Season 6 Episode 3

Live streaming is popular among developers for many reasons. I discuss this and more with FullQueueDeveloper (Daniel) in this episode. Thanks to Daniel for taking the time to talk with me and live-streaming this event.

Transcription

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Compile Suite podcast or video if you are watching this on YouTube. Whichever one you're doing,

we will put links in the show notes. This is another special episode here. We have a guest today, and we're gonna talk about something that, I think a lot of developers do and and we're both passionate about this. I've got, you will know them as full queue developer or Daniel. And he is live streaming this on his stream.

Hello, stream. And we are gonna be talking about streaming as part of our developer process and kind of our developer life here. So without further ado, let's jump in. Daniel, please go ahead and introduce yourself.

Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for having me on, Peter. My name is FullQ Developer because, well, full stack just doesn't encompass enough of what I do. Not only do I do the back end and the front end, but of course, the iOS and the Android and the DevOps and the marketing and promotion on TikTok, etcetera. You need you need a new name for that.

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And as I've grown, I feel like there's so much more that that name encompasses. But yes, I've consulted, and freelanced, and employed as an iOS developer as well as all the other kinds of developers too.

I think that's enough for an introduction. Oh, and I started streaming about 20 months ago.

20 months ago, but it seems like a lifetime. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I've been reborn so many times.

Well, you know, let's, and it's funny you mentioned that because I recently renamed my my stream. That then becomes complicated because, like you say, so many people know you by by so many other names. We were talking about this before we started recording. You know, let's dive in here. What made you decide to do start streaming to begin with?

So many things. Of course, if there was only one reason, I would probably ignore it. But I guess the the primary reason is to meet new people. And I can say we got a stamp of success on that. New people right here.

I guess in the we have a pandemic in the world, and people are reacting in all kinds of different ways. And the Internet is a beautiful way to meet people that you would never have met walking along the street or something like that. So, yeah. Meeting new people was was number 1. I'm a developer.

I'm actually pretty bad at the video games that I like, like StarCraft or Heroes of the Storm. No one's gonna watch me if I stream those games. They're they're going to mock me, and, perhaps perhaps even rightfully so. You know what I'm good at? I'm good at writing code.

And I I saw other people kind of streaming some code, and I'm like, hey, I think I think I can do this. And the third reason was to try to make people happy. I feel like the the best way to make yourself happy is to create your own happiness. And I wanted to show how I'm creating my apps, how I'm creating my little beaver colonies and and timber born. Mhmm.

And, you know, also talking about creativity directly by we do some readings from this book every now and again. Every every stream, not now and again.

Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. We have very similar, goals as to how some of this came about because, you know, it's kind of the same thing. I was like, well, I could stream games.

Right? I'm an avid gamer. I've been a gamer all my life, but everybody does that. Right? And and and like you said, I'm not particularly fan like like stunningly fantastic at any one particular game.

And I didn't wanna do just a, hey, here's me playing a game thing. And and so I thought about some of my other goals. And, the reason that I started doing not only the streaming, but the podcast, the blog, all of that stuff was because I realized through some jobs that I'd had in the park where I couldn't really, I can't talk about the work that I did there. And so I needed a way to show the world, look, I can do these things. Because I also have big gaps in my resume where it's like, yeah.

I did some stuff for a few years and you're just gonna take my word for it. So I thought doing a stream and all these other things is a way not only for me to record my own knowledge, but to to put it out in the world and show people. And another one, especially with the stream, was to really show people, look, you know, anyone can do this. Right? Anyone can make things.

Whether it's a program, a nice picture, a painting. You know, whatever the level of creativity is, I believe everyone can do it.

And Absolutely.

This was my way of showing, look. Look. If I can do it this badly, you can do better. Right? So it sounds like we had very similar goals there.

Right?

That's chapter 1 of this book, everyone creates. There you go. Yeah. And I think, like, creation inspires creation. Inspires creation.

Greatness inspires greatness. I was watching a whole lot of Project Runway a few years back when I started my Subway app underway, and it would just get me fired up, and I'd I'd go program I'd just go program some Swift, like Yep. Dresses and programming, nothing to do with each other, except except it was so inspirational. Just seeing people just really go for it and really get that dress looking just right.

