mergeconflict287 === [00:00:00] James: Happy new year, Frank it's 2022. [00:00:12] Frank: The best of the 2020s. I've heard, I've heard this is going to be the best one. Happy 20, 22. [00:00:18] James: Totally happened. Actually it's not 2022 yet. Cause it's actually we're recording. I'm going to break, break. Don't look behind the [00:00:24] Frank: curtain, but it's almost at work. The wizard must not be disturbed. [00:00:31] James: Well, it is 2022 when you're listening to this podcast and what a doozy, because you know, there's new year's and new, year's always a fun time. We went out skiing you're over visiting the family. And, um, it's a, the year's over Frank, the year's over for our patron listeners. We did. Everything that we could imagine a recap, uh, topic. We talked, um, you know, sales, we talked in that purchases. We talked video games, we talked Starship, troopers, all the things. Um, but this year, Frank, we usually do predictions, but we're not gonna do predictions. Maybe we'll do predictions. But [00:01:11] Frank: I want to predict Iowa 16 will come out this year. I [00:01:15] James: want to do a recap of the wins and the losses of the year in tech and mobile development or software development or all the things. And we just kind of go through some stuff, talk about some of our highlights and our low lights in general. This is the big year. A lot happened. Uh, Frank, a lot happened. I mean, besides the big win of us recording a lot of episodes of podcasts, um, and doing 250 plus number like two 90. It's so amazing. That was a, that was [00:01:47] Frank: a big, we have to pat ourselves on the back there. So thank you for putting us first on this list. Yes. Congratulations, [00:01:53] James: Jas. It was a big win, uh, which, which is fantastic. Um, I'll start it off with the wind. Are you ready? [00:02:02] Frank: Okay. Okay. So this are there more wins or losses? I'm curious what the distribution is going to be here, but we'll start on a high note and let's not end on a low note though. We should go back to some wins at the beginning at the, okay. [00:02:16] James: No, this can be anything, right. This could be a release. This could be something that, that, um, maybe a gadget that we're really into, uh, it could be. I don't know anything. Right. Anything. Okay. Yeah. I mean, let's just the vaccine. That's a big win, you know, we're doing good, [00:02:34] Frank: but you know what? I'm going first vaccines count as tech. Okay. We had the, one of the fastest rollouts of a vaccine ever. The vaccine was created. It got distributed. I know everyone's complaining about it and politics and politics and politics, but take a step back and look at how fast we created a vaccine and got it distributed. Certainly. The wackos are out there. But, um, I, I think that that was a huge win for society. It's 20, 21, like barely exists as a year in my head, because from January, until I'm going to say April for myself, that's when I got vaccinated. It was just an ugly continuation of 2020. I didn't want to think of. So 2021 started roughly in April for me, and then ended roughly in June for me. And we've been in the, in between times. So it's been a really weird year, but I think, um, that one has to be number [00:03:28] James: one. And honestly, because of the technology behind it is really breakthrough the MRN and how vaccines pivotally going forward will be produced, uh, is forever. [00:03:41] Frank: Yeah, we, we finally got our understanding of how genetics works, how we can redistribute stuff like that, how viruses work. We finally got a good enough understanding of that, that we can, um, I mean, program living things to do things it's a little scary, um, no conspiracies over here, but it's kind of impressive that science has gotten to that point where we understand, uh, RNA and DNA that well that we can do this. All right. For me, I assume con will be, I'm sorry. It's star Trek reference con will be coming anytime now. [00:04:15] James: Oh God. Um, uh, all right. For me, I am going to go with game streaming. Um, now this is not a new technology, but a company that I may work for, um, you know, we're not the first ones to do it, but I have to say the X-Box game streaming X cloud servers. I think to me is a pivotal breakthrough. I know it may have even started like in 2020, but this to me is a pivotal breakthrough where you can truly get your games. Absolutely anywhere in a combination with game pass, which is like a Netflix style for games. Uh, you can get game streaming on your iOS phone, Android phone, on your PC, on your X-Box any, uh, anything that has a browser you can stream to it, right? You can hook up controllers to. Um, to me, this is, is astonishing because I have an Xbox series ass, which is the digital only. And you now have kind of two options. Do you want to sit and download a hundred gigs of files or do you just want to play the game really quick in under 15 seconds? And you can now do that and use way less than a hundred gig. With pretty much zero latency. To be honest with you, my upload speed is not super fast. I know this may not be for everybody, right. I have. Okay. Internet. Um, um, I'm not the gig up gig down. I used to be, but I am, you know, I don't know what we are like 400 up or 400 down and 15 up or something like that. So. Oh, I think that it it's really astonishing how far this technology has. Come on, how many different platforms have tried it and it just didn't stick. And, and now we're at this point where the technology, the data centers, all of these things have really taken off. And I feel like X-Box with the strategy of putting it everywhere, including on an Xbox. Did it kind of did last, but to me it's almost the most important one because I want to be able to try every little thing and I don't want to have to. Install, anything to me, it's amazing. What a piece of [00:06:18] Frank: technology. Yeah. That's really interesting because you could see the marketing meeting where someone's saying this is a console killer. So like you would think that, you know, the classic Microsoft, every department shooting, each other thing would happen and the console would go into a protective phase. But what. Just another way to game. And so it makes absolute sense for it to be on the console and it should have, it should be the best on the console. The console should be the best at streaming it. I have to admit that I was quite a naysayer about this technology because I don't know. I guess it's one of those things where when we started out on 300 baud modems, I'm still amazed that we can do graphics on the