Slightly Caffeinated

Chris Gmyr (00:00)
Hey, welcome back to the Slightly Caffeinated Podcast. I'm Chris Gmyr

TJ Miller (00:03)
I'm TJ Miller.

Chris Gmyr (00:05)
Hey TJ, so what's up in your world?

TJ Miller (00:08)
man, I'm realizing like yesterday and today that I have just completely fallen off of all socials for the most part. I've just been like super busy, hunkered down, know, onboarding, getting the lay of the land and trying to download as much information as possible about everything. I think it's like the hardest part of like onboarding somewhere, especially

you know, somewhere where I'm like super passionate about what we're doing and super excited is, I just, want to be like very useful and I want to like do lots of things, but I just, I don't know enough yet. And I know that just comes with time, but it's so difficult. Like, I just, want to know the things and do the stuff, you know?

Chris Gmyr (00:53)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's so time consuming and it takes a lot of energy to go through the onboarding process and start learning a new code base, a new company, a new team, like everything. I I've totally felt in the past that like I'm just completely heads down for just hours during the day and then, you know, come up for error and it's like, okay, it's done with work time and into family time and

didn't check socials, didn't do anything extra or even maybe take a break, which is pretty terrible out the get go. But yeah, it's totally understandable and it's a lot to get onboarded into a new place.

TJ Miller (01:33)
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's fun. I love, I love learning. So it's just like a constant, constant stream of learning stuff. just, yeah, you know, just, you spend all my cycle, my brain cycles doing that. And when it comes to like back to being social, it's like, I just don't have anything left right now. but outside of that stuff, my wife celebrated her birthday over the weekend. So we've got six months of her being able to hold it over my head that she's older than me.

Chris Gmyr (01:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

TJ Miller (01:58)
but we were going to have some people over. The kiddo got sick, so we didn't have anybody over, which is a bummer, but he bounced back pretty fast, which is great, but it was a forcing mechanism for us to finish painting our kitchen. And that was, that's been a big long project and we still got like a couple of pieces to paint, but all the like four main walls are done. We painted all our cabinets. So it's, we're got all new vibes in there and.

What we were able to do for her birthday is we went out to an orchard, is where we're still kind of summer weather, but it's getting a little cooler. So that was a ton of fun getting to go pick some apples and I'm still eating donuts every day.

Chris Gmyr (02:39)
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's something that we don't really have around here unless you go out to the mountains for three or four hours, this apple orchards, because it just doesn't get cold enough in central North Carolina to have apple trees. So yeah, that's kind of a bummer that we miss out on fall time. We can go to the farmer's market and get a bag.

TJ Miller (02:43)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Chris Gmyr (03:04)
But, you know, it's totally different, especially with kids, like being able to pick and eat and just have fun at the Apple Orchard and, you know, have cider and cider donuts and all that stuff too. So.

TJ Miller (03:14)
Yeah, one of the beautiful things about Southeast Michigan, man, we're about an hour north of us. There's a dozen different orchards to go to. So yeah, busy, but hey man, what's new in your world?

Chris Gmyr (03:24)
Yeah, let's see, try to avoid the impending hurricane coming up from the south. So I don't think it'll really come too close to us. It's more actually going up by the mountains a few hours away, but we'll still get the side effects of some rain and wind. And at least we're extracting right now. We should be fine. We've gone through so many of these things before, and it tends to just go around us for the most part. So we're keeping an eye on it.

TJ Miller (03:30)
Ooh, yeah, that's right.

Chris Gmyr (03:51)
Shouldn't be anything too bad.

TJ Miller (03:53)
Honestly, I think I might get hit a little harder than you are. it's, last last projection I saw was coming straight towards us, which I don't think we're going to get hit with like anything major, but all the spill off I think will kind of keep migrating north a bit.