And and I think it's important for folks, who are who are watching your stream right now or listening to this podcast or or watching replays of this video to understand that there's this often there's this misconception, I think, that, when you do these things, like like programming for example, that there has to be some end goal, some end product that ships, and that's not necessarily the case. I don't know about you, but I know for me, I I create way more than I ever ship because a lot of it is about that personal discovery and about that learning. Right? I don't if I go learn something, I spin up a project. I'm sure you do the same thing.

Right? And we may do that on our streams. Certainly, a lot of the streamers we know, shout out to the folks we know out there, that's a lot of it. Right? We we get together on these streams, and we have the chat rooms like your chat room going right now that I can see.

Well done, chat room. You know, all of these things where we just get together and, like you said, with the pandemic and everything else, it's just like a little virtual space, where we get together and we have a club. We have fun with it, which is always the most important thing to me. Even when I'm doing my day job and I have my teams of developers, the number one thing I always say to them is make sure you're enjoying what you do. Right?

Because number 1, if you're not enjoying it, it's not the thing for you. And number 2, if you are enjoying it, you're gonna take away from that way more than if it just feels like work. And you're gonna

Exactly.

You you're gonna go that extra step without even realizing it, and you're pushing those boundaries all the time. Right? I don't know about you, but certainly the folks who watch my stream, for example, they used to be screwing up all the time, and I don't mind it. I'll make fun of myself. They can make fun of me.

Because, again, part of that is having everybody understand not every single line of code we write is perfect and work. Right? You know? Exactly. It's it's the screwing up part that you learn from.

So, you know, how do you handle that on your streams if you're doing something and it all goes completely astray?

Oh, man. Well, I guess for code, I guess I guess I had a vision for, like, oh, I would screw up and write a long right long wrong line of code, like you just said. And I would go on Stack Overflow and figure it out together, and that'd be great. And that would be a great learning moment to see. Hey, look, even me with over 20 years professional experience, coding since I was in grade school, even I write bad code.

It's the things that fall outside of that that really, throw me for a loop. Like, Yep. Like audio problems or something in some technical issue, or or like sensitive stuff like like passwords. Yeah.

Yep. I

shared my IP address once on stream, and, oh, man. Have you Oh,

good, Yeah.

No. Yeah.

Little tip there for folks on that one. What I do is, very early on, I I knew it's like, okay, this is gonna be a problem. If I I I I just sort of trained myself, like, never do anything sensitive on the stream. But if you do, like, for example, when I'm working on my game or something like that, it has telemetry deck in there. Right?

But let's be honest, you know, it's pretty harmless. So if I accidentally show my ID for my telemetry deck reference to to that app and so on, and someone takes it, the worst they're gonna do is send me, some telemetry. Right? You know? So so it's it's like, okay.

Try not to, but it's not the end of the world. It's it's a it's a read only thing. That is definitely something is you do have to remember that, you're streaming because the more you do this, like, even as we're doing this right now, you know, you become very comfortable with it and you forget that there's people watching. You forget that there's a thing recording, people can watch it later. You forget the oh, they can freeze every single frame later on.

So even if you only show it for a fraction of a second, they they could go get it. Right? And now every and now everybody in the chat room's like, oh, I didn't think of that. Right? You know?

So it does happen, but you it's like everything. The more you do it, the more you get used to it. Right?

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Break time over. Exactly. Yeah. I made like, hiding the screen, I'm doing something sensitive, but then it's like, if I'm like deploying to like if I'm deploying my code to a server, like, I'm just show I'm just showing the hide screen screen all stream, and that was just that was just not fun.

Yes. Yeah. That that does become a problem. Right? There are times when we do things where you can't show them, and you know it's gonna take a while.

And I don't know about you, and I'm curious about your answer on this because, sometimes I'll be like, oh, I wanna stream right now. You know, it's like, I wanna do a stream tonight. And then I remember, well, the stuff that I'm doing, I can't really show. Is there any point in doing a stream? No.

