Ep. 19 - To Be Or Not To Be...Comfortable with Ricky Diep

I think the best bot you can make is a Midwestern chatbot. And it takes 30 minutes to say goodbye to you.

Hello, and welcome to episode 19 of Developers After Dark. I am your host, who people like to call the Teemu version of Joe Rogan here on Developers After. What's that?

That's accurate.

So I've heard. So I've heard. But, oh, yeah, we're here. Episode 19 on a nice rainy day here in the Midwest. Nice and cold, basically. We have a really, really awesome guest for you today. We're going to talk about some really amazing stuff that just happened just recently. But before we get into that, let me pay a couple of bills and give a quick shout out to. To both AJ And Dennis for last week, bringing the train into the station for last episode. I went back on Friday and I watched and I wanted to also give a shout out to Caitlin too, because she brought up something really, really interesting. And I, I actually, as I watched it, I went back and I looked at my own, like, Slack DMs and she had brought up the point where it's like, I can't remember. I. I don't want to quote her specifically, but people paraphrasing of like, there's like the kind of, like, the humanity is lost when you start, like, DMing people like, hey, quick question, or, hey, this. Without actually asking how they're doing, or, how's your day? Or hey, it's been a while since we talked and I went back and I looked and like, a majority of my slacks since, you know, since I've started, over time, have become less and less human.

Yeah.

So shout out to her for that. Because I actually started going back and as I started messaging people from that point forward, I actually started kind of reintroducing humanity into my content.

It's an odd bounce. I don't like, like, superficial, like, conversation for the most part. It's like, just get to the point. But at the same time, I don't like to be that guy who jumps out from around the corner. It's like, yo, I need this now type of person as well. So it's like this weird balancing act, right?

There's that quick question, quick question. It's like, you know, instead of, how are you doing? Or, hey, how's life? Or I haven't talked to you in a while. So, yeah, I. I started to make a habit to try and do that a little bit more.

Just, I am so guilty of doing that.

Yeah, I did it, like three times this past week. I think I did it to Lauren Pacifica once and then who is it? I think, I think I might have even done it to like, I don't know, probably like Hannah or somebody just been like, hey, you know, qq. Because I'm too lazy.

Yeah, we don't even, don't even type out quick question anymore. It's just too cute, right? No, but yeah, no. So shout out to Caitlin that that's what makes her one of the best, honestly. So, so let me do real quickly pay a couple bills here. I mean, obviously for those watching and those listening, you already know that devs@darkpod.com is the website. You can go there for episodes. We do them live on most Fridays and then any back episodes, obviously you can go back and check out the whole episode catalog. As always, if you want to know what is going here at HubSpot, your best bet is going to be the HubSpot developer changelog. You can honestly go. And if I'm clicking on the right banner, that would probably help as well. You're going to go to developers.HubSpot.com changelog. You'll find out the latest stuff going on. Everything from like bug fixes to configurations to deprecations, all the way through rollups. I mean, everything is there. And not only do you see the stuff announced too, but keep in mind too, there's also an upcoming tab too, so you can kind of see what's coming in the near future. That's always important to know as well. So check that out if you haven't already and subscribe and make sure that you are part of that email chain and you'll get notifications on stuff coming up as it happens.

Hey Nick, I just want to add to that on the change along with the change log at the very bottom is a link to the community. And if you do have questions or comments about that specific change log entry, that is your place to go to say what's up with this? Or wow, this is amazing. I prefer the wild this is amazing comments over the what's up with this? But compliments more than complaints.

Yeah, that's fair. No, that's fair. That's a good call out, Dennis. Thank you. Thank you. One last thing too. The Academy, of course, is always a place you're going to go. Academy.HubSpot.com to learn anything, like everything you want to know, whether it's inbound marketing, whether it's SEO. Like everything is there and you should definitely check it out. And most importantly, something coming up that's kind of a yearly thing, but it only happens in a week span and that's going to be the world Cert week for 2025. If there isn't a better. If you want to learn new stuff or you want to re up your certifications, now would be that time. Or that week would be that time, which is all of next week. Because HubSpot is donating $5 to educational focused charities around the world for every certification. Yeah, so that's. I have tons. Like, like most people, I put off my research our certifications to the very last minute. But if you're going to do it, that would be the week to do it. So that way it goes towards a worthy cause. So check that out. And yeah, if you, if you're just recertifying, make sure you do it that week. And hey, if you want to learn something new, like I said, that's the week to do it, so.

And I also heard Nick's going to personally send a video to everybody to say thank you.

