From Frontend to Backend ... in 2026

Yo yo, welcome to the stream. My name is Steph. Let me know if you can hear me. I'm trying out this mic again. Hopefully I got the volume so it's nice and clear today. Anyway, so I got a couple good questions that were put to me yesterday. I figured I'd answer them in this video. So, somebody who is a front-end developer due to uh AI, if I understood his question correctly, he's wondering if you should get into the back end as well. Uh that's question number one. Number two, somebody wanted to know whether they should get the MacBook Pro or the MacBook Air uh software in software development. Anyway, so uh welcome to the stream. I hope everything is good. Cheers. Let me know in the comments if um if you can hear me clearly. Let me know if you can hear me clearly in the comments. I would appreciate that. And then we'll just jump into the two things I discussed and then I'll do a little Q&A and we'll take it from there. So, I hope everybody is well. Um code long and profit. Let me know if you can hear me. Uh also let me know where you're uh where you're watching from. You know, say uh I guess Tijana border. I guess you're in uh T1 or Border Jumper. I guess you're in Mexico, dude. Uh loud and clear. Good, good, good, good. Yeah, let me know where you're from and then uh as you jump in, I'm going to give people about a minute or so to jump in. Oh, perfect. Good, good, good. So, you guys approve of this new mic? It's just a lot easier because I I don't have to have a mic in my face and I can move around. Just it just makes it easier for me to uh record my video here. Anyway, I hope everything is good. All right, cool. Orlando, Florida, Tijuana, [cough] >> Google, excuse me, Zambia. Zimbabwe, excuse me. Wow. Chad. Wow. All over the world. Unbelievable. Fantastic. All right. So, yeah, as you come in, let me know where you're from. Uh I'm just going to jump into the subject and then people will have to uh go watch the replay. So question number one, if you are a front-end developer, somebody asked me whether or not they should get into the back end. I have I have always been a big pro I have always been a I've always been a big proponent of working both ends. You want to work both ends. It's uh it's just going to open up many more job opportunities if you know the full stack. basically the back end and the front end. That is for sure. For every pure front-end job there is, there's probably multiples of that in terms of backend or full stack. So, I would learn the full stack for sure. That's my recommendation. It has been way before the AI age. Way before the AI age. Now, in the AI age, um, they're all becoming one and the same. Right now, I just want to before I get into this, I want to point out something. I think this is the best time in decades to become a software developer. I know with all the doomers out there, it seems counterproductive. And the reason I think that a because I'm starting to see it now in the market. I'm starting to see a huge growing demand for software developers, but not for old school software developers from five years ago. You got to leverage the new stuff now. You got to leverage the new stuff. Of course, that is using AI to augment your software development, learning how to integrate AI with your front end or your back end. This is the future of software development. People who adopted early are going to be in a really good position. So, yeah, if you're a front-end developer, I would definitely learn the back end. It's just going to create more job opportunities for you. That is for sure. That is for sure. Um, what else is there? Next question, laptops. Uh, what laptop would I buy in terms There's two choices that somebody put in the comment. Number one was um, uh, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Um, if the MacBook Air is significantly cheaper, which I think it is, I would just go with a MacBook Air for 99% of people who are in software development. For those of you who are not uh into the Apple ecosystem, you have to understand is that uh Apples have a very high resale value. Like when I used to resell my laptops, I would often get as a few years later, I'd get like half of what I paid for it. You know, it is very uh they're very they're very powerful. So, that being said, you don't need to get a brand new laptop. I'm still using a 2020 MacBook Air. Now I loaded up with maximum RAM and a big hard disk. I think it was Do I have a two terab? I might have a two terabyte. I'm not sure. It could be only a terabyte. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah, just get as much RAM as you can, but 24 GB of RAM will be enough to do just about anything you possibly need to do in terms of software development. So, yeah, those are my uh two choices. Those are my two choices. So, let's see if you guys got any questions. I'm just going to go through the comments here. I can hear perfectly. Tijana Orlando Chad front end dev front end to DevOps Kubernetes doctor five years of experience AWS infrastructure networking so I'm not what you're I'm not that sure that's a question or a statement of your abilities Mark uh with the help of AI you should learn as much as you can front end back end side end upside down and well yeah it's all becoming it's all flowing each into each other right um I've been paying attention a lot to what's going on in the AI space in development and the fact of the matter is uh the hyper productive AI drivers are the people who know how to traditional software development and they apply those principles and methodologies into their AI workflow so sometimes they're doing pure AI sometimes they're writing code with the help of AI sometimes they're writing parts of their code with AI and they're doing other things you got to understand if you're a beginner prior to AI as you became a more advanced developer you worked less and less with code on a daily basis you're much more involved in um thinking about architecture organ making choices about technologies to leverage in there uh you're a system thinker and that's that's actually a big part of being a software developer uh but now in the AI age being a system thinker is a huge thing is a huge thing. Argentina, could you recommend a software architecture course covering patterns, resilience, etc. Um, I don't have a particular course, although I'm getting into that more and more in my mentoring program, uh, unclestaff.com. Uh, first