 A JS developer is much more important than a CS developer, if there is such a thing, or a CS-developed bed. And so there's like a hierarchical system. It's not making these huge barriers between people who are real developers and not real. Your background in development is quite unique in that you didn't come from a traditional computer science background, you did like philosophy. So how did you actually get into development? I've been an interest in computers from a young age. And I first started HTML and CSS on like Neopets, which is like a kid's site where you look after like a virtual animal, and you can make your own like desktop, not desktop, sorry, website on there. So I made that, and forgot about it for a long time after that. When I got to university, things like Codecademy and other like online courses started coming out. But it was Codecademy I was introduced to by a friend. And then my final year I heard about bootgamps and I got like lost interest in the other things I was pursuing. So I thought, yeah, I'll give it a proper try and applied for what I'm going in. So what does a bootcamp entail? Is that like an intensive course or? Pretty much, yeah. For us, it meant that we worked in groups of four for 16 weeks on different projects. So starting off simple, something like making a blogging framework and then building up to using APIs and other frameworks like React. And how did you find like just the logic of computer science? I mean, I understood algebra a bit. That's the only thing with mathematics that made sense, which is weird. And then I did art. So it's kind of weird that it became a web designer kind of cryptically or UX designer. I mean, how did you feel like from the background of like philosophy, which you studied? I think philosophy did help a bit because it helps you to understand how to break things down. So with me, like maybe I want to learn, understand how to use React and it's like you need to understand all these things and all to understand React. And I understood that it's a journey where some people are like, oh, I like to react. I didn't get it. So I just never going to understand. And it's like, if you look at like, can't like that, then you're never going to understand can't. So it's like, helped me to break things down, but like, I didn't do very well at logic like in first year. So people often think, oh, you did logic. So you'll be good at it. But yeah, I don't know. Was it 12 weeks? The course that you did? Or how 16? So I mean, was there a moment there when you think, aha, okay, now it makes sense? Or is that like not necessary how it works? It was like a billion and a half moments, I would say. Like, yeah, I remember callbacks very clearly because that was one of the ones where we were all stuck for a while. And then it eventually made sense in one day. But lots of times it's like, you get to the point where you're like dreaming about coding. So thinking about all the videos you've been watching and hearing like the theme tunes or different videos in your head, like, so you're living and breathing it. So it's like a lot easier for those aha moments to happen. What was the most challenging thing to figure out then? I think for me, the first time I tried to understand how an API works. So like calling something and then bringing it into the front end was really difficult for me to wrap my head around. It was mostly repetition. Like even there's projects after the bootcamp that I did. So the projects stayed helped a lot with reinforcing things. But during the bootcamp, I was like, I'm never going to understand this. And it's just like, okay, no, it's just really too difficult for me. So it was difficult. I think even more than the technology, it was more... There can be things that are too hard for you now. But if you keep trying, eventually, sometimes you'll get them. Yeah, the framework actually starts limiting what you're trying to do because it's like this big black box of stuff that you don't know what's going in there. You don't understand when it comes to performance, why something's not happening. I mean, how do you feel or what your feelings about frameworks in general? And if I look at that, like React, obviously I'm still quite junior, like coming up to two and a half years now, but I couldn't tell you how React works internally. I do worry about that, people often say things too magical. And I think if you started off learning React and you understood how to use React, then maybe you would definitely miss the fundamentals of JavaScript. It's better than something like Angular, where you are just putting elements into your HTML. And I think it's going to be a lot less transparent, like you're doing things in a very angular way, whereas at least React lets you do things in a very JavaScript way. But yeah, I think it's easy to win user framework to get lost in framework-specific stuff. But then the other thing is you're always forced to write everything in vanilla.js, which requires you to know a lot of stuff. So it's almost like, you know, which way to go. Some of the folks at work we were talking about, some of the tools which are adopted by the community are often not necessarily the best technically ones, but they're the most approachable. So it's like WordPress took off because it was like the one-click install, so loads of designers use WordPress. Or JQuery made things easier. Do you think that is the future of tools which are just make the jobs easier for developers or how do you think developers should approach it? I think it's annoying because the gap is always going to be there because obviously, well, there's the whole scoffing over PHP in sort of, in the developer community, it's not very nice, but people... There's the drag-and-drop Squarespace WordPress sort of very simple development world, and then there's a lot of real development where people are doing like more, like, I don't know, JavaScript, Ruby, that kind of not out-of-the-box sort of solution. And I think it's more about bridging the gap because I feel like often people will start off with something that, especially if they want to get into development, maybe they'll start off with a WordPress site, and then they realize they need to edit it in some way that WordPress.com can't let them do it. And then often give up because they didn't realize that it's going to be a whole thing to get from there to a WordPress.org sort of like them, that figure by themselves sort of site. So I don't know. I'm not sure if development will go that way because I think in a way it's trying to differentiate itself, differentiate itself. So it doesn't end up like AI taking over our jobs and stuff, but yeah, I don't know, it's