internet, let alone video, but it makes perfect sense that if I can watch a YouTube video. Certainly gain content constraint. So it really just comes down to that. How quickly can I transmit my current game controller state, and how quickly can the server react to that game controller, state and broadcast that video down. We kind of solved a video over the internet, which is amazing actually, what a triumph of humans here. And so it's really cool that it gets applied to something and you've been using it. We were chatting earlier and you were saying you were completely unpacked. That's cool. That's cool. That means I don't have to ever use my ridiculously expensive RTX 30, 90 video cartoon ever play a video game. I'm very proud that I've owned this video card for six months and have yet to play a video game on it. And hopefully I never will. And so that's fun, but I could still play video games on Linux. Could you imagine you could actually play a video game on Linux if they support the browser and everything? So very good. That's. Definitely a win and it doesn't matter if it was released in 2020, because that year doesn't exist. So very good. It's [00:08:04] James: true. Ah, oh, you can do a win lose or an in-between. I'm going to even go with the wishy-washy as well. [00:08:12] Frank: You started with something fun. So I got to do something fun, obviously. So I'm going to give it up to the personal mobility market of electronic devices, attaching motors to your feet. Um, I know city. Kind of hate how many scooters are out there now. And E bikes are out there now, but too bad. They're awesome. I think personal mobility, especially with electric motors, we are really going through an electric motor Renaissance right now and sure. Pollution happening. Um, I mean, I joke that in the park next to me, I can see a scooter or a bike in the lake every so often, but they come by, they fish them out, they get them out and they certainly can be nuisances. I don't know why I keep listening to the negatives because they're awesome. I love to see how many people are going around on electric scooters now. And you know what the best part is. They're starting to find, we put suspended. I mean, you know, when they first started making them, they were making them like kids' scooters and like old fashioned bites and everything and the technology, they just weren't comfortable. Your arms vibrate, your whole body vibrates. It's terrible. And so that's like the first-generation, but now all. This technology is proving itself out. The motors are improving and we're putting investments into it. And now for kind of reasonable, you can go buy yourself a nice scooter with suspension on it. You can buy an electric bike with suspension on it. You can even buy electronic units cycles with suspension on them. Unfortunately, you can't get a one wheel with suspension, but either way it'll come eventually. Uh it's it's it's just nice. It's. I'm happy to see that market growing, because it means fewer cars on the road, even though it means these little things are going to be scattered about a little bit. Uh, you know, now you can spend a thousand dollars and get a really nice transportation device for a city versus having to go spend, buy a $15,000 car, you know, and the all polluting and all that stuff. Now you can just have a cute little battery. [00:10:15] James: Yeah. And, you know, I have seen the progression, like you were saying of these bikes and the scooters, and I think more so that's been the impressive part of 2021 is that as sort of a reboot to me, I went to San Diego a long time ago and there was like a 5 billion of them around, but in Seattle, right. There's. Hooked them up and there's different modes. What you're comfortable with, like these little bikes, these scooters is big jump bikes still. Um, and I've also seen, you know, the apps are intertwined as well. Right? You can kind of they're, they're more intertwined in general and I think it's. When, when the bikes first came to Seattle, they were just normal bikes. Didn't even have they weren't e-bikes at all, which doesn't make any sense. There's 5 billion Hills. Yeah. [00:10:59] Frank: Everywhere. And you're a biker. I'm not a bike. Like you're healthy. You're strong James, the rest of us. Aren't, we're weak and pathetic. We're trying to get up these little Hills and it's just, it's impossible. I need my, uh, batteries and motors and all that stuff to help. And you're right. Uh, those initial bites were, it's still a good idea. I remember when I first went to Paris and they first had a bike share, so bike share. That's that's a good idea. Like the municipal share part is almost separate from the electric part. It's just kind of funny that they compliment each other very well. So the municipal vehicle sharing stuff and the electric motor revolution that we're going through right now is, uh, yeah. Good, good to watch. [00:11:38] James: All right, here it is. It is. The year of arm, specifically the Renaissance, the, the maturing, the elevation of the M one chip with the max. I'm going to give a tip of the hat to our good friends over at apple for extending the M one chip that could have been the highlight of 2020, but it only was in a few devices. It came out in November. Right. Um, so I'm going to say 2021. By far, fundamentally, um, brought the M one ship to the forefront in a whole nother way, by not only putting a new Mac devices, also in the iPad as well. And then coming out with the pro and the max, which, uh, pretty much trounced everything. Um, so to me, um, this is amazing. And additionally, when it comes to I'm on support, we talked about this last year, that stuff wasn't ready and we still have ways to get. But Frank, you mentioned it last week and in the tip of the hat to this am one revelation, Dennis, six running natively on the What a joy not to mention. Yes from act 2022 coming with native M one support and it did make it this year, but it's coming was very exciting. You know what I mean? So, so I think that's why I am one this year gets to the tip of the hat, the, the, the feather in the cap, if you will, of a salute to maturing up by. Creating, you know, faster chips, but also, um, I think the ecosystem around it has really matured and it's really exciting to see where this will go and to see what everybody else is gonna do in 2022. Now that we've been pushed even further from, uh, [00:13:24] Frank: Yeah. And it's not just apple either. It's nice to see competition up in game. Like Microsoft had that layer where you could run, what, 32 bit x86 code on an arm. And then apple came out