I guess there's not. And then there are folks who do this for fun and this is their career as well, right, like ourselves, You know? And so I never stream, for example, you know, day job work. Talk about, you know, I don't think we ever become completely comfortable with this, but what was your approach? And and were there times where you're like, this was a bad idea or I should never have done this?

And and how do you deal with those moments? Or or maybe you were just a natural.

Definitely not a natural, but I would like to start off with a success story before we get into the other stuff. I guess the the the best time for doing something sensitive on stream was with, I was working on FQauth, the signing with Apple open source server, and we deployed it to DigitalOcean on a trial account. So after the stream was over, I just deleted everything. That's smart. Everything.

There's no trace. So that was so freeing about that is I could just show everything.

I like that.

Like here's all the IP addresses of the server. Here's you're just all the passwords I'm using. Here's everything, but that's probably not something you're gonna do every day is like launch, like demonstrate an open source server deploying. I guess what I do now is I I work on my app 2 days a week, 1 on stream on Sunday, and another time during the week. So my plan is any infrastructure stuff is gonna be on my private session, and those are those are early in the morning before work at the moment.

That that's a good idea. So so for you, you had this clear, like, line in the sand that says, alright. This is where, I hate to use this phrase, but for one of a better phrase, this is where the real heavy duty stuff takes place. This is where the lighter, more fun, you know, stuff takes place that's safe to stream. Is that kinda how you break them down that way?

Yeah. So far, I haven't done any heavy duty stuff on the private session, but I know it's there for for when I do need it.

Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah. Yeah. That's exactly that's exactly the plan going forward.

So has this happened to you where you it doesn't work out for you because you're doing something, and you're not doing it on a stream. And you're like, oh, dang. It worked. I really wish I'd streamed this now. Right?

You know? You had something like that? Because that happens to me all the time. I'm like, wow. I so did not expect this to work.

Has that happened? I'm not I'm sure it probably has. I feel like I just I'm just in 2 different head spaces when I'm coding alone versus coding as a show. I'm I'm narrating what I'm doing. I'm saying, hey.

Hey. Welcome back Stack Overflow. I'm I'm saying, oh, oh, there you go. Xcode crashing again. Yeah.

Whereas in in my private session, it's just a little bit more heady. I'm not exactly narrating as much. Yeah. There hasn't really been it's it's usually like a smaller thing too. The the worst is when I think I have a full stream of tasks planned, and then I again, I'm done in 5 minutes.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that's when you get the opposite. And and you're like, look.

This was supposed to take all night. Right?

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

That that's what happened to me the other day. I was doing, doing a thing, and we were integrating, Game Center into my app. And and I I wasn't doing it on screen because I'm like, okay. This is gonna be a disaster. So I I just did it, you know, without a stream, and then 10 minutes later was like, oh, it's working.

And this was a surprise. So I I sort of, on my next stream ended up having to do a recap to say, look, this is how you set it up. You know? And then other times, there'll be a simple little thing, like, I don't know, whatever it is. Like, I'm gonna add this screen, and it's gonna go there.

And the next thing you know, it's like and apparently, I've completely forgotten how to do navigation in Swift. You know? Exactly. And and you're like, wow. You know, because that's the time you're like, well, I'm probably looking a bit stupid right now, but I've learned to accept that it's like, look.

This hap you know? And, again, part of the reason for streaming this, is that it's important for folks to see the failures as much as the success. Because like you say, I mean, I've been doing this for, I don't know, well over 20, into the 30, maybe, years. Yeah. And there's an awful lot of failure in that time.

And it's important for people who are getting into this stuff to understand, you're gonna fail at things, and you're gonna hate life, and you're just gonna be like, I should never do this. What was I thinking? And and and wanna give up and walk away. Well, you know, news for you folks. Here we are 20, 30 years later.

I can't speak for for Daniel or anyone else, but I still get that now. There were those days where you're like Exactly. What the hell am I doing? I, you know, I I'm I I didn't never wanna do this again. So it still happens.

You just it it's part of the process. You gotta get used to it.

