Ep. 6 - The Lost (Now Found) Holiday Episode | Devs:After Dark

In 2024, the Developers After Dark team recorded what some consider to be the best holiday podcast episode ever made. Shortly after recording, a team of jealous podcasters snatched the recording in an attempt to keep it from the eyes and the ears of the public, fearing that the standard had been raised too high. For months, maybe years, the episode vanished into the digital abyss until some brave soul Tripped over an old USB stick in our studio's utility closet. Now dusted off and ready for your listening pleasure, we present the long-lost Holiday Spectacular. Buckle up, you're about to get that Big Nick energy.

You know, I'm your host with the most, uh, boss with the sauce, bringing Big Nick energy. Because this is professional.

Right.

But yeah, no, here we are. This is episode 6, a very good special holiday episode too, which means we've made it through 2024, kind of like a holiday roundup. You know, I'm your host with the most. Boss with the sauce, bringing Big Nick energy, El Capitan. And what we kind of wanted to do with this one is we kind of wanted to go over 2024, essentially, and what kind of rocked 2024 in both good ways and bad ways. And in doing so, we kind of reached out on LinkedIn and a couple other places where we kind of took a look at some of the feedback from some of the people that we respect, admire, and follow, you know, outside of our normal realm. and just kind of get what they thought influenced them in the dev community over the year. So what I thought we would do is just to kind of frame out this episode. At the very beginning, I'd like to kind of just kind of go over like with all of us, just kind of what we've appreciated this year, any resolutions we have, because this is a holiday episode. So this will be the last one of 2024. You know, so I figured it would be kind of nice to just kind of Kind of give any shoutouts because this, I want to tell you right now, this as easy— because I'll be honest, like when we first talked about this before we even started putting pen to paper, I was like, oh yeah, this should be easy. It was just do a podcast, right? Just do the thing. There's a lot more work and a lot more risk involved in this than one would ignorantly think. Because in my mind, it was ignorance. It was complete. I was just like, yeah, it's just a podcast. I've seen idiots do this all day long. You know, it's like— How hard could it be? Um, quite— I would say quite hard. Um, and to add to that, without these 2 here, um, it would be absolutely 100% impossible. So to introduce them, these are obviously my co-hosts Dennis and AJ. So let me know, how you doing on this holiday season? How you— how are you all feeling right now?

Well, after that, I feel so warm and fuzzy. Oh my God, man, that, that really just, you know, it's from the heart. It's It's snowing outside, but not in here, man. The heat's all on.

I love this.

Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good after that. That's, that's, uh, a lot nicer than I was gonna say about you, that's for sure. No, I'm just kidding. Well, that's what I did.

I wanted to set the tone first so that way you would feel like a jerk if you said anything horrible about me, because I know it's coming.

It's—

people feel it. I can feel it out there. There's people that feel it.

So I would have to say for this year, the things that I'm probably the most thankful for, honestly, is One being on a, a, the developer relations team, just as the 3 of us are, like our team is phenomenal. We're always like looking out for each other, but also like the, the marketing team that has been helping us with all of our developer marketing stuff this year. I think that like without them, we probably wouldn't have been able to get a lot of the comms out that we wanted to get out and do a lot of the things. They kind of helped streamline a lot of our stuff this year. So I think, yeah, in thinking about the year, like I'm just I'm just happy that like our team is still as solid as it is and that I get to do this with you guys. And of course, naturally, everybody in the community who I've talked to and reached out to, you know, all those people for sure. I mean, constant conversation. I love having conversations with people even when it's not about HubSpot stuff, just to know like how things are going, like, you know, how, like how business is doing, stuff like that.

100%. How about you, Dennis?

What was the question? Sorry, I was promoting our livestream on some Slack channels and—

Oh, nice.

Okay. Not because I don't respect you and that this is not important to me, but what was the question?

No, I see what it is. And just for those listening, yes, we are. This episode, we're hosting it live as we do it. So it's one of those episodes too where we have to be very I have to be a little bit slower in my delivery because there's no dump button. And I'd like to keep my job for 2025 because, I mean, there's still time. There's still time between now and January 1st where I could do something to be like, it's not, it's not us, it's you. But so, yeah, but no, we kind of just, I just wanted to know how you feel in this holiday season. Like, how are you? Like, it's the end of the year.

A lot of good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. I thought you had another question. I am feeling very, very blessed, as they say. I had to reiterate all the things that AJ just said. Like, you know, the community has been amazing to me. I have had a freaking brilliant year with Developer Hug, and that has been pretty inspiring. And it's just seeing all the people come and actually donate their time to something they don't get paid for. I don't know, man. Like, that's like, that's the beauty of an actual community to me. Like, I love it.

And that's going to be getting bigger next year, right?

Yeah, yeah, we're, we're shooting for at least, uh, 2 per month. Uh, we started that in the fall and trying to continue it. It's, as you said, as you said, for a podcast, you know, it's more work than you, than you think it is. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on.

So, um, someone, someone who's not familiar with, um, where they can go to get involved with, with the Dehugs, where would they Where can we send them so they can get—

Yeah, um, that's, that's a good, great question. Right now events.hubspot.com is the place, and you can do a search for a developer there, which will show you that. Um, but in 2025, Anton, who is a co-leader of the, the Hug, D-Hug, um, is going to do a live build of developer hug website, I believe. I'm not sure if I should be saying that or not, but you know, I am.

Um, I think good week to pick live, right? Yeah, right.

So yeah, it was like he was inspired by John's, you know, Coding with John series, right? And he, he said, I want to do this for the Developer Hub. We're going to start from A all the way to Z, like designing it out to coding it out. Um, and I think we are looking at maybe starting in March in that area to start building it out. So it should be pretty exciting, whole HubSpot, you know, CMS build.

And for those of you who haven't checked that out yet either, uh, the Coding with John, you can find that on the, um, our YouTube channel for the HubSpot developers. I'd highly recommend going and checking that out. I was able to sit in on, I think, 1 or 2 of those, and it was, um, it was fascinating, you know, because it's like, that's a lot of pressure too. And like, Dennis can speak to that, of course, is like doing it live like that and like putting yourself out there is— I mean, doing this, I, I get to just be an idiot and people just Yeah, that's, that's him. But like when you're, when you're trying to like code something and actually like teach something or demonstrate something, that's rough. That's rough. That's just, that's more pressure than—

yeah.

So check that out when you get the chance for sure, because like a lot of work and a lot of stress gets put into something like that. And John does a very fantastic job of just showing and demonstrating everything that he needs to do in those. And it's, um, it's unfair, honestly.

It's unfair. It's unfair. Like we, we talked about this last time when he was here, like doing the inbound and I was like all nervous trying to live type and code and how the smallest mistakes, you know, really mess with your head. Right. And John just goes with it somehow. And if, if you're listening out there, buddy, well done. Well done.

And then you also had to share the stage with an idiot that had like making like beeping noises like a robot. And it was just—

That's true. That's true.

Awkward.

So yeah. You've not, you've not done anything for me in a positive way, Nick, uh, ever.

No, even, even this endeavor. It's not really doing much for you. I'll tell you that right now. It's probably bringing down your value. But, uh, I mean, we'll try to turn that around in 2025. That's one of my resolutions for the new year as well. And just to get this out there, um, as far as resolutions for this show, uh, like I said, it, it is a little bit harder and a little bit more difficult than I would have ever anticipated. But at the end of the day, like, for 2025, we want to kind of turn this Um, we want to like make, we want to build on what we've got so far. Right. And we want to either bring in more people to talk to, maybe do it weekly. There's things that we're throwing around right now. I mean, just doing this right now where we're live on the website is just like a very first, right. That, that we haven't attempted yet. Uh, mainly because like, I can't, you know, uh, speak properly at times. So Dennis's editing, so your editing skills though, I will give you have improved via me. So you can thank me. Wow.

Wow.

See, see, I bring some value to this whole endeavor. But no, as a resolution and stuff, and I have to agree with both of you on like, for the year of 2024, it has been fantastic, right? Just the support from the dev community, the things that we're taking on as endeavors in the future and the things that we're working to build right now that will go on into 2025. It's good stuff, right? And being kind of like knee deep in it as far as like the quality. assurance aspect of it or the ecosystem quality aspect of it has been eye-opening, right? It's been educational for sure because there's just some things that I only know what I know and I don't know what I don't know, right? So it's— I've been able to— I think the one thing about HubSpot is I've been able to grow faster here than I think I ever have. And the empathy part too is like you always hear people talk about that, but— I never really had that other places until I came here, right? I had the, the concept of it, right? And like, you could be empathetic to a certain extent, but to actually like practice what you preach didn't actually start till I was here. So that, that's one of the things for this year that I thought was, um, a net gain for me at least. But, um, at the end of the day, right? And Dennis loves that phrase.

Hello.

Hello, friends.

Yes.

I got the bingo card ready because this is gonna happen today.

I do. You know what, until he said it— okay, for those listening who don't know what that, uh, slight jab was about, uh, Dennis, uh, pointed out to me just recently that I like to say at the end of the day as a filler. I didn't realize I said it at all. Like, I thought that was like the first time I'd ever used it, but Dennis mentioned that I constantly say that.

Like, you have a brain of a goldfish then. Like, you, you might just reset every 10 seconds.

It must. I mean, I already have the— which I don't think anybody named it in that last episode on YouTube— the disease where I'm stuck in a certain decade of movies.

Yeah.

Like, I still have that, which we're trying to figure out and diagnose. But yeah, it wouldn't shock me if— yeah, something like this where I use phrases to fill that I don't even realize I say. It's better than saying um every time or like. But, you know, when all is said and done, The end of it pretty much justifies— it works out, you know what I mean? People get what I'm saying. So, but thank you for pointing that out, uh, you know, and making that a, um, gee, something that I'm going to like listen to myself every single time I talk now to make sure I don't say it. But—

Well, it's okay. We'll just take all the past episodes and run them through AI and just see how many times you've said certain things.

Yeah.