with Rosetta to and Microsoft like, oh, heck no. And they released theirs where they can, they can do, they can mix architectures within the same running process. They're like, look at this stuff, apple. So I'd like to see that competitive spirit actually come out and yeah, the M one. How good is that, that roughly the same chip I'm using in my phone is the chip I'm using in my computer. It's great. That's cool. I love it. I love it. Um, I have yet to get to experience the awesome and one max max, but, um, I was lucky enough to get to see my brother recently. And we were talking about new laptops and everything. You know, there's an M on max out there and it says maximum the name, you should go get it. So I don't have to. And so I think I convinced my brother to go get one of those computers because they're so cool. He's been used in a 2012 Mac book pro, so I think he can splurge for the max it's. It's really cool. I was seeing a tweet from someone today saying, you know, when you, uh, have you, you must've written a direct threat. App and your old gaming days, right? Yep. Yep. You know, the very first line of code you write in that app is query all devices and pick which GPU to run on. It's like the beginning of every graphics app, it's the beginning of every metal app. And you never know what to write there. And should there be a drop-down some people have EEG people, some people. The GPS get disconnect and all that. It doesn't matter in the MRN world. Cause it's all just on that chip. The default device does everything you want. It's got the neural engine built into it. You don't even have to put a selection screen up because no one's running external GPS except for those crazy Mac pro people. But we don't really talk about them. The rest of the world is nice and simple. So it's really nice to have it be fully consulted. Like that on the depth side, X testing a lot easier. I'll say that much. I love that I have an iPad and an M one laptop that I used to develop for on that iPad real quick. My turn. Well, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta keep that dotnet six train going, because this is terrible because yet technically, maybe not fully released, but Mac catalysts support in dotnet six, I have been begging for and pushing for. Uh, for ever James and we've certainly talked about it a lot on this show, but I did maybe a week or two. I did something that I've been wanting to do for forever. I wanted to write a Mac app, but I didn't want to use app kit. I wanted to use UI kit. I did a file new project and I wrote a Mac app using C-sharp Mac catalyst.net six Mac catalyst. Although Maui. Released, you can actually still develop Mac, Mac catalyst apps, just fine using the native API, using UI kit, uh, specifically. And it works like a charm. I finally can write Mac apps using kind of one of my favorite API is out there UI kit. And I think that that is. The biggest blessing on the planet because I can support my two favorite platforms in one code base. And although dot-net is great at co-chair between platforms, you and I both know it's so much easier when you're coding against just one API that's of course, why Maui in San reforms are so important. One API is very important. Okay. Uh, for me, if I'm just looking for Mac and iOS support, my catalyst is the way to go and I'm so happy I can finally use it. So that's the hugest biggest win for me. Thank you, Don. That's ex. [00:17:08] James: Yeah. And I, and you know, I think catalyst and running iOS apps is quite a revelation too, because I think once you experience. The fact that your iOS app will work just fine and all the APS at work and your in-app purchases and all this, it just works. Right. Which then makes. More census say, okay, well now I can just make it better by doing this matte catalyst thing and bundling this up and now it can run everywhere and like, this is going to be kind of awesome. And I reached so many more users. Yeah. I want, you know, [00:17:40] Frank: yeah. And, um, I mean, truth be told max sales are lower than iOS. iOS is just such a large platform. You know, mobile is dominant right now. It's beating desktop. But as a computer user, I use Mac tons. And so having all my apps run in both places is incredibly important to me so much so that I've basically written two UIs for pretty much all my apps, because it's that important to me. And now I don't have to do that anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. I'm just going to keep saying thank you to people until they get it. Yep. [00:18:15] James: All right. Up for me, this is a wishy washy, highs and lows. Are you ready for Hank? It's a [00:18:20] Frank: low, I can feel it low coming. Bring it down. James space. Space. Yeah, we're doing okay. I guess, Hey, we put a beautiful telescope up there and it probably will make it to El to hopefully fingers crossed. Please, please. James Webb, get to LTU. Scientists will go insane. If that thing fails, we, [00:18:42] James: we put a beautiful stunning space telescope up. Yes, you are correct. And it is astonishing. It is a glorious, glorious thing. We've also launched and cluttered up their entire surroundings with so many satellites and space to breathe big space, fine, whatever the orbit around there. There's fine. Okay. I here's the thing, I think it's a Marvel that both. Um, all of them, all of them did it, right? Like everyone, every billionaire went to space this year and [00:19:16] Frank: showing off a [00:19:17] James: bit, you got the space acts, you got the, the Virgin, you got the, the blue origin ever. And people are just going to, and I think that is you got you, someone put a strap to rocket. Um, I think space is the coolest thing ever. Like we got up there and then we stopped going and I don't understand why, but like, it's it, you strapped these. On like a chunk of metal and flying up there. Right. So it's astonishing. But also the thing is kind of like I'm in the first time I did it, I thought what was more impressive is when space X went and docked at the space station. And I thought that was cool. And I think the year of live streaming space is really cool to see. But I'm just kind of, I guess, I guess I thought like just normal, you know, space travel would be cooler, but now I'm just kinda like, I don't know. I'm kind of wishy-washy on it. Maybe it'd be cool. Maybe it would just be super lame, cause I'll never be able to afford it, but I don't know, telescopes way. Cool though, that is a really freaking cool telescope space travel. [00:20:21] Frank: I think people are being a little short-sighted there and I won't