Exactly. And, yeah, I feel like demonstrating that is supposed to be power should I hope it's powerful. I haven't actually heard any feedback, positive or negative, on this thing that we're both talking about. Mhmm. It's like showing Xcode crashing and showing me not remembering the architecture of my app or, like you say, how does Swift do navigation again?

Yes. Yeah. And and if Have you gotten positive feedback or negative?

I have, and I'll tell a story. But but quickly for folks, if you've never had Xcode crash on you, make sure you're using Xcode because I don't know anyone Xcode hasn't crashed on. Right? You know, the the chances are if it's never crashed, you're not using Xcode. That's your problem.

So so let's put that out there. But I I do wanna give us a a story because I, you know, again, I wanna inspire people to understand that anybody can do this. Some folks that come to my stream, 2 in particular, you know, firstly, I wanna give a shout out to to Mono NZ, who's one of them. And, this guy, NZ, they are not related. They'll be the first to point that out.

In particular, you know, one of them, one had never done iOS development and and came along and was like, hey. This is cool. And the other wanted to make a game and, you know, had never done any of this to to quote them on it. You know, they they were inspired to start doing it because they watched my stream, which hopefully means

Oh, nice.

They realized, well, he's doing such a terrible job. I can do better than that. Fantastic. It worked. You know?

So so that so I have had people give me that feedback. I've also had folks contacted me via, from from listening to the podcast and and similar things saying, and and some of the reviews, which is I I break things down in a way that made it understandable for them to to work with it and and, So there's, you know, there's that aspect to it as well. Thankfully, I've had the feedback. Admittedly, I always ask, hey. I I want more feedback.

The more feedback you give me, the more I can tailor the content to to what you want it to be. Mhmm. But I'm lucky that I've had those folks give me the feedback because, you know, again, folks, for us as streamers or or whatever it may be, just having that one person say thank you. You helped me in some way. That goes a hell of a long way to motivating us to keep us going.

Right?

Exactly. Shout out to all all you in chat right now who do keep me going. It's it's truly appreciated. I literally would not be here without you.

You know, I love it when of course, I've I've seen your streams before, of course. But I love it when I'm watching people's streams on on any subject and you see active chat rooms. Because to me, that tells me that, you know, whatever the streamer is doing, you you're making contact with those people. Right? And, you know, it that's when it becomes a community.

I think, you know, again, for me, me sitting in front of a camera talking, it's just a live video without the chat for me. It's I know when I do my streams Yeah. The chat room is what makes it worth doing. Right? On a day when I've had a terrible day and, you know, you're like, oh, screw this.

If I do a live stream, I know the chat room's gonna pick me up and by the end of the stream, I'll be fully pumped and motivated, ready for the next one. And, it's massively about the folks in the chat room. Right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've had days where I'm like, I don't I don't wanna stream today. I know it's a half hour to stream time.

I'm not ready. And spouse B says, you know, you know, you really like doing this, right? So I get out there and do it. And just like you say, by the end, hopefully, I pump up chat because chat pumps me up

too. Yeah. The, the chat room, bless them, you know, keeps me going. And anytime I'm watching somebody else's chat, I try to be as interactive as I can. You know, sometimes, I think we all do this and, you know, we should talk about one of the styles of streaming that you do as well, where you sort of have it on intentionally in the background.

So I'm not quite as interactive with the chat as I would be, but it's serving as community space that says, I feel like I'm working with someone remotely because we got that going on. Right? Because you have your streams you do, sort of the scenic streams, I I I guess. I don't know how you would describe them. Talk about that.

Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. So to to sort of describe the scenic streams for the folks who who haven't heard of them yet, on workdays from 10 am to 4 pm, I I play some some music and share my my scenery videos. I live here in beautiful New York City, and there's a lot of really cool, scenic spots which I think are a little surprising.