And then that's—

that's right. And this episode is going to be about like what rocked 2024 and AI is going to be mentioned at least a dozen times, but right before we start getting into that, let me just say for 2025, like for this show, uh, the resolutions, the New Year's resolutions typically that I have for this is one, I'd like to do this more often. Like right now we either do it, you know, we do it every other week. Um, and like I said, it is hard to do and there is a lot of work that kind of goes into it on the backend. And we try to squeeze that in, in between like our normal, uh, 9 to 5. responsibilities, right? I'd like to try to do it more. If not, then I'd like to focus it more on just interviewing people, right? Like really getting to know like developers in the community, other people on HubSpot. So there's, there's a couple different ways to take it into 2025, but I would love to, as like one of our goals is to be able to get Dharmesh on the episode at one point somewhere in 2025 or before I get fired. Like I'd like that to be that, that'll be like my swan song. Right. The pinnacle of my career, you know, going out gracefully. So that's another one too. And then pretty much overall, I'd like to just see us try to grow the viewership and grow just the, the overall exposure to this and see if we can build on what we've done. Just— and keep in mind too, this is just in 6 short episodes, right? We started this a little bit late. We talked about doing this, I don't know, since I met Dennis, right? And since, you know, me and AJ had always talked about like similar things, but not quite like this. So this was something that was, you could say it was in the works for quite some time.

Indeed.

But really didn't come into fruition until late 2024. So for a late start, I mean, not too bad. Um, but I pose the question to both of you. What are your resolutions for this upcoming 2025?

That's— I, I really want to heads down more programming. I, I say, I think I say this every year and I fail. It's like, you know, exercise to me, you know, like I, I, I, um, um, the longer I am here, the longer I feel removed from just sitting down and like day-to-day coding.

Right.

So my basic, like, I don't know, it's, I was gonna say one of the biggest things that happened this last year was CSS, all the developments there.

Mm-hmm.

And I am nowhere near keeping up with any of it. You know, I, it's just not something that I am there. So I want to do more coding, uh, both front and backend. You know, the, everything's like growing so much. And in an effort to, um, add, you know, another AI reference, um, I want to just get on top of it now before it really takes off and becomes You know, like it, you know, how, how coding was back in the '90s, you know, has changed so much. I wanna be at the, that front of line and be just, you know, escalate with it.

Right. And the worst feeling is when you feel like you have to try to catch up.

Yeah, exactly.

It becomes insurmountable at a certain point because the pace at which things change, like just in the AI space alone, just that alone, the way it's changing day over day. It's really hard when you're behind the 8 ball to catch up on that. So yeah, no, I definitely feel that as well. AJ, you, do you get that at all?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I know I've, I, I ended up, I'm actually doing a subscription to, uh, Codecademy so that way I can kind of stay on top of a lot of stuff there. And, and to kind of go with that, like, that is kind of my 2025 resolution is to basically like do a little bit more on Codecademy, like get really more heavily involved into like the data aspect of stuff. Because as anybody knows who's talked to me, like, I love data. I love, like, give me like 7 different tables of random data and let me try and put it all together. Like, that is, to me, is like most people like putting puzzles together. To me, it's connecting all data points as much as I can and doing all of those things. So I definitely want to dive more into data this year. But also, um, like Dennis said, like AI.

AI.

I, I would love to dive a little bit deeper into AI too and really just try and get a, a good solid grasp on like where data can connect with AI and how we can make everything way more streamlined and do all kinds of stuff like that.

No, fair enough. Yeah, actually, I think that's going to dominate probably the rest of this episode as far as like— because we did pose the question to everyone out there, like we did it on LinkedIn and I think on Dev Slack as well, maybe. We just asked everyone we knew, like, what was 2024? What rocked 2024, right? Whether that be good or bad. And A good portion, if not 90-something percent of the responses either had the word AI or agent in it. It's pretty clear if you were ranking this, what the number 1 was. Why don't we get into that? Right before we do, I just want to give a special thanks and shout out to everybody in the developer Slack community and the dev community out there that helped us, and especially to people like David Romo who actually did an episode Andreas, who I swear, like every episode there's at least a DM conversation with me and him about, like when we talked about the mysterious song right on the internet that got solved. It was, you know, in Germany was the radio station. So like it was like he was messaging me about that and he's also been like sending me links and stuff about interesting things.

Wait, he talks to you too? I thought it was just me you talked to.

No, and it's awesome too because it's like that's where you get to feel like Oh, okay. This isn't just us talking into the ether. There's maybe somebody actually listening, which is— it's probably the coolest feeling.

It really is.

Like, even if it's 1 or 2 people, it's still like, it's not zero. And that's where it feels— it really does feel good.

But I—

that, that I would say, if I had to sum up what I want that to be scaled, is that times 1,000 people, times, you know, 10,000, whatever it is. If I could bottle that and replicate it, that, that is just the overall greatest thing. And I just want to say thank you to everybody that's— and even our teammates too, uh, you know, Hannah, you know, Bri, everybody, John, like that, that, you know, took the risk of being like, you're doing what? Like, what? You guys are—

I gotta—

I'm gonna have to sit in like in a space with you guys for an hour and talk? Really?

Okay.

I mean, Again, it's, it's a bit of a risk, right? It's like stepping into—

Brooke's in the wings here. She's about ready to go on at some point in time soon.

I know. I'm literally like, it's weird. I'm like watching it on the other screen and that's— yeah. So, uh, but yeah, no, I mean, it's everything. Like there's, there's the outreach from just internally too of the people that said like, well, I want to go on and like, you know, tell my story. It's fantastic. It's, you know, it's like one, it's like, uh, if you look at it, it's the greatest compliment to all of us because it's like, I trust you guys enough to sit in the presence of everybody and like reveal things about myself to the 3 of us. It's like, really? Okay. If you trust us, cool. Like, I'm like, I think I'm an idiot.

Like, it's great.

I'm fantastic. So, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, it is the utmost—

Respect.

you know, sign of respect that they're just like, yeah, I would be— I'd love to come on and talk with you guys about myself or anything, right? So, uh, just a big shout out to everybody that's, you know, made this possible. Because at the end of the day too, like, we're doing this as like— there's no doubt that we're not HubSpot employees, right? So my manager, your manager, everybody's manager, their manager's managers have a slight hint that this is happening, and no one said like, yeah, knock it off. Like, So you have to— there's just something there that it's hard to put into words, but it's appreciative on my end for sure.

So, Nick, if you start crying, I mean, you know, it'll be the first time I've ever seen it.

So humidity in here, man.

It's the humidity in here. It's hot in here.

I don't know what it is. I got a fan going.

It must be those prescription glasses that are totally not prescription and 100% fake.

I don't know which side says HubSpot, but these are HubSpot developer glasses, actually.

No joke. Are they really? Are they like glare reducing glasses of some sort?

Nope.

I just think they're fake. I don't remember where I got 'em. I think like when I first started, they just sent them to me or something. I don't remember. But yeah, they do have a lot of glare to 'em and they serve no purpose except for—

Well, you know what the purpose is, is like, and then just for your awareness, I think I can almost read your screen from the reflection of those glasses.

You should be able to. That's like, it's the notes that, um, it's literally just what everybody posted in LinkedIn about 2024. So like, I'm helping you as well.

Thank you.

If you get lost, you Just fall, fall deeper in love. Very deeply if you get lost in it.

Fall in love with these hazel eyes and you'll be just fine. You'll be just fine, so don't worry about it. Just get— just fall deeply, madly in love with these eyes and you'll be able to read all of my hands. So you'll be fine, you'll be fine. But on that note, uh, why don't we just jump in and start? Uh, why don't we save— you know, I don't want to say the best for last, but the one that's going to take up the most time talking about is obviously going to be AA. AI. Why don't we start with the CSS? Because quite honestly, I'll admit I've been a CSS coder for quite some time. I've done— but really, when I think about it, I'm behind. I really am as far as the things that have come up and some of the newer. I remember just, it wasn't too long ago. When was it, AJ? I was talking with you and I was talking about— nested CSS and using— there's a compiler that I like to use. I'm on a Windows machine, you know, full transparency. And I was talking about, like, well, I got to do it here because I do nested, you know, SCSS or whatever. And you're like, well, it just— you don't need that.

Through data center.

Yeah.

And I was like, wait, what? And I had heard that you didn't. But, like, again, I'm so stuck in my ways sometimes. And it's just like what's quick and what's easy for me. Didn't realize that. So there is some something to say about being a little bit behind in it. But I know that, um, Dennis, in especially in that LinkedIn chat, there was about, uh, what was it? Was it CSS container styles? CSS.

I mean, that's like, that's huge right there.

Yeah.

And like, I agree with you, man. Like I used, when I was, you know, more legit coding, I, I would use, you know, Sass or SCSS. Uh, constantly, right? Because it just did the things that CSS was not able to do. And now that is almost like, that's like an install I don't have to worry about at all anymore. You know, it's all, it's all taken care of. Um, subgrid came out, you know, is in full, full, uh, support now, which is, which is amazing. Uh, and CSS just is becoming more of like a programming lang— it's actually a programming language almost, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's brilliant.

I know, um, what Google released, the CSS Wrapped, and I, I know that because I've shared it around internally, but I also just pulled it up now. And like, all of the stuff that you can now do that has been like, like you said, container queries, right? I think I was talking to John and I was like, I know of them. And like, we have a blog post about them that I, I think it was Data that wrote it. No, it wasn't. It was somebody else in our community who wrote it. But like, I read that one when he wrote it. I was really intrigued by it, but I just never got a chance to use them. Then John sat with me and was like, oh yeah, here's— he gave me a quick rundown of it and it's phenomenal. Now I'm trying to incorporate it, going back into things that I've built before, being like, I need to go incorporate this because it just makes things way easier. Especially when you talk about module development, doing container queries in there. A lot of times back in the day, full sections is what people were building with modules at HubSpot.

Mm-hmm.

Now it's like, yeah, you can still build a full section module if you want, but you can also use container queries to be like, well, if somebody happens to put it next to something, let's change the way it looks a little bit. That just opened up so many capabilities in doing that. Seeing the things that people had created made me want to dive into that more. It's just been amazing. I love CSS.

There was actually a rule in the template marketplace to not submit full-width modules just because of that fact. People were doing it so often. I mean, it's not nearly a concern anymore, but like years, a couple of years ago, like when I first started, that was actually a thing that was a concern. But yeah, I, and 2, the thing that gets me too is like now that there's a whole new measuring system in characters versus like ems or pixels, right? So now you've got that, which I haven't even like dived into yet, which is something I really want to take a look at because it seems nicer now not to have to rely on the viewport and more just the— the container, uh, being the actual thing that's going to have to be focused on versus, you know, which having to worry about which device they're on. So that's always, um, something that's— I'm glad, you know what I mean? That's like one of those things I'm like really excited about that. So yeah, that's one of those key things. Um, but yeah, like you said, like honestly, like I would say maybe even not that many years back, like where if someone said like, oh, I, I'm a programmer. And then they, you'd ask like, what, what language or something? And you said CSS, they would literally laugh you out of the room. They'd be like, yeah, get outta here.

Mm-hmm.

You didn't say PHP, so I don't care, right?