call you short side. I'll say other people are being, um, yeah, the rich people are going up. Who cares at that? That part's irrelevant. Almost what's important is people are going up. I think in our generation, we were a little disappointed because from our perspective, we just started putting a bunch of robots and space and. But RC cars get boring. After a while. Eventually you want to play with real cars and real human lives going to real places, you know, like with real danger and all that kind of stuff. It's a human spirit thing. It's a better story. It shows courage. It shows determination. It requires that the. Do their job better flat out because human lives are at risk now. And even though it's the rich people and certainly we can lose them, it doesn't matter. It would have been fine if those ships blew up, but there were some normal people on those ships and we wanted to make sure they got back home. And that was important. I honestly. I'm happy to see the rich people go up because it means in a few years, the rest of us will be able to go up. The short-sighted part is, um, suborbital is incredibly important for travel and an airplane flying through the atmosphere. It's stupid. It's just such a waste of energy to feel. That way to fly horizontally on the planet. It's much smarter to go straight up, get yourself out of the atmosphere, propulsive round in the debt of suborbital space for a little while, and then fall to the earth. It just makes absolute sense to do it that way. And I'm, I'm really excited that we'll start to get some ballistic travel soon. And by soon, I mean, you know, hopefully before I die and these are just the first steps towards. [00:22:02] James: Yeah, that's a great point. Know. Yeah, I think that's a great point of looking at it that way too is, you know, we used to have the super engine, whatever space, Sonic, Sonic, supersonic, uh, you know, the things that, you know, way too expensive. And weren't great, but I agree that makes a lot more sense of this. Could, this could change the way that we travel, you know, who knows? We don't have to be dead by that, but eventually right. That could be, uh, pretty, pretty awesome. That's a good way of looking at it. And I think you're right. You know, it does push things, push things forward. Um, Uh, which I think is great, which is great. Um, I was just a little wishy, I think the, after the first time I was like, yeah. Okay. I get it. I get it. But long-term positive. All right. Your next. [00:22:46] Frank: You're just getting tired of like how many rich people are there, what could they possibly be doing? There's a lot of them. Oh, I don't know. I don't have anything else. You'd go again. [00:22:57] James: Okay. Um, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you this one. You place it winner loser in between. Okay. Play this. [00:23:06] Frank: What you got metaphor. Oh, gosh, he had to give me the most controversial one. You, you gave it to me because you didn't want to pick. Um, at first I, we don't know that's the truth. We don't know what they'll come out with because in general, corporate edicts, uh, don't. I'll say roughly that, uh, large corporations have a bad time having original thoughts and creating anything original. It's why they buy small companies. So metaverse, I'm going to give them an E for effort, but my guess is it's, it's, it's not going to work out, but at least they're going to push the tech forward. You know, um, we talking about Metta [00:23:49] James: or just the metaverse in general. Oh, [00:23:51] Frank: okay. Sorry. We are, we, are we holding this to the, uh, medic company corporate structure? So I'm just going to be cynical and be like, it's a cash grab, obviously corporate structure, but I think the idea behind it, like they rebranded Oculus rift as the. Uh, something shoot the men or something. And so that, that's all I say. Um, I'm happy to see them pushing into that area. It's probably gonna fail. Uh, and I'm super cynical about the corporate restructure. [00:24:21] James: I think that meta. So if we talk Metta first and then metaverse, I think net positive. Net, I think it's a net loss this year, but I think next year, net positive, I do believe that many more people just in your mind will want to, we'll be okay with working for Metta and not, you know, not having to go work at Facebook because it's fundamentally a different product, even though it's similar enough. And I think that they will they'll win people over. They already are. Uh, but I think longer term. Uh, regardless of the name, I think the rebranding was a good idea. I think that they'll push it forward. I think metaverse itself. We already, we already have instances of it. Right? You have the Oculus, you have, you know, team stuff. You have, you know, other games that puts you in. You've got Minecraft. Minecraft is just the ultimate metaverse that I don't understand. Um, I, I think the thing. In it. And if we jumble it into a web three shenanigans, I I'm, I would say I'm under hyped this year, but maybe next year I'll be overly hyped. I think it just needs more time to bake. And I think it's all bubbly SodaStream physics, right? [00:25:43] Frank: Well, you just gave me my 20, 21 negative. You just said the evil word there. So, um, no soda streams are perfect and wonderful. Everyone should have one. I don't have one. I'm just kidding. Okay. We sound good though. I got [00:25:58] James: one for Heather for Christmas. Game-changer Frank game changer, who would've thought that you can just infuse water with bubbles and it's. Frank it's astonishing. It doesn't work. Yeah. [00:26:19] Frank: I love that. I hope that's your big win that your discovery of the soda, [00:26:23] James: 8 trillion. It truly is a game changer. Fizzy water all the time. I demand rumors. Weren't saying it for years. I don't know. It's [00:26:30] Frank: true. Uh, I'm a big follower of Merlin man, and he's been a big proponent of it that in fizzy water altogether, I'm just not a fizzy water person. [00:26:37] James: I wasn't Heather. Okay, fair enough. That was what was the thing? That was the thing that I said that you hated web three. Is that the thing? [00:26:44] Frank: Yeah, he got there. He got there. I, we actually can't even have an intelligent conversation about it. Cause every time I tried to read about it, I just, my eyes roll and I fall back. So apologies to everyone. We will cover web three once James and I. Finally wrap our heads around it, but I'm going to say quite that over to NFTs and just be like 20, 21 was the year of the NFT, obviously. And I just don't get it. I