Chris Gmyr (03:57)
Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, totally. It should slow down enough by the time it gets up to you guys anyways. Yeah, doing some popcorn sales for Cub Scouts with my son. into popcorn selling season. So doing pretty well so far with that. doing some store friends, selling to some family and friends online, things like that. So probably got a couple more weeks of doing that. And

just doing all the parenting stuff and home stuff in the meantime.

TJ Miller (04:37)
Yeah, man. I've seen the scouts out around here doing popcorn. I wish they had Boy Scout cookies, man. Like, I can't eat popcorn, but I will eat me some cookies all day long.

Chris Gmyr (04:45)
you

Yeah, a lot of the things that we sell at the storefronts are the popcorn, but online they do offer some different products. like chocolate covered pretzels and some different nuts and things like that. So if you're interested, will send you the link.

TJ Miller (05:05)
Yeah, yeah man, send me the link. I'll definitely get in on some. I'm big on carbs, so I'm very happy to eat chocolate covered pretzels like constantly.

Chris Gmyr (05:14)
Sweet, sweet, yeah. I'll definitely hook you up then. So speaking of consumables, the title of this podcast is obviously slightly caffeinated. When we started talking about doing a podcast and the initial title way back years ago, like we were both super into coffee, you guys were doing your own.

coffee beans, roasting them and got like a couple of different roasters. And it just seemed like we were just talking about coffee all the time, which is awesome. And we realized the other day that we're, this is episode six, like we haven't talked about coffee at all. We just dove into it and started talking about other great things, but we haven't talked about coffee. So maybe that's something that we can kind of bring back into the fold as we go.

TJ Miller (05:38)
Yep.

Chris Gmyr (06:03)
forward now. So yeah, what is has your coffee journey been kind of like the last couple years? Maybe what are some, you know, things that you're drinking or like really enjoying right now? Either maybe some beans or a process or, you know, gadget or whatever.

TJ Miller (06:18)
Yeah, yeah. So I've got kind of like a wild journey towards like coffee. So I'll, I'll step back a little bit and like talk a little bit about the journey because it's got some like roots. There's, I spent like 11 years, like 11, 12 years, like working in the bicycle industry. So in Southeast Michigan, that's super seasonal. So during the summer we'd be all working like 60 plus hours a week and just, you know, slaving through the bike shop. and then we'd get laid off in the winter. And so.

needed something to do and it worked out well for me to go work at coffee shops during the winter. And like during the winter, everyone's going back to school. So they needed people to fill in at the coffee shops. And then I was back out, you know, during the summer when all the college kids and, you know, everybody was done, done with school. They were able to come back and like fulfill their positions at coffee shops. So it just like worked out really well. And so every year I tried to kind of like work at a different coffee shop.

there were a couple of years I worked at the same one, but I tried to like move around and just kind of experience different pieces of it. And that's where I got like really hooked on being more or less a coffee snob. like don't get me wrong. I'll definitely drink some awful coffee if I need to, but I've, I've, I've got a taste for the good stuff.

Chris Gmyr (07:32)
Yeah, totally. Once you taste it, it's hard to go back.

TJ Miller (07:35)
Yeah, and then you experience all the different methods of making it too, which is like, I've got, I think probably one of every type of way to make coffee here. we've bounced around, we even did pods for a little while, just got super lazy. But now we're back to good old manual methods. But yeah, that's kind of.

yeah, I guess. we went on from that. We got like really snobby about coffee. My wife and I are like pretty entrepreneurial. Like my wife is super entrepreneurial. And like a handful of years ago, I mean, I'd say a handful of years ago, and it's been probably like five or six years, we started like a really small like coffee company and we were, we had like a small like a stove top roaster. We were roasting on that and ended up like kind of

voluming out of that and we got a, I don't know, like a three pound, like three pound roaster. And so we did that for a little while. And then I just, as far as like a business goes, we realized that like we, in order to do even like baseline, like sustainable levels of business, we were going to have to scale like actually kind of big and we weren't willing to make that investment in it. And so we kind of fell off the roasting a bit.