Right, right, right, right.

Exactly. So like, it's, it's kind of nice to see this come about the way it is and be taken more— not that it's not taken seriously, but you know what I mean? Like, that's the sentiment is much, much different. So yeah, yeah, I like that a lot for sure. Um, let's see, one of the other ones that, uh, came up actually was And this is one that's less revolving around code, but I've kind of liked this myself because again, a shout out to HubSpot for just the way that they handle this in general is just the well-being of the developer, right?

Yeah.

So basically just burnout, you know, any type of like mental health, you know, it's, there's, it's a concern, right? And a lot of people have expressed it, you know, in different forms and fashions, you know, whether that's the burnout or stress. But I think the approach that people are taking to it, because let's put it this way, I came from an industry and all the love in the world for real estate. Love it. Absolutely love it.

I do.

But, and I know Dennis loves it too because it comes up almost every episode except for maybe the last. But the mindset around that and around burnout and around what they would call work You know, life balance did not exist, at least where I was. And it's not a knock on the place that I work, but it's just, it is what it is.

That's the vertical.

Coming to here versus that, I have to say, like night and day. Absolutely night and day. The way HubSpot treats, like, go do something, go out, like, like my son likes to say, go touch grass, Dad. Great, got it. Okay. So, but it's like, it's That, but personified. Like, it's— you don't have to worry about that type of— I mean, it still happens. People get, you know, get a little overwhelmed, they get stressed. But like, now compared to before, especially in this vertical versus where I was at, there's— I couldn't even tell you the amount of like— and the stories that since we're live, uh, yeah, probably not going to mention them. But yeah, there's just been plenty of things where you would just look at it and be like, did that just happen? Did we just do that here? Like, what? You know, not nothing nefarious, but just crazy as far as like the mental anguish, you know, to try to get something done.

Well, I think you have to think about it as the industry though, right? Because technology has increased so much and like the rate at which technology is going, especially now with the addition of AI, like it is a more stressful environment because You have to move fast, right?

Right.

So I think over the years we've seen this increase in technology and this, like, this opening of, like, newer technologies and things that streamline and things that move fast has kind of forced people to end up having to work fast and move fast and iterate fast. And I think those companies, like, you know, HubSpot does it really well too, is we will run full steam with things, but we also try to make sure as many people get eyes on it as possible. You know, we are calculated about what we do try and go towards, and we want to make sure that when we're doing something, we're not just doing it for the sake of doing it, but we're doing it for a customer, right? Like, I think that's where a lot of people just want to build to build, and like, they end up burning themselves out because it definitely comes down to like strategization, right? And like, just making sure that you have your checks and balances along the way. It's, it's basically like project management. If it's not managed efficiently, The project will eventually fall apart. So you need to kind of have this almost system in place to make sure that that kind of acceleration doesn't cause like a back burner, a burnout against other people.

So yeah, I mean, like, and as I say, piggybacking on that, like the idea of developer experience itself has become like an actual thing where, you know, historically developers were just left with like this kind of terrible UI or whatever it might be to actually do their processes or frameworks. And now as things are being developed, especially at HubSpot, we're thinking more and more about how the developer experiences their workflow. It's not just about the marketer, not just about the end user out there. It's about the people who actually are building on it, which helps with their stress and their ability to deliver timely or in a fast and efficient ways. So it's been a good year for that, I believe.

Mm-hmm.

No, absolutely. 110%. AJ, remind me, like, for the show notes for the site, the article, the CSS articles and everything, and we'll put those in the show notes so that we will have them for later on and stuff like that. And just a shout out, thank you, Isaac. You also rock as well. See him in the chat there. Fantastic.

Thank you.

But yeah, no, one of the other things too that came up and obviously a lot of eyeballs on it just because of Inbound that just passed over the summer was the, um, basically app cards, right? So you have the, you know, the interface extension, and that pretty much took everything by storm. And I can speak from pretty good authority just because of the fact, like, a lot of those I have been looking at, you know, as they're submitting them for review. And just some of the stuff that they can do now in that is pretty cool. I like it. It's like, it's one of those things where, and also too, a shout out to James Fry too, as well, because in the, when we posted that question about what rocks 2024, his name came up because of the app cards for the app, you know, with him and his team as well. And it's just, it just goes to show like the—

Yeah.

what you can accomplish now inside of those is fantastic, right?

Yeah.

Usability of them, you know, having them placed within the CRM where they're at is— it just makes things— it solves a lot of problems. And for me to be able to look at each one of these, you know, individually, like— and it's cool because each one of them is different, right? So there isn't— it's not like— and this isn't a knock on the asset world at all, but like when you're looking at modules, right, certain ones, whether it's a slider module or something like that, there is a bit of— and it's not a lot, but there is some repetitiveness to it, right? A theme is a theme is a theme is what I always say. Sure, you can have different verticals and you can have different, um, modules and different like numbers templates within them and so on and so forth, but you're never going to get a theme sent to you to look at and be like, oh, this isn't a theme. This one got me. This is something else. No, it is. Sorry, it's just the way it is. But like with the app cards, it's a different experience like each time of what you're like trying to like test against or what you're just trying to like replicate an experience. And it's kind of cool. I, I have to admit, you know.

Yeah, no, I want to say this going back to the developer experience. Like this is a— this is one where I think HubSpot really is nailing it like properly on the developer experience. I mean, using React first of all on the front end, it's a, it's a common language now. Like, or, you know, it's, it's easy for people to do. We have components, we're being more prescriptive, right? You have a set number of components you can actually use. You can do all kinds of things with them, but you know, the design's gonna look like it's HubSpot native.

And they're growing too, the number of components, right?

And then you hook up your backend, you know, it's, it's all good. You got like, you know, you can local dev now. Remember when local dev wasn't a thing at HubSpot? That's, you know, you can do that now.

Do you remember when FTP was, was the way to do this?

Oh my God, yes, I do.

Do you remember that? Like back in the day it was, it was FTP and then the CLI got released and it was just massive.

That might've been before I got here, but yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. A huge, huge upgrade right there. So yeah, once again, dev experience is just like spot on there. Um, I do like the restrictive aspect of it where we have like a specific set of components that we are putting out that you can use. I'm sure there'll be some people out there that challenge me on that. And I wouldn't mind actually seeing some way of like, um, suggested components perhaps that, you know, people could submit for review. And, you know, we can like maybe make something off that. Uh, but that's not my area. And Sergio, I apologize if I'm, you know, opening a can of worms. Uh, but yeah, I love it. I think app cards are pretty freaking amazing. And my, my biggest thing, so, you know, I come back from the, you know, the CMS side of, of the world. Um, I feel like this opens up CRM development for CMS developers, right? You can, it's convergence here, which is just—

Yeah.

That's a good point. I didn't even think about it like that.

Yeah.

That's a really good point.

Yeah. That's, that's one of the reasons why I love that we went towards React as well. Like you literally CMS developers who build with React all day long can now build functionality in the CRM and connect data and do things where like, if it was me and this was like years ago and we didn't have React as a version, I would never be able to do it. Like I'm, I'm not. I know APIs, I can make calls to them, post to them, do all these things. But like, tell me to build a functional thing that talks back and forth using APIs, that's where kind of my skill gap ends. I can still do it, but it will definitely be hacky going through it. But like, with React, I was able to build a card and do all sorts of things. And it was like I felt more empowered to build more because of that. So—

And they're releasing so much stuff all the time. It's just amazing. I'm very proud of that team.

Actually, as a resolution for 2025 for the show too, as well as I kind of want to carve out— I mean, the amount of time is irrelevant, but just kind of any type of major updates and stuff as far as whether it's— I mean, it's going to be hard to do that throughout HubSpot, right? We're going to tell you the newest stuff in all of HubSpot. There's so much of it, but try to pick out certain things that are like most relevant to the dev, like the dev community, which I mean, most of it is, but like trying to just do a little bit of that within the episodes as well and try to push out a little bit of that, um, kind of those updates and that content. Because what I've always thought of, and I can't remember how the conversation started, uh, but, um, what was it that they were talking— I think it was maybe a competitor or something else, but like You know, everybody has their version of like, like Disney Plus or something plus like that too. Like, I always thought it would be nice to have something like that here where it was more like a— and I'm just pitching this out there, maybe it's selfish, but like, you know, if there was a HubSpot Plus and you did have a talented, charismatic already experienced it at least 6 episodes of podcasting. And if you know anybody, Nick, and if I, I, you know, there may be some people I have in mind, I'm not sure yet, you know, ones that love Slick Sliders. Thank you, Isaac. Um, that, you know, would be able to, you know, maybe be the face of something like that, a very attractive face, um, hazel eyes, you know. 5'9, big glasses, you know, 20-something-inch vertical. Like, there's like, there's a thing there where, you know, I feel like we could do some— but like introducing stuff that like HubSpot's doing. I mean, I know we have those in pockets. Like, don't get me wrong, we have all this stuff in pockets. We have, you know, we have, you know, influencers, you know, that mention things online. We have the, you know, the developers YouTube channel, you know, we have the podcasting network, we have all these things which It's not that we don't have things where we're pushing stuff out, but it would be kind of cool to bring that all together and have this kind of like digital juggernaut, right? That's like with a flagship, if you will, you know, a very talented human. Like, whatever the case may be, I'm just saying like that would be something where it's like, that would be fantastic. But in our little neck of the woods right here where we're operating, at the end of the day, I would like to at least do that here, you know, in absence of anything else where we can start like pointing some of those things out. Like, for example, the Coding with John thing, like, go check it out. There's a video, I can't remember how many episodes it is, where it like converts— and AJ, you'll have to remind me who the person is— but it converts, it shows you like the equivalent of PHP to Hubble. That's the thing I watched. It was John's—

John from Ascend.

Yeah.

Right? What was his last name? Fuller, right? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I watched that before I like The week before I got here, right? And actually, it was probably on the developers YouTube page that like prepped me to join HubSpot because I was only used to like WordPress development and PHP. I had no idea about Hull, right? I had certain concepts of it, but like for me, that would be something fantastic to be able to like build to, right? And then have it be bigger and like it doesn't have to be HubSpot Plus, but everybody has a Plus. But but yeah, something like that for me would be like fantastic and just to like. Contribute to that.

But will we have some sort of like Marvel Cinematic Universe type thing where we can have, uh, you know, tie-ins in this?

