I know less now. Even than when we started this whole thing. Because it is, there’s an interesting movement though, where a lot of people are talking about like, Maybe you don’t even need all of these things.

Like, yeah, these are great tools at a particular scale, but like, you know, diving into them early on is just, you don’t even have any users. You haven’t finished your app, you know, or whatever else. Maybe you just need to containerize it and push it somewhere and let it be a process and grow into those things as needed, so.

[00:19:43] April: and let it be a process and grow into those things as [00:20:00] needed.

You can automate an app and your infrastructure, but then also the back end or the infrastructure runs behind. It can be serverless. It can be a containerized environment. Doesn’t have to always be Kubernetes and getting that to customers and people’s heads going, there might be a better way to do this to make your lives easier without the overhead of

[00:20:18] Chuck: Kubernetes.

Yeah, like you’re going to spend all of your money and time on that aspect of your business and application when perhaps it’s like overkill. It’s a sledgehammer when you need a pin hammer or something like that.

[00:20:30] April: pick instead of a sledgehammer every time. But yeah, I think that’s, we’re good at that tech. We over engineer everything because we’re all engineers and we’re like, let’s make this thing amazing, let’s secure our jobs, architect a thing and go, hold on, we’ve over complicated the system.

[00:20:40] Chuck: Yeah, of course. Then you gotta refactor. See? Job security in the long term. Yeah, I don’t know what it is. I think I’m getting older and then I’m feeling more nostalgia about early web. And so like when I hear DHH go out there and be like, actually I just bought servers instead and did it this other way and saved us a ton of money.

And I was like, [00:21:00] exactly. You could totally do that. If he can do that, I could do that for some, you know, a bunch of things too. I’m more inclined to run apps out of my house rather than spin up Lambdas

[00:21:08] Adam: Global edge nodes, you know. Sounds

[00:21:10] April: secure. Yeah, well,

[00:21:12] Chuck: Yeah, well, you know, security being a side effect of whatever. Yeah, my, my old Dell you know, sitting in the closet in my house.

That’s plenty secure, right?

[00:21:20] April: right? Absolutely. No firewalls. Open

[00:21:23] Chuck: What, wait, what’s a firewall?

[00:21:24] April: a thing that, never mind. We’ll go over that next

[00:21:27] Chuck: I thought that’s what you put between, like, the engine and the people, right? In the car. You put the firewall there. I don’t

[00:21:33] Adam: Ooh, is that where it got its name?

[00:21:35] Chuck: I. I mean, I know that’s what they call, like, the area between the engine and the car. I don’t know if that’s where it’s got its name.

I know there are two different things, like.

[00:21:43] April: I believe a firewall was started, yes, because it prevented things from getting in, so I don’t know the exact history, but I bet Richard Campbell knows, and we could ask him, and he’ll give us the whole history of

[00:21:53] Adam: You know what you

[00:21:54] Chuck: Ooh, you know what you should ask her? What’s the difference between ingress and egress?

[00:21:58] Adam: out. I just love

[00:21:59] Chuck: Yeah, [00:22:00] I know. I just love when people are like, what is this? They don’t under, you know, you’ve not gotten that confusion. I hang out with a lot dumber people than you, I think. So that’s okay. Present company excluded, of course.

so much. I

[00:22:11] Adam: so much. I got a question. When is a phase of somebody’s application? needing to be a hybrid on prem, off prem.

[00:22:17] Chuck: of

[00:22:18] April: prem? It depends.

[00:22:19] Chuck: that

[00:22:20] Adam: the sig, the signs that you’re going to see that you’re like, it might be time to move a little bit of this on, on prem?

[00:22:26] April: on prem? I think, so, so to go back on prem?

[00:22:29] Chuck: of a

[00:22:29] Adam: Yeah. So like, yeah, if you were born in the cloud, died in the cloud, but all of a sudden you’re like, no, we need some, we need some on prem stuff.

