 What's going on here? We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, salt shaker full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, and loafers. And as Jerry packed that first bowl and handed it to me, I drew in a cloud of marijuana smoke so deep, and I looked him in the eyes and said, let's ship some fucking software. Apparently this won't work either. So hey, look at that. Come on, you got that? Boom. Alrighty, there we go. I'm Leon, Leon Gersing. I'm a single dad, I read a lot of code, I work for GitHub with that guy SpicyCode in the back, and you can find me on the Twitters as Ruby Buddha. Yeah, if you need me, just shout. First of all, I want to open saying that 69% of all statistics are completely fucking made up. So take whatever I'm saying with a complete grain of salt. Most of this is colloquial, but I want to start off with how we understand one another, where we get our ideas, and how those ideas influence one another. So when we think about a group of individuals, there's various different fringes and places where you can inter-bingle, and you might find yourself in some of them one day and in another another day, and that's totally fine. But we really, when I'm talking here in over-broad generalities, this one I'm talking about in culture, where we're saying we might have like a dominant culture that sets like the tone, the pace. These are the rules that we have made up, and these are the rules that we live by. And eventually that dominant culture is gonna be hit with a subculture. People say, well, dominant culture is not for me anymore. I'm gonna go over here and have a cigarette. And that won't be enough for some others, and they may find a counterculture, one that actually doesn't live in harmony with the dominant culture, like a subculture might. A counterculture might actually actively try and combat the dominant culture, because they don't wanna agree with their rules. They don't agree with their life. I think people from this area know a little bit about what I'm talking about there, right? Yeah. I was out there yesterday too, it was a lot of fun. And then there's the fringe. The fringe, like almost everybody except the fringe is like, I don't know what they're doing, but I'm happy they're doing it over there, right? And there are things to learn from all of these. And as information is accelerated, as we're allowed to hear the stories of our brothers and sisters from other lands, from other disparate groups, no matter how close, we know a little more about ourselves, maybe where these ideas came from and how to acclimate to them. But how do you know when there are boundaries in your way? How do you know that your culture has started to stagnate where you need to actually reach out to other communities, find new avenues, maybe modalities of thought? It's very difficult to do. Now, as I'm going through, I know I'm talking about culture and that could be very personal for people. It could be very emotionally triggering. But I like to think of what Frank Zava once said, after walking on stage at a wood stock and said to a bunch of hippies, if you don't know who the hippies are, they look a lot like me, they're very unclean. They make a lot of really good music. And he said, we all wear a uniform, which is just really upset them because part of their culture as a subculture was that they were in stark defiance of the uniform of the dominant culture. And suddenly someone came up from the counterculture and said, hey, hey guys, you're doing it too. Good luck, right? So I don't mean to say any of these things to offend or to hurt or marginalize or place anyone in any kind of group. That's not what I'm trying to do. What I'm trying to notice is where ideas come from and where do our rules come from and how flexible are those rules? So a good example of something like this is when I was coming into software, one of the methodologies for producing software was the waterfall method. And our group at the time, Lexus Nexus, used it very well, like it seemed to work. We would go from one stage to the next to the next and then move it all the way back when something didn't go right. There were like 20 different groups I had to learn about before I could ship anything. But for some reason, it seemed to work there and it was fine. And then suddenly the dominant culture starts asking questions like, wait a minute, this seems really ridiculous that I have to wait all the way again to do anything. So people start thinking about it and people start moving on. And then maybe a small group of pioneers in the counterculture go out and say, hey, hey, hey, this thing doesn't need all of this process. Let's throw that to the ground and just go with four rules, right? And that's maybe where the agile manifesto comes into play. And then they say, okay, well, we don't need all of your write-offs and sign-offs and HIPAA and SOX and all these other things. We don't need that. We just need a philosophy, which is what the agile manifesto is. It's just a doctrine. It's a philosophy. It's one group's idea of what healthy process looks like. So wait a minute, that looks pretty cool. Those guys and gals over there seem to be shipping some code pretty quickly. I think maybe we should adopt some of that and take it on as our own, right? Yeah, and this is when people start to say, punk is dead. So we look over and we go, oh, they're angry. Oh, and they're