I think when people think of the city, they think of big buildings and smog, but, we have we have grass too, and and beautiful rivers. So so, yeah. I guess, I forget exactly what the seed was that that sparked this, but I, like, I I have a bunch of these these videos now that I've taken as a background for my podcast, and I could I could just play these because I had just started a new client, and I can't show a client code on stream. I'm just I'm not doing that, but I still wanna I still wanna be alive, and that turned out to be such such a fun stream because folks will show up and say, hi. I say, hi back.

We're all working together on our respective code. Xcode crashes. People type in chat. Yeah. It's turned out to be like like, who's going to who's going to want to watch watch this?

It's the same thing every time. I put it on random, though.

Yeah. Yeah. But they're I

think they're actually pretty good videos. Yeah.

Mhmm.

It's been a it's been a blast.

And and we'll get into this, but a nice psychological factor for those folks who are stuck in a cube somewhere or an office with 4 walls. Right?

Exactly.

Who don't have anything but literally that to stare at all day. Even just having that on a screen somewhere reminds you that life is going on outside. Right?

Oh, well said. Well said.

Yeah. And and and so that's an important part of it. And and on that note, you know, this is something else that I I know we both care about as well. For me, and I'd I'd be curious to see what you have to say about this, streaming is, or or any interaction like this, you know, Discord or whatever it may be, is an important part of of the developer life cycle, I guess you would call it. Right?

And so mental health becomes, as as many of us unfortunately have probably seen in in the news and things like that in our industry. There's a lot of layoffs and things like that, but it's very stressful. It's stressful even when everything is going. And Yeah. You know, I'm curious if you if you have any thoughts you wanna share on that.

I guess the short answer is I do see a therapist once a week, and I've been seeing him for over 11 years or so at this point, once a week. And it's been massively helpful for for me personally. I feel like people get a trainer when they go to the gym, and no one bats an eye. I think I think therapy is getting some traction as far as I think like 20 years ago, it was like, what do you like? There's nothing wrong with you.

Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah. But it's, it's really helpful to to talk things through with someone to discover how I actually feel.

And once I can see how I actually feel, what to do becomes a little bit more obvious. Yes. Whereas when I'm when I'm sort of clouded by all these negative messages from externally or internally or wherever, just sorting those out alone, can be daunting, especially when you're just starting out. Not to not to top my shoulder too much, but I'm I'm leading my my sessions with the with the therapist now, and he's just kind of there as as training wheels Great. Which is pretty cool.

You know, a lot of the time, we go to the the doctor. We go to the dentist and that so that not because we're having a problem, but because we don't want to have a problem. Right? Mhmm. And and and I view it that said.

Yeah. That's exactly the same way. Right? It's like you don't wait for the car to break down before you fix it. You know, you you keep the car in good shape and hope that you never have to.

This is my day job as much as it is my my fun time. And sometimes it gets too much. Right? Sometimes Yeah. You you know, at the end of the day, you're like, you know, gosh, the the day was just so draining that you you don't wanna do any of it in the evening.

And, you know, I know for me, sometimes when it gets towards the latter part of the week and I'm thinking, you know, I haven't done a stream. I haven't recorded the podcast to put out at the weekend and things like that. Haven't written a blog post. Whatever it may be, it starts to add this self inflicted artificial pressure. And you know that you're the one doing it to yourself, but still, you know, it's there.

And, it there there were times when you're like, you know, I I just can't do this. And I think it's okay to say, you know, gonna take a break. Right? Gonna take a break from the streams. Gonna take a break break from the whatever creative content you're making.

Yeah. I organized my my content into seasons. When I feel like, like, as Mary Poppins says, when the wind changes, when I feel a break coming on, like, I'll just take that 2 week break and then start a new season. And usually some sort of transformation happens internally, while I reflect during that. So, yeah, the new season really does feel to me like a new season, a new a new breath, a new a new something happening.

You know, for me, like, at the moment where I'm going through working on some games, and I'm I'm recording a Godot, game engine video, series. As those are my way of stepping back from some of the other content that I make, doing this for a while, chasing down that interest, being constructive and learning with it, and coming out at the other end with something for everybody else. And then I'll cycle back to, like, this week where I was working on the SpriteKit game back in Swift, things like that. And I think maybe it's worth mentioning to to the folks listening and watching, if you find that you're getting frustrated, bored, or whatever it may be with something that you're working on, think about trying something completely different. Again, it doesn't have to be something you ever intend to ship.