[00:22:36] April: Most of the time I only deal with on prem, on prem stuff if it’s legacy, like super legacy. And I, and it’s interesting because I see a lot of customers go, you know, we want to put this on prem or we can do this ourselves. The time and cost and effort is worse on prem than it is in the cloud. Like the, the thing that cloud has done, forget any cloud provider, they’ve commoditized compute. And even with AI, compute, all of it, it’s been commoditized and that’s what’s amazing about it. So I see very few customers on [00:23:00] prem unless it’s a, they’re literally on an island. Oil rigs. Seriously. If you’re in a Yeah?

[00:23:08] Chuck: yeah, closed networks,

[00:23:09] April: Yeah, closed networks where you can’t physically reach the cloud because you don’t have internet connectivity.

That is it. And they need to compute locally because they just can’t do the transaction across. That’s the only time we go on prem anymore that I usually see a use case for. And the time it takes to go back on prem is just time consuming and not very you gotta, you gotta also plan for the scalability.

In the cloud, you can just scale on demand. When you’re going back on prem and you have to scale, unless there’s a, again, you’re on an island or an oil rig, why would you do it?

[00:23:37] Chuck: because from a security perspective like most of that those concerns have been quelled right like compliant from a compliance standpoint every every Cloud vendor or at least I know AWS and Azure for sure are like they have all the compliance covered for like FinTech Medical and all of that because I would have thought like maybe that is one argument is like sensitive data [00:24:00] compliance issues yada yada yada But

[00:24:03] April: So I can answer this one because I live in the UK. We’ve had Brexit, unfortunately and a lot of customers have had to come out of the EU into the UK for their data residency, which has been a mess. So I know like with the cloud providers, they offer those services, but not to the scale and the size that’s in the EU or in other data center regions.

So that’s one problem. The scalability isn’t there. The features aren’t always there. But yeah, I think data residency has been a big problem. A big question. It still exists, and that’s probably where a lot of customers are like my data can’t reside over here. We can’t, you know, transact on it with F.

I. S. Two. They have legacy requirements like we must have to data centers. It’s actually not really written, but it’s been such a legacy rule. They all have in their brains. We have to do it this way. And then when we talk about resiliency story, it has changed with automation and scripting, but they haven’t switched their brains to match that.

[00:24:49] Adam: Oh, so they’re scared. They’re worried about redundancy or something. And so they’re just no

[00:24:53] April: So they literally will spin up an active, active data center situation. Or active, active apps. And you’re like, well you could just script it.

[00:24:58] Adam: just script

[00:24:59] April: And [00:25:00] deploy it somewhere else. And, oh, but no, no. We’ve always done it this way. So when everyone says, we’ve always done it this way, I just cringe and like die a little on the inside.

But

[00:25:08] Adam: Grab some whiskey.

[00:25:09] April: whiskey. Yes, grab some whiskey and it goes away.

[00:25:11] Adam: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:12] April: but yeah, it’s, it’s, data residency is going away. There are ways to combat it. And also when, when we talk about code and where we’re storing our code and residency on that, if you’re putting things in your code base and data residency is an issue, you probably shouldn’t be putting it in your code base.

Like, you need to look at where you’re storing your code. But then also you think about developers, right? We code on our machines, and everyone’s cloning their code to the machine. So if you have contractors or third party folks working, like, they’re taking their laptops with them, and they’re not giving your code back 99.

9 percent of the time. And we’re all traveling, right? Like, what code do you have on your machine?

[00:25:44] Chuck: traveling, right? And you’re jumping onto whatever random Wi Fis, which I do try to avoid most of the time.

I listen to enough Darknet Diaries to know, like, I should avoid the Starbucks Wi Fi, but,

[00:25:53] Adam: but You don’t like your packets being sniffed?

[00:25:56] Chuck: Well, I mean, that’s a personal preference. I don’t mind that. But I [00:26:00] usually, you know, keep that to myself. Or, yes, yes, dried. Yeah, fresh apricots just don’t have the same punch to them, you know.

[00:26:08] April: the airport too. It’s like, we have USB now in the airport. I’m like, I’m not clicking into

[00:26:15] Adam: The airport, too. It’s like, we have USB now in the airport.