I just don't think the multiverse will be something we'll jump into because it didn't seem to play out very well. It might get you a movie or two and a couple of box office, you know, just a little, you know. I think Deadpool put it best when he said the multiverse is dead. So like, yeah, we could try. I could see it like being something big like that where it'd just be like You know, and it could, it could really like launch other people to attempt things like this, right? Like, because like you would have a network where maybe there is certain things that are focused on certain, uh, like verticals or like maybe they're like with Bri with React. Like, tell me you wouldn't watch a show where she like just talked about React and gave React examples and was like interviewing people like prominent in the React world. Like, I would. Because I wanna learn that. That's something that interests me. Like, it's just, there's kind of things like that, you know, it, I feel like that would be something just absolutely beneficial, right? And plus we have a whole dev community of people, you know, that are always contributing anyway that would probably love to jump at the chance for the exposure and things like that. So, I mean, they can't all fit on this wonderful show, you know what I mean? We only do one every other week, but you know, it's, um, but to me that would be something just absolutely fantastic to do.

And, uh, well, I think you said it right though. Like the community people, there are a lot of people in the community that do, Tons of awesome tutorial-based things and stuff like that. Like for instance, Carter and Justin, right? Doing the CRM bootcamp.

Mm-hmm.

Like that is a phenomenal thing. And we've had so many people go through the bootcamp and it's honestly one of the, one of the best bootcamps that I've, I've seen that, you know, they're just really on point with everything. So like having more community members do things like that, like, I mean, uh, George Thomas, right? He posts videos all the time and those are fantastic. I remember watching those videos that he used to post even before I joined HubSpot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, in the community. So it's just one of those things where there are so many people creating content.

Yeah, just, just when we ask questions alone, or people like, just for this episode, like the outreach that we got. And I also want to give a shout out to Pete Nichols for the poem response to Dennis's poem suggestion that we posted. Fantastic. Thank you for that, Pete. That was really, really cool. I liked that. Um, but yeah, like, you know, like you mentioned Justin, Justin was one of the people that responded to the thing, like what rocked 2024, right? So he You know, and it, it, it revolved around basically, um, around UX, you know, so it was, uh, there's plenty of people out there and there's plenty of, I think, interest and, and things like this. And the educational aspect of it for me, because I don't know, there, you know, I, I, I'm pretty transparent and I don't know if this is to a fault of things that I don't know, right? I, I, if I don't know it or I, and I just, I don't shy away from saying like, yeah, I'm not, I have no experience in that whatsoever, but I wanna learn. And like things like that with that like magnitude of growth and like those options.

Mm-hmm.

And don't get me wrong, there's, there's Codecademy, there's, there's other things like that. But like there's something to be said about the, the intimate experience you would get if it was, especially if you work at HubSpot and this, that would be a thing. Or these are, you're not just learning from Codecademy. Like this is like, like Justin Gibbons, for example. This is just like, I met him at Inbound for the first time. Amazing person. Like, this is Justin teaching this. Like, this feels personal. Like, this feels— there's, there's something about that versus like, oh, I'm just, I'm asking the robot at Codecademy. Could be, could be an, uh, you know, it could be a, you know, an AI agent just answering my questions. I don't— it doesn't— there doesn't— there's, there's something there that I think I would just absolutely love, you know.

If it was just a heads up, when Dharmesh comes on, it's just going to be his agent. You know that, right? It's going to be—

there'll be an ad, like an illustration, and they'll just say, yeah. Like, I've seen some of those videos where they like create— like, I just got an ad for that too, speaking of AI, because we'll probably jump into that next. But where it's like, we'll create AI, like, like content for you with video. Like, the mouths never match up to the words. I'm like, that's cool. And the person looks slightly real, but I'm like, you can tell they're just not.

So, so Brooke Bond and I did a demo of an AI where we tried to do this, and it was the most hilarious thing. Because it was just, it was so random compared to the directions we told. Like we said, like, I forgot, Brooke, maybe you might remember. I think it was like peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We had it like describe on how to make one. And it was so random. It was so random though, like what we got back, but it was hilarious. And it's like, it's cool to see the development of AI and, you know, the things that have happened, like NVIDIA with the eye tracking thing.

Right.

Like within, I think it was like NVIDIA's Creator Studio now has it where It will always have your eyes looking at the camera.

Yeah.

So that way you can look around at notes and do everything else. And like, I think that's cool, but that's also gonna kind of be creepy if I look this way and you just see my eyes like—

Right.

It's just like traveling off into the distance. Like, what?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, what was the old, like, oh, squiggly line from like The Simpsons where like you just see like the— it just makes me think of that where like AI is gonna be great in some of its applications, but it's also gonna be downright hilarious in other areas. And I love on LinkedIn where people are sharing like the, like, oops reels, you know, the outtakes of what AI has done when they've done it. Because like most people post, they go, look at how cool this is that, you know, and like this still image made into a video. But then some people will go, hey, this is what I made, but then here's all the outtakes.

And I was going to say, how many hours did it take to get that?

To get that one. And I think that that goes back to something that, Nick, you and I talked about this probably about a year and a half ago. where like LinkedIn is great, you see a lot of great things, but behind those great things are a lot of hours, a lot of unknowns, and a lot of things that people don't realize. So I know I got caught up in that trap of seeing all these things on LinkedIn of people building these great things and going, man, how come I can't do that? And then Nick was actually the voice of reason and he goes, do you know how long it probably took them to make that one post?

Like, social media all over.

And it's things that I just wouldn't have thought of. And having a marketing background, you would have thought that I would have like been marketing.

It's more like a psychology thing though, if you think about it, because it's the whole, it's the whole Instagram photo, like, exactly. It's like, oh my God, why, why aren't I eating tiramisu on the beach, you know, at sunset every night like this influencer? It's because it's like 1 second of their life and the rest of the time they're in their pajamas in like a 1-bedroom apartment. It's not the same. Yeah, there isn't an equivalency there. So it's like perception.

Yeah, yeah.

So like, I don't—

I—

yeah, but it's easy to fall for that. It really is. But some of the videos though, not, not too bad. Like, I was, uh, There's a couple people on X that were showing like a couple of the ones that they made with like world leaders, and it was like they're all like goofs, but like it's it's it's pretty good. Like because I think one of the actual, and we're pretty much into the AI section of this conversation at this point, but um the um one of the ones was it was it posed the dilemma like at what point do we not need actors anymore, right? At what point can it not make a make a movie?

Right?

Because a lot of the things, if you think about it, and I can't remember who I was listening to, it was probably like Tim Kast or something like that. But it was, um, the question was posed, it's like, at what point does AI then, you give it, it's a script, right? Like certain movies follow a certain script, right? Whether they're Hallmark movies, whether they're whatever, there's a certain script to it, right? Like trouble and tension at the beginning, 2 people that don't belong together. Oh, they have something in common and then they fall in love at the end, right? So it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, if you could feed AI a script of that, they can create the characters, just tell them what they need to look like or how tall or whatever, and they can make the movie, right? So at what point are actors not relevant when AI starts to be really, really good at that? So—

So it's funny that you bring that up because back in August they picketed, um, actors and stuff picketed Warner Brothers. I think, was it Warner Brothers? Let me— yeah, Warner Brothers Studios.

Mm-hmm.

Because of that, because video games and stuff are using actors' voices and it's like they can come in and record one line, pay them for that one line, and then use AI to clone it and keep going.

Right. It was, it was ChatGPT and Scarlett Johansson or something like that. Was that the— I think so. But like, yeah, yeah.

A great example of this in the music industry, the Beatles, right? Released Now and Then with a literal digital voice cloned of John Lennon.

Yeah.

And I don't know if anybody's watched the story of it on Disney Plus.

I did not.

Totally watch it. It's the coolest thing to see. But this is something that they've been doing in the works for a while now, since like Lord of the Rings movies and things like that. The engineers were all working on these things, and then eventually it came around where they were able to do it. It's like they tried in the past to do this because it was a long-lost recording of John Lennon that just basically playing for a song, and then they were like, well, let's get it back together. But when they did it, they had problems with John Lennon's voice. And then I think George Harrison getting his— like, his stuff was like dust and speckled, you know, like clicks and pops kind of thing. But they were able to use AI to basically recreate John Lennon's voice to keep it going and clean it up, and then also to clean up Harrison's stuff. So like, the thing is really cool to see how it all came together. But it's like, this is the power of AI. We're like, what's going to happen 20 years from now? Are the Beatles going to be releasing new music under their estate? with their voices cloned? Like, how, you know, and that's where like this whole AI thing is great, but like there's a lot that's still to be battled and decided because like voice acting, things like that, a lot of this affects it.

Imagine being that— imagine being the, uh, the, the team leader or manager of an ecosystem quality team and having to figure that stuff out, Isaac. Uh, like it's, um, yeah, no, I, I— but I agree, it's, it's It's nerve-wracking because you're battling with something that's moving so fast. So you're trying to create, not boundaries, but you're trying to create ethical rules around something that's mutating and changing so quickly that by the time you get something down on paper, it doesn't even have to be concrete, the parameters have changed.

Yeah.

in, in a certain way or a certain form, right? Like, a year or two ago, we wouldn't be talking about like— or like, let's say like a year before the Scarlett Johansson thing, because that's just voice. Like, we're at the point now that, you know, when that battle went on, that was like, well, you're, you're screwing over voice actors technically, right? So now we're talking about, well, the person doesn't even need to be there at all. I don't need an actor. I can just say, make up name. I want him to look like Scarlett Johansson, not exactly like, but in that image. And I have an actor, I don't need to pay you to come out. I don't have to get your trailer, your bowl of M&Ms without the red, like, it's there, you know what I mean? You don't need it, right? And then if you look at that, and then you think to yourself, well, that's never going to happen, they're never going to look at the financial benefit. Like, how many movies are flops because they had to spend so much money on this, that, or the other? Well, it's not that much more of a risk now. to do something that might flop because the investment might be cheaper. Now granted, when the technology has to get better and this and that and more streamlined, but if it becomes to that point where it's like, oh, it's not that much money to just create an actor, put them in this, um, like I said, like this, uh, algorithm of like, take a Hallmark movie. I need— was it Dean Cain that was usually in most of them? The guy that used to be Superman? Give me a Dean Cain type person and, and, and a love interest. And then put it into the algorithm of Hallmark movie, spit something out for Christmas of 2024. And this might suck. That doesn't matter. It only costs us X amount of money to do it. Let's see what happens. If we break even, we break even. As long as we do that, that's real. Like, that's real. Like, it's—

How much money do you think it actually would cost though? I'm curious. Like, it's, it's, it ain't cheap, you know?