and now we've like found a couple of local coffee shops that roast their own beans and we mostly, mostly use those. and then like, far as like tooling goes, we're like, every morning's a French press. afternoons are typically like, I'll do an AeroPress cause that's like a little bit more suitable for a single cup. and that's, that's kind of like where we're at, like coffee.

bean wise, I just, I'm super excited. I got another bag of artisan coming from the terminal shop boys. you know, coffee over SSH, you know, being a super CLI guy is just, right up my alley. So I'm looking forward to getting, getting that bag in here and, you know, going with some of that. So, how about you man? What's like a little bit of your journey and means and methods making it these days.

Chris Gmyr (09:34)
Nice. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. My journey, I don't know, started before my wife and I got together. So that's, I don't know, probably about 12 years at this point. at that, like before her, I was just drinking like crappy Keurig and just adding a bunch of junk to it to make it taste good. And it just wasn't something that I would call coffee to like by today's standards, right? And then

TJ Miller (10:11)
Haha

Chris Gmyr (10:15)
I think for Christmas one year as a gift, like she went out to one of the local coffee shops and got me a whole bean bag of something that they had and then a little like blade grinder and French press. And that little change just catapulted me into the whole coffee world and experience. And just the amount of like

TJ Miller (10:36)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (10:41)
flavor in different options and just all the gadgets which I usually find myself getting steered towards anyway, naturally. There's so many coffee gadgets. So just kind of like took me from there. So it quickly went to like, this blade grinder, you know, isn't that good anymore or I'm getting like not the consistency that I want or the French press is getting like too sludgy. So like, let's actually get a better.

grinder and going to a burr grinder and getting more consistency with that. then, well, what's out there besides French press? getting a Chemex and a pour over and a much better coffee drip pot and things like that. then, yeah, AeroPress and a whole bunch of other things like that, like multiple different pour over mechanisms and probably

TJ Miller (11:28)
yeah.

Chris Gmyr (11:29)
I know, five years ago, I pulled the trigger on a super automatic espresso machine that like, again, has like a touchscreen on it. So you like make your drinks, you could adjust the different like grind size and do double shots and like all these settings and did like the milks and all that stuff. But slowly over time, I also started like kind of getting rid of things because I wasn't using it and just like adapting to the taste that I like. And then after using the...

super automatic for a while, just not feeling super engaged with it. Because once I had my two or three drinks that I did, I just of reused that. And it's like, well, there's this big machine that could do so many other things. I never, I usually drink mine straight black. So I wasn't connecting it to any milk or anything else like that to make it really worthwhile. So I ended up selling that on Facebook Marketplace not too long ago, maybe within the last year or something.

to free up some space and time and things like that and just kind of simplified a little bit more. So we still have like a really nice drip coffee maker. has like a rain head on it. So you get more of the grounds kind of dispersed and covered by the water and keeps it at the 203 to 205 temperature. So that's our daily driver for that. But I still have the Aeropress, French Press, Chemex, which I really love.

TJ Miller (12:41)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (12:52)
So typically going for the drip, because it's easy, especially with kids running around trying to get people out the door and just getting something done. But occasionally on the weekend, I'll bust out the Chem -X. I haven't actually done the French press and the AeroPress in quite a while, but maybe I can get that started again. Yeah. And then coffee beans. Man, I feel like I went down the rabbit hole with this a while ago.

TJ Miller (13:01)
Yup.

Yeah, for sure.

Chris Gmyr (13:19)
And in Notion, I don't know if I showed you this before, but I made a huge coffee database in Notion where I would go to all these different spots online or even, I tried some of the subscription coffee services before. like trade and a few other ones where they would just curate different bags for you and send them. So I would go to either like trades website or the actual roaster who I got the coffee from and saved

TJ Miller (13:25)
Wow.