I’m like, I’m not plugging into that. No

[00:26:19] Chuck: You know, the funny thing is, though, they all have USB A and then we’ve all been converted to C now. And so, like, I still have a place to plug this in.

[00:26:28] April: So, I now have to carry various types of cables for USB C and USB A. Like, I actually need a bigger backpack to hold different types of cables now. And I’m like, we’ve reverted. 1998 is back,

[00:26:39] Chuck: Yeah, in so many ways. This is kind of what I mean. Let’s put our servers on prem. Let’s use true full stack frameworks for applications, which I don’t think is all a bad thing, by the way, you know, the Django’s and I forget what dot nets is called Laravel and you have all the and rails and all of that.

And like, [00:27:00] actually, they all are pretty decent. You don’t have to pay 16 different services to do off for you and, you know, offset all these other things.

[00:27:07] Adam: things. It’s been the latest Twitter controversy. Is everybody agreeing that our life is good?

[00:27:13] April: Mm.

[00:27:25] Chuck: know, I brought it up.

[00:27:27] April: Don’t say it three times. raise the dead.

[00:27:30] Chuck: Guillermo. Oh, here we go. He might hear this one.

[00:27:33] Adam: Nice try.

[00:27:34] Chuck: Yeah, I keep trying to bring him around, but

[00:27:36] Adam: This has been an awful lot of web. I think we need some whatnot.

[00:27:40] Chuck: want some water? Oh, I have a whole bunch of living in the UK questions. I’ve been there a bunch and I don’t know, I was there like six weeks or so and I’ve, I’m a big football fan. I actually thought the food was good. Do you, do you like the food?

[00:27:53] April: The food actually is good. In the UK you get very fresh ingredients. And when you go to a grocery store it actually tells you the farm and where it’s [00:28:00] grown. So, let me show you. The law says you have to know, like, when you buy chicken or whatever, and there’s tons of, like, free range stuff, farm based stuff, and it’s cost effective.

Like, when I come to the U. S. again, and I go to, like, a farmer’s market, I’m like, I paid 8 for carrots. In the U. K., I literally pay 50 cents for a giant bag. So it’s, it’s very much still a farming industry, that Europe is still very much a farming industry. The food’s pretty good. I was actually at a phenomenal restaurant a few weeks ago, and it was stunning.

Again, all fresh ingredients. It’s there. I think the Brits are known for Boiling their food and salty food and pub culture, but actually that the whole kind of like gastro pub thing has become a thing Tons of micro breweries in the UK as well So I think they’re kind of westernizing a bit like after the u.

s. Stuff, but you go the right places You get some phenomenally fresh food Squeaks

[00:28:52] Chuck: amazing. It is so good. Yorkshire pudding. I stayed mostly in Yorkshire. I mean, I’ve been to London a little bit and around there. But in [00:29:00] Leeds for quite some time and,

[00:29:02] April: Did you know there’s a rhubarb triangle in Yorkshire? I learned this from a Yorkshireman. He’s like, Oh, something, something. Have you been to the rhubarb triangle? And I’m like, I’m sorry. Is this like the Bermuda triangle?

[00:29:12] Chuck: am I gonna get

[00:29:13] April: Am I going to get lost and never come out of rhubarb? No, they grow. Yeah.

Rhubarb. It’s a bit earthy. It’s a bit bitter. But yeah, there’s a triangle where they grow the most rhubarb in the world or something crazy. And they have a rhubarb festival. So rhubarb, I’ve had, like, rhubarb ciders, and very famous British dessert is a rhubarb and strawberry crumble.

[00:29:34] Chuck: it’s, so the American,

[00:29:36] April: so it’s, so the American, North American version is a rhubarb strawberry crisp, which will be like oats and nuts and maple syrup and cinnamon.