It reignites that flame for the original thing that you were doing.

And I have a I have another failure story to, share there.

Okay. Go for it.

I guess at the beginning of season season 5, this season, I wanted to make the the the reading portion of the livestream into more of a podcast, more of a pre edited thing. So I worked all day Saturday recording content, editing. I thought it looked fantastic. Played it on stream. I thought it went okay.

And it did the same thing the next Saturday, recorded all day Saturday and then streamed Sunday using that as sort of, as part of the stream sort of prerecorded segments.

Yeah, but

man, I just it was so awesome to do it to see that I could edit that together, but I can't I can't work Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and you get the drift. Like, I I need a day off.

Yes. Yeah. No. You're right. It's it's all too easy to become, unhealthily obsessed with with something.

And and you feel like, oh, I gotta get this done now as opposed to, hey. Take your time. Have fun with it. Right? Anything else we should talk about here?

Yeah. For folks wondering about the book, it's it's coming back as kind of just the original version of just reading about it and talking about it on stream. The it's it's not going away, but the the podcast YouTube dream perhaps needs, needs to come back at another time. I I know that I can do it. Just I don't I don't have the bandwidth right now.

You know, the the only rules you should set in place and the only, markers in the sand that you should judge yourself by is you. Right? And and what I do for that, just for folks, is I ask myself, you know, have I done better this time than I did last time? That that's all I'm looking for here. Right?

Because as soon as I start the have I done better than I'm gonna fail every time because inherently built into you is that criticism that says, nope. You did not. And and now you're in the negative space, and that's not gonna work for you. Right?

And that's that's like the message of this book. It's like, yeah, he's he's saying, like, you have to discover yourself. Like, you're you're you're the peace of God that's in you. If God is everywhere, God is in all of us, then then that's yours to share to

to bring out that expression and share that. And no one else has that same expression. It's it's gonna look different somehow. Something I learned, many this was, gosh, so many years ago. Back in, in a previous life before before this, I was a professional photographer.

And Oh, sweet. When I was learning photography back at school, the the advice one of my art teachers gave me, which was just one of the best things ever, You know, that that thing that comes up is like and and and it applies today with, like, to do apps. Right? And they said, hundreds of people have taken this photograph. You know, hundreds of people have written a to do app.

I mean, all these things, but nobody has done it the way you're gonna do it until you've done it. Right?

Yes. Exactly. Bruno Mars doesn't have a monopoly on love songs. There's still more love songs to write.

Exactly. And so that has sat with me forever. That is one of my guiding rules is until I've done it, I've not seen my version, and and I've still got bandwidth to make one.

Exactly. Beautifully said. Yeah. There are already Subway apps when I made Underway, but there wasn't one like Underway yet. Anything else here?

I think, you know I mean, I I'm hoping that at least that was my goal with this conversation was if if we can make one other person say, you know what? You're right. And they start doing it. Hey. Succeeded.

That's the mission of my stream.

There you go. Exactly. So with that then, Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today. And and also thank you for letting me invade your stream. I greatly appreciate that, and thank you, for to the chat room, your chat room for the patience and, all the support that I see going by in the chat room.

You're you're all awesome. You are blessed, sir, to have such a wonderful chat room. So, thank you.

I am. I do feel exceptionally lucky. But to your audience, thank you for letting me barge in on them. Fullqdeveloper.com has the links to all of my apps and open source projects and GitHubs and Discords and all that. All that.

Yeah. And we folks, we will put all of that in the show notes as well for you. But please, if if you are not a follower of the livestream, or any of those links, go do that. I I I promise you will be rewarded. So thank you so much for that.

Alright. And for my part, hey folks, you know you know where to find me. It's compiled dev on Twitch and it is compiled swift everywhere else. I know it's confusing. I'm so sorry.

Go go go to compileswift.com and you you are home free.

As mentioned in this episode
https://fullqueuedeveloper.com/
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

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