 Hello everyone, it's the spotlight live. Look it. I'm back took a little break a couple of weeks At raw code a bunch of people with some awesome shows together I am here with probably the cutest puppy and to me the cutest project out there with GRPC I have today on spotlight life. We have April Kyle Nasi. She's an open-source strategist and program manager for Google We're talking GRPC. We're talking puppies. We're having a lot of fun spotlight live starts Now so now before I put bring in April I have to you know take care of some you know some of some business here So CNCF disclaimer This is an official live stream of the CNCF and it's such a subject to the CNCF code of conduct Please do not add anything to the chat or questions that be in violation of the code of conduct basically be respectful of one another I want to welcome April to the show. Welcome. Hey, hi I'm here for puppy talk anything about puppies dogs. We can just forget the Open-source stuff. Yeah, we should just talk puppies. I'm serious I shouldn't you know, but folks. Hey, look, this is an interactive show again everything that we do in cloud native TV Is interactive? It's only as good as the folks that are involved in and joining and having fun So I want to kind of kick us off But if you all have questions, please feel free to ask those questions in chat Don't be shy rich burrows. I know you're out there start asking some questions. All right So let's talk about GRs PC. Let's talk about the project background. Like how did it start? Give me give me give me the start the beginnings Yeah Excuse me, so if you're all familiar with Google and our internal infrastructure, which I don't expect that necessarily everyone is we had a internal RFC infrastructure that was called stubby and it had been in use for over a decade and it was decided to kind of rework it and Take advantages of things like HTT P2 and to also decouple it from some of our internal infrastructure And we wanted to make it open source and we wanted to build something that would become like the standard for you know, RFC server communication And so that was that was how it started. It had a lot of goals It's been going Handcakes just had a birthday for five years. Oh, I should know better. Sorry However, many candles were on the last cake And yeah, so we open sourced it and it's been been going strong for a few years heavily used internally, of course at Google and then a lot of you know big names CNC of customers, of course are using and I forget which Number gRPC was to CNCF, but it was definitely one of the earlier projects So it's gRPC has been there for a while Incubated project much like Falco we interpret we use a lot of the gRP stuff gRPC stuff in there And it's it's it's awesome. It's a great great tool. So let me ask you this again What was the original problem we were trying to solve the gRPC? I mean, you know, we had we had the tooling already ourselves It was let's Redo this to make it, you know work better for not only our internal use but then also Make it an open source Project that then anyone can use, you know, one of the things that we say Is like if you want to run your business at Google scale or run it the way that Google does This is this is the way to to do it, you know We use the tools that we're actually using And there was definitely this desire to have it be, you know, the actual standard across the industry So not just something that, you know, was exclusive to our own infrastructure so And bringing that to the masses like that's the whole open source thing and I think you know There's been so many projects come out of Google obviously Kubernetes being one of them, right and how You heard of them So like in terms of like like early stages of getting in folks hinge when when you were like hey This is this is, you know, this is gaining a ton of traction people are using this for ways that we need to think about Yeah, you know, it's interesting One of the things that like, you know, I know we'll we'll talk about our little puppy friend later But one of the things that you know kind of led to meeting something here was like our piece are, you know RBCs are boring, right? Like it's not it's not summer. It's no Falco, you know, like it's not some sort of revolutionary fancy technology So, you know, it wasn't necessarily this, you know, super You know buzz buzz word thing that everyone was gonna glom on to We did have, you know, some early adopters like Kaur it was Sorry, I'm trying to think of the first the first folks who are using it was like there was universities and We also had, you know, some of the the, you know, I can't name everyone But some of the big names that you might know of like Netflix for instance is you know, using GRPC Juniper Cisco cockroach labs was also one of the first ones So, you know, we definitely was kind of having those conversations with other Companies and projects that were doing similar things and kind of how can we help build out their need? And those were the folks that were there at the start or OS And so as we've Gone on, you know, several years one of the other Things that I think is kind of unique to GRPC is that there's in I Can't even count right now how many different language implementations there are So we're a little different then you know kind of When you think of the projects that like something like, you know, a Kubernetes for instance You've got one big bulk of code. So when we talk about like maintainers and things like that, you know it's focused on one project but with GRPC there's like six or seven that we are officially supporting and then we Absolutely encourage the community to make their own language implementations for GRPC as well. So that's kind of how there's a rust implementation out there Microsofted.net Apples were working on the Swift implementation so you can do it with a lot of different Languages, which I think is really unique and part of why we good at the way we did Got it. And I mean there was a question, you know about like You know, I just put this here I think it's more of a statement I