They do, like, a, a crumble’s like a wheat, crumbly wheat topping, and they put custard over it. It is really good. It’s not my thing. Their custard is really good. It’s, they kind of bathe all their desserts in custard. It’s a lot of dairy for me

[00:29:54] Adam: want a custard bath. You

[00:29:56] April: You know what? Come to England. We’ll just put you in a bathtub and pour custard over you.

[00:29:59] Chuck: [00:30:00] yeah. Do you go watch any footy?

[00:30:03] April: So,

[00:30:04] Chuck: I,

[00:30:05] April: I, I played soccer growing up, and then when I moved to the UK, I just didn’t really get it. There’s a whole culture around it. However, yes, I’m now forced to be a Newcastle fan.

[00:30:16] Chuck: around it. However, yes, I’m now forced to be a Newcastle fan. Yeah. And they had a really big match the other day,

[00:30:27] April: Yeah. And they, they had a really big match the other day against Manchester United or Man City. I think it was Man

[00:30:33] Chuck: The United, we played two weeks ago. It was 3

[00:30:36] April: Yes, yes, that was the match. So yes, I am apparently supposed to like Newcastle now. So I will be attending. Actually, I have a very good friend of mine that owns a pub next to Newcastle Stadium. St. James Place, called The Strawberry. It’s like this world famous pub, and I went there one day for a few pints.

And yeah. The culture around it’s phenomenal.

[00:30:55] Chuck: Right, like just keep the energy when you’re there and then a club like that, [00:31:00] that’s a historic club. So yeah, the whole town is in, they’re all fans, they’re all connected in some

[00:31:07] April: they love it. I mean, I’ve been to like Fulham’s football stadium because they were a customer of mine many years ago. So I got to go there, and I was there with like an account rep, and he was wearing his Fulham tie, and he was like totally geeked out.

I’m like, I don’t, I don’t get it. But I guess for me it was like, it would be like me going to an American football stadium and like going to see the Patriots and meet Bill Belichick. I would have been like, yes, let me get the hoodie on,

[00:31:29] Chuck: on! Oh, okay.

[00:31:30] April: But,

[00:31:31] Chuck: so you like egg ball game?

[00:31:32] April: I do like the egg bowl game. I also like rugby. I grew up in the U.

S. and my great uncle played American football professionally. So I grew up in a very football household. So yeah. So liking British soccer, i. e. football has been an interesting transition, but rugby is huge over there. Rugby, I call it football, ruggers. It’s getting

[00:31:48] Adam: getting bigger, I feel like. Well, huge rugby.

[00:31:51] Chuck: it’s huge anyway,

[00:31:52] Adam: Pickleball rugby seemed to be so hot right now.

[00:31:54] April: Yeah, absolutely. And rugby, you know, we always say it’s like American football without the sissy pads and

[00:31:59] Chuck: huh, for sure.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] April: and the game doesn’t stop every three

[00:32:01] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, no, I I don’t understand that game, but I do enjoy watching it when I do it’s sort of like I don’t know what’s happening. But like the hits are you know, they’re hard, but they’re they’re more respectful, right?

Nobody’s going headfirst and like dislocating their neck or

[00:32:16] April: There’s a lot of ear ripping, a lot of biting and grabbing but that’s where Scrum came from. That’s the developer term Scrum was from rugby matches. But the Brits are great because they will go and watch at the pub and scream at the TV and they talk all the I have friends that are big rugby players and I’m like, I just shake it out in my head, like I don’t understand all of I understand the rules, but like they know all the players and then the Six Nations is on and they talk

[00:32:38] Chuck: Oh gosh.

[00:32:39] April: Yeah, it’s like, the Six Nations is like the American Super Bowl over six teams,

[00:32:43] Chuck: I was in France last September and, yeah, like the Rugby World Cup or whatever was there. So that was like all over. Oh, man, this is It’s huge. Yeah, it’s

[00:32:52] April: whole world stops in that part of the world.

[00:32:53] Chuck: you know the term soccer is actually a British term, not an American term? It’s a

[00:32:57] Adam: term?

It’s a misnomer.

[00:32:58] Chuck: Because it was called [00:33:00] association football. Soc. Soc. Soccer, rugger, similar thing.