thing I would do is look at refactoring. Refactoring. Uh, there's a famous book I by this guy named Fowler, Martin Fowler. uh if you look below the video you'll find a link to it on Amazon. there's a a Java and a JavaScript version of the book which u the principles apply to all languages by the way and in terms of architecture you know on a low level architectural uh I would architecturally rather on a low level I would just look at design patterns just basic understand what MVC is facade uh dependency injection uh these are fundamental to all that we do in terms of software Yeah. What's your opinion on developing web apps with Rust or C++ through web assembly? I haven't done it. Um, you have to ask yourself why you'd want to do it. I guess your speed speed of development but I would again my main focus these days is to learn your fundamentals of coding whether you do C++ or web apps or I don't know Swift development for iOS but get the fundamentals down but incorporate AI tools as you go along the modern developer is going to use AI tools if you want a job you want highpaying jobs you want to high demand. It's the developers who understand the AI stacks as well as the fundamentals of coding. So before I would get into DSA into the minutia of writing uh writing code, I would I would do I would spend more time on the AI low code implementation. Again, don't think that AI is replacing developer. It is not. It's just a it's just a um it's a it's a power tool. It's power tool. um and offers you maximum flexibility. So I was getting into uh web apps like there you have to ask yourself when would I want to use Rust or C++ through web assembly to to do this? Why and when? What's the point? I assume it's high performance. So one of your jobs as a developer would be to determine uh what this particular project needs. Sometimes it may need web assembly. Sometimes it may need just you know a simple uh simple CRUD implementation with some full stack framework or something. It really depends right one thing I want one of the things I would suggest that you do and it's part of my Ruby joke is that you you you get rid of this idea that one language is necessarily better than the other language. In some ways, each language has its strength. In some ways, each database has its strengths and weaknesses. In some ways, AI is fantastic. In some ways, it's not. But you have to just know when it makes sense to use C++ or to use Rust or maybe just going to do something in Python, right? You have to make those judgment calls. That's a big part of what being a developer is is to be able to make those judgment calls about these technology choices, you know. So, let me know if you got any other questions by the way. So, yeah, I did a live stream as a couple days ago and I had about 50 people unsubscribe. So, now I'm down to 277,52. I I don't know what the real number is, something like that. Because what happens when you have a new technology change like this, it challenges people's um people get into camps, right? I'm in camp C++ or I'm I'm in camp JavaScript or I am in camp code and then other people are in camp AI now, you know, and and they're fighting each other. And but when when when new stuff comes about, it makes sense to employ the new stuff, right? It really does. It really does. So, if you have any questions, we're only a small group so far tonight. As you can see, I'm starting to do lives again. I have to set a set schedule. I'm going to do a poll on the website on YouTube to get us a time a set time to do these things so that everybody can get in on them. Anyway, yeah, you have to have um you have to be open-minded as a developer, right? You have to be open minder. What you say is BS. What I say is BS. All right. Why is it BS? Let me tell me why it's b BS. Let's see what you have to say. I'm open to debate. Uh tell me tell me remember I was writing code commercially in 1994. I've written code lots of commercial code in Java and C and PHP and JavaScript and Python and a whole bunch of other languages. I've written tons and tons of code. Um, I've probably written more code than uh other people. Always clickbait videos. Why is I answered a question right at the top of the stack. The the clickbait the the video title was if you know front end should you learn back end. Short answer is yeah. And the question was about you know how how AI is affecting this? And I just I've always said um flexibility and abil flexibility of mind and the ability to have a broader range of skills to come to the market with you're better off. Right? So you know my principles are consistent. Nothing has changed from what I've said from the AI age to now. What niches are best for web designers, devs like SAS, local services, ecom? You're gonna find a lot of um freelance web designers and devs. You're going to find a lot of e-commerce. You're gonna find a lot of branding sites. Um uh this is for freelancers. You know, small business development is very different from enterprise level development. Very different different set of requirements, different set of clients. So enterprise is very large organizations, small business or small business. So when you're doing uh web design development for small business, yeah, you're looking at JavaScript, you're looking at PHP, right? You're looking at a lot of e-commerce integration, a lot of WordPress. That's just the nature of the game, you know? Now AI is coming into it. Like if you get into AI, like somebody in the last stream said since he started offering AI, he's got he's got tons of work coming in. I've seen all seeing it all the time. But if you're doing the enterprise large scale, then it's like a lot of C, a lot of Java. There's some JavaScript as well. There's always exceptions, but um as a general rule, that's what it is. What would you advise for moving up and getting out of out of being stuck in the same place as a senior software developer, possibly still having imposter syndrome, too? What your steps would be? Well, in larger corporations, when you're when you want to go from senior dev and higher up, it's it's a lot of it is about social skills and macro skills, architectural skills. Um, you know, that type of thing is really the key to all that. So, that's number one. Again, I know people hate to hear it, but the demand is now for developers who have a very good understanding of what you can do with AI now. So you if you can take your your your senior dev skill experience and start incorporating AI tool sets as well, then you're going to be powerful. It's it's that's my advice to you. So improve your social skills, you know, so people will want to work with you. improve your architectural skills, u communication skills and AI skills as well. This is all very um it's all very important. So imposters shouldn't do it. If you build stuff, you're a senior developer. That tells me that you know what you're doing. You don't become senior by not knowing, right? I totally agree with that. The language you use start to matter less and especially in the age of AI, it just a question of which is the right stack for the project. 