really motivated and they're really getting things done. Why don't we just ape the motions of what they're doing without actually understanding what goes in and creating that culture? So to create punk, you have to actually go live punk. And punk still exists. You can find great punk. It's out there. You can get punched in the face at a show and have a good time, right? It's there. And it's not at the Avril Lavigne show. You will be punching yourself probably in the face. Sorry, Avril Lavigne fans. I didn't mean anything by it. You did. But in order to actually know a culture, you have to identify that there is a difference, that there is a boundary, that there's something there that you might be able to draw from and bring back to your home. And that's fine to do so. You can go throughout. But you can't just cargo cult it. You can't just build a gun out of wood and say, why doesn't the magic work? It's not necessarily the path to wisdom. It's not the way to find yourself understanding what caused the subculture to be created in the first place. So we get this. My friend Charlie Baker once called Agile with a little lay anything where we are doing Agile by name and not in practice. So what we ended up with in certain situations was, oh, yeah, we have a scrum table. And yeah, there are cards on the wall. And we're now doing waterfall with cards on the wall. That's awesome. Didn't take the time to go into those communities, to go and sit with their brothers and sisters and understand them, talk to them, see what their pain was. And even if that pain could be replicated in the same system, maybe there was a different system that could have come out of it if they had tried, if we had gone down that path. Maybe there will be a new one where we do, right? Who knows? You've got to get out of your place, though. I always say, when thought is replaced by process, you end up with something like this. Yes, the escalator to stair land. It gives the illusion that what you have is real. It gives a myth. It gives you something to talk about. But it's a bit of your stomach you could feel that there's something wrong, that there's something off, missing, that it's hollow. Well, it doesn't move. I don't. And this piece is something that I've found in doing a lot of user group stuff. There's a feeling that I've got something important to say and all the power to say it. Only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of that power. To know that you have all the tools in front of you, but you don't know what to do with them. These are the pieces where we wander. These are the places where we can take this power. We can take our understanding of the journey that we've been setting on at this moment. And we can walk into cultures that we don't understand and start to learn. We can be open cubs. Jose was talking about what was that style of Ruby that was like inconsiderate Ruby. I thought that was hilarious. I hadn't even heard of that. I think you should be inconsiderate more often. Like why not? Who's to say it's not right or wrong? Take it in and let's try it on for a bit and see what happens. Let's use some of this power to be creative and destructive and amazing and rebuild whatever we want and not get trapped in the desert of the real. The Boryard has this concept of the Borgia map, where this great empire exists. And the king says, I would like a map, a tapestry that's as big as this screen. And it has every part of our culture on it. It has every mountain in our land. It has every waterfall that we have. It has every grain of sand on it. And it looks as glorious as the empire when it was created. And then over time, the map starts to deteriorate a little. But the kingdom behind it is gone. It has started. The mountain has turned to sand and rubble. The waterfall has stopped flowing. And what that map represents no longer even exists. And yet that's the thing they're going to worship. So if you find yourself stuck in a dominant culture that is rigid, that hasn't found a way to loosen its boundaries, realize that it may be time to move out and seek new ideas, to find new ways to bring these fresh ideas back into your life. Rather than worshiping an ideal that no longer exists. I love this quote. It's at the beginning of that very book. The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth. It is the truth that conceals that there is none. And the simulacrum is true, which he quotes in the book to a classicist. But I've scoured a classicist. It's not there. So he was trolling me from page one. And I like to retranslate this, that we simulate reality and we know it. We lose touch with our actual reality. And the simulated reality becomes real. So be careful when you're fighting for things like idiom. And idiom is just an idea that came before you that a lot of people liked. It is not concrete. It can be broken. And it should be. Every day, as software developers, you are inventing reality. You are inventing a reality that did not exist before you woke up that day. Think about that. That is an immense amount of power and immense amount of freedom. And if you limit yourself in your own mind, your realities will suffer. So invent every piece of it, how you deploy, how you build your software, what tools you want. You don't necessarily have to invent it literally. I mean, invent it figuratively. Pull together the parts of other communities that make sense to