So, yeah, he's been doing that lately.

He's really, really in the game with like the just being a human being.

See every week, these two, Ricky, they come up with this new thing. Either I'm signing merchandise, which nobody's gonna want, or I'm doing. It's. It's amazing. All these things I'm quote unquote, volunteering for that I've never heard of before. So that's, It's a very interesting.

We talked about the same meeting, right?

Yeah, you weren't there, but we talked about it.

I was gonna say, was it a meeting of two? Because I obviously was not there for any. But with that said, without further ado, I want to introduce our guest because there's also something else that we wanted to kind of discuss too, that I wanted him to be the one to do it because there is no better person. So without further ado, Ricky, why don't you introduce yourself, tell everyone who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so my name is Ricky and I've had over 7 plus years experience within the tech industry. I started in tech and I've always worked in tech. I've had a ton of other previous roles which I'm happy to dive into if that's where the discussion leads to. But in short, I am currently the principal product marketer for developers at HubSpot for platform marketing. And yeah, that's a little bit about myself. And do you want me to jump into the, to skip ahead into the DevTools or. I'll let you tee that up first.

Yeah, no, that'd be perfect. Yeah. Like last week we had, we introduced, we kind of did the Spring Spotlight. You know, there was an event in New York, but one of the things that is a really important focus for that would be the developer tools and the updates and some of the new stuff with regards to developer tools. And that's Ricky. No better person to be able to tee that up and tell everyone what that's all about. Why don't you just jump right into it?

For sure. I guess this is my part of paying the bills. I'm here to really talk a bit about some of the developer tools that we have coming out. I'm super excited to announce that as a part of our spring Spotlight for 2025, we've also included a brand new suite of developer tool that are really designed to accelerate integration and app development for developers on the HubSpot platform. We have a ton of features and updates that we're really excited to share. But essentially developers are the backbone of what makes things possible.

Either Ricky has got quiet or.

Oh no.

Coming back in in a different. You got that, aj?

Yeah, I am.

Huh.

There we go. I don't know what happened. Okay. I'm sorry.

It sounded so good too. We were really like. I was just listening deeply to that.

Sorry. I'll quickly trace back to where I was. So, as a part of our spring spotlight for 2025, we were really excited to introduce a new brand, brand new set of developer tools that we had that are really designed to help developers integrate and build applications faster on HubSpot. Developers are essentially the backbone of how things get created, how great the platform really is. So we really wanted to give them their own showcase. Later on, aj, Dennis and Nick will pop in a link to the chat on a page that fully highlights some of the things that we've launched for developer tools. It includes our latest updates and features and some of the things that I'm super excited about. When I was building the messaging for some of this was our reimagined app development experience. You're able to build things within the cli, you're able to have updates to our projects platform. We're really focused on API updates to really help with extensibility for what you can and can't do with this new HubSpot platform. And also my most favorite thing that we just did an AMA for on Reddit is UI extensions. This really allows you to create that first party native experience onto HubSpot that really improves your customer experience. And then lastly, one of the things is also unified app data. We're allowing you, with the power of app objects to bring your own data regardless of what it is. We're more than happy to find a home for it on HubSpot. And all of these things are combined to really help developers go from idea to value even faster. So developer tools on HubSpot for Spring Spotlight 2025. Check out the link and DM us with any questions. I'm more than happy to answer all of them.

You had me a faster time to value.

That's right. That's what it's all about.

Yeah, that's. I think a lot of the times when developers are building things, it's all about tech depth, bandwidth and being able to have resourcing. We really, you know, took that step forward in doing more with less and really helping accelerate their time to value. Like, what are ways that we can bring your ideas to life f faster and faster? That was the main premise of what we were, what we were releasing. And I was super excited when they onboarded me onto this project. So, yeah, check it out.

Speaking of speed, I forget who it was. There's someone on LinkedIn I saw recently who, you know, the US has got this whole tariff thing going on right now, and it's kind of freaking people out because you got to keep track of the tariffs, right? This guy built an app card In I think, 10 minutes that displayed tariff rates to the countries of that contact or companies, you know, where they are located or they're shipping to, which is freaking amazing.