100% That's 100%. I would say any experienced developer knows this. This is nothing radical. It's nothing new. It surprises juniors because they're all thinking, "Oh, I got the key is React or the key is Typescript." No, it's not. Depends on the demand, right? How many Typescript jobs are there versus how many Typescript ready developers versus also the project? Sometimes TypeScript makes sense. Now, I learned this the hard way as well. I remember my first freelance gig um where I my first PHP freelance gig. I went in to see the client and I and I at this point in time in my career I was a big Java developer. I had my own Java framework that I developed my on my own from scratch. I had my own UI layer. I had my own data access layer. I had my own validation objects. It was quite performant. So I go in to see the client and I say to the client, "Mr. client we got to okay I see what you want to do we should do it in Java he goes well our current system is PHP I said well well nah PHP sucks bro doesn't have doesn't have error trapping it's a primitive was very it was PHP3 very primitive but he said listen you want the job you got to do in PHP the guy said I'm not going to have part of my system built in PHP and the other part of my system built in Java so then I got to get two different developers he had a good point so I said okay the money was good so I said I'll I'll just do it. So, I took the job and what I learned was PHP was indeed crappy at certain things. This is PHP 3. Uh, but on the other hand, it was super performant. I remember talking to my brother as a developer and I said to, you know, PHP is crappy. You know, we got the die statements instead of try catch and but but you know what, it's one line of code to send an email whereas with Java serlets, it was like a page of code. Uh, and I realized, okay, it wasn't very um, it had all kinds of limitations, but I could get out an app with like, you know, thousand lines of code instead of 20,000 lines of code. So, I said, you know, you got to admit there's an advantage to that, you know. So, you know, it's a lot easier to debug 1,000 lines of code than 20,000 lines of code. All right. What's your experience with uh TDD test driven development? There's been a push back on it recently for faster develop but I think it should be strongly considered still no well in terms of integrating test in an application I've always said for many many years because I learned the hard way once you have a version one of your application a stable version where the use case is very well defined meaning users have used it you know what it needs to do then you start incorporating uh test uh within your application development workflow. Otherwise, what you're going to do is you're going to write a lot of tests and then you're going to see the use case will change a lot. Then you got to start not only you got to rewrite your core code, you got to write all re rewrite all those tests again. So this you know you said there's a push back recently. Well, I've been pushing back against this for 20 years. uh you first version I don't write too many tests except for some very basic core objects or something and I would just uh get it out as quickly as possible because what you're going to find when you going from concept concept to version one going from the alpha to version one there's going to be so many changes to application behavior that you're going to have to rewrite a bunch of tests anyway so I wouldn't be doing it you know so I would say back off on the test so I'm not against it but wait until you have a solid use case established. Do you teach the fundamentals of Python in your foundations package? Yes, I uh I do have a foundations Python but in my uh mentoring program I do cover the foundations I cover foundations of Python of JavaScript of full stack of SQL and relational databases HTML of course and CS3 CSS3 enough so you get so you know what you're doing and then we can move into the the the very practical stuff by the end of the foundations training you will understand the full stack won't be a master but you understand you understand cred operations, so so forth. And you understand uh responsive websites, the stateless nature of the web, how to write clean code, you learn about data types, you learn about, you know, methods and functions and object orientation, all the important things. Uh real songs, I recognize, how are you doing? I know somebody's a an OG uh stream watcher when they do this code long and profit, everybody. Um, what do we got here? Cashi, I just finished one year Java plus spring boot course. Did a banking web app, React and Spring Boot, and now I'm applying for some job postings in LinkedIn. So far, nothing. What would you suggest to me? I would suggest that you look for some work to help help a nonprofit local nonprofit maybe help them do some work for free so you can develop some uh some skill there. and also start integrating AI uh skills because that's one of the hacks right so many developers are still resistant to learning AI because they see it as competitive to development which it's not it's just changing development but that means there'll be a lot of opportunity so the hardest job to get in software is the first job on why don't you get that first job where you can show real world experience you'll be cool the thing about also a one-year course with JavaS spring and spring and boot and any of these enterprise technologies is that usually enterprises want people with compai degrees. So I don't know if you have a computer science degree or not. So it's kind of makes it more difficult. So I would look at small business look to work for nonprofits um get into uh AI development learn a little full stack uh with maybe uh