don't get any new market. I feel like maybe I'm finally too old. I don't know. Am I an old, but the NFT thing, I've always wanted digital rights that weren't in control of, you know, Microsoft, let's say. But at the same time, the weird markets that they've created, the weird trades that are going on, how people are using their money to buy these ridiculous APAC things. I don't get that part, but NFTs were obviously popular in the tech community and it created a lot of division. Tech Twitter is really roughly split between people who are passionate about NFTs and crypto and web three and whatever the heck that is. And people who think that, that they are, the other group is actively destroying the planet. And it should all be abolished, you know, through federal law. I don't have a strong opinion because again, I don't fully understand it. It was certainly the year of NFT. So was that a positive one or a negative one? [00:28:08] James: I I'm back and forth on NFTs. I am. I am. I think that there are cool things that companies can do with NFTs and the form of like a contributor, you know, tokens of appreciation and minting something for somebody, uh, you know, think of it as a badge, uh, you know, in a way that is state to you. As far as the art and the evaluations, I it's really hard for me to wrap my head around it. And the fact that many of them get lost and crypto in general, um, I would say. T's I think they started strong. And then again, I think it is a 50 50 blend and I've muted many people on, on Twitter. I don't follow anybody, but, you know, it's, it's, I it's just too much noise that I can't crank contribute to the conversation intelligently. I did watch a great YouTube video from, um, Johnny Harris who used to work at Vox. Now he does his own thing and he had a battle with himself, you know, that type of thing, the positives and negatives. And they're talking about energy, but actually. Like 40% of crypto is like, is like renewable energies. Like actually it can be good for renewable energies. Cause like no one uses energy at night, but like wind is still going. So whole thing, right. That everything is bad. Um, I think, wow, on the flip side, NFTs could get there as they evolve over time, because I think that crypto. Is it a weird space? It's I think it's a wishy-washy, but I'm going to go with a little bit net positive on crypto because here's the thing. Is that I'm, I'm now getting a little indication. Some from some of my friends that are more, let's say fiscally conservative, as far as, um, what they invest in, like more of like bonds and CDs and, you know, um, you know, uh, ETF's like normal things, but like even a little bit more conservative, they're now like researching crypto and like understanding the fundamentals behind the scenes of how it works to intelligently do stuff. Unlike me, who just finds a bunch of Sheba and doze point, which is not intelligent at all, by the way. Nope. Um, and I just, I just buy random coins for no reason. I don't invest a lot in the crypto beside the dose. I that's a, that's a minimal investment, but 100, a few like $250, like five years ago. Okay. It is not a lot of money anyways, but I think that it, the year of. And crypto becoming not just mainstream, but actually more accepted in a way where you kind of stabilized a little bit more. I want to say, I think it's, it's maturing to a point where it's not that thing where like all of your relatives are just asking you about doge. I think some of your relatives are now asking you intelligent questions about crypto and want to have a conversation around crypto. And I think that's, what's changed where NFT is, uh, as a buzz word where I think. The the, the cryptos and the good projects we saw Ethereum Ethereum itself, regardless of NFTs. There's a fundamental piece of technology there that differentiates differentiates itself in the market, and there's gonna be other coins and other things that long-term, I think we'll do. So I think it was net positive this year. [00:31:21] Frank: Oh, I, I appreciate that. Good. Thank you for that argument. Um, I you're you're right. I think I just get lost in that we're in the wild, wild west phase of it right now. And I'm honestly still waiting for that black Tuesday event. Certainly crypto falls all the time, you know? Price of your dose going through now, the price of Bitcoin falls all the time. It's a thing, but I still don't feel like we've had that mass thing where the whole market drops out is what can the market handle that will it recover from that? What legislation will be put into place? That's why I feel like we're still in the wild, wild west of it. I get a little nervous. People using it as serious investment because, you know, what do you call those like blue chip stocks or whatever, you know, you know, uh, well-established companies that roughly speaking, as long as we don't have any major world wars or anything, their value goes up. And so they're pretty safe bets. If you want a retirement fund, I get a little bit worried about people putting retirement money into crypto, which has absolutely no safeties or anything like that. But it's certainly a all town market that you can certainly profit off of if you're lucky. Yeah. That's where it's. [00:32:28] James: Oh, I agree with you there because that is that's the scariest part of, uh, you know, crypto or NFTs and all these other things. You know, there's not a physical thing behind it, right? Where, you know, you invest in a company and if you're in an index fund, which index fund investing, I know it's not cool and hot, but, um, if you're investing in, let's say the S and P 500, the top 500 companies longterm, that usually goes up right. Again, I'm not a financial advisor or a financial fiduciary, and nor does any of this advice, it's not advice. It's just talking about stuff. It's not advice. Don't listen to me regardless. But, you know, like you said, they're there, you're investing in companies and those companies pay back things as well in the form of dividends and they reinvest in long-term. Those things usually go up. Now, the stock market crashed many a times in the past. We've lived through it. And usually if you believe it, America or if you don't believe in America, there's international funds too. Right? We could do that to you, but you should diversify. It doesn't mean you could ever expect one to, oh gosh, I'm going to get myself in trouble. Next thing, Frank, please take me out of this, this whole. I [00:33:35] Frank: don't know how to quite put a tech spin on this, but I'm going to say Taylor swift taking down the