That's amazing. Yeah, no, that's. That's super impressive for those on audio too. Developers.HubSpot.com SS25 dev tools. But yeah, like just being in that space, you know, on ecosystem quality, to be able to like see some of the app cards and kind of review them on the. Just on the app world in general, there's like so much. I know the discovery cards were another thing too, that like, as. As we're reviewing apps and looking at them, like those are some things too now that we take a look at and that we see come through. And it's just, it's so much more nicer now than, you know, you rewind the clock back, you know, maybe five, ten years or, or whatever. However far back you want to rewind it, you've got that instance where I don't want to install 50 things to try to figure out if this is the right thing for me, whether that's apps, plugins, whatever the case may be. So, I mean the feature cards alone are really great. And then a shout out to like Brittany and Marina on my team as well because there's the up app certification and that's something that they work with directly to try to like raise that bar. Because I mean that badge isn't just, you know, for aesthetics that these apps have for the certification. There's a rigorous amount of things they have to go through in order to achieve that and maintain in order to achieve that. So it really does kind of show the level of quality that an app provider actually partakes in in order to get it there. So yeah, just a lot of really great things. And Ricky, we appreciate you coming on and like, you know, telling everybody about it and kind of, you know, pitching it to everybody because there is so much of it that you do kind of it's easy to overlook or it's easy like if you're just looking at the website to see like, oh no, this is really great and see all this and you'll still miss stuff because there's just so much.

So yeah, indeed.

I, I want to give a shout out to Dennis because I actually followed one of his tutorials to build an app card on YouTube like two nights ago. So I was doing a multi flow card following one of the tutorials in the webinars that you did. Very, very straightforward and it's super, super easy to do. So if I can do it, like I feel like anyone can do it. So huge shout out to you for helping me.

Thank you.

Nice. Nick.

Nick, I want to push a little bit harder here. Like you, you say you're reviewing app cards now, so I'm not sure how like well known this is. Maybe it is, maybe it's not, I don't know. But it's not all for private apps anymore. Right? Like you can actually put these on the marketplace. So you can, you can what you had, it's a private app at one point in time you could maybe have a little extra cash come your way from getting these on the marketplace.

Absolutely, yeah. Apps on the marketplace can have app cards within them. Right. They'll just go through. You know, we'll do a review just like we would do with everything else and then we'll take a look at it just to make sure it's not broken or, you know, there's a lot of collaboration that I personally, this is not a personal note like a lot of collaboration that we do on our team to try to make sure that the best quality, quality offering, if you will like, whether that's an app or a theme or an app card is when it's put forward or when it's proposed to the marketplace, just to make sure that it's at its highest level, you know, when it goes live. So, you know, we do stuff on our end where we check and we look at it, and it's. Yeah, it's a really great thing because there have been ones that I've seen come through that I've seen that are just. They're phenomenal. They really are. There hasn't been one yet that I've seen where I'm like, why are they doing this? Like, there's been. The benefits that it adds to the CRM are just like. As I look at these, I always try to look at it from a perspective of like, okay, let's say I'm. And I love. Dennis loves this. Like. Like, I'm a realtor. Could I use this in this fashion or something? You know, so it's the scenarios I try to create as I'm looking at it.

Fifteen minutes in, 15 minutes in, folks.

Do you like that?

Is that a recording on the bingo card? So I'm.

Yeah, just. Just. Ricky. Just so you know, like, I. I used to work in real estate, and I try not to bring it up in every single episode, but it's not true.

You try.

You intentionally.

You work hard.

No coincidence, we call it.

I thought the real estate thing was just in the two episodes that I watched.

No, no, it's in all of them.

Coincidence. Totally coincidence.

The other.

The other, like, 16. Don't even mention it. I don't even mention. Just pick the two that were. That's all. But no, yeah, I try to, like, look through it through that lens and, like, try to, like, imagine there's a, you know, a scenario where I'm needing that in a particular case. And, like, they all just seem to fit very, very well, and they're very intuitive. So it's. Yeah, there's just a lot of good stuff going on with that. And, yeah, you can now have them in the marketplace with your app. And it's. It's just a world of difference, so.

Absolutely. And if there's app providers out there that are listening, that are like, well, I don't have those in mind. Like, I would recommend putting them into your app, like, making app cards, because it really does, like, being able to not have to Frankenstein. Right. Like back in the day where it was like, oh, I need to build my processes while I have, like, seven different sites. I need to do data isn't fractured in different areas. Bringing that all together under one roof is just good, regardless of whatever platform you're on. But, yeah, I highly recommend anybody who's already on the marketplace without app cards in their apps to build them. They're very, very simple and straightforward.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

And then there's definitely. There's documentation there that you can follow that make things really, really straightforward. So. But without further ado, let's get into talking about you, Ricky, because that's why we wanted you here. The second reason why we wanted you here. And let's kind of rewind it back. Well, you know what? They're like neck and neck. It's both. I mean, they're right there. So it's. To be fair, let's kind of. Let's rewind it back as far back as you want to go and tell us, like, how you first got into, like, what first sparked your interest in technology in general.