Chris Gmyr (13:48)
that coffee's page in the database. So then I was able to track the price, where it came from. I would do ratings and little comments for everyone, having a screenshot of where the location was and is a single origin. Is it a blend? Is it what kind of roast level it is, light, or dark? And had this huge database.

TJ Miller (14:00)
Wow, dude.

Chris Gmyr (14:14)
notion. it was really helpful going back to these places or be like, yeah, what was that coffee from a couple months ago? Or like, know TJ would really like this thing. So let me look this up and send you the link type of thing. But yeah, I was going full hog into that, spending a lot of money and time doing coffee bean discovery and going down the rabbit hole with that. And then at the beginning of this year, I've been in

TJ Miller (14:33)
Ha ha ha.

Chris Gmyr (14:41)
kind of on a different health journey. got a bunch of tests and things like that. And I actually came back high for mold and different toxins and talked about consuming all these different coffees, because I would get a lot of single origin from all over the world. And it's regulated, but not like,

super highly regulated and the amount of processes and people that it goes through and things like that. A lot of coffees are typically high in toxicity and mold because of just how they're processed. So my medical provider said, hey, check out these coffees. And there some other companies out there that do screening of coffee beans for molds, toxins, pesticides, and a few other things. It's fully organic. So

TJ Miller (15:05)
Right.

Chris Gmyr (15:32)
The company that I usually get my beans now is called Purity Coffee. And I'll put a link in the show notes, but they have a couple different blends. They're all organic. And they have some different benefits to the different bags that they have. But there's only five or six different versions that you can get. So it's not as expansive as a trade or one of the subscription boxes. it's what I.

can have right now. So not as exciting as previous years, but trying to stay on the health train and get some of this stuff cleared out of my body so that once the test results come back to more normal levels, I'm able to, if there is any toxins or impurities or mold within the coffee beans, my body will be able to flush that out a lot better in the future. So just doing what I need to do now.

TJ Miller (16:02)
Yeah

Yeah, that's interesting,

Chris Gmyr (16:27)
see what else is in the future after that.

TJ Miller (16:30)
Yeah, dude. I think an espresso machine is something we haven't had here. And I think we're definitely interested in getting something. don't know. I probably won't make anything too fancy, although I am like a super sucker for an extra dry cappuccino. So there's a chance that I might get into the fancier stuff. But no, I think an espresso machine would be pretty nice.

In the afternoon, I normally need a little caffeine boost, but typically not enough for a whole bunch of coffee. So that might be a nice change of pace. I'll have to check out this purity stuff. sounds like I'm on a little bit of a health kick too. So that might be worthwhile looking into. Question for other people that I think you and I can answer. What do you think?

Chris Gmyr (17:04)
Yeah. Yeah.

It tastes really good too.

TJ Miller (17:24)
is like the number one quality of life improvement like coffee wise, like be it device or apparatus or like technique, like whatever. What do you think would be like advice for someone else to be like number one thing to do to up your coffee consuming experience?

Chris Gmyr (17:45)
I think is probably of the list for me because if you have like a good grinder, you can basically put those beans in anything else to brew them and it's going to taste so much better. So it almost doesn't matter. Like if you put it in a drip versus an arrow press versus a French press or anything else, as long as the grinder can handle that, which a decent burr grinder will be able to do that.

pretty easily. So that will open up a whole bunch of options for you like right off the bat.

TJ Miller (18:18)
Yep, 100 % agree. That's exactly the same answer I've got is, you know, there's just so much to be said about drinking coffee, like fresh ground. Like, doesn't matter what you're drinking it through, like even like super, you know, bottom of the barrel drip, like you will absolutely like have a better experience using a grinder.

Chris Gmyr (18:41)
Yeah, 100%. And then after that, just kind of depends, really. Like if you're doing drip, you probably don't need a fancy kitchen scale. You can definitely go crazy with that or a different gooseneck kettle that's electric that you can dial in the exact temperature. It kind of depends on where you want to go after that. But the grinder is the

TJ Miller (18:47)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (19:09)
the biggest thing in my mind. And then it kind of depends on what you either have or want to get into like in the future. And then that will kind of push you in one direction versus the other.

