Prioritizing Performance and the Future of the Terminal with Zach Lloyd

The terminal is a constant in the dev world. Every developer will interact with the terminal in one way or another. So what if they worked better? Tools within the Google Suite inspired Warp Founder Zach Lloyd to bring that same ease of collaboration to the world of terminals. And so, Warp was born. 

Because you can't avoid terminals, the implications of improving such a widely-used tool are what kept Zach going and building momentum with Warp. Zach believes in tools that solve problems vs shiny new tools winning the popularity contest. And that keeps him iterating on Warp, with the ultimate goal of improving developer workflow. 

In this episode, Chuck and