JS and uh or PHP or something. That's the opportunity. I like to say AI is heavy on the A and light on the on the I. Right. Right. Now, yeah, 100%. AI is not smart. It's not smart. It's a giant probability engine or if you know arrays, it's a it's a weighted array metrics. That's all it is. But it's very powerful. It's very capable. Sometimes AI just falls and stumbles right away. And other times, it could save you a ton of time. At the end of the day, if people learn how to use AI properly, you have to learn it properly. You have to know how to use it properly. They can be highly productive. Again, AI is not replacing developers. Let me say that again. It's not replacing developers, but it is changing development. And right now, AI can solve a lot of problems that prior to AI you could not solve. So, AI based developers or developers know AI, they they're printing money now. It's I see it all the time. Lots of job opportunities. So don't um don't give up on that. Uh what should I focus on if I have time for now? Start the path of full stack dev. Learn machine learning. Deep I wouldn't learn deep learning. Machine learning I wouldn't that's like low-level model creation. I wouldn't bother with that. I would learn full stack. And while you're learning full stack, learn how to use AI to augment your full stack learning and development. and how to use AI integrated in your workflows. That is going to get you a job much quicker than anything else. Uh I studied both but not deeply to the end. Bachelor CS not a masters AI that's it. On the other hand, if you want to get into machine learning, get a job. There's probably tons of jobs there. But again, I think there's a huge opportunity just leveraging all the AI tool sets. So you got the frontier models, GPT, Gemini, anthropic code, etc. But learn to use the the the downstream agentic tools as well. You know, I did a video for Replet just recently, which is one of those downstream agentic tools. Yeah, that's the opportunity. Hey, go, I haven't joined you for a live one in a couple years, which is which was on YouTube. Hope you're keeping well and so are your loved ones. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks. I haven't been doing too many lives in all fairness to uh everybody here, but uh yeah, you too, man. Thanks for joining. Let's say this guy is cooler than a cold side of a pillow. [laughter] [snorts] There you go. I think we have to learn how to code AI apps to automate tasks for different types of businesses like lawyers, et again. Fantastic. I'm telling you, I've been at this game since 1994. I'm not here to hurt you. I just tell you what I think. This is based on three decades of experience writing software and building putting out software into the real world. Uh working for clients, building my own software. I have software now. Studio Webb.com. You go verify deployed it into hundreds of districts, school districts, classroom management tools. So I understand the whole scale you know and I'm telling you this is a huge opportunity this AI stuff but you still need to know your fundamentals of code at this point even at some point which eventually will come where you won't be touching much code at all by learning to code it's going to teach you to think in a very effective way. So when I I remember when I first started learning uh programming, I started understanding software in a fundamental way that was very hard to explain. So it's very very important. If you don't mind, if you can give me a thumbs up, I appreciate it. And how do you know you're a senior developer? What is the standard to kind of check if there is companies either look at time in a company or specifics but only in one place. So how do you tell? Well, it depends on the company, right? Every company will have their different criteria. Some will say you have to be doing for a certain amount of time, which seems accurate, and others will say what have you done, right? If you can lead a project, lead other developers, you can uh architect, you can make design choices about software, that makes you a senior dev, right? So I'll give you an example. client comes to you and they say, "Um, Steph, we want to build a a phone system, a phone answering system powered by AR or whatever. So, we want people to be able to call. We want to have a automated system, take their calls, take orders, take payments, route the orders to the kitchen and schedule delivery and so forth. Can you do that?" So you as a senior dev are going to have be you you have to know the landscape and you have to be able to say okay what can we do with that what is what tool sets can we use to implement this you notice here I'm not talking about code yet right coding is just an aspect of the process so senior devs will be able to answer these questions so this is like more of an AI development age question but it could be like a junior question someone company may say to you yeah we're a small company and we want to put up like you know information on a regular like a magazine site. What would you do? Should we build something over scratch or what should we do? I said, "Well, how many you going to just be you who's going to be writing or you have multiple people?" Probably going to probably have multiple people. Maybe you need to stick up a video every now and then. What What do you think? Ah, so then you're thinking, okay, I could write something from scratch, but that could be kind of silly. I'd probably want to use WordPress, maybe a Drupal. There may be certain plugins you would use to to decorate the WordPress capabilities. You see what I'm saying? This is all part of the job of a senior developer to be able to make those technology choices. Uh I found that I that I less and less touch code, but I still have tons of work. Laugh aloud. Yeah. As you get. So he said Fast Wings. Mr. Fast Wings says, "I found that less and less I touch coal, but I still have tons of work." Well, that's it. The people who are freaking out about software development getting killed by bots, AI bots are writing code. These are juniors or people who are just learning. Uh because if you're experienced, you know that coding becomes less and less important as you write more and more uh as you build more and more software. Long before AI, it's always been like this. The hard part about building software is not the coding. never was. The hard part was working with the different pieces, the different