TJ Miller (19:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, if you're using anything that like you're manually adding water to, like French press, pour over, definitely recommend an electric kettle. Doesn't need to even be like crazy, like set your temperature, like almost all of them have like a, at least a like medium low high setting or somewhere, somewhere in that variant. But yeah, getting a, getting an electric kettle makes big difference there.

Chris Gmyr (19:43)
Yeah, totally.

TJ Miller (19:46)
Cool, dude. Coming off of coffee, something else I wanted to talk about. I don't even know where this will lead, but just talking a little bit about what kind of developer you are and set the tone. I can run with it and see where we go. Personally, I feel like I am a very vibes -based, an emotive developer.

I will write code that's maybe a little less performant, but like looks and feels good. Like, I don't know, like I've got to feel good about like the, vibes of the code. Like I have definitely like a way I prefer things to look. I'm really particular about like white space and like where things are returning. And I've got like a lot of hard and fast rules for, for myself for like how I'll leave.

Chris Gmyr (20:21)
it.

TJ Miller (20:37)
like arrays formatted or if there's a method where the first parameter is a string and the second one's an array, how and when I choose to wrap that array or leave it in a single line, I'm really particular about it and it's all just got to feel good and look clean. I don't know. And that's typically why I have such a hard time doing TDD too, is because I've got to write the code out and make sure it all

feels cohesive and good before I go and start locking it in with tests. I don't know, man. What about you?

Chris Gmyr (21:11)
Yeah, totally.

Yeah, mean, I think it depends on kind of what I'm doing or like the context of what I'm working on. Because I think it's kind of different between just kind of hacking on a side project and like, I don't know, let's just get this thing to work. Like, I don't really care about tests or maybe how it looks because no one else is going to see it but me. So I might be like a little bit more lax, at least at the beginning stages with that.

But if it's like an open source project, then I'm going to be a lot more strict about it. And like you said, being visually pleasing to other people coming in and reading it. Same thing on a much bigger project like Atwork or on a larger team or code base. Those things really need to be dialed in for me. And then the bigger the code base, the bigger the user base and team, the more concerned I am with those like

best practices and like, is this actually tested or tested well? And is this going to be scalable for what, you know, our size of a company and app needs it to be? Because we don't want to like over scale and over design, but it needs to suit the needs that we have right now and maybe a step or two in the future. So at least in the work context, I'm a little bit more

TJ Miller (22:33)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (22:37)
defensive, a little bit more aware of what needs to happen, but I guess still coming back to basics, like it still needs to look good. It still needs to function well, still needs to be tested well. And it's still, like you said, it still needs to have that like good vibe to it because like I'm probably going to come back and read this in a week or two or a year or something. And like, it's just going to be in much better shape if, you know, it reads well from the get go. So that's what I...

try to promote in a lot of my work and pairing and code reviews and stuff like that too.

TJ Miller (23:14)
Yeah, I find that like

the vibes -based emotive programming style that I have. I feel like I almost sweat it even more on my own code bases and side projects and stuff because I don't have to compete with other people's styles. There's always that, too. I'm very particular about it. So I will...

I'll try to be a little bit more relaxed about it when there's like other people in the code base too, because like I know they've got their own styles or like the code base kind of has its own styles. So like I can't necessarily like make everything the way I want it to. But when it's like just me, man, I'm sweating all the line returns, all the details. Like, yeah, I think I can go even harder.

you know, especially open source, like the stuff I've been working on with Sparkle, like I'm sweating like every comma, just like it's, it's all got to like feel good. But I find that that also leads me to.