Like, over time though, If you look at it from the pers— I'm just looking at it from the perspective of what technology does over time, right? Like, eventually, if it becomes more streamlined, if it becomes this, that, and the other— there's a lot of like ifs that have to happen in order for that to be— for that mindset that I just described to actually come about. But there's been plenty of other things that we thought were going to be too— VR, like, in its first inception. Oh my God, how much money that's going to cost for you to have like a virtual Like do virtual reality, you're gonna need this big deck all around you. Remember like the old ones at the very, very beginning where it was like, okay, you'll put these things on, but you need this whole thing all around you and this big like, and you gotta be on this platform and you can like, like now I can put on the Quest 3 and it maps my room. Like it's like, oh, I don't need this. I'm just going to spatially figure out where you're at.

You know what I mean?

Like the—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like in the movie world, like things to sell, like Meryl Streep, I wanna watch this movie because of Meryl Streep, you know, like, you think that is going— like, how's that work with AI? Like, are we going to have like, um, you know, floppy disk with Meryl Streep that we just bring over to another, uh, set?

I, I hope you're not talking bad about Meryl Streep.

No, no, I love Meryl Streep.

That's my point. I think they'll create the next Meryl Streep or the next so-and-so, right? The next Denzel Washington, the next action star. They'll create that person because again, like, even over time, right? The next person comes along. Like, even the ones that we like to— and don't get me wrong, there'll always be the archive of like, I like John Travolta in Broken Arrow. Not many people would ever say that. But like—

Face/Off fan.

Or Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, right? Like, those will always be there. But for the future, you could— I could easily imagine a world where you say, well, I like John Smith and so-and-so, and John Smith was just an actor they made up. Because remember, it's not too far-fetched to now be able to say, like, like, take Midjourney where you're like, I need to create a, um, what would you call it? I need to create the— this is my spokesperson, but keep using that likeness in different scenarios. I don't see where that couldn't be applied. Like, I would hate to see that happen. Like, I would rather have actors. I'd rather have movies the way they are, you know, being from a generation that where you've grown up to, like, know that. But is it impossible?

No.

Just the way other things have evolved over time. Now again, that's the ethical thing, is the thing that's going to throw like a wrench in everything. Because like, yeah, if I'm an actor right now, which I would love to be, I, I would be upset. I would be pissed if they're just saying like, I'm just gonna make an actor on the computer and I don't need you anymore.

Yeah, you know, I hear you.

I don't know, me being in the technology, I feel like if I was an actor, which I definitely will never be, It most likely would be like, I'd be like, yeah, just recreate me in AI. Just pay me, you know, residuals. Like, all right, as long as it's not something like crazy, like—

It's called lazy.

As long as it's not like Black Mirror-ish where, what was it, Salma Hayek, like that episode where like they go to the extreme with it, totally fine. But let me, let me pose a question to you guys and, and especially to everybody who's watching right now. How far off from the Black Mirror episode of San, what was it, San Junipero, do you think we are? The one where they upload the consciousness into like basically a retirement facility?

I did not see that.

I've never seen it, but I've watched Altered Carbon, which I believe is like similar to like your consciousness, right?

TL;DR, sorry for any spoilers, the episode's been out since 2016-ish, so I'm not really worried about upsetting people.

Should be okay.

Ideally what it is is, um, this person's consciousness is uploaded into a simulated reality And then they are much, much younger. So this person is like hospice, right? Okay. They upload their consciousness into a computer, and then the person's back being like 18, 19 in San Junipero, or I don't even know, San Junipero. And it's like the town, and they're like meeting other people and they're talking. And here, all of these people that they're talking to are all people that have had their conscious uploaded.

This is like Futurama in the heads, isn't it? Like, yeah. Yes. Nixon heads Futurama.

Like, how far off do you think we are from that? Because if you think about it, like, we have simulated realities already with VR, right?

They would not be— they would be close proximity. Like, okay, let's put it this way. I think you would be able to do something like that, but they wouldn't be the pro— they'd be close proximities as far as like maybe mannerisms and maybe like looks and so on and so forth. But I think the human consciousness and the personality aspect of it, I don't think they're anywhere near close to being able to mimic something like that. They maybe— because think about it, like, think about the way it does it now. It's like, it's, it's a sum of its— it's a sum of parts, but it doesn't understand. It's all that put together.

True. It's also a philosophical question, you know, like, what, what is you? What, what is the definition of you? Like, there's, uh, if there's a great laser, for one, is me.

But that's—

there's a great book called, um, um, Star Trek Physics. So I forget the name of it. Um, something like that. I'll find it and I'll reference it. I'll find it. I'll put it in the notes. Um, but the question is, you know, when you do, when you, uh, uh, beam me down, basically it destroys you and makes a copy of you down, you know, wherever you went. Right. Is that actually you or is that a new person altogether? You know, what, what is the answer to that?

Well, it depends. Is it like The Prestige where it's basically dropping the original one into a tank every time?

No, no, you're just eliminated. You're, you're, you're, you're atomized, you know, like you, you no longer—

John just says the same thing. Yeah, you get destroyed when you're unable to move you. Yeah. Yep.

Basically what John said.

Basically what John said. Yeah. No, no, that's 100% true. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. No, it's, uh, yeah, I don't think they're going to be able to get close because like, how do you honestly replicate, uh, like witty sarcasm, charm, Sure, you can copy the hazel blue eyes, the beautiful mane, but you don't— you can't really mimic— I'm just saying hypothetically, like, I'm not pointing anything out to anyone specific, but like, we're talking hypotheticals.

3 years later, there was a clone and it was kind of better and funnier and great mustache.

How do you— you don't really— there's certain things you might be able to replicate, but the rest of it, I, I don't know.

So I also feel like there's a little bit of a lack of humility. Like, I, I, I think that, uh, we're not all that great, right? Like, I think the next version is not going to be Us exactly anyway.

So the next version of me better be 6-foot-something and be able to spike a volleyball better than I was. Like, I'm just like, why, why would you sit there and replicate something where I know my faults and be like, yeah, yeah, why don't you, you know, just add, add a little bit, you know what I mean, a little bit more muscle tone, you know, just it— yeah, like, why not, right?

If we all just did become the heads in Futurama, that would be— that'd be the best joke in history.

Is it sad that I was binging Futurama before we started this show?

I mean, it's the best way to get ready for AI. It's like Futurama's pretty much— Yeah, there you go. We're aiming for as a society, right?

Would you say it's the boilerplate to the future and that we should probably put it in a GitHub repo and prepare?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. It's a documentary shot in real time, basically. It's kind of the way that works. But, um, yeah, let's jump— like, we're still on AI, but let's take a look at a little bit more. Um, there was one that I wanted to point out because I'd never heard of it before, but, uh, And I can't remember who said it, but it was funny because they said it's amongst my favorite and my worst discoveries of the year. But that's Cursor, acquired by DataRobot. And I took a look at it and it's actually pretty cool. It like helps you rewrite your code essentially is the way like it kind of looks. I haven't downloaded it yet or I haven't like attempted to use it, but just reading. Have you?

Yeah, I have. I think John, haven't you? I think John has actually used Cursor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, perhaps this time we should get John up here. Yeah, where's he? If he's willing.

Yeah, John, you want to you want to hop in here? Because I think you have done cursor. I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I can. I'll send John if you're willing. I'll get you up here. But I've been using I've been using cursor for a while. It's like VS Code, but you have like some AI action going on with it. Yeah. Invite copy John.

Already said to come, Dennis.

Whatever, man.

Whatever. Whatever. Look, he's ahead of the game.

Oh, he's getting holiday attire on. This is interesting. Okay. John has the best costumes and like the best like dress-up attire. Like that spacesuit that he wore, which is phenomenal. It's true.

It's true. It's really cool stuff, this curse. But at the same time, it's also scary. And it's it's one of those things like you you should know what you're doing before you start using it because it just Spits out a whole bunch of stuff, then you don't know why. So if you don't like actually go through and approve and, you know, like, like code review, you know, like watch it and you gotta know what the code is before you can actually review it, right?

Yeah. He's like, we've had this in, uh, we've had instances in this in the developer Slack where people have asked for assistance on code and then we're looking and we're like, wait a minute, that's, that's not an API at all. Where, where did this? And it's like, oh, it was, you know, it was AI helped create it. That was actually part of the— we updated our code of conduct shortly after a lot of this started happening to say, hey, if you're going to use our AI to generate code, please tell us ahead of time because sometimes it's not always correct. But that gives other people who are trying to help the idea of, oh, okay, I need to make sure that all of the code or I need to scan more of the code than just what they're trying to— logical whiteboarding ideas. I need to actually look at the code because It may not be what it's expected, or there may be a more efficient way to do it.

Yeah. And beyond that, like it might not, not be efficient, but also might not be secure. Like it has this, it has this love for installing, you know, packages like npm, everything, you know, like reinstall, install, all this good stuff. I have random packages for whatever problem you might have. And, uh, you know, as you know, npm, all those have like many security issues within those.

It's a whole problem out there.

But yeah.

Now imagine that's developers, right, that are doing it. Now imagine when you start to— and this is like, there's, there's been launches by other, other companies and stuff like that, which I won't name, but like, imagine when you start to open that up to customers to build their own.

Yeah, no, this is, this is a really interesting thing. Like, it, yeah, it's, it's like kind of proof of concept kind of stuff. I, I don't think anything anyone who's not a developer out there would produce would be something that could scale to handle traffic. You know, like, it's like you can build something up to 65, 70% of the way, have a nice little MVP. Um, but then I think my, my opinion presently is you have to hand it off to a developer. And I think there might be a market for that specifically at some point in time soon. Carter, uh, pay attention.

There might be a solutions partner out there that's just chomping at the bit to do that. Absolutely.

I see a JMac. Bring him on up, AJ.

Hello, hello, hello! Yes, I love it! Excellent, I love it, bringing the festivities.

For anyone out there, John has been our, uh, he's been researching and keeping them, uh, us grounded.

Sorry, I was in stream, I was in the stream with y'all and watching you at the same time, and that created chaos.

Yes, it really did.

What was that?

I was— I thought I'd introduce you as you've been kind of, uh, the person on the ground, like, keeping track of all the AI developments in the development world, uh, for us and trying to— how I say— like, develop an opinion how, how we feel about it and how we— how it should be approached. Um, so amazing to have you up here to talk more about it.

Well, uh, thank you for Thanks for the moment adding me, I guess. My general opinion that everyone, like, should try to have is be optimistic, but also careful with how you use it. I think it's very easy to assume it's doing things that it's not, and then it's also Easy to also do things where you don't actually know what it's doing for you. Like an example of something I was working on today in Cursor, because Cursor was brought up, is I've been building a little HubSpot project for fun, and that project I basically just wanted to do some Simple API requests to HubSpot. And yeah, it like installed a whole bunch of npm packages and, and it's just in an endless loop of errors.