components, whether it be APIs, different types of servers, making technology choices. That's always been the hard part. What do you think of anthropic and the US government disagreement? Is it a marketing ploy as apparently Clo is getting millions of users a day now according to a recent tweet? I don't know. I heard about it. anthropic claims they were concerned about the US's government use of their technology in war and uh so I don't know it's hard to say right sometimes a lot of these movements can be uh decisions can be very machian meaning they may say this to create an impression but really they want they're actually doing that happens all the time so it's hard to say are you still doing keto um I am doing keto adjacent, but I've been cheating lately. Um, so what do I mean by keto adjacent? Keto diet, ketogenic diet is very low carb diet, under 50 grams a day. Some I I pulse it in and out. So some days I'll do less than 50 grams and other days I'll do 100 grams. You know, it depends. Generally speaking though, I Andrew, I tend to favor less and less carbs. I actually feel much better when I eat less and less carbs. That's just the way it is. It's uh yeah a few qu questions. How you today learn code when companies less and less code do manually? A lot I am a light years in the industry now and days I am freelancer. Again you got to think about just um code instead of thinking my mindset is code versus no code. Your mindset should be what tools I can use including code that will get this job job done as quickly as possible. The more jobs you can get done get done quickly, the more money you can make. Again, the lowhanging fruit here is low code no code AI. When I say lowhanging fruit, I mean it's the fastest route, the easiest route. Hey Steph, I have a question regarding mobile development. Is it better to learn native or crossplatform like better learn Flutter or React Native? That's a good question. You know, again, that comes down to the project. You know, it really does come down to the project. A lot of development for native has been crossplatform with a a Flutter or React. But some types of mobile apps, you have to do it native because you need to access hardware that you can't access with a an abstraction layer like a Flutter, a crossplatform layer, like a Flutter React. Like I have these banging speakers and they use I think it was Microsoft Zamarind. I talked to their lead developers a year or so ago and the thing is so goddamn buggy and I was talking to the lead developer at the company's publicly traded company and he was saying that uh he's been toy struggling with whether or not to rewrite from scratch natively. It's a hard decision and and you know and to add more complexity to his question AI changes a lot. I was just talking somebody in my mentoring group, they built something uh web app and so and then and they had used the AI and they trained the AI. So then they said AI build this in native iOS and it did it right away. You know, I think it took a day or so to get it to work. Um so it depends. That's a big big game changer. Like I said in my previous video, the differences between the languages, although they never been hugely important to be honest with you, it's always project specific. Um, these differences are going to start collapsing even more, they are already are because of AI. So what would I do? I don't know what what else do you know, man. It's like if you knew nothing, if you know nothing, if you're going to you're going to if you're going to do crossplatform, I would learn the web. The web is going to offer you many more opportunities. And if you don't want to do the web, I would get into uh probably iOS development with Swift. I want to start freelancing, which we're in 2026, become WordPress developer, Shopify dev. The goal is eventually leave my 95. I would get into WordPress and touch a little bit on Shopify because one project you may do WordPress, another project you may do Shopify, but for every Shopify job, there's probably a 100, 200, 300, 500 WordPress jobs. But again, if you're getting into this, learn AI. But if you're going to do freelance, you have to learn the full stack, but not the super advanced, but like what I cover, you have to understand the technology. You have to understand what HTML is and CSS and request response cycle and servers and clients and web servers and database servers. You got to understand this stuff. Um, yeah, but you're going to see the market's going to tell you. I think what you're going to see is a lot of WordPress. Really good to see live streams back. Roughly how long would it take for someone who is very adept at Excel to learn SQL? Not sure it's actually they're not very related to be honest with you. Um but to learn SQL you're learning about relational databases. You start by learning relational databases and then you learn SQL which is the language of relational databases. How long like in my pro course I have one little course you learn the basics of it. you can get through the basics I don't know start getting comfortable within a week just basic you know the basic database design basic SQL queries the more advanced queries can get pretty esoteric so with AI you can really accelerate the speed at which you do that but yeah it's uh it's not not too long not too long you know SQL the structured query language is a 4G GL language fourth generation language and it reads in English right select star from table from database or select star from table name uh where uh user is uh from California so that's like a pseudo code SQL query so it was actually designed to be more like English than anything else I really don't know what to learn anymore. Uh just need a clear path. Start with the WebStack fundamentals. As you're learning the WebStack fundamentals, start leveraging AI as well. If you want to and that's the beginning, if you want uh to learn the Webstack fundamentals like in my program, you're looking about 200 hours, 250. You don't need to use my program. People come to my program because they want the whole structure and the guidance. That's why it's called the mentoring program. But you don't need me. You can start with start with HTML, then do a little CSS. You'll know you'll know enough when you know how to do a responsive website, then you can move into other stuff. So, I hope that helps. How to deal with a high amount of competition in freelancing platforms? Any advice for