[00:33:05] April: Did not know that I’m gonna tell all my British friends that now when I have to like go to a football match What do you know soccer is actually an American British term? I’m gonna give the history.

[00:33:13] Chuck: history. Yeah, there

[00:33:14] April: I am I mean, I get like thrown out the pub or they’re gonna buy me more pints It’s gonna go one way or the other so we’ll see what happens.

[00:33:20] Chuck: get a vibe here. I think you’re going to make

[00:33:21] April: I’m gonna be fine. I’m gonna make more friends than enemies. Yeah

[00:33:24] Adam: pints than

[00:33:24] Chuck: So that’s a kind of fun thing about British culture. I know. So how has that affected living there?

How long have you been there?

[00:33:31] April: I’ve been there 11 and a half

[00:33:33] Chuck: Yeah, okay. Well, that’s a long time. I’m surprised you don’t have a little bit of an accent, all things

[00:33:37] April: It depends. So, again, like any answer in tech, it depends. If I am around British people, absolutely. I’ve been in the US for a few days, and we are drinking whiskey. So when I drink, I sound more New York sounding. But if you put a Brit in the room, I’ll change my intonations.

Without question.

[00:33:52] Chuck: Yeah. You say my name all the time, actually. They’re always talking about chucking something out. Chuck it out. Chuck it out. Yeah. And they’re like, [00:34:00] your name is Chuck.

Like to throw stuff out. Like, yeah, thanks.

[00:34:05] April: we just throw you out. And your last name slash surname is Carpenter, so we throw out the Carpenter.

[00:34:09] Chuck: Yeah, exactly. That’s what it really, yeah. It makes a bunch of sense. You know, you’ve solved so many life problems. Like, really, less therapy for me in my future, I think. I’ve got a few things going on there.

[00:34:20] Adam: I had fun in London. I went to a pub to see some football. And I ordered Thai food. And I was like, what? And the teriyaki came out on french fries.

[00:34:32] April: you were in a weird

[00:34:33] Chuck: Yeah, you were in a weird pub.

[00:34:34] April: So, I will say this, there are places that,

[00:34:36] Adam: good. I

[00:34:36] April: they’re not french fries, they’re chips, by the

[00:34:38] Adam: They are chips. Yeah. Well, that’s why I was confused. I was like, yeah, I’ll have the teriyaki and chips. And then

[00:34:42] Chuck: by the way, it’s the Belgians. But yeah, fries are chips, chips are crisps.

[00:34:46] April: Yes, very much. Chuck’s on it. Yeah, that was a weird pub. So they’ve very anglicized

[00:34:53] Adam: that meal. My friends told me it was kind of normal.

[00:34:56] April: I have ne Okay, I’ve been in the UK 11 and a half years. [00:35:00] I’ve never seen that.

[00:35:00] Adam: to

[00:35:01] Chuck: a lot

[00:35:01] April: I’ve been to a lot of Thai restaurants.

But I’ve never Yeah, I don’t I don’t know if I’ve been to one in London. I’ve been to a Thai restaurant in London. I’ve still never seen

[00:35:07] Chuck: Sure. It’s an international city. They have a bunch of stuff. I don’t know. You, you, if you didn’t have Indian food, you really should go back.

[00:35:13] Adam: Oh, for sure. Indian

[00:35:14] April: Indian food’s totally different. You gotta go for a curry. Curry and a pint.

[00:35:16] Adam: all day. Oh. Yum.

[00:35:18] April: So, Cobra or Tiger?

[00:35:20] Adam: no, I’m thinking, Yeah, same.

[00:35:23] Chuck: Yeah. No, I’m thinking, cobra.

[00:35:27] April: Yeah, same. I’m a Cobra fan. Tiger actually put sugar in it.

[00:35:30] Chuck: Oh, I

[00:35:31] April: And it was like really, I remember having it one time, it was

[00:35:33] Adam: buttholes, why’d they do that? It tames down the spicy in the food.