Chris Gmyr (24:04)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

TJ Miller (24:09)
massive, like at least the want, the desire to do like these massive refactors and like scouting along with it. Cause it's like, all right, well like I'm going to introduce like this architectural pattern and like this feature, but nothing else matches this. like everything that that touches ends up like I ended up like wanting or trying to like go and clean up and put the vibes on all that stuff too. And, it's, it's really tough to like know when to stop and like,

figuring out how to get myself to stop. Cause I just, I want to, gotta like make it all feel good, you know? Like even, even the new code where that's like the edges of that, that's all got to like feel good how that's interacting with everything else. And yeah, that often I think leads me to just refactor city. And I don't know, it's a tough place to be sometimes.

Chris Gmyr (25:00)
Yeah, totally. And it's hard to call it a day at some of those levels where it's just like, OK, this just has to be good enough for right now. Because I know you. You're good enough is probably much better than 90 % of other developers maybe doing that same or similar work. So I get caught up with that, too. It's like, I can go 20 more steps with this.

TJ Miller (25:19)
You

Chris Gmyr (25:28)
you at the end of the day, you just have to kind of stop and be okay with it. Because also, like what you see in front of you right now, as other things kind of shift and change around it in your knowledge, and other assumptions change, like that could diverge you from the path that you had today, or the idea that you had today, right? So, like, if we're just constantly...

changing and moving and not really settled on something. You don't have the time and space to really see what else is possible and what could be even more beneficial for the code base or the feature or the project.

TJ Miller (26:10)
Yeah, I definitely, like on Sparkle, like I've shot myself in the foot a few times by like over -perfecting. Like I've been trying to take a really iterative approach to it. And I've definitely sweated way too hard on what I was currently working on. And then in the next iteration, I find myself right back there needing to, you know, redo 70 % of it. Like that's not a bad thing to like need to redo that.

like 70 % or whatever, it's because now I'm introducing a new concept and I have to like restructure things to account for that. But man, I like definitely spent days like really, really like getting the perfect vibe on all this to then just like come back and yeah, I need to change it a couple of days later. It's like, well, I guess I didn't need to do all of that. Or maybe we'll talk about it a little later, but like I've been just like stuck.

on Sparkle, like something hasn't felt right. And, I haven't been able to put my finger on it. And like, that's the other part too, is like, it's kind of stopped progress on a whole bunch of things because I know there's something wrong. Like something doesn't feel right, but I don't necessarily know what it is. I've now sort of figured that out, but like, that was just like a really frustrating feeling of like, I know something's not right here.

doesn't feel good, like it works, it like totally is functional, but like there's something about it like I don't like and nine times out of 10 if I like trust my gut it'll, it'll you know, it's the right call, but gosh that's annoying, you know, just stuck at that impass.

Chris Gmyr (27:48)
Yeah, to feel like you're almost there and just not finding that unlock of the next step or feeling better about it.

TJ Miller (27:57)
Yeah, it's like, don't, I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know what to do to like make myself feel better about it, but this is, this is not right. And then you just end up kind of like sitting on it and letting gears in the back of your head spin on it. Like, I don't know about you, but like, I've always just got like background gears turning on things. And, you know, I was out, was out throwing the football around with my son the other day and just like, kind of came to me. like, well, if I do this, that'll make everything so much better. You know, like.

Chris Gmyr (28:24)
Yeah, sometimes you gotta let go and do something else like non related to the task, you know itself and the brain will just keep on working on it in the background and just, you know, let go and like it'll come back for sure.

TJ Miller (28:40)
Yeah, man. I guess that like leads a little bit into like, I wanted to touch on like pair programming a bit. which is definitely something that like, I, I enjoy doing, I'm hoping to do a lot of it at Geocodeo. know we've got a, a developer who's got some like Ruby experience and now they're, you know, getting into Laravel and, luckily there's like so much inspiration from, you know, Rails inside of Laravel that there's, you know, some

familiar architectural concepts for them. But I know something that like I'm going to hopefully be spending a fair amount of time doing is like pair programming. And I feel like I'm not really good at it. Like I don't I don't know. I feel like I'm not good at it, but I really enjoy doing it and

It's, it's an area that like, I'd love to improve on, but I think it's like, I think it's an area that's hard to improve on unless you like go pair with somebody who is really good at it just kind of start picking those things up. Like I've read articles and, you know, poked around and like watched, watched videos and listened to podcasts about people talking about it. But I feel like it's maybe one of those things that like, just learned through experience, like you find a good pair of programmer and.