part-time freelancer jobs? Where to where to get opportunity? The opportunity now is to be the freelance developer who also understands how to work with AI. That's it. So you can start implementing chat bots for people and start being able to produce work at a record time. That's where the opportunity is. Um, what do you think about combining web development with AI? 100%. I highly recommend it. I highly recommend it. AI will f up, you know, sometimes, but other times it does amazing job. So you learn to work with it, understand it and then you you'll get maximum productivity. Definitely work with them. Do you think that everything has already been invented? No. I mean launching a SAS. No. Right now there's a new type of SAS where a AI based SAS tools. It's already coming out. There's a slew of them. A slew of them. Hey Elena, [clears throat] how are you? Hope everything is well. Uh does your mentoring group help with like evaluation of skills, paths to grow, learn skills and refresh fundamental build on art like our data structures build? Yeah, exactly. That's the main reason to join the mentoring program is for that. I do provide fundamental training, interactive training with my own platform. Uh but the main value is everything else. Like I'm actually adding new stuff to the program all all the time. Especially now I'm going to start adding a lot of new stuff. My program is very job and career oriented. Whether you want to get a job, you want to freelance or you want to start a SAS business, it's very oriented towards that. Um for me all this technology they're just tools to uh to get to the end and the end is to build things. Say what is the use case codeex code replet just try understand when where the cases say what is a use code what is use case code I think what he's trying to say fast wings is that you just have to figure out when it makes sense to use codeex code or rilet understand when to use them um and that's the lowhanging fruit like the guy who was asking how do you get the jobs you get the jobs by doing the new stuff that people haven't learned yet that's the opportunity uh is DevOps cloud future compared to folks I can't say which one is more future proof developers are going to be around forever but they're just going to be the new type of developers that's all you know oh mentor my mentor [laughter] that's I know what I know what movie you're referencing there Robin Williams also does your mentoring group include stuff like AI too yeah I just put in a brand new module on AI, how to think about AI, understanding, you know, broadly what to do. Um, and I I'm adding new modules like I'm start I have a few planned out. So, for example, I teach the foundations of code. We got about uh HTML 5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, and databases. You learn about this. You learn the basics of how to write how to write code properly, data types, that kind of stuff. But you also learn how to freelance. You learn how to communicate well. You learn about AI. You learn about WordPress. You learn how to position all these things. The idea is to be to have a good understanding of foundations, understand how to architect and and and and to make choices about technology choices for a particular particular job. That's the whole point of it too. So yes, the answer is yes, we including I do include AI stuff and a lot of it's coming out. I use Python for cyber security. Is Python good language to build a SAS? Yeah, lots of people have built great SAS products on Python. This is a good language. All right, thanks for the super chat, man. Uh, bro, where's the coffee sip? Great advice. Oh, you know where it is. [laughter] It's a little cold right now. Very good. I appreciate Thanks. Thanks for watching the stream. I hope I'm here to help. What goals you set when learning a new framework like when can you save it? I'm ready to apply for a job. Build something. You don't want to be constantly in tutorial how you want to just get to the point where you understand enough to build. You have to understand a lot of something that a lot of people don't understand when they're new to this. There's no developer who knows everything. Impossible. Even when I was uh neck deep in Java coding and I built my own frameworks, I built all kinds of apps, I still only used a very small subset of Java. One of the mistakes you can make as somebody getting into development is spending too much time learning stuff where you're not you don't have a demand for it. So one of the things I do is I teach you what you need to learn. I have two categories of technology and development. I have the mustle learn fundamentals and then I have all this other stuff which is called the need to nerd stuff. The stuff that you only use and learn when you have a job because what you don't understand once you understand excuse me a lot of people what they don't understand is once you have a grasp of the fundamentals learning a new language learning a new tech learning a new database learning a new full stack framework etc. It's not that hard. It's not that hard. And that's in fact one of your jobs as a developer, as a pro is to be able to learn new things. So when people are saying, should I learn this? Should I learn that? It's like it almost doesn't matter. You see what I'm saying? But again, that being said, I I think maximum speed and opportunity to get jobs, to freelance, to start businesses, learn full stack, learn the low learn AI stacks, low code, no code, and all that integration. you have that very powerful uh so in terms of again set your learning so let's say you wanted to learn I don't know expressjs make sure you know your foundations of the web request response model servers clients JavaScript client side code rendering server side code rendering HTML CSS you don't have to know everything just so you can build And then I would just uh uh build something, you know. And then when you're ready to apply for a job, when you can build something, build something. What did you create today? I cooked the steak. I cooked the steak today. It was pretty good steak. Medium rare. Um with Montreal steak spice. That's one thing I created today. Uh what else? Nah, I I I didn't make any coffee. I just buy my coffee. No, I didn't I didn't write any apps today. Um I'm not a big code writer anymore. Uh I have been, you know, getting pretty old. Uh no, I I architect a lot. Um now I'm just looking at what I'm