[00:35:36] Chuck: a,

[00:35:37] Adam: So,

[00:35:37] April: a, a a lager of that sort will tame down the spice in whatever Indian curry you’re eating. Like a Vindaloo or a Naga.

So, yeah.

[00:35:47] Adam: Nice.

Yeah.

[00:35:47] April: Fun fact.

[00:35:48] Chuck: Yeah, I mixed my curries. I almost said Massaman and I’m like, Nope, that’s Thai. We were just talking about that. But,

[00:35:53] Adam: were just talking

[00:35:54] Chuck: well, excellent. I think we’re about at time. Yeah, I want to respect your time, but [00:36:00] I am going to pour you a little more.

Is there anything else as we wrap up that you might want to talk about? Promote? Mention? Well, we are at Microsoft Build. I guess

[00:36:10] April: I guess I should promote something around that. But I think people are going to catch up on the cool stuff. There’s a lot of AI happening in the world right now. I think, I spend, I spend almost every day of my life talking about AI. And I want to just encourage people to learn about it, try it, and really embrace it.

And learn that it is a pair programmer versus driving the boat, if you will.

[00:36:28] Chuck: Yeah, I agree.

[00:36:29] April: And it’s, and it’s, it’s, you know, it’s like any shift we’ve had in tech, you know, back in the day we had physical machines, right? Then we went to virtualization and we all had to shift and adapt and learn. Then we went to the cloud and containerization again, shift, learn and adapt.

So I’m going to say to everyone, just keep learning keep adapting and you know, you’ll be stay on top of learning and keep going in your career.

[00:36:48] Chuck: Yeah, so, you’re not afraid of Devon? No. Yeah.

[00:36:51] Adam: No. Yeah.

[00:36:53] Chuck: I wanna know, where’s AI

[00:36:55] Adam: Yeah. Well, I want to know where, where’s AI in your day to day, where you find, like, I have a couple of [00:37:00] workflows where I’m like, AI is definitely helping me here.

There’s other workflows where I’m like, that was a really moronic response, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. You know where are you finding that it’s really impacting your day to day? So I

[00:37:11] April: I think I was, I was really nervous about it. And when a lot of AI would give me a response, I’d be like, Hmm, I can do it better.

And I absolutely had that sentiment. Now, it’s able to be a lot more intuitive, read the context a lot better. And also a lot of things we’ve done with AI has made The ability to ask it questions, A, natural language, but also in multiple languages. So if people aren’t English speaking, and I work with a lot of people in Europe, where English is their second language, so being able to communicate in their own language is really critical to writing better code.

I think it’s taken off a lot of the heavy lifting of my day to day stuff. And then I can focus on the fun code. Because I didn’t become a developer to write boring code and to just do repetitive tasks all

[00:37:49] Adam: Another loop.

[00:37:49] April: Yeah, yay, here we go again. And it’s just, it’s getting better and better. And it is helping me to move a little bit faster.

And I always, I always, when I give a talk about AI or any like DevOps topic, I talk [00:38:00] about how much time as a developer we actually spend writing code. I think the official number was like 25%. We spend the rest of our time doing other crap. We go to meetings, we’re waiting on others, we’re waiting on permission, whatever.

In the time we have, we have to write the most efficient code we have. And that’s, it’s been an enabler to help me be more impactful and more productive in my days.

[00:38:16] Adam: more impactful and

[00:38:17] Chuck: I echo that sentiment. It’s like, don’t be afraid of it. It’s just another tool in the tool belt.

[00:38:21] Adam: of it. It’s

[00:38:22] April: we’re still driving. And we’re still architecting. We’re still designing. We’re still making the decisions.

[00:38:26] Chuck: still

[00:38:27] Adam: still architecting. We’re still designing.

We’re

[00:38:29] April: Alright. Thanks guys.

[00:38:30] Chuck: Thanks again for joining us.

[00:38:31] April: for having me.

[00:38:32] Chuck: me. All right.

[00:38:33] Adam: Thanks for having me. All right. Ciao.