So yeah.

So it's one of those things where it's like, okay, well, I could have maybe just done this myself and it would have taken an hour, but I spent 4 hours instead just telling it to fix its own stuff. So I would say, then the only reason I'm spending time having it fix its own things is because I didn't write its initial code. So I don't know exactly how it's going to approach everything.

Yeah, I do.

But if you take it in bite-sized bits, if you work on one small feature at a time rather than the big picture, it tends to work a lot better. Copilot Workspace is super exciting. I've played with that. Um, I have not tried GitHub Spark. That's probably really cool too. Replit's interesting. Yeah, a lot of exciting stuff happening right now.

Yeah, it's in a lot of ways, it's just a faster way to copy and paste from Stack Overflow in a lot of ways, right? Like, you don't know what it is, you copy paste it, hope it works type of thing, right?

Don't give away the secrets.

Which is something in here about Stack Overflow, right? They're the most— and I'm looking at it, the most common frustrations for them at 62% is the amount of technical debt. So it's interesting because like, do you think AI creates more technical debt or do you think it actually reduces? I, I think it creates more if it's not efficient.

Yeah, that's what I, I've read, that, um, it does improve the efficiency of senior Engineers who know what they're looking at. So it, it's like having a nice little junior programmer on your team. Uh, it's not necessarily very skilled, but you know, it's quick about it. Um, and you as a senior have to go in and do the reviews and actually say, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you going with this, buddy? Which is why I actually like, um, Cursor over some of the other options out there, cuz there's an approve, you know, you can apply it or, you know, reject it.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas like Replit, for example, man, that just like goes to town, like building out all kinds of things. And then you ask a simple question like, wait, actually, could you add this to the navigation please? And it deletes like 35 files, creates 17 more files, you know, 75 more packages. Yeah. But it, it, it's something, it's there, it's gonna happen and it's gonna improve for sure.

I think if you take it in certain chunks, right? And I, uh, one of my buddies, uh, Francisco, shout out to him. You mentioned this on LinkedIn too, where it's like, It's increasing productivity and confidence, you know, at a certain level in the day-to-day work, right? So it's not like, it's not, it's not, he's not taking this like AI and like doing this whole 6-month project in like 5 minutes. It's not like, it's not one of those things, but it's like over time and granted it'll get better over time, but like at its current state, right? It's these, these little, little things where it's cleaning this up or it's increasing productivity here and there. Time's money, right? So, you know, anything that you can do, I just, there was just.

Yeah.

I was just going through something. I can't remember. I was putting on, uh, my youngest has a whole lot of fever, so he's watching YouTube and, uh, there's this thing and there was actually a thing for the calendar, right? Like, this is going to prioritize your calendar and it's going to move stuff around. So like, there's little things there where like just increasing the productivity and giving you more time to do other things is very beneficial. But indeed, yeah, I think as long as you're not leaning it, leaning on it so heavily that you're kind of losing sight of what's happening.

Yeah. Speaking of losing sight, like, at, uh, at least with, even with Replit, you can still download and look at your code, right? It's still there. You can edit it if you want. But have you all looked at this, uh, Devin? You know, where it's like you, you interact with it through Slack. I mean, what the heck?

Like, I've, I've only seen, uh, there's a YouTuber named The Primate Gem. Uh, he paid for the $500. Oh, right, right. He found the description, and his videos are hilarious on it. It is— he's found some ways to work with it that are very unorthodox. In one video, he— and this was all livestreamed— he convinced it that it was an ape from Planet of the Apes, and that it had to— every interaction that he ever had with it, he would speak to it like in broken English.

Oh, wow.

And it had to reply to him in broken English. And bizarrely, it was actually doing a decent job. Like, it still had some quirks where it would do something random, but it was mostly working.

But how do you feel about like abstracting it away that much? I mean, like, you are now no longer in charge of your code base. I'm not sure. I've never played with it. And as Carter said, it's very freaking expensive, you know? So I'm not sure if you can like Uh, yes, a vulnerability.

And I, I see it more as like, so a lot of these tools, I think the, the senior developer is who's most empowered by them, and the junior developer has to learn some skills that normally they would learn on the job in a way faster Way. So basically what I mean by that is like what you're asking about, like Devin and some of these other tools is you are now more of a PR reviewer.

Right, right.

You, you have to actually go, okay, this solution actually makes sense for the task that I'm trying to do, or it doesn't, and evaluate that. And when it comes to the junior developer, like, you're not at that level of like, you don't know what the good solution might look like. You're just going for, I want to get the project done as fast as possible. So it creates these situations where you might have like, you know, 50 npm packages that you don't even know what they do. And, and you sure, you might have something that's half functional, but you don't know how or why it works.

Right.

So a senior developer is more likely to rein it in and be like, no, dog, like, you're going too crazy. Like, love the enthusiasm, tone it down a notch.

You know, it'd be kind of cool if you could, um, set— like, you know, when you're playing a game, you can set, like, you know, uh, beginner, intermediate, advanced. It'd be nice, like, there was a version of that for these, these tools. So, like, if I chose beginner, it would— it'd output the code, but it'd also have, like, a really verbose Definition of what that snippet of code does.

Agreed, agreed with it.

Now, when you were talking about, uh, the interaction with Slack, was it actually like a— an agent that they were dealing with inside of Slack that they were telling? Because you had mentioned that previously. Is that what that kind of is, essentially?

I would consider it an agent.

Yeah. Okay. No, I was just curious because like, that's— I think that's probably one of the bigger Um, and another buddy of mine who had, uh, in the, uh, the LinkedIn, uh, Arvind, he had mentioned, uh, that, that being one of the bigger differences too is like, at the end of the day, you know, it's, you have this kind of like before you were, you were dealing mostly with like, you know, it was mostly like chatbots, right? That were kind of, the interaction was very, uh, you weren't actually doing like, you weren't executing things in parallel, right? It was more like, this kind of— it was very rigid, right? Where now it's— and I saw an example of this too with another place. Who it is is irrelevant at this point, but like where the example given was, let's say you're an HR person that gets like thousands of, what would you say, like job applications, right? And the agent, the AI agent, then You would enter— you could interact with it within Slack, and you could like say like, oh, it would Slack message you, hey, I just found a new person that, you know, fits the bill for this job that you had, you know. Um, and then you would be like, okay, make an appointment. And then the Slack— the bot, or the agent if you will, would then connect to your Google account and it would do all those things throughout, but within Slack. This would be all within Slack. The agent itself wasn't created in Slack and all that other stuff, but You interact with it through there.

Yeah.

And that, I think, is one of— and that was what my buddy Arvind pointed out— is things like that is where it's now a step above the traditional, well, I'm going to throw a prompt at this chatbot on this website and it's going to maybe give me something. If not, it's going to fall back to OpenAI or something and give me something generic. And who knows, maybe I can get it off track by asking it something ridiculous and hallucinate like to the extreme, you know, and, um, it's a lot different. And it's, uh, those are the type of things that excite me is the possibilities. Obviously guardrails are— will be needed even more so than ever. But, um, yeah, I, I think with that there's a lot of—

Yeah, I want to hit the play button. I'm going to try to do a dramatic entrance here. Let's see, I, I didn't have a chance to queue up good music for this, so I'm using the, uh, Background music here, but let's see if this is. Ladies and gentlemen, weighing in at approximately 150-ish pounds, maybe. I have no idea what this guy weighs. Maybe five foot eight inches tall. Let me bring to stage.

God! Satan.

I— you, you were, you were about right on, on the 150, but I, I claim to be 6'1. Uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not 5'8.

Listen, buddy, I, I think I am taller than and better than everyone, so, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that, that's accurate.

And I just saw, I just saw Nick's shirt and, and big Nick energy. That's great. Yeah. That's awesome. I unfortunately don't have my Santa hat or any fun t-shirt on, so that's a little bogus. John got all dressed up.

You're just representing developers because that's literally the attire that we wear all the time. It's just all black.

Yeah, it's a blank t-shirt. I have about 15 of these blank t-shirts. Yeah, that's us developers.

Tell us, Carter, this whole AI thing, pretty overhyped, right? kind of will go away next year, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in a phase out. It's— yeah, it's in a phase out for sure. No, I mean, I absolutely, absolutely love my Claude. I'm not a big OpenAI fan, but Claude and Anthropic. I see. Yeah, that's, that's the play.

So what makes you enjoy Claude over OpenAI or Anthropic?

Well, Claude is Anthropic. Um, OpenAI.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, you're good. I mean, it's like a sub— it's a— it's like a one ring down. Uh, OpenAI, I, I, I cannot say I trust OpenAI, but, but I still use a lot of their tools. I trust Claude a little more and Anthropic a little more. They are owned by Amazon, but also the Claude interface is significantly better and the answers Don't feel like super AI. I don't know how they're doing the training or whatever, but it feels a lot more genuine and it doesn't feel like— they actually just released an awesome paper about alignment and the answers that it gives are a lot more— it feels like they are not like dumbing down the model afterwards or they're like tightening up the model to get it to say specific things or not say specific things. It feels like a lot more open. And I also love Grok. on Grok AI and, uh, and like just xAI's models.

Wow. Wow. Um, unfortunately Gemini was not, uh, uh, mentioned.

No shot. No shot. No, I— yeah, I used Gemini like one time. Although Google's video model, man, that— yeah, what is that one called? Limu or something? Leo? Yeah, yeah, Leo, I think. Um, that is freaking insane. Actually, correction, say it again. Veo. Veo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's insane because, because yeah, Sora just, Sora just got released for everyone, the, the OpenAI video model, and, um, and that's cool, but the Veo model just blows everything out of the water.

Yeah, I think what we're gonna end up seeing in the next year, because you know when, when image generation Like, the main thing that everyone kept calling out was that, like, every image of a person involved way too many fingers.

Yeah.

The new thing that the, the companies are going to use to prove that their, their tools are, like, actually really good is I think we're gonna see a crazy amount of gymnastics, skateboarding, and, uh, surfing videos. Because if you've ever seen AI-generated videos Of that, it is hilarious.

Yeah, the transfers, like, uh, they, they turn around and it's like the legs just have completely swapped positions and it's like, okay, it's not, it's not quite learned.

Just so you know, I brought a gas station cup for you, Carter. Just that. Ship one out, ship one out.