Oh, God, you're making me really think so. I think for me, I was in high school, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Like, as every high schooler does. You know, when you start to think about college, you're like, what do I even want to major in? I was almost going to major in wood shop, but then I learned I'm not. I'm not handy enough. I took two. I took one class, and I was like, yeah, this isn't. This isn't for me.

And then there was. Department got called, and you're like, nope, I'm out.

Right.

How many fingers do you still have remaining?

Yeah, I. I learned very quickly it wasn't for me. So then, like, I think I dropped out of that elective, and I selected the only elective that was still open, which was programming and C. I had no idea what it was. And then I tried that. So then I didn't do too great in it, but eventually I was like, oh, there's really cool stuff that you can build with this. Like, I think we built, like, Tic Tac Toe and Pac man and all that stuff, and I got really interested, and I learned on it on my own. But I think what really sold me was all my friends were playing Batman, Arkham Origins, Call of Duty, Fallout, like, all these games from, like, 12 years ago or 12, 15 years ago, and I didn't have a way to play it, so I built a PC. Like, I saved up, like, all my money and I put together a PC. I had really no idea how to do it. And I asked my friend, I looked on YouTube, pieced it together. It was kind of janky, but it worked. So ever since then, I was like, I think this technology thing is pretty cool on what you can and can't build with it. I got into Syracuse and I majored in information science, minored in comp Sci. So that's kind of how I got started in to the world of tech. Why I specifically chose to work like in tech, though, is probably one of the stupidest reasons. I remember I had a bunch of internships in college where I had to like, dress up and wear like suit pants and dress shirts and ties. And I remember I had one in New York City, and it was so hot that summer, I was like, I don't like dressing up for work. And then I saw one of my friends, he just got back from an internship from like a tech company. I can't remember which one it was. And I saw him wear sandals to work every day. And I was like, I want to do that. So then that's kind of how I went down the rabbit hole. Okay. No matter what, I want to find a way to break into tech or work into tech. So that's kind of how that all started, was sandals and games.

Love that your biggest decision making aspect was a tire.

That. That is a huge thing. Like, I feel like I can't think with. With the tie on. Like it's strangling me.

So you have to feel comfortable in order to be comfortable in what you're doing. I believe in that completely. Absolutely.

I remember working an inside sales job where it was like you were required to wear dress pants, dress shirt and tie. And I was like, I'm never meeting a client.

Right.

There's no way.

You have to dress the part. And I'm like, yeah, but the part makes me really uncomfortable and like, sweaty all day long.

So can we. The comfortable part?

Yeah.

Oh, my God. And I'm lucky. I lived in the city as well. So, like. Like being dressed up on a subway, for example, in the middle of the summer is possibly the worst thing in the world.

You're like, packed like this close to somebody else, and you're like sweating on my suit and I'm sweating in my suit and I'm like, exactly. I don't like.

Yeah, the Chicago L. The air conditioning never really worked at all. So. Yeah, no, I can. I can imagine that. So shout, shout out the metro in Illinois. Let me ask you. PC building. So at an early. So at an early age, then you learned patience because I also. Building computers was. Is kind of a thing that I started doing at an early age, and I kind of fell in love with it just because, you know, like, the possibilities, right? And being able to build your own thing and then, like you said, being able to play games or doing whatever. But that was. That was your baby. You built that. Right? So did that teach you it? I mean, it taught me patience, because I'll tell you a story, but did that. Do you have that same kind of experience?

I don't even know. I don't remember. Honestly. I just remembered being so happy that I got it to work. Yeah, I took a lot of time to do. Like, it wasn't like. Because back then, there weren't that many guides. Not that many people did it. Like, when I did it, it was GTX 660. And we used to have the little SLI cables to connect both of the graphics cards together so that you can play, like, some of those, like, 1080. I'm really going back, like, the 1080p games at, like, full frame rate. So it did teach me a lot about patience. Saving up money to buy all those parts was not cheap. As a high school kid, like, I worked at a daycare. I corrected a bunch of papers, and I just saved up a ton of money to be able to do it. So in terms of patience, like, putting it together, I don't think I got the parts fast enough. I think it was like saving up the money was what took the. Took the longest.

No, that's. No, I. I completely. I get that. Yeah, completely. I broke. I broke one of the first computers I built for AJ before it even got done.

You broke three motherboards?

One motherboard. I was. I was working on it, right? And I had it, like, down and kind of on the side, and I had.