doing now related all joking aside related to technology. I am looking at this AI landscape now and I'm looking at all the new tools are coming online. It's vast and um the one of the hardest things about it is figuring out what's what's useful, what's not useful. And the problem with AI, well, if you're going to call it a problem, is that it's changing so quick. It's like every week it just it was the same thing in the early days of the web, by the way. So, the key to all this is you got to concentrate on once you have your fundamentals, concentrate on getting jobs done. That's the key. and let the jobs dictate what technologies you're going to learn. So, what I've been doing is kind of get, you know, had conversations with a few couple friends of mine are building apps with AI now. One guy who's got a startup. Um, I didn't talk to him today, but yeah, that's what I did today. Just looking around. So, I created my mind. As an experienced dev, I don't like WordPress mainly because of how much maintenance is involved. Yeah, WordPress could be a pain, but it's like WordPress has been the um last 10-15 years the 800 pound gorilla in the room in the sense that uh developers hate working with it because it can be a pain but there's so much demand because so many companies use WordPress. Thank you. How would you learn design if you're stuck if you suck at at or would you use community templates? I would use templates. There are basic design principles that will make your layouts look pretty good. Alignment, whites space, uh use one perhaps two fonts in your page max. Create a lot of breathing space. Uh so don't squish all your elements together. um consistency of the color scheme. So don't have red buttons on one page and yellow on the other page unless red has a meaning and yellow has a meaning. So you have to apply meaning to this color scheme. And finally there are psychological new colors. So certain colors are exciting colors and certain colors are relaxing colors. So for example, I'll give you three examples. nightclub. You could use reds and neon blue and dark dark dark page, you know, to club wedding photography site or wedding location site, pastels, whites, greens, pastel yellows, pastel blues, you know, or light. Um, so in studio web, for example, I use greens and orange a lot. Yeah, green and orange a lot. Uh, because they're calming colors. Calming colors. Pastelli. So the psychology of the color scheme in place. So you can follow these basic rules. I laid out some of them for you. Um but you could find follow design principles. So at the end of the at the end of the day, use templates. But when you use templates, one thing that people do is they uh they mess up the template. So they get a perfectly good template and then they start moving things around and they don't know basic design principles like I talked about alignment and so forth and they start effing things up. So if you do use a template which is good I encourage you not to f them up too much and learn those design principles. Again I teach that as well in my my stuff. What is something new you have learned recently that's surprising or made you go wow or that's interesting stuff in the AI you know it's like a few months ago I was playing around with AI so I I do a keto diet diet I'm not the most loyal in the last few months but um the thing I used to hate was tracking all my calories right I look on a plate how many calories I have in there what are my macros you know how many fats how many carbs how many proteins So, I found out that GPT, uh, it was the only one who could do it at the time. You take a photo and you can tell it, hey, tell me what's on the plate. Can you give me the macro breakdown? It's very, very accurate. Tested on many, many places, like super accurate. I'd say 98% accurate, which is good enough. So, that's freaked the hell out of me. So, my friend here is emailing me with his uh travel tourism business. He's uh showing me all the stuff he's doing with Clawbot and Clo and it's just pretty wild stuff. It's not trivial at all. It's it's complex stuff. So that's what wow me all that kind of stuff. Besides AI, software development hasn't changed much in like 10 years, right? What we did in 2015 pretty much the same as we did uh in terms of coding and software and frameworks and libraries. It's pretty much the same, you know. So that hasn't that's been pretty but the AI stuff is wowing me. Hey Steph, great to see you streaming more. I enjoy your courses on studio. Hey, thanks man. Cool. Well, thanks for joining. Same process as did the profession of sound engineering with the peripheration of more accessible tools making the engineers more more capable and not dependent on big companies and infrastructure. Yeah, pretty much. pretty much I predict and we're already starting to see it. We're going to see many small companies, one guy, one woman, two cats, dog, and they were able to produce super successful applications. I was just talking a friend of mine today. I won't give away what he's talking about, but he he anyway, I'm not going to talk about what he did, but anyway, he sees an application that he could build. AI makes it possible and he can make a lot of money with it. Is it going to be a billion dollar business? No. But could he make uh half million bucks a year? Very likely, very possible. Uh so yeah, it's um very much so. And that's the thing about these new development technologies is that allows developers uh a team of one, a team of three to be able to compete with with before it would take a hundred people. So my prediction is we're going to see a lot more software development happening. We're going to see a lot more you're going to see a greater distribution of the load meaning there's going to be a lot more independent developers doing very very well. That's why I don't think this stuff is bad for developers. I think it's very good. I think it's great. Do you have an opinion on what the best design pattern architecture to build a SAS? That's a very broad question. Depends on the type of SAS. That being said, I have my my uh three favorite design patterns. MVC number one. All the full stacks I believe use that except for maybe Microsoft Windforms. Um although they do have MVC implementation. So MVC is number one, dependency injection number two, I used to use it expressed in something called a serlet filter. Uh facade number three, uh these are the three design patterns