you, that seem to be working the same way. Not just because they're heroes. Not just because they're famous. Not just because everybody knows them by name. There are plenty of new names that we have not yet heard of and I can't wait to hear them. So how do you change your perception? How do you enter yourself into fringe culture? How do you get over there? Well, I believe that perception is reality. Oh, yeah. So if the prescribed path, go to school. I go and I get all my education. I get a junior high degree and then I go to high school and I get my high school degree. Then once I got my high school degree, I go to college and I get my undergrad degree. And once I get my undergrad, then I'm gonna get my master's. Once I got my master's, get my PhD, maybe two or three. Then I'm gonna find myself a nice place to work and live out the rest of my days until I die. And everybody lives happily ever after, right? No, wrong. There's no prescribed path. There's no easy one way to anything. And these are the smartest and most creative people in the world. So we don't need it. But what if I'm trapped? What if I can't get out? What if I feel like I've seen everything and I know everything? Well, rule one, there are no rules. I've run this shit, just my house. It's true. Every person before you that told you you were wrong in their life, too. That's right. Every hero you've ever had is just another person who pees. Humans, and they all make mistakes, and that's fine. If your rules are holding you back, if your rules are trapping you, or someone else's rules are, it's easy enough to rise up against them and say, no, no, I'm gonna do it a different way. You don't even have to be a jerk about it. You're like, no, no, I don't like that at all. Peace. Done. No big deal. You might find yourself feeling like you're dejected or rejected from whatever group you happen to be in at that moment, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's okay to say things that might hurt or offend those around you. What's not okay is to repress it. What's not okay is to let it never be said. That's where we all lose. So there are other ways to do this. You don't, doesn't always have to come out of a book, right, I mean, like come on stamps or stickers. I don't know. But I love Brother Bill Hicks. Here's an old comedian from the United States and he says, wouldn't you like to see a positive LSD story? Today, a young man on acid realized that we're all madder and just merely energy condensed to a slow vibration that we're all one consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively. So there's no such thing as death. Life is only a dream and we're the imaginations of ourselves. And here's Tom with the weather. All right, Brother Bill Hicks, you want a good LSD story? I'll give you one. Here's a guy right here who published a paper on the use of LSD 25 for computer programming. Bet you didn't see that in your textbook, did you? Well, I have it in the show notes. You're welcome to take it after this. It's, yes, that and the recipe for LSD. But this is a person who is looking around at all of the available techniques, all of the available processes, all of the things that his contemporaries could tell him about how to write software. And this is the 70s and he's looking and he says, I can't even wrap my head around it. He had to write this huge programming assembler and we couldn't see it. So had heard about some very interesting things happening with low dose LSD and went and tried that. And after a night of throwing away a lot of code, had some idea of the entire system could imagine it in a way they had never imagined it before. Now, I'm not saying to go out and do LSD for any lawyers who are in the room. I'm just saying that there are different ways to see the world if you could just take a minute to let go and check, what, is something helping? Is someone passing around LSD? I knew you were. So we live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning. So we have a very interesting bit where we actually now have this time where we can see these cultures. They emerge, they come to us. We don't necessarily have to do what I did 30 years ago, like wandering through Europe or wandering through Asia, just trying to find people that I could relate to. We found each other. Look, we're here, right? So even though there might not be meaning in these texts in this information, meaning is derived. Wisdom is derived through experience. So if we're feeling this way, where we're inundated with information, where we feel isolated from the world, let's use this information to then ingratiate ourselves into these other worlds, to find out what's there, to gain the wisdom that brought them to that same place. And we may be able to repurpose it in ways we can't even imagine, but it may not be on the path that we expect it to be. For instance, as you heard earlier, I was doing some.net and iOS and all this. I mean, I was just basically looking for a community of people that were a little weird. And then somebody introduced me to Wise, pointing you guys to Ruby. And it blew my mind. Blew it open. I still want the onion. That was promised at the beginning of the book. It doesn't have to be. If you are dying to share Ruby, then find a way to do it. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same learned Ruby in 24 hours. You don't have to go down the path that has been before you, just because you think there's a pot of gold there. Anyone who's ever been down the prescribed path will even tell you, eh, it's a hit or miss. You may get paid. You may not get paid. So who cares? Is it for the money? Is it for the experience? Is it for the journey? For me, it's for the wisdom. Finding that wisdom will come in all kinds of crazy ways. Sorry, a little fun fact there. Anybody know George, we have Serrat here, right? Pointillism. All of this person's contemporaries were constantly telling them this is worthless. He worked on this painting for two years. Worked on this Chromaluminescence for two years. Now we call it LCD, right? Just pixels, right? Same thing. He was way ahead of his time. Way, way ahead. Yeah. And if he had listened to those contemporaries, if he had stayed because he was in that particular culture, we may never have gotten it. He may never know how impactful his work has been, but it was. Even to people not in his group. And your wisdom will come from masters that look completely different than you expect them to. For instance, if you want to know how to do a grand jeté, this might be the person you wanna ask. Just because I don't know how he does it. I can't do that. And I have basically his same bill. I gotta find this kid, right? So on your path, on your way to wisdom, to enlightenment, to the place where you become the person that you're trying to be. Remember that that person that you may discount or just credit because they sound weird or scary, that's the time to soften. That's the time to open your heart. That's the time to be embarrassed, to be a child, to be a fool, and let it all in. It doesn't have to change you. It will, but it doesn't have to. One of the most courageous things we could do is listen to someone and be heard by someone else. And let them have their voice. Let them have every bit of it. We don't have to assume any of it. We don't have to take on any of it. But we can be there for one another and we will grow from that. So part of this is just that people say to me, Leon, I would love to do what you're talking about. I simply don't have time. And I say, yeah, yeah, you're right. If you say you have no time, then you don't. Time is not something that we have created right now, time is, man, love to meet our time. That's what we did. We said, oh yeah, there are seconds, a millisecond, 15s and whatever, and be there at eight o'clock, not eight o'five. But that's a myth for thousands of years. We ruled ourselves by, oh, when noon happens, like when that big orange thing is up there, I'll get there when I get there. We're here, the Catalonians are probably like, yeah, we're on beach time. I'll take an extra five minutes. It's fine, it's wonderful. You have time for everything you want to have time for. You make that choice, and it is a choice. One of these things that really got me going was this quote by the Dalai Lama in which he understood that man sacrifices his health in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health, and then he's so anxious about the future that he doesn't enjoy the present. And the result is that he does not live in the present or the future. It lives as if he's never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived. And I hope the same is not true for Ruby, for all of our beautiful programs that we write. I hope they evolve and grow and find wisdom in other cultures, and they find a way to live now in the present, in that moment where we're confused. Oh, come on. This always reminds me of this lovely poem. I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth, and then I ask myself the same question. And this is that moment when I'm sitting in front of my desk and everyone has told me that every idea that I've ever had is wrong, and I gladly get up and move over to another one, because I can. There's no reason why you'd have to stop your journey short. There's no reason why you can't get out there and be a part of it right now. There's no reason why if something doesn't make sense to you, you can't look it right in the face and say, I love you, but I don't understand you. Can you please explain it to me? Most times people will have no problem doing just that. This always reminds me of this one thing because the medium, of course, is affecting the message. So I must give you this little poem. It is tiny. If you will so indulge me. It is The Perfect Tie by Shel Selverstein. And it reminds me of everything I want to learn in life. It reminds me of the truth versus the lie. There was once a boy named Gimmy Samroy, and he was nothing like me or you, because laying back and getting high was all he cared to do. And as a kid, he sat in the cellar sniffing airplane glue, and then he smoked bananas, which was the thing to do. And he tried Coca-Cola, breed helium on the slide. His life was an endless search to find the perfect tie. And grass just made him want to lay back and eat chocolate chip pizza all night. And the great things he wrote while he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light. And speed just made him rap all day, and reds just laid him back, and cocaine rose with sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back. He tried PCP and THC, but they didn't quite do the trick, and poppers blew his heart, and mushrooms made him sick. Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it too long. And his sheesh was just a little too weak and smack, where it was just a little too strong. Gueludes made him stumble, booze made him cry until he heard of a cat named Babab Fats, who knew of the perfect tie. Now Babab Fats was a hermit cat he lived up in Nepal, high on a craggy mountaintop up a sheer and icy wall. But hell says Roy, I'm a healthy boy, I'll cry or crawl or fly. So I'll find out, and I'll find that guru and give me a clue as to what is the perfect tie. So out and off goes, give me some Roy to the land that knows no time. Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb. And for 14 years he tries that cliff and back down again he slides. He sits and he cries and he climbs again, pursuing the perfect tie. He's grinding his teeth, his coughing blood, he's aching and shaking and weak. As starving and sore and bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak and his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf and he snarls the snarl of a rat and there in perfect repose and wearing no clothes sits the godlike Babab Fats. What's happening to Fats says Roy with joy, I've come to state my biz. I hear your hip to the perfect trip. Please tell me what it is. For you can see says Roy to he, I am about to die. So for my last ride Fats, how can I achieve the perfect high? Well, dog my cat says Babab Fats. Here's another burnt out soul who's looking for some alchemists to turn his trip to gold. But you won't find it no dealer stash, no, not on some druggy shelf. Son, if you would seek the perfect tie, you must find it in yourself. Why you jive motherfucker says Jimmy some Roy, I have climbed through rain and sleet. I have lost three fingers on my hands and four on my feet. I have braved the layer of the polar bear and taste the maggots kiss. Now you tell me the high is in myself? What kind of shit is this? And my ears before they froze off said Roy had heard all kinds of crap but I didn't climb for 14 years to listen to that sophomore rap and I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the match. So you tell me where the real stuff is, I'm gonna kill your guru ass. All right, okay, says bad bad bad. You're forcing it out of me. There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabali, a wretched land of stone and sand where snakes and buzzards scream and in the devil's guarded blooms the mystic titsi tree and every 10 years it blooms one flower as white as the Key West sky and he who eats of the titsi flower will know the perfect tie and the rush comes in like a tidal wave and it hits like a blazing sun and the high at last the lifetime and the down don't never come and but the Zabali land is ruled by a giant who stands 12 cubics high with eyes of red in his hundred heads he waits for passers by and you must slay the red eyed giants and swim the river of slime where the mucus beast they wait to feast on those who journey by and if you survive the giant and the beast and swim the slimy sea there is a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards that titsi tree to hell with your witches and giant says Roy to hell with beasts of the sea as long as the titsi flower blooms there is hope blooming in me and with tears of joy in his snow-blind eye Roy hands the guru of five then back down the icy mountain he crawls pursuing the perfect tie well that is that says Babapet sitting down on his stone facing another thousand years of talking to God alone it seems Lord says fat it's always the same old men or bright eyed youth it's always easier to sell them some shit than it is to give them the truth I'll leave you with a few last thoughts one from my favorite here Mr. Thompson morality is temporary wisdom is permanent that which someone is judging you for today may celebrating you for tomorrow you follow your heart you follow your crew you find your people and you move together you figure out where that wisdom is you know it's in that journey and as you're afraid and as you don't wanna share that code and as you're feeling little down just remember something I tell every student I've ever had that code is a living representation of who you are right now no more, no less that's it it is who you are and who you are going to be we don't know may show where you came from and that's good but it is a living representation of you right now and I hope that you will share it and I hope that you will join me on this so long thanks for all the fish I've really appreciated your time go out there and be somebody we've got a couple of minutes for Q&A if anyone has any questions I know it was sort of more motivational and technical but there's one question here in the middle there's just a mic coming to the side hey there what was the first time that code made you happy? the question there was what was the first time code made you happy? the first time is hard to remember I've done a lot of drugs but I remember the first time that it made me truly blissfully happy was when I could share it with someone else so I remember hacking on my own trying to figure out what it all meant and it wasn't until somebody who wasn't interested at all just came by and said what are you doing? I said wait a minute here come here let me share this with you so for me that was the joy and I think I've been chasing that high ever since as many people as I can get to thanks for that you want another question? no I can't get you illegal drugs awesome let's give him a big round of applause Liam