Welcome back to part two of our betweenisode! Everybody is working remotely now including ourselves, so today we continue the catch ups we were having with a number of longstanding buddies and chat about life after social distancing! The show is a back-to-back of four different conversations, the first being with Amos King, Chris Keathley, and Anna Neyzberg from Elixir Outlaws. After that we talk to Paul Schoenfelder, before getting on the line with Sophie DeBenedetto and Meryl Dakin. Last but not least we catch up with Dave Thomas. Our four conversations cover the same broad themes, and we mostly share our thoughts about what is happening in the world right now, how we are coping with working remotely, and what particular projects have been keeping us busy. Our guests share varying perspectives about what it means that we are restructuring the way we do things. We talk about how even if you worked remotely before, things feel different now, and we also consider the extra burdens of being a remote software developer. Other topics include the line between complaints and constructive criticism, wild animals roaming the streets, and the general atmosphere in our different locations. From a tech point of view, we touch on IoT development, various GitHub projects to get involved with, why students aren’t learning how to program properly anymore, and a lot more. Get it all here and make sure you stay tuned for episode one of season four!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Scaling up the NFL Draft website for remote screening.
• Home life and side projects in the quarantine: Mogde Podge, a baby, and game development.
• Shameless plugs from everybody: Binary Noggin, ElixirBridge, and Finch.
• Isolation, low supplies and trying to stay positive at present.
• Imagining roaming wild animals now that humans are in quarantine.
• Advice from Paul who works at home for surviving social distancing.
• What Paul is doing for Ockam to secure IoT devices.
• The danger of starting hack vulnerable tech companies.
• A plug from Paul to get involved with Lumen.
• Nature taking over; Meryl and Sophie’s experiences in Brooklyn and Westchester right now.
• Working from home versus working from home due to a global crisis.
• Domestic squabbles over bandwidth between Meryl and her software developer brother.
• Lessons learned to stay sane during quarantine: getting dressed.
• Extra tasks remote developers are having to do remotely; becoming project managers.
• The difference between complaints and legitimate critiques of work systems.
• Dave’s amazing remote communications setup 40 miles north of Dallas.
• The situation where Dave is with regard to coronavirus and freedom.
• How COBOL has not become too broad despite not using libraries.
• The history of programming languages that Dave teaches.
• That PDP-11 runs better emulated in Javascript than in its original hardware.
• A drawback of modern development: not understanding hardware.
• How Dave is digitizing his SMU courses due to teaching them online at present.
• All the effort Dave puts into grading his students’ exercises.
• Issues that coding is not taught rigorously enough; students can’t ‘program’.
• How well the human race is doing to mobilize en masse right now.
• Whether tech caused the crisis and humanity could manage this crisis 100 years ago.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Eric Oestrich — https://oestrich.org/
Justus Eapen — https://www.linkedin.com/in/justuseapen/
Amos King — https://www.linkedin.com/in/amosking/
Chris Keathley — https://keathley.io/
Anna Neyzberg — https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-neyzberg-93545316/
Elixir Outlaws — https://elixiroutlaws.com/
NFL Draft — https://www.nfl.com/draft/home
Modge Podge — https://www.amazon.com/Mod-Podge-Waterbase-16-Ounce-CS11302/dp/B001IKES5O
Star Trek — https://intl.startrek.com/
Sublime — https://www.sublimetext.com/
VSCode — https://code.visualstudio.com/
Binary Noggin — https://binarynoggin.com/
Connor Rigby — https://binarynoggin.com/author/connor/
ElixirBridge — http://elixirbridge.org/
Nico Piderman — https://github.com/sneako
Quinn Wilton — https://github.com/QuinnWilton
Jose Valim — https://github.com/josevalim
Finch Library— https://github.com/keathley/finch
Paul Schoenfelder — https://www.linkedin.com/in/gotbones/
Ockam — https://www.ockam.io/
Lumen — https://github.com/lumen/lumen
Timex — https://github.com/bitwalker/timex
Sophie DeBenedetto — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiedebenedetto/
Meryl Dakin — https://github.com/meryldakin
Flatiron — https://flatironschool.com/
Sophie DeBenedetto’s GitHub Post — https://www.thegreatcodeadventure.com/my-long-distance-relationship-with-github/
Elixir School — https://elixirschool.com/en/
Meryl Dakin’s Watch if Your Dare Episode — https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/watch-if-you-dare/e/68798094?autoplay=true
Luigi’s Mansion — https://www.nintendo.co.za/Games/Nintendo-Switch/Luigi-s-Mansion-3-1437312.html
Dave Thomas — https://pragdave.me/
COBOL — https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/index.htm
PD-11 — https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Electronic/PDP-11.html
SMU — https://www.smu.edu/lyle
Elixir Wizards Podcast — https://podcast.smartlogic.io
SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/

Special Guests: Amos King, Anna Neyzberg, Chris Keathley, Dave Thomas, Meryl Dakin, Paul Schoenfelder, and Sophie DeBenedetto.