You start like adopting their habits. Like, I don't know, man. What do you, what do you think about like musings on pair programming?

Chris Gmyr (30:01)
Yeah, I I like pair programming. I don't do it as much as I would like. And I think it kind of depends on the season or like what is happening, especially at work. do most of the pairings at work. So if we're not working on maybe like a big new feature or something that involves the whole team, it's kind of hard to split that far down to what someone is working on. If you don't know like

all the context or what's going on with that feature. But on a much bigger one, a lot more architecture discussions come out of that in general direction. And then actual ticket processing. It's like, I'm working on this task today. Can you help me with this? So yeah, I really enjoy doing it. I don't know if I'm necessarily the best at it, too.

I feel like I forget how to type when someone is watching me all the time. I don't mind being, do they call it the driver if you're the one watching and talking through it or typist or, I don't know. I don't mind directing and speaking out loud and having someone else do the typing and implementation of what we're talking about, but I definitely get.

TJ Miller (30:57)
Always.

Chris Gmyr (31:20)
kind of sidetracked if I'm the one kind of leading and typing and trying to talk, you know, also and trying to keep my spot like mentally where I am in the actual work of programming in the pairing session.

TJ Miller (31:34)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of my pairing like kind of comes a little closer to me, live streaming my work than like pair programming sometimes. And I know it's like a really, I feel like that that's like a really nasty habit. Like, especially working with somebody who's, you know, got less experience who you're, trying to like help level up and teach. I think there's like so much more advantage and to be like being the one.

like doing like actually interacting with the mechanics. I keep forgetting the terminology for everything, but like, you know, I think there's a lot more to be gained, like typing at the keyboard or really kind of putting them in the position to like walk through and like take a shot at like talking you through the architecture and talking you through like how they would implement this feature or, you know, I think there's something to be said about like not being like

facetious, but like, I don't really know what the next step is. Like help me like walk through like what the next step is while I'm sitting here. Like I know exactly what I want to do, but like here's a forcing mechanism to get you to think, think about and like think through these decisions too. but yeah, I feel like my default kind of like slips into being like a little bit more live streaming and that's, it's a hard habit I'm trying to break.

Chris Gmyr (32:54)
Yeah, but I think there's some like benefit in there too of just kind of like stream of consciousness. Like this is what I'm thinking and this is how like I'm working through it. And I tend to internalize that a lot of times. So there'll be like a point, like if I'm kind of typing and kind of leading it in that way, like I'll just pause and be like, someone's actually waiting for my response or like trying to figure out like what I'm thinking. And it's like, okay, have to

restart in my brain a little bit, now vocalize what I had in my head or what popped into my head that I'm now thinking through, and then we can talk about it together. So that's something that I definitely need to be better with in pairing. But it also, I think, kind of depends on what you want out of it, or who might be the person to gain maybe more benefit from the pairing session.

So like with you getting onboarded with like GeoCodeo, you'd probably be the typist. So you can actually like physically click through the directories and code and like open things up and kind of start building up that muscle memory where things are and having someone kind of direct you, you know, where that is and vice versa. Like the other person is in more of that like teaching position in that onboarding experience, like helping you through that process.

So I think it kind of depends on what type of pairing that you're doing. Because onboarding is a little bit different from full -fledged feature development or architecture decisions or anything like that. So I think it kind of shifts depending on which type of flavor you're talking about with pairing too.