that I leveraged all the time. All the time. There's there's others. Um anyway, those are the three. So when you're building a SAS, you want to keep the code base very simple as MVC does. It's se it segments your code into model, view, and controller. Model is all your business logic, database logic. View is of course all the view templates. The controller is the the brokering code that in broker is the interaction between the front and the back. But and then you use uh dependency injection which allows you to add um functionality to an app without having to uh mess up your app and facade is a way to simplify uh code but anyway that's another we won't get too deep into all this with AI do you believe that programmers are going through the same process that as did the profession of sound engineering once did yeah 100%. Well, I'm not a sound engineer, so I only I only have an inkling. My brother was a sound engineer. Um, in many ways, when all these new tools came out was a democratization of sound engineering, meaning you didn't need to pay for studio time and you could just do stuff at home, right? I think like way back in the day, I think Radio Head recorded their first album in your dorm room, right? On a laptop, if I recall. Yeah. Yeah. No worries. I mean with the proliferation of more accessible tools making engineers more capable and not depend on big companies in their infrastructure expensive equipment. 100%. Yeah, I agree. Like I think you can have small one-man shops making very big inroads where they couldn't before. [cough] What's your thoughts on light mode or dark mode on websites? one over the other, both ability to toggle. Well, number one, in terms of reading text, light mode is usually easier. Uh, number two, it also depends on the theme. If you're have a Halloween site or a death metal band, you're probably going to go with a dark theme. Um, yeah, my problem with AI is that it changes so rapidly that I can't adaptable workflow. In my experience, using II without proper warful intensive supervision ends up causing problems. Yeah, that's the problem. Uh there were problems with the web in initial stages as well. The key to working with AI, you know, is to keep your AI implementations fine grained, meaning you don't want to do too expansive. You want to have AI build this part here and this part here and this part here. and you're going to have to adapt with the time. The good thing, the good the good news is that it's so quick that you should be able to. Is it worth to learn CMS like WordPress alongside your web your main web stack? You just learn the basics like WordPress I consider a for freelancing especially it's it's very important skill. I have a WordPress uh basics course in the program just so you get your head wrapped around it so you can install it. Again, you don't want to spend too much time trying to learn everything. So I curate what it is that is important so you can you know we want to get you in the ring. We want to get you making money as quickly as possible. I mean that the real programs will make the AI his team in many tasks. 100%. I'm already seeing it. I'm already seeing it. How do you think the best way to deal with loneliness is Lizard Wood? Great course by the way. I glad you like Lizard Wizard. Well loneliness is like a programming. You know as you know you've done Lizard Wizard. It's a it's it's really it's almost a decision, but it's a decision based on early early childhood experience. One of the things you could do is just go to the coffee shop, shop, start talking to people, get out. One of the reasons I get out uh I live right in the core of my city and I get people know me all around downtown. I coffee shops and waitresses and restaurant owners. I go I talk to people. I get around and talk to a lot of people. Reach out to people if you're feeling lonely. Just read out reach out to people and but also reprogram your brain using some of those lizard lizard techniques. Um I'm glad you like lizard wizard. Lizard wizard is my uh course on the two operating systems of your brain. I have lizard I'm think I'm coming out with a new addition to lizard wizard by the way. Update this wizard too. Now the internet is full with tailwind slop soon front end I mean that all of front end from design to website will be most in demand jobs could very well be could very well be that's why you know oh it's almost almost an hour that's why I always emphasize the fundamentals because if you have the fun Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny Bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunny bunn bunny bunn bunn >> can you hear me? Can you hear me? [laughter] Let me know. I maybe I screwed up my mic. Can you hear me? Testing 123. Oh, can you hear me now? Let me know. You keep saying fundamentals are loop. [laughter] Very important. Very important. There we go. Got fixed. Wow. God. Really? [laughter] [snorts] It's the matrix, dude. It's It's the matrix. It's sending you a message. It's sending you a message. It's telling you what's important. All right. Good. Good. Always a professional stream here. Always a professional stream. [laughter] Oh my god. Well, well, we're going to do an experiment. See, I'm going to go back to my lab. See if it fixes it now. Good lord. We thought we breached us. Haha. All right, let's try again. Hello. How's that? Is that better now? Is it better? How's this now? I just switched back to this thing again. Did it work? Let me know. Did it uh did this one work or I'm going to have to go back to the old mic. Let me know if this new mic is actually working now. This is a real life debugging fundamentals. Fundamentals. Chad GBT mic. [laughter] That's funny. All right, guys. You're all good. Okay, so this this mic is working again, right? Because I'm back on this thing now. I'm back on this thing. All right. Yeah, radio guy. Okay. All right, guys. Uh, no bugged anymore. No more fundamentals in loop. not bugged anymore. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, good. Good. That's interesting. There you go. Sign from the gods, my friend. Sign from the gods. All right. Thanks for watching the stream. Uh, I'll let you go. Colong and profit. If you uh disagree with anything I have to say in the stream, let me know. And uh, yeah, we'll talk soon. I'll end off with my ASMR uh, video here. Cheers, guys. >> [music] >> Wow. Down. >> [music]

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