I forgot, I forgot which AI it was that did this, but did you guys see the one that has like a, um, virtual try-on where You can choose a model, upload a picture of your garment if you're like a fashion industry, and then it'll take that garment, put it on the model, and then the model can like turn around, can walk down a street, and it'll show you like what your garment would look like on a model. And it's like that kind of like, I guess it's also going to affect the modeling industry at that point.

That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I think I just saw too, Redfin just did something recently with um, like listing, uh, listing shots of like a house where you can change. I mean, it's not— it needs a little bit of work, but the fact that it wasn't there before and is there now, you can literally change. Like, you want to buy this house but this isn't your style? Modern. Click on this, click on that, and it reworks the entire room but keeps everything where it kind of should be as far as like spatially, but changes the decor. Like Completely of the, um, of the actual listing, which I thought was very, very interesting because a lot of the times, like working in real estate, that was always the big— it's like, oh, I can't see myself living here, this really isn't my style. It's like, you can change anything, you realize. Paint, paint, paint. It can be expensive depending how much you buy, but you can always change the color of a wall, you can always throw out a table. But like, it's very hard for people to visualize that, and I thought like using this It's sort of like, I guess you would call it like image AI to like basically redesign an entire room while still keeping it functionally the same as far as like structure to give people a better idea of what they can do and stuff. So, um, yeah, it's, it's something else. It's, it's, it seems like the potential to eliminate things as far as like actors, models, you know, voiceover actors, that's the scariest part. And At the speed at which it moves, I think that's even more concerning just because of the fact you have to try to— you're behind a day or two to try to get the guardrails in to prevent certain things. So, um, I like what it can do. I just, I'm— I worry about the guardrails not being in place until it's, you know, too late.

So I have a funny story to share, but Dennis, go ahead because I know what you're going to do next.

In an effort to bring everyone who's watching this, uh, this stream onto the stage Um, I'm going to go with, um, the lo-fi. Let's see what happens here.

Okay.

Oh, the lo-fi is a good entrance.

Friends, countrymen, person that I know, respect, who wears a Santa hat much better than the Nick LaForte on stage. Most people do. Let me bring to, uh, your attention Brooke Bond.

Thank you so much for having me. Um, I just realized that I should probably blur my background because it's not great. So let's—

Have you seen— have you seen the mess behind me?

Oh, now it looks great. Now it looks much better.

Oh, it looks so much better. No, this blur is not working. Okay, fine. You all will get to see how messy my virtual background is. I need to work on it. This is why Dennis, he convinced me to get a green screen this year. So People can actually see my hair and stuff.

So I keep forgetting I have a green screen. I really should use that because I bought it when, um, when we did the backdrops. I think it was like 2, 2 or 3 years ago, like when COVID hit and we had our developer day. We all got like the backdrop that said HubSpot in the— and all those things. And then I was like, this is great. So I ended up buying another one out of— from the company that was green screen on one side and like a white brick wall on the other. Because I figured we could use it to take pictures of our kids for like Christmas and all that stuff. And I, I still to this day haven't used it.

But the green screen—

I was in a closet back there.

The play is Dharmesh. Dharmesh has a big green screen behind it, but it's his house and it's like his actual spot. He just has, has it cleaned. I'm like, that's the play. You make people think you don't have a green screen while still having the green screen.

I heard that. I will never get him on that show now because you gave away a secret.

He said that once in a meet, like in a team or in a company meeting, and I didn't believe it at first. I'm like, what? Why would you do that? And I'm like, all right, I guess. I mean, like, let's not ruin the opportunity.

I don't know, worried that his kids go walk into the room while he's on a Zoom or something.

That's funny. So Brooke, tell us, AI, like big fan, not a big fan? What are your thoughts here?

That's a great question, Nick. Um, I am cautiously optimistic. Uh, I don't think it's at the level of where people think it is. Like, it's not like we're not like in The Matrix or anything. Like, I don't think it's gonna like be that crazy. I think it's really good at very simple tasks, but if you ask it to like try and like actually reason like a human does, because it's basically just like determining what it's going to say based on the words that come previous to it. It doesn't have the ability to actually reason and think, which is why we've seen where like Cursor and like Replit and stuff like that gets stuck where it's like you tell it to do something and it's like, oh, let me now change this thing that was totally fine and superfluous to what you actually asked me to do. So yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, if this is the Matrix and they stuck me with Dennis and AJ, I need the red pill like yesterday. But no, that's a, that's a fair point. That's, uh, rewriting all of that. Yeah, that's— I haven't used it yet. I'm definitely going to because somebody had mentioned it earlier and I didn't even know it was a thing. Honestly, that's how stuck I am reviewing stuff. I, I barely— I don't see daylight sometimes. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, no, at the end of the day, that's— I want to check that out. But yeah, that would be a little bit disconcerting to me if it's— there's that. But there is that fear though. You're right, like 100%, like Certain people you talk to, they'll make it seem like AI is going to eliminate everything tomorrow, as if it's like polished, ready to go out the door, and like, you know, you're just fighting inevitability. There's reason for concern, obviously, but I think like, yeah, you're right, there's— it's definitely a little bit further off than I think a lot of people are raising that fear flag, if you will, you know, for it. But well, let me, let me just say—

Skill issue. Sounds like a skill issue.

You gotta improve your prompt engineering.

Well, and I mean, I think we talked about this yesterday though. There's like a lot of people who like wanna use AI and become like technical about it, but like they don't understand how it works behind the scenes. Sure. So it's like we're just gonna eventually have like all these people using it that have no idea like how it was made, what it was trained on, right? Like how it's even working. And then like we talked about, it's just a big black box for everybody eventually.

Well, I know, so there was an article 2 years ago, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna post it here in the chat so everybody else can kind of take a look at this who's, who's watching the stream right now and see. 2 years ago, somebody decided to have an old childhood friend that they, that they used to have, who I think they had passed away or anything like that, but he basically took his microwave and injected AI into all of it to be his old friend. And the moral of this all is eventually he was like, oh, it's okay, come on inside. Like, he like opened the door and come on inside and let's hang out. So he opened the door.

Into the microwave?

And the microwave turned out to be her in real life.

How big of a microwave does he have?

Wait, I'm so confused.

Yeah, I saw this like 2 years ago and I was like, this is why AI needs to be looked at closely.

This reminds me of the house, the movie that I never remember the title of.

I think the movie is called Smart House, right?

Right now, to get this off my chest, it's the one where she like—

because like the whole premise is like they win this like smart house, it's like super futuristic, and the children don't have a mother. So then the house is like, let me create a mother and become their mother. It was creepy.

Did the smart house happen to kill anybody? Because my—

No, they stopped it because this Because the creator, the lady who created the house, knew how to like do the kill switch pretty much, and that's what saved the day.

Yep, that, that Smart House is a movie from 1999 about that exact thing, and it did not get very good IMDb reviews.

I mean, it's a Disney Channel original movie. It's classic. Okay, then it is classic.

Yeah, it has to be. There was actually Someone was—

There was a, um, based off of what you're saying, AJ, with like it going kind of off the rails, but, uh, it was just— I just heard it on a podcast just recently, and, and I'll, I'll find it for later. But like the premise of it was the code that they wrote tried— it literally— the code that they wrote tried to lie so it wouldn't get deleted. Like it was like there was something where it was trying to write something and it was asking it to edit, like remove part of it, like remove part of the code, which removed part of like the actual logic. And it lied and said it did it and it didn't actually do it because it was trying to self-preserve. Like it was like the craziest thing. Like I got to find it. Maybe I'm explaining it slightly off, but just imagine like you telling code to delete itself and it's saying like, or delete something that's like a vital part of itself. And it's saying, yeah, no, I did it. Yeah.

And then you look and you're like, that's, that's, that's what this, this paper is, Nick, by Anthropic. They're— when they align the models at the end, it's like, hey, does the model align with these core values? And we got to make sure the model has figured out that if it lies during that step, it's not going to get— it's not going to get, uh, like, it's not going to get switched off and like toggled off for certain things. So it's now lying on that last step to get to full production. It's crazy.

That is insane. Yeah.

I do think so. I've read the same articles and as well as the prior ones, they've done similar Repeated studies on like models doing malicious behavior. There is one caveat you should know. It is important, like research is important, but before prompting them to delete themselves or delete whatever thing that makes the AI what it is, as well as before it goes and does the like a malicious action, they first start with a prompt telling it that its goal is to do that thing and why. So like the caveat is like, it's not automatically just trying to preserve itself.

Okay.

However, where it gets dangerous is, so if you've got an AI tool and somebody can inject the prompt into it, And they get their prompt in first, effectively, then you don't know that it's trying to do all of this.

So the new hacking, the hacking of the future.

The new hacking is literally social engineering gone with bots.

Yeah, yeah. Actually, there was a crazy experiment. This guy put, this guy put $20 grand in like a bank account and the AI had the ability to transfer money out of the bank account. You could send in prompts to the AI. It was like a $100 buy-in. to send in prompts. And if you got it to send the $20 grand somewhere else, you got to keep the $20 grand and then whatever the buy-in was. And eventually it moved the money out after it got to like $50 grand. It's a wonderful old Twitter thread. And I was like, that's ingenious to like to find some safety flaws in your model. It's like, hey, we're going to put $20 grand in this bank account. If you can get the AI to move the $20 grand and whatever else is in the bank account, the pot, you win it. I was like, yeah, that's genius.

That's, I mean, that gives sweepstakes and stuff a whole new meaning. Yeah.

Like, oh yeah, that's your hackathon right there. That's, yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. I like that.

There, there's an AI, uh, bot in, uh, I think it's in, uh, England right now that will, um, it gets on spam caller lists. Mm-hmm. And it's just this old lady who, oh yeah, I've heard that one.

Yeah.

Just, just keep them on the phone for Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's doing good work. Yeah, I love that. I love it.

I love that feature on my phone.

Yeah, I would— John, do you use the Pixel, um, um, the call waiting feature?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, uh, I don't want to sit on the phone with, uh, With a, like, if I'm calling my internet service provider or something, they throw me on hold, I throw them on hold.

Yeah. Or incoming calls where you can, you know, ask for more information about why they're calling. I love it.

Every time I've asked for more information, nobody has ever responded.

Never. Never.

I get a response usually, but I get a lot of spam. Spam.

AJ, you're on the Android side now? I, I forget.

Uh, I am, I am because, so it was really funny. I have been an Android user like all the time. And I was like, you know what? I use a Mac for work. I, you know, I, I wanna be more connected. Let's do that. Like, so I switched over to iPhone. I think it was earlier this year. 3 days is about 3. Yeah, that's 3. 3 days I lasted. And then I went back and I switched it to an Android because I just couldn't, it like, it didn't allow you to do like, like you could only have one, basically run one app As a single process every time, which was kind of annoying because I, at the time, like I usually use split screen on my phone.