TJ Miller (34:41)
Yeah, I think that's like, brought up a really good point. Like we were pairing earlier today and we were working on a feature together and it was a really interesting position to be in because it's like, I've got a whole heap of like knowledge and experience with Laravel. So like, I'm kind of driving from the perspective of like, here's how I think we can implement this feature. But I also lack so much context about...

the integrations that we're working with and like the actual application we're working inside of like, just, I'm still learning all of that stuff. So like they've got all the knowledge and like the context and like the app and everything. But then I'm coming in with like the, the other piece of that. so it was a really interesting experience. I think we ended up like balancing it really pretty well, but man, it's definitely an area where I'd, I love to continue to improve on. if you're, if you're listening to this and you've got like really good resources.

reach out to us, like let us know, like I'd love to improve on that.

Chris Gmyr (35:41)
Yeah, and did you see Eric Barnes, Laravel News, do an interview with Ben Holman? He's been doing kind of like the pair with me pyramid scheme, where you pair with him and then you go out and pair with your next five people and then they have to do the same thing. And you eventually get this whole amount of people that have been pairing with just random remote people.

TJ Miller (35:51)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (36:06)
you know, online and it doesn't matter like the code base or the technology or if you know them or not, it's just like do like a calendly link or, you know, Google Cal or something like that. Like find a spot on my calendar and pop in there. Have you ever thought about doing something like that?

TJ Miller (36:21)
I have. I have thought about doing exactly that and just like throwing out a calendar link and like setting up some availability and just like, especially working on like Sparkle and all of that. Like I've got, I've got a code base that I'm working on that, you know, definitely could use, use eyes on it. And I'm happy to help, you know, pair on other people's stuff too. So I've thought about doing that and like, I think it gets back a little bit to like what I was saying to you where I think, you know, that

provides opportunities for you to be like pairing with other people who are maybe like super awesome pair programmers and you're able to kind of pick up on those habits as well. Yeah, I think that would be something good to get involved with. Is that something that you've thought about doing too?

Chris Gmyr (37:05)
Yeah, I've thought about it and seeing Ben Holman talk about it, because I think he's been on a few shows or podcasts or whatever talking about it too. I'm like, this is just a really good idea. But I just haven't had a chance to really pull the trigger on it. But would love to connect with him and other people in the community or not in the community who just see it and was like, am in a totally different tech stack. But hey, let's pair together on something too and maybe just broaden.

the base of knowledge and my understanding of other tech stacks, technologies, companies, people, just practicing and working on that pairing muscle, you know, just like anything else. So yeah, I think it would be a really good experiment for us to go down and try.

TJ Miller (37:50)
Yeah, it was something that was really hot on too when during the period that I was laid off and doing like a bunch of live streaming. that was, that was, I think if I was going to be laid off like any, any more beyond what I was, that was going to be like the next thing to introduce was just like, yeah, let's just like do a bunch of pair programming too. Like I've got the live stream going on, which I'm hoping to bring back soon. But I had that going on. I was like, you know what? This is like perfect opportunity to like, yeah, be pairing with other people. It's not like a

don't have a ton of time on my hands, know? So yeah, definitely hot on getting back to the live streaming as well. You had mentioned it, talking about pair programming, just like having that stream of consciousness and like thinking out loud.

Chris Gmyr (38:23)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (38:34)
I know, I found that like really, really helpful to do just even for myself. You know, I've found myself a couple of times here with like not streaming, still, you know, thinking out loud to myself. And it was just, you know, helpful to have like a little bit different perspective to your own thinking, I think. I don't know, that was cool. I think that's, I think that's all I've got, man. You wanna maybe wrap this one up?

Chris Gmyr (38:58)
Yep, let's wrap it up.

for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes and mention links are at slightlycaffeinated .fm. You can find us on Twitter or X at slightlycaffpod and email us at hey at slightlycaffeinated.fm So yeah, TJ, thanks for the chat today and we'll see you next week.

TJ Miller (39:20)
Yeah, thanks y 'all.