guess but like it's more of in my experience your piece uptake has been incredibly slow Which is a shame but one thing Here is and we can all read that right? It's nice that you Right and you know, I've seen that as well. I mean it's it's really kind of kind of cool But maybe you can elaborate more further about like those integration points Yeah, and I'm you know full disclaimer not a developer myself So I can't tell you the full ins and outs of GRPC web and the the coding that's going on But I think that's that's definitely something that is kind of a good and bad thing about having so many different Language implementations is you know kind of spreading your your maintainers across the board GRPC web Was one of those things that you know a lot of people were asking for For a long time. I think it was coupon Austin was when we were able to say like it's coming so it's still you know, I don't want to be the the standard of you know PR is accepted but We you know have the implementation and you know, we're certainly working on it And honestly one of the things that we need probably the most of all from people is just that feedback of the use cases because again We know what we're using GRPC for and we know what a lot of you know Kind of the the key or big end users are using it for but we love to hear from You know regular folks. It's not all enterprises that are using GRPC. In fact when we had coupon Austin we had I Forget his name, but there was a gentleman who was telling us about like he was using GRPC to relay weather data from like the weather you know Station he had outside of his house and like you know Just pulled up the laptop there in the session and was kind of showing us how we were doing how he was doing it It was really cool because that's not something That you know, we are typically thinking of when we think of someone using GRPC We don't think about the little you know hobby projects normally So that's the kind of stuff that like it's really great, you know, and you're mentioning, you know, talking about rust knowledge I know rust is of course Becoming much more widely used and so there is an implementation The hotness evpf rust was some all the cool kids are doing it is what I hear So There is an implementation out there. It's in yeah and tonic and it is we have in GRPC. There's like Three different repos. I mean that we use there's the main one which has all the languages There's also an ecosystem which is where some of those third-party Projects and then other projects that kind of add on or extend to GRPC live so I think that some of the rust stuff lives in there and By all means check it out play around with it You know the people who are working on that and maintaining it of course, you know want feedback and a lot of it is You know, let's figure out what folks are actually using and meeting and then that helps everybody all the maintainers figure out You know what to do next so I'm gonna go on a little open-source soapbox right here and again I'm not gonna put you on the spot. Oh six Kelly jack, but I'm gonna I'm gonna say this in general if you're seeing things like, you know You performance or integration issues and all of those things like this is the beauty of open source You can help to contribute until the you know, you have direct access through open source to be able to do that Yeah, I mentioned Falco, but like, you know, those are things where we've make the we make the projects better that way And I'm sorry to GRPC, you know other out there It's just that's that's the thing that is is awesome about is having that community be able to do that You don't have that in other communities. You don't have that in closed source technologies, right? So this is really useful feedback that we're seeing here. Love to see in the GRPC community doing stuff there as well, right? So All right. Yeah, I was gonna say Kelly jack I think I have an issue assigned to me right now about our rust documentation on the website. So I might you know My opinion was a melt there. Um, yeah So he's got a PR or her. I'm sorry. I don't know if this is a they I guess they I've got a PR I need to submit to hear so great love seeing this and you got it live. We have you documented here Let's make this happen. That's it. Let's make it rain. So, um, I'm gonna make a cry, you know So we're gonna get the pancakes in a second I've been purposely holding a star of the show since whatever and by the way if you looked at the graphic about I put the Amazing graphic by the way. Thank you so much for doing that. So very cool So if somebody wants to get involved in GRPC, can you kind of give them a you know a TLDR? Yeah, um Jump in the water's fine. Basically. Um, we have we have monthly community meetings one of the things that we did a few months ago for the GRPC birthday this year was kind of You know draw out some of the folks that have cool demos and things that they want to share that they've been building with GRPC Always welcome any type of presentation or even just you know coming and showing the coolest stuff you're building Doesn't have to be anything fancy um, I think documentation is the number one thing that the former one of the former GRPC product managers that was here he and I Would routinely You know go speak to people and be like, yes, we know documentation is terrible. It's just kind of constantly Apologize for that. We were fortunate to get some time with the tech writer that CNCF provided to the project Gosh was it late last year time no longer has meaning So we definitely made a lot of improvements in the website and a lot of improvements in documentation overall, but ultimately It's people who are trying to use it trying to figure out how to make a contribution things like that that That's where we figure out what needs to be fixed. So please don't be shy You know if you are trying to do something with the documentation Trying to go through a quick start or whatever and it doesn't make sense or you run into a blocker Please file an issue and tell us because we're happy to fix it. We just don't know So