Mm-hmm.

If I'm doing stuff so I can monitor 2 things at once and do it. Well, one of the big annoyances I had, and I know this is totally first world problem, right?

Yeah.

But like at nighttime when my wife decides to fall asleep or, you know, if I'm still awake, I'll watch TV, but then I'll play the sound of the TV through my headphones using my phone. Well, the problem was, is with an iPhone, the second you turn the screen off, done.

Yeah.

Disconnected. Everything went back to normal. On my Android, I could turn the screen off and it was perfectly fine. So I just ended up switching back because of the frustrations I had. But the, the funniest thing about it is my wife was an iPhone user her whole time. Got her to switch to Android after I showed her everything that my phone could actually do. And she's like, I need this now. And I was like, yes, you do. So like, I actually got her to switch.

Maybe eventually I'll switch to Android because even though, you know, we use Macs for work, I don't want to connect my personal iPhone to my work Mac. So I just don't do it. I don't— I'm not signed into like my iCloud on my work computer. I'm like, that's a bit too much. But going back to the spam calling, just answer in another language. I answer in Mandarin Chinese and then they hang up on you real fast.

Right.

Yeah. My wife actually, she wants to go back to a dumb phone. That's, that's the, her next, uh, device.

That would be the dream, going back to the Nokia flip phone that I used to have. Yeah.

I want, my dad used to have a Motorola Razr. Maybe I can find it and see if I can get a SIM card for it.

Yes. Oh, Razrs. Those are great. I remember I got a, it was like a BlackBerry kind of thing. I forgot what the phone was, but I ended up getting one of those from somebody and like, I just switched my SIM card to that and that thing was I used that for a long time, but that was when like cell phones were great because like you could literally drop it or like run it over and then just pick it up and continue with your call. Whereas now, like, I think it dropped from the arm of my couch to the floor and I cracked my screen and I was like, are you serious? It was carpet.

Like, nice.

I just, I just, I put in an order for a Light Phone 3 a little bit ago. I'm still waiting for it. I think it's coming in January, but I, I pivoted away from a dumb phone like a year ago to an iPhone and now I don't wanna pivot back. So I'm waiting on that to arrive.

I don't think I could ever imagine Carter having a stripped-down, non-technical phone. I just don't, I don't know if I could ever believe that you would have something non-technical.

Very surprising.

Yeah. Yeah. I like to check out.

I mean, I thought he was a 5'8, so, you know, you never know with this guy.

Dennis, Dennis is full of lies. Full of lies. Why don't we do this, guys? Because we're gonna, we're, we're hitting up on about an hour and a half now, so why don't Why don't we wrap up with kind of, um, everybody kind of giving their biggest New Year's resolution that they're gonna have? Because like I mentioned at the beginning, this is gonna be the last episode of 2024, and we hope to do a lot more of these in 2025 with individual interviews and things like that. Brooke, Carter, uh, you're, you're on the list. Uh, John, you've already done it. Doesn't mean you can't do it again. Um, but yeah, so why don't, why don't we just kind of go around real quick? I mean, I've already done mine, but I want to hear from everybody else. Like just kind of what your biggest New Year's resolution is for 2025 and then what you kind of look forward to most in this upcoming year. John, you can go first. We'll go— I'm just looking at my screen.

Okay.

I hadn't thought too much about it, but I think I'm gonna do the classic try to diet and exercise more. That's my goal. I gotta get better at that.

Not a bad goal. Not a bad goal.

What are you looking forward to most next year for 2025?

I think, well, so HubSpot has this cool thing, and AJ is getting to take advantage of this very soon, but, uh, HubSpot has this cool benefit, uh, where if you've been around for 5 years, uh, you get a sabbatical, and this recurs every 5 years. So We have a team member who's had more than one sabbatical now. But so my sabbatical is this year as well as AJ's. So I'm excited for that.

Nice. Congratulations.

So my sabbatical starts in about 10 days. Now?

11 days.

Oh my God. Stop. We're going to— what are we going to do without you for a month?

Progress.

Nothing will get done. Nothing will get done.

The podcast quality is going to go up a little bit, but like—

That's true.

We'll understand it.

On the next podcast, instead of like a little, little tagline saying AJ under AJ, it's just gonna have a picture of AJ and it's gonna say AI.

Yeah, I'm just gonna make— I'm gonna make an AI actor for this one.

Yeah, just make a— yeah, I mean, like, there's a ton of like avatar generators out there, right?

Oh, I totally—

There's enough videos of you on this podcast that we can train the model pretty easily.

Please do this because this would be hilarious because I would love to just see the random answers it gives you.

I'll look into it.

I'll Or just have Chris stand in for AJ. That could work. That could also be the plan if you want the random answers.

And the blazer selection as well.

So I know his blazers are way better than mine though. Chris actually like, he does order some good blazers. Mine's a $10 find at Walmart like 4 years ago.

How about you, Carter? What kind of resolutions you got for, uh, this year for New Year's?

Yeah, I, well, I really want to do a little more teaching, like a little more, a little more content out there. And I should probably get better about the LinkedIn game because that's a big, that's a big pull for a lot of people. And I've seen some people that are posting a lot of cool developer stuff on LinkedIn. And like, I would really like to contribute to that. So, so some teaching and some content is something I'd want to get into.

Love it.

I'll sign up. You name it, I'll sign up because there's a lot of learning I need to do. What are you looking forward to for this next year coming up? Anything in particular? You doing anything important?

Well, we always have the, we always have the Dev Bootcamp and then we have, we have San Francisco Inbound this year. So that's going to be also super legit. And I have a couple of, couple of people in San Francisco I always love catching up with. So that's going to be awesome.

Excellent. Excellent. Brooke, how about you?

This is a little bit of a confession. I've never built a serverless function. So I need to learn how to make a serverless function.

You got this.

Wow. We gotta fix that.

I know. I know. I'm like, I have really been behind the 8-ball in terms of like upskilling in certain things. Like I did like all that React stuff. I was like learning how to do that for the CMS stuff. And then I never, and I was like, I'll get around to the serverless function stuff that is literally connected to like almost everything else. And I just haven't done it yet. So I need to like—

I love that making honesty. That's good stuff. That's pretty cool.

So that's my, that's my big thing. And yeah, I just want to, like you guys said earlier, like I, I, I want to get more into coding this year, like actually set aside like maybe like one Friday a month to just be like my coding day where I can like go through and like do different things and just build some stuff.

That's such a good idea.

I will happily join you for that one day a month. You'd like— like, that would be—

I mean, I'll put it on the calendar, make it a recurring event, invite everybody who wants to come.

Yeah, that's a beautiful initiative. Yeah, absolutely, 110%. How about you, AJ? What do you got, uh, as far as New Year's resolutions aside from taking a month off?

I think that goldfish comment earlier, Dennis, was right, because I don't think Nick remembers that we did this at the beginning for us.

I know, but we're right. This is this is the wrap up. This is the wrap up, and I'm giving everybody a chance. And plus, that way you can improve on your answers if they weren't exactly quality. True, true. I think they probably weren't.

So as John said, like I am looking forward to my sabbatical. It's you know it's going to be through January, which is nice. My kids' birthday falls in January too, so it's just even better. I'm buy gifts.

That's yeah. So I'm excited for a lot of that.

Things I'm looking forward to in 2023. 5. Honestly, I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing like the developer community and how it all keeps taking shape, to be honest. Like, it's— our community is still like one of the greatest things ever. And being a part of it before I even came to HubSpot was just— it was awesome then and it still is. And I think the amount of transparency and empathy that I see in the community is just going up and up every year, which is such a great sign. To know that like people can come into this community and go, hey, I don't know anything, please help me. And people, you know, like Carter's usually one of the first ones that'll hop in and be like, let's do this. And just like everybody is so helpful.

Love it.

Community. And I absolutely love it. So I'm excited to see our community and the events that come up this year and, you know, the bootcamp. Like, I honestly want to go through the bootcamp even though I know like everything it is. I just want to go through it because it's just amazing. So excellent.

And then Dennis, no one really cares. Um, so what's that?

No, that empathy piece. Wow. So empathetic.

Oh, looks like we're at time.

Sorry, Dennis. Yeah, no, Dennis is the— Dennis is the CEO of this operation. Uh, you know, whether he wants nowhere if I don't let it. That's exactly like Dennis holds the keys to this car. I'm just in the passenger seat. I'm the one hanging out the window drunk. So like, this is, uh I want to hear, Dennis, what are you most excited for in 2025 coming up?

Yeah, I mean, community, community, community. Uh, Developer Hug is going to be amazing next year. I'm really excited about that. Um, my, my, I think my chief goal now is to get a sponsorship from Highlights Magazine to this, uh, this podcast.

So there's so many dumb things I've mentioned. Don't forget, uh, you know, forget what is it, Coke Zero, uh, Oreo flavor. It still needs a sponsor. I think one of the goals should be one sponsor.

At some point in 2025. That's it. You know what I mean?

If one sponsor and then Dharmesh being on the show, I would like literally I'd retire. I would just pretend I don't care. That would be I could live on those accomplishments alone. It would be great. It would be absolutely fantastic. But Dharmesh will label this show like a brand risk. So, but, but no, like again. From everybody here and everybody watching and everyone that does watch, um, I just want to say thank you. Um, this has been an awesome journey thus far, and, and it's— we've been able to share it with quite a few people. Uh, you know, just in this episode alone, it's really cool to kind of do this. I think this is probably something we should do like this a little bit more, do you know? Like, the live thing is always nervous, or a little nerve-wracking, and a little bit of nervousness there just because of like I want this to be interesting, right? I want this to be conversational. And, uh, you know, I'm always worried it's not, but then on the flip side of it, I've never been disappointed, uh, you know, up to this point. Disappointed with my co-host, but aside from that, everything else— Your bar is very low, buddy. Absolutely fantastic. We've had great guests thus far, and it's just— I, I only anticipate this getting better, especially AJ being out a month. So like What we have is something really, really great. I want to build on it. But again, just a big thank you to everybody here. Brooke, Carter, John, and everybody else. That's Hannah, who's been guests, and David, Roma as well, you know, and Bri as well. I don't forget Bri. I just want to say thank you to everybody. This has been absolutely fantastic. I'm looking forward to 2025 with hopefully more shows, more guests, more conversations, more controversial things that can come out of my mouth to potentially get me fired. And from everybody here, I just wanna say happy holidays and happy new year and see everyone in 2025. So, yep.

Bye all.

Later.

Later.