difficult. I hear conversations about like PHP or people just doing HTML, they're not real developers. There does seem a bit of condescension between what the real developer does and the fake developer uses frameworks and libraries. And there seems to be, I don't know, something to do with ethics. And I know you did philosophy, so. And what do you think about that attitude? I think gatekeeping is a big issue in coding. Like, I don't know if it's to protect people's salaries or their perceived place in the technological world, but it seems like people love to just grind a little people down and to make sure they seem better than others. So I mean, how do we actually challenge that kind of elitist attitude? Because it is development, like someone's using WordPress. Okay, they're not coding everything, but it's still, you know, what they're creating is still a real thing. I mean, I don't really understand. I mean, we have this in the design world, like real designers use Blar or real designers do X. And it just seems like very like strange arbitrary rules set up to, again, like very protectionist. I mean, how do we break those barriers? I think a lot of time it's like elevating things that are seen as easy, because like HTML and CSS, people can argue about HTML, but accessibility is a big issue. And lots of people don't do it very well. So HTML in itself can be a job if people wanted it to be. CSS, people like to joke that CSS is a bad API and all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, it's very difficult to do it very well. And so HTML and CSS developers should be hired alongside a DS developer. Like it shouldn't be a strange role. And just like not devaluing the work that people do would be a good start. Why do you think people do that? Is it just, again, the protectionist attitude of they want to be seen as much more important. So a JS developer is much more important than a CS developer, if there is such a thing, or a CS developer better than it. So there's like a hierarchical system. Yeah. I think the way it's protecting themselves, because a lot of people have known Homsky and doing computer science means that you've learned a certain amount of things. You wouldn't have concentrated on HTML and CSS and JS if you did that. So it makes more sense to be like, oh yes, Java is the best, most powerful language when that was what you learned and that's what you're good at. So I think it is a lot of gatekeeping to protect themselves. And you've worked on a project called Wildcard JS? Yes. Could you talk a bit more about that? Yeah, it's for people who are underrepresented genders. We're having our first hackathon soon. Well, hack day, I should say, really. What's that going to tell them? I just want people to get together and work on a product they want to work on, meet some people, have some nice food. Just people from different backgrounds? Yeah. You started off your development life in a boot camp. I mean, what was your relationship with designers in that? I mean, how have you and how have you adapted the way that you work? I've had a lot of excellent designers, like my first job, which was a small startup. And it was very difficult working with designers when obviously they just give you a brief, they are gone as soon as they finished it and then you're working along with like another member of the team to make sure things are up to spec. And it's only a very different working at my current job where a designer is alongside you during the process. And it's so much smoother and it's interesting to see how collaboration improves the process so much. I think a lot of developers like to think that once you have a design, then you can just build whatever the site is and you don't need any more input, but often that's not true. So you need to do more iterative stuff when you find that. I mean, do you do a lot of paired programming? Because I've never really had the chance to really do it myself because most places I've worked at I've actually just written the front end code myself because it just, I've always just found it easier, just do it and then maybe a developer coming and help refactor things to make it much more performant or accessible or whatever. I mean, how have you actually worked directly with the designers then? Mostly on assets, I think, in our sort of assets and site design. So it will be like the way a response site should look, the way that it should look on desktop, that kind of stuff, as well as the assets that are needed for different viewports and stuff like that. In terms of the actual cycle and when you're actually working with a designer, how has that handoff process happened? I mean, do you stop thinking about the ideas together like a sort of sketching session I want a whiteboard or do they, like a brief is given or the challenge or whatever that the thing that they're trying to create and then they come back to you with a solution? I mean, how does the collaborative process work? It's collaborative, the way it's started. There's the customer, which in our case is the sales person or whoever is trying to make this new thing. They will go to the designer, they'll work together to come up with a brief and then they will come up with the assets and designs. They'll come to us. And then when that's decided, we can work back and forward to make sure that it actually works with what is needed. Do you do any design work yourself then or is that not something you're not really interested in? I'm trying to learn, but it's difficult to find resources, so yeah. In resources and just how to design? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I've been doing this almost 20 years now and I still don't know what I'm doing. I mean, I think it's always gonna be an ever ending story. So I suppose just to wrap it up, what are we saying? Learning to code is just a matter of time. Yes. And there is ethical issues in the industry of protectionism. I mean, do you think there is any solution to smashing the glass wall or just keep on trucking? To open up resources to people who aren't necessarily very small children or people who are maybe of a more adult age, more resources for them to do things for low cost. Like a lot of boot camps, my boot camp was free, but a lot of boot camps are very expensive and it's like another layer of gatekeeping again. So maybe it's a big issue because obviously that'll be like changing education system, but yeah, there's a lot of stuff that could be done. The only thing I really care about is the speed in which you can create a prototype, how you can show that intent, show a vision, I don't know, show an iteration on a feature or create something entirely new with minimal cost.