music industry, we're going, we're going far left field on this one. Uh, I just think it was kind of interesting. I don't know if I have all the details myself, but it was neat to see. As far as I understand it, she wrote a bunch of songs or songs were produced and released and she made lots of money, but other people were making even more money. She wanted to renegotiate the contract. They wouldn't negotiate it, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, she wanted the rights back to her song. So she did what I think a lot of people wouldn't have the guts or smarts to do. Well, I own the, I wrote the song and the way music work is, is really weird. Like the person who wrote the song is a different copyright from the actual recording of the song. And so she took her big guts and went out there and rerecorded the albums and stuck it to the people that were trying to mess with her. And I think that's awesome. The texts Ben is a used to use Napster and pirate music. It's super cool to see her. And also Brittany got out of her conservatorship. I don't know how to relate that one either. I'm just going to give it to the music industry [00:34:43] James: for that. It's a huge win for Brittany big fan of the, the bee Spears. Um, additionally though, a Dao change, the Spotify. [00:34:52] Frank: Oh, uh, that one's news to me. Tell me more. So [00:34:55] James: Adele, she wouldn't put out her new album on Spotify because I think by default, the play button is a random button and she said, no, we create albums and they need to be put back in an order. I think we talked [00:35:08] Frank: about, oh my I'm sorry. I don't remember talking about it, but thank you Adele, because. Yeah, I'm an, I'm an old timer and I like my albums played an order. Thank you. The songs were put in an order. I don't like random and that's awesome. Yeah. All right. [00:35:23] James: Number win number, win. Number one, number one number when it's late anymore. Copy. Right. Not next. A huge win for me, subsystems. Okay. [00:35:34] Frank: Oh. The windows type. It's that specifically, [00:35:40] James: specifically WSL and WSA, the windows subsystem for Linux too. And the windows subsystem for Android and specifically windows 11, I think game changers. I'm going to give a hats off tip of the hat to the company. I work for Microsoft, uh, because I love windows 11. Uh, is going to make me build a whole new machine. I'm very excited about it, maybe next year at the end of the next year, but all my other surface books, everything has windows 11 and I'll tell you WSA WSL, even I'm not Linux person being able to just sit there and. Now debug an Android application instantly debug my applications on Linux and, you know, immediately Ws L G the graphics being able to run Linux applications on my windows machine. That's pretty flipping cool. Tip of the hat to cross-platform. Everything Microsoft bananas. [00:36:38] Frank: Um, yeah, we talked about this before. I just want to reiterate, this is really good stuff because windows has had the subsystem capability forever and in particular, it's the empty Colonel. Classic auntie Colonel. I was lucky enough to get deep dives in how the thing works. And the very first thing they have to explain to you about the NT Colonel is that it's, it does not expose the wind 32 API. If you've written a windows app before and, uh, like a C plus plus one before you're very well familiar with the wind 32 API. It was actually my first gooey thing that I learned, but that is not windows that is yet. A subsystem on the empty Colonel and the empty Colonel has forever been able to, it always had a Unix subsystem, oddly enough, because Microsoft used us a support. Xenex one of their Unix operating systems and that was there, but no one was taking advantage of it because obviously Microsoft was pushing windows and they want everyone using windows. So the only subsystem that mattered. Windows and the windows, some system. And it's really cool to see them take advantage of the slight over-engineering of the empty kernel that allows you to just put these API APIs on top. It was funny when. I got into a weird phase of windows, app development, where I wanted minimal exe sizes with minimal dependencies. So there were, if you could code something against the NT API, I would. So you could do all your file access through the NT API. You could do your threading through the NT API. Microsoft hated it when you did this stuff. Cause they were like, just use 1 30, 2 dummy. But I used to love those like zero dependency things. Yeah, I don't know. It's cool to see a company take advantage of this, um, uh, this investment that they had made years and years ago, and that investment pays off in dividends. I think, um, the Linux. The subsystem always felt like a little bit of a parlor trick to me because they always had the Unix system. So getting the Lennox up and running was just a matter of, you know, finding a bunch of dis uh, distributions to run on there. It was the Android one that really made me take a step back and think, okay. Some on at Microsoft realized, uh, the potential here in this technology and they're really pushing it. And that's fantastic to see. [00:39:05] James: Yeah, I agree. Unexpected. And, um, I think that has a bright future kind of going forward. I think it's really going to not only just kind of push the subsystem stuff in general, but I think it will push the windows into a whole new category. [00:39:24] Frank: Hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. What, what other do you think there'll ever be a max subsystem? No, those companies will never get along. It'll never happen. Well, you [00:39:33] James: have Linux and you have Andrew, cause it's, you've got the open source of, of that stuff. Right. And the district knows and even Android as a distribution, that's opensource. So I don't think apple is giving away district distributions of that stuff. You know, the biggest thing that. I could do. I mean, you remember back in the day, right. There was project a story, uh, and project, uh, some other [00:39:57] Frank: area. I'm not going to know the name. Yeah. Uh, w so like, one of these was, how did it work? Uh, there was a UI kit kind of implementation for the windows. Was that one of them? Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty much what was the. [00:40:11] James: The other one was Android, I think actually. [00:40:13] Frank: Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, it turns out it's much easier to just put Android on the machine and run it as a sub system, the port over the API or anything like that. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Well, I had one, but it's totally gone from my head. So why don't you take the next one yet to get all right. Big winner [00:40:33] James: of the year Romo. [00:40:37] Frank: Oh, is that a win? Well, [00:40:40] James: you know, okay, so, so 20, 20, 20, 20, I think remote work complete and utter loss, big loser in, in, you know, from home forever, because here's the problem is it was like the meme of the day. And you've got kids running around this whole thing. I think that. I don't think it like is like bad for productivity. I love remote work. I love working from home. I think it's what everyone should do. But I, I think that we figured it out in 2021. Like, I think we figured out there's better tooling. Everyone's got a web cam people got better microphones. Like people, you know, the kids are back in school a little bit more. Like, I think that in that vein. I feel like remote work had a more general acceptance. Now I will say this. I will say probably there's also some fatigue at the same time, which is kind of a bummer. So I do think that we'll have to figure it out in 2022. My fear for 2022 will be that hybrid is a complete and utter disaster. And that's going to be a big bomber if that's the case. [00:41:48] Frank: Uh, a hybrid in what way? [00:41:51] James: Hybrid some people back in the office. Some people remote, things like that. [00:41:55] Frank: Yeah. Okay. Well, we we've always wanted to expand the remote part right. Who doesn't want to work from home? Yeah. So it's the awkward phase. It's when some people are home and not, I get that. Yeah. It's hard for me to relate then doing an office in a while. [00:42:10] James: I think it's a big win only because. You know, I think, especially as I've seen, I use teams all the time, but you know, other people I know use like Google and other Google meet and the other things, those tools have gotten a lot better, I think. And I think that there's been a lot of big push there and I just feel like remote work, the remote work set up. Everyone's figured it out. I feel like everyone's now taking more breaks. I hope so. I hope if you are working from home. You know, the thing that, that, um, we have at a Microsoft assignment, a Microsoft specific thing, we had this Veeva app thing or whatever, I dunno some, some work thing. Um, but there's this calendar integration that allows you to schedule like no meeting Fridays, for example, and then also focus time. And it just randomly puts a bunch of junk on your calendar to block it off. So you can go take a walk. You know what I mean? So that has been a big game changer where. That there's a lot more reason. This is why I think it's a win is because a lot more research has gone into remote work and hybrid work and, you know, um, stress and fatigue and there's tools and there's techniques. Everything is kind of coming out to try to help that. And I think that that hopefully is going to be a longterm win overall from this whole. [00:43:26] Frank: Yeah. W we've certainly normalized video calls. Um, I had some kids in my life and they never call me. They always video call me. It's always some kind of video chat it's discord it's, you know, something crazy like that. So definitely the technology matured, it had to, we had to mature it because it was in kind of a weak state, but you're right. Okay. That is a win because it's, it's advancing. I don't know. I don't really want any more discord channels for the amount that I have right now. I don't need any more. I don't need another teleconferencing app, but the ones we have right now. Yeah, you're right. They've come a long way and they're doing a lot better. I'm going to swing us a little bit hard back into a hard technology again, and bring up something we've certainly talked about on this show. A technology I absolutely love, but I'm going to talk about it because it's getting good adoption now. And that is dev containers in vs. Code. This is. Docker. Docker's great. And all, but it's, it's a cult. It's a lifestyle. You, you really got to go head first and learn 8 billion Unix commands and clickety clickety, and their app is big and complicated. And there's terms that you have to understand. And then you get into the sin called Kubernetes and it's all very confusing. There is a elegant, simple implementation of containers through Docker called dev containers. If you use vs code, it's a first class feature in there. I don't even think you have to install an extension or anything. It's just there. Um, what I've noticed is, um, people are. You know, projects have dev containers and it's so nice because I don't have to contaminate my system, installing whatever ridiculous library. Some programmer decided that they love one place where I saw it. That's making a big difference for me. I like to do embedded development and an embedded development. You always have. Some branch of a C plus plus compiler, either GCC or climbing or something like that, some weird cross compiled version of it that can output some weird instructions that for some weird chip and having 8 million copies of those SDKs on your machine was always complicated. You would have long SDK installation instructions that had to cover 8,000 variations. Lennox and they never included Mac, but finally, they're starting to go Mac and how to do it on windows. You always have those sections. Now I'm thinking of one company, um, expressive. They make the ESP 32 chips that I absolutely adore. Um, they make risk fi chips. They have wifi on them. They have USB host controllers. They're absolutely amazing chips. And what I noticed was that company, I think with SDK version for the ESP IDF SDK. Sorry. That was a lot of got through them all though. I think I was correct. Uh, what they started doing is shipping Def containers and putting the SDK in an image up on a Docker container repository, whatever the heck those things are called and you just, you know, point to that, install, whatever little other pieces. You want to on there, but your dev environment comes preset up. Vs code will reload into that environment and the tools are there. Everything just kind of works because it's all somewhat virtualized. I know it's not virtualization. I get at people, but it's some of virtualized and it just works. It's setting up a working tool chain for an embedded system was always the hardest part. Getting new people, onboarded was especially bad. I have a project that I absolutely promised my professor if he increased my grade, that I would finish before I died. That was literally what I wrote on the