that's our number one ask usually is Tell us what's broke and we will fix it We just have to know we have a lot of open issues Because we are we do not auto close we frequently have discussions about that in our project meetings, but there's a lot of open issues still so of course there's plenty of things that folks can jump in and help out with But a lot of it also is even just if it's something that you also experience an issue with or wish there was a feature Let us know. Um, the features are done in grpc via a process That I always mix up rfcs because we like to make it as confusing as possible So we have g rfcs to put in a new feature into g rpc um Then g rfcs live in their own Repose wells that relatively easy to find Please read through those and again, you don't have to code anything but just tell us if you're a user or a potential user Hey, this would work for me or this wouldn't you know, we that's those getting those use cases is really the biggest You know easy contribution anyone can make no code required. Just tell us how to use it So Fantastic. All right. So we haven't we got involved. We figure these things. Let me let me ask you this question here Um, what are some things you would have done as a project you would have done different? um You know, I wasn't there at the very beginning So I can't speak from day one. Um, but I can't speak from my day one Um, which at this point I've been at google for four and a half years So I guess I came not too long after g rpc was born. Um I think One of the things that I you know looking now going back to and one of the things I was excited about to work on with g rpc was the fact that it was this Large project with a really large community. Um that needed a lot of structure and you know It's kind of the chance to get in and set up the framework for Growing the community and getting you know the organization for the project going um Priorities being what they are and and you know things shifting I didn't get to do as much of that yet as I would have liked to In the process of working on it now, um, you know Uh a lot of it. So I think you see like we've been uh, we've had an open application for graduation with cncf for A year and a half two years now. It's been a while. Um, and a lot of the feedback came around parts of like governance that just weren't clear and You know, I kind of that's like one of those things that yeah, we we can make that better and we should do that and should have done that Um, so that would be really my big thing is like just from the very beginning Making it very clear, you know those steps of how to get involved and You know, um the different processes that we do have because it is kind of You know different from Some open source projects because this is something that you know, we are using internally. It's part of our infrastructure So there's that natural kind of conflict that comes up sometimes with specific You know feature requests like we're there are going to be times where and there have been times where we will have a fundamental disagreement on You know the way something should be architect, um, and that's okay um, but you know ultimately You know, I definitely would have Been better about that from the beginning of kind of acknowledging that that was always going to be there Um and making it really, you know clear with folks and you know Putting the making sure that people understood the processes and the ways that they could you know communicate Make their own proposals and things like that. Hopefully that makes sense Oh, it makes complete sense and if you think about it, you know, google contribute is contributing People to be able to like make this happen and you know That's you know, and if you hear things of contributor diversity and all those types of things It's like look, I mean you're you're still assigning people to do open source And that's making putting technology in people's hands for them to also contribute, right? So that shouldn't be that shouldn't be frowned upon what I think it should be is this more of more of the The guiding light right the guiding hand to be able to like to get other people involved in specific projects and all of that So, you know, I understand if it's just one, you know You know, someone vendor doing and saying look, this is really like a marketing aspect of something right, right? The reality is is we're guiding hands to project to to folks contributing to the various projects out there Like g r p c like falco and all those so I mean again It's it's it's something I think when you do it right and you have a community that's pushing for all of these things It's such a beautiful thing and I you know, I look at your You know dockerpoles and all the people that are you know your adoption is incredible. It's like 100 million people You know, you know, it's it's incredible, right? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm we're happy right we're at 30 at this point, right? So it's just like, you know So it's definitely a good thing. So okay, listen, we got the business out of the way All right. Well, wait before before we get into The star of the show Yes, any any plugs anything you want to talk about. Oh, yes. Um, I asked the team What they was lying to plug. Sorry. I the one thing I we always have this with like the cncf folks of like What's coming up? What can we highlight at a conference? I'm like, well, we have releases every six weeks So we don't really get to do like the big release But I will call out a couple of things about releases. Um, obviously, you know, the project is g r p c You think you know what that g stands for It actually changes every release So, um, we have a file in the the github org of like what each one has been named And whoever is the release manager for that particular release gets to pick what the g stands for I am curious to see at what point we will run out of g words Um, I keep pushing for like, you know specific ones in halloween, but I don't I don't get to pick. So, uh, Although I asked him what are some past g's like so we can kind of go through a couple of those that you remember Great. I mean, there's some of them are easy great You know, um, a lot of times they're trying to try to find the list now a lot of times they will pick. Um Just like it's almost like somebody opened up a dictionary and You know pulled regular poor weird things. Um The lot we've had a gummy bear giggle Green gets So wait, it can be complex. It can be Wait, hold on. So it can be, um, like complex words and comment like so it can be sentences. All right So it could be game of thrones. No game of thrones could be we do have One of them was guadalupe river park conservancy, which is also a g rpc and that's a park here in san jose Um, so when we've all in when the team does like volunteer stuff, we'll do it at their Park because I mean, how can you not the names match up? Um, so yeah, it does change every time. Um, there are some that I don't Like the names are Yeah, but the first one the 1.0 the g stood for g rpc Because we're very very imaginative Yeah, that's great. And um, let me let me ask you this. Um, when is the godfather release because I want I want to do some contributions to that Right, right. I'll have to make I'll let the team know we've had a request for that. Um But yeah, so you did ask about upcoming things. I apologize. I got distracted with fun stuff. Um, This is a live stream. We go we'll go everywhere if you want. So don't so, um One of the things is in the oh, so we're about to have 1.40 and so in the 1.40 release c core will finally have basic configurable retry support um, and of course the Lead maintainer said, you know, it still doesn't include transparent retries But that will be later this quarter and he added and it doesn't yet include hedging and some restrictions apply Void were prohibited by law So we have fun But that's the the new big one that he wanted to highlight for c core and then just overall I mean, there's a lot of new functionality being put around put in around microservices and all because you know everybody's all about microservices these days, so I've lost I've heard of them. I heard yeah, I think it's I think they're gonna be a thing. It's weird. Yeah Um, somebody somebody said that they put together a hello world with g rpc client and server, which is great That's cool. Thanks for getting started. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, so all right There we go pancakes. Let's talk about pancakes. I want to know The origin of pancakes any of the whole get our audience that story. I want to know we all want to know I mean, it's kind of like when I take the dogs to my in-laws. It's like, I know you just want to see the dog It's fine. You know, it's not about us anymore. Um So, yeah rpc Not exciting really not cool. Not something that people are like, oh, I love it. It's so cute and cuddly So we had for a long time been talking about, you know, you look at like the go-go for the amazing success that they've had with that And everybody loves the gopher Um, we were, you know, kind of talking on the team of like we need a we need a mascot We need a cute animal. So in much the same way as we do for release as we were like, all right what animal starts with g and could potentially like You know, make it fit like that makes sense for using it and also be cuddly because some of the suggestions were like you know, weird Dinosaur things and you know that like you only find encyclopedias and I'm like, that's not no one wants to cuddle that that's not cute Um, and so we've been talking about it. It wasn't like a real thing. It was kind of like, yeah, we need to do this and then one day I went to lunch with Eric Anderson who is the lead maintainer on a lot of our java and We went to lunch and we were talking is one of those things where like you're talking about something and Just all of the pieces just fall into place um, but it I just I you know had the realization of like a golden retriever gr And then, you know, who doesn't love dogs obviously i'm a crazy dog lady, but like who doesn't hold the dog And then through the process of Eric Eric and I kind of ripping on names it hit of like pancakes PC And thus pancakes was born Uh, and we actually had, you know, some initial design work done He was very cute cuddly But we just kind of we were at the process at the same time changing the g rpc logo with cncf their designers were working on that And I think it was just at that time like nobody really had an appetite to completely launch out the mascot But what we did was um, we basically one year kind of forgot about g rpc's birthday And I did a blog post where I was like, hey, we got you a puppy Sorry, we feel bad. We forgot your birthday. Well, we got you a puppy And it also timed with we did our first g rpc conference that year So that was like what 2019 um and As part of the conference we had golden retrievers brought in So we were able to kind of tie everything together of like here's our new mascot And here's our conference and here's golden retrievers that came in during that was like the break for the conference Everybody's on the floor Petting golden retrievers. There's an organization in the bay area that um, you know raises them as seeing Idars and a lot of them are retired and this is what they do is they do kind of advocacy work So that was just like how can you not love any excuse for? You know dogs at a conference um We have a lot of fun with it. We had uh, we have little like for instance, there's a little pancakes teaching Let's talk about that Let me talk about that real quick because like I talked to a couple of people on our marketing team, right and and says And then we're like Oh, you're talking to the puppy people today. It was like it was like it was like they were laughing. They're so much It's like that because the key chains there was everyone at conferences like oh, we got this really cute key chains And so it's like now I can tell them the whole story like I can you all can watch this now You could understand where the grpc comes the the what pancakes name comes from fantastic I I always tell eric that he is the godfather for pancakes because it was very much that like You know like when you are a developer and you're the rubber duck, you know You're just talking to to try to make the brain work like eric. What's my rubber duck basically? and Not only do we do the uh, you know, obviously we have key chains. We had plush as well for our first conference which I think there's a few of them that have been living alone In one of the in our Sunnyvale building at my desk for the past year So hopefully it's not like lord of the flies in my desk when I get back with a bunch of pancakes But we had plush for the conference and we've got you know the the key chains and then really the big thing is every Just kind of like what we did with today for the you know Cloud native tv and for any sort of event that we go to like I don't actually I No, I don't have one from but um Our last in-person coupon in San Diego pancakes was surfing We have an amazing sticker vendor that we use in portland That's called sticker ninja. I'll plug them. Um They had a really great like holographic So it's like, you know, this holographic pancakes is surfing and he's got the you know cncf coupon flag In his hands and we also did one for oscon There's a pancakes of him, you know with like the portland t-shirt We try to put most of them up on the get hub repo. So if you go into get hub For grpc and I'm trying to pull it up so I can give you the proper repo name, but it's in the community Repo and there's a folder of pancakes designs And we have some of them from there's the basic ones of like he's got his ball cap on he's got a You know he's holding a ball. Um, he's got a stick, you know The other one that's really fun is another part of um You know with grpc having uh using protobuf and proto. Um someone on twitter had said Uh, they had done a tweet of like why did they call it grpc? They should have called it to pro pro talk and sir And so we have a we made a It's like pancakes with a badge. Um And so that's kind of an example of like, you know fun stuff that the community has done or has the idea Pancakes is there for it. Um, so, um, I don't know if you want to you know, we might have some cool Pancakes and falco stuff coming um Spotify Spotify, um at kube con was kopenhagen Um when they did their presentation about their use of grpc. So we did a special spotify pancakes, um and It's I I saw i think they have it on some of their presentation stuff But it's basically um, it's pancakes with he's wearing Headphones and he's got their logo And apparently internally the spotify in spotify the spotify kubernetes team was really jealous of the grpc team Because they had their own special pancakes So, um, you know anytime you can be somehow cooler than kubernetes. I consider that to be a win So, uh, we definitely have a lot of fun with it. It is definitely You know, it's something that we similar to the go-go for like anyone's You know, if you're artistically minded and want to try to draw pancakes, you know Hanging out with your project mascot or having fun, you know, whatever the next I guess we're going back to la this year. So I haven't quite well. It's probably going to be hollywood themed. Let's be honest um, but whatever, you know location We are happy to have pancakes come and and join and you're welcome to uh, you know Do the same just like you do with a gopher Awesome. I'll tell you that tell you this we got kelly jack. You bet you're gonna get some stickers. All right. You're doing a hell of a job with grpc web stuff. I mean All across the board nix packages. It's it's phenomenal So I gotta do a couple of plugs. Okay. You might hanging out for a little while. I do a couple of plugs All right. So first off before we go, uh, I'm gonna let you go. I'm gonna we're gonna talk for a couple seconds here. Let um Um Lastly, I want to is there anything you want to say to community right now in general before before I do a couple plugs Oh my gosh. Um Thanks for being awesome and being there. Um, we do have Amazing, you know, the people that are using grpc are always just like we see here It's like, you know, they're just trying and trying to get it work and then, you know, throwing in Uh contribution, so it's been it's it's been a great bunch of folks and it's one of my Favorite, you know communities and projects to work with so Thanks. Awesome. Yeah So thanks for being on and hanging out here. I'd love to, you know I'll be hanging out for this real quick So, um, everyone by the way follow if you haven't already follow cloud native tv Um, it really helps the show for you know, twitch if you're watching this on the replay Hit that follow above all right It really helps um, not only us but helps all the projects involved that are, you know Getting more projects on here and all of that so Y'all know about kubecon. I'm sure that uh pancakes is going to make an amazing appearance in la with like, you know I'm assuming I don't know a tox or a ball gun will have to figure that all out Uh registration for kubebon in cloud native con north america is open. Um, and everyone There's a link and I also put it in the chat. I'll put it in the chat as well Um, so, you know, check it out. I'll be there god willing. Um, I'm sure april will be here god willing all of the Who's who of in the cloud name space also you're going to see a bunch of amazing talks Amazing, you know, just everything about it just being together again. I'm so excited for so please, you know go and check that out um last As well as in the cloud native tv like we have stickers and swag now, which is incredible It's really cool. So you'll there's a starter kit there as well We'll be giving some of them out in a couple of weeks. Um The road to kube con the summer letting everybody relax, but we're gonna start giving out some of some cool stuff. So um, again Thanks for that. So That's pretty much my spiel april. I appreciate you and g rpc and pancakes for being on the show this week Um, and remember you for having us. Yeah, it was lovely having you so and remember community The spotlight is always on you