It's always inspiring to hear people that started in one place and ended up encoding somehow. I was reading a tweet yesterday where somebody was like, yeah, coding compared to the other sciences in math is like easy space. You could study for like two years and then get into this space. It's nothing like hardcore mathematics. So yeah, I love how fun and inviting it

is. It's basically just it's magic with thoughts. So anything you can think about, you can make true. So that's pretty cool and amazing. And basically from the moment you can think of it, you can figure out how to make it real because almost everything is possible. So it's just, I think it's very inviting because it is so immediate. And the gap between having real tangible reward for what you're doing is so, the gap is so small. So you can almost, and particularly I think that's true with web development. It's harder when you're building native apps and things like that. Like as you say, you know, you might study for two years. I think you don't have to study for two years. You know, you can get real results within a matter of days or hours even. And then it's reward, cycle of reward. So you have something great and you want to make something else and then you have to learn something to do it. But it doesn't feel like at work because you immediately get the reward of the thing that you wanted to do. And so it's just, there's a wonderful, virtuous cycle, I think.

So we'd like to thank Raycast for sponsoring our podcast. If you haven't heard of Raycast, it's an app for Mac that's like Spotlight but with superpowers. You can do all the same things you do in Spotlight, quickly opening files, URLs, but it also has a lot of other cool features like clipboard history, window management, schedule overview, which I personally love and a lot of other stuff. It's also got a really, really great React based extension API, which is super cool.

Yeah, so what extensions have you been working into your workflow lately?

I've really enjoyed the scheduling extension in particular. So it has this functionality where it essentially hooks up to your calendar and you can have a key binding that basically takes you into your next meeting and I find that super, super useful.

And a similar vein, I'm finding the built in reminders extension really useful. I love that you can just like pop into the Mac OS defaults and it feels like it's native.

Something else I've been enjoying is Raycast AI. That's their pro functionality, but it gives you access to these built in large language model AI features that help you summarize notes, fix mistakes, change the tone of a highlighted phrase. The thing that I really like about this over chat based AI solutions is that it's integrated directly into your workflows. So, you know, highlight something, run a keyboard shortcut like you do for any other extension and then it will activate this functionality. So it's really cool, really, really helpful.

To learn more, you can visit raycast.com or you can go listen to episode 38 where we talk with the CEO Thomas about the product.

I'm curious because you were working in an agency and you did some design work. And then you came into programming again through that, even though you had done some hobby programming earlier in your life. What are the do you think there are parallels between the design process and the like programming process from just like a purely, you know, you're talking about that like rich reward that you get of like, you know, having an idea and bringing something in life. And sometimes I think about that from the design space is like it can be hard to conceptualize something and like bring a design to life, but there is like a gratifying feeling there. So do you feel like there are parallels between the two?

I should say to start with, I don't think I'm a very good designer. So I think I have, I have opinions. So I know what I like and I sort of recognize it rather than knowing how to create it. So my design process was largely, you know, playing around with curves and, you know, fixing logos until I felt that sense of recognition. This is this is right. This looks good. And so we got to some very nice places, but it's not because I think I was a very good designer. I think it was more because I think at some point, at least one of the things that I did was OK. And that was how we got there. So I am not the person to ask about the design process because I don't think my design process was was the way. I mean, I basically, this is a thousand monkeys on a thousand keyboards. That's what I exemplified. But I think I do look at programmers who do have really lovely design sensibilities. People like Anthony Fu has done some really great stuff. And, you know, think at the level of this is art. And it has a sort of similar, I do think there's a similarity in terms of the elegance of particular kinds of design and coding that there's this sort of search for the sort of the elegant, the minimal, the perfect choice. And it, which I think is similar also to the choice that looking for the perfect word or message. Again, you're trying to come up with something that is infinitely small, you know, like a fractal, something that is perfectly the right size to do what it needs to do to express something or communicate something or obviously encoding to sort of do something. And sort of with a message, it's fractal because you can zoom into it. So a message can take 10 seconds, but you could talk about it for 20 minutes or an hour or you could give a day's workshop on it. Because it has this sort of fractal quality. And I think sort of identifying something like that is the same kind of thing that programmers, I think, are trying to do when they try and make something generic or usable or, you know, not just for the specific use case, but something that might be bigger. I think it's the same, same mental leap that's happening. I don't know if that answers your question at all, because as I said, I'm not the right person is weak to the scientists. What do you, what do you find? What's your take?

And it's a good question. I mean, I think all creative endeavors have a similar sort of echo. It just depends on what you lean towards, right? Because it's like the level of effort.