paper. Before I died, I would die. I will finish this project and I have a CD. Of the SDK, but I have no idea how to get that thing running on my computer. It's so ancient and old, but if it was a dev container, you know, if it was built in 2021 using this technology, that wouldn't be an issue for me because I would just have that container sitting there ready to go. Uh, Which I, I wish I had that back then, but I'm happy that new programmers are coming into a world where they can confidently install random STKs off the internet without much fuss, as long as you have infinite amount of hard drive space. And then you're good to go. So I'm going to give props to dev containers. We've certainly talked about on the show. I just think there are. [00:48:02] James: Yeah, no, I think that's a great point because there's a lot of times when, yeah, it's fine. If I'm downloading another dotnet project, but sometimes, you know, I'm, I'm working on other stuff and you just want to get something up and running and it's a Python thing or it's a new thing or it's this other thing. And he was like, oh, I got to install this thing. And this thing, I'm like, oh, this is all theirs. It's all this other version. Like, okay. Whereas the dev contains. As they start to standardize, I think, Hey, just open it up and just all your dependencies are just there and, and it totally works. I think that that is, uh, going to be huge. All right. Last one, Frank. And then we'll get outta here. I think this is the big one for 2021. Brittany. we got C 10, we got F sharp five. We got the blazer trimming. We got, uh, Donna come, we have. All the things it's so fast. I got the minimally KPIs, Donna, Molly previews, all the things, uh, the unification, the visual studio, 2020 twos. I mean, come on people. This is a zero.net and in many ways, for me, at least as the.net developer, uh, I, you know, I think it's just a continued journey on the path as Donna continues. So I was excited. I was excited for a great, I think it was a great, great year for.net. Um, and I'm real excited for 20. [00:49:23] Frank: It really was. And it's foundational technology. We're going to be building a lot of stuff off of dotnet six. Yeah. Uh, we, we had hoped I was done at five, but we didn't make it start at six and that's going to be kind of the new baseline for everything. I can still tell everyone, please still produce.net standard 2.0 for now. If you're a library author, I still think you should be doing dotnet standard, but I'm only going to be giving that advice for maybe another year. Or so, and then I'm going to be like a hundred percent on Essex, everyone onto dotnet six. We're just in a slightly trans transitional time right now. But the technologies like. Blazer blazers, probably what like a 2019 technology or something, but it's so good. You know, it's, it's the best way to write a web app period full stop, whether you're using the web assembly version of it or the, um, server socket version, uh, it doesn't matter either one, that's the right way to write a web app and it's, you know, it's getting to be a way to write mobile apps. Uh, thanks to dotnet six. You mentioned the languages, but I think honestly, it's, it's the tooling and the platform support are what make.net six so important. And we're finally into the place where Mack has first-class support. Uh, I mentioned Matt catalyst. Uh, you mentioned that we're going to run on , I'm waiting for it. I want to download it. And, um, I'm so excited for all of that, especially because I just travel with it. Computer now. And so I'm very sensitive. I want everything to run. Lickety-split super fast and that Netflix going to have all that. And it's finally out James, we made it, we made it to the year of dotnet six and hot reload. Oh my God. How did I forget hot reload? The most important thing on the planet? Oh my God. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just lost. For words. It's so important to me. I feel like my whole career, I've been trying to get hot reload in all my apps in one form or another, and now it comes out of the can, you know, you install the SDK and you just get it. And it just works. It's really low. Yeah, thanks for reminding [00:51:30] James: me. I've been doing a lot of like learn modules on my live stream on YouTube. And uh, every time it says like, oh, just hit a five debug. I'm like, and Don it watch and just go cause I'm in vs category and just going to continue. And then the best part of it, I really liked doing the donut watch because there's, um, if you're just developing a web, it, it makes a lot of sense. You have to like debug anything and just working on different stuff, because if you make such a big change, it doesn't mean. There's this magical thing that comes up in the CLI, it just says, Hey, do you want to like, read? Like, it's a route edit. Do you want to just rebuild, do nothing? Or do you just want to always rebuild? Always rebuild. And I was like, yeah, always just always rebuild all the time. Like, just do, should be the [00:52:10] Frank: default. We got to talk to someone about getting that it's like, as the default, obviously just do it. Yeah, and I, I want to, I find that I'm most productive when I have.net watch running kind of in the background. And when I want to debug, you can still F five D bug. You just bring up another instance of your app. You can still keep the other one running in the background. And so the mode I get into is I always have dotnet watch running in the background, making sure the app is refreshing and hot reloading and doing all that magic stuff. But sometimes you want a debugger, you know, sometimes you want our break point. Debuggers are great. One of the best parts of.net in fact is.net has a superior debugger to pretty much every other language. I'm trying to think of an exception to that rule, but no.net has a security bug or two every other language full-stop. Uh, and do you want to be able to take advantage of that? So I just want to remind people that you can totally run two instances of your app at the same time. It's fine. I don't care. So I always have a version of the app running under dotnet watch, and then I debug into it. When, you know, I screw up. [00:53:12] James: That's smart. I like that. All right. Well, what are your winners and losers? And in-betweens leave a comment tweet at us. Send us an email, hop on our discord that pop out on Patrion, wherever you want to find us do other things, but happy new year and here's to a great 2022. So until next time, I'm James Monse Magno. [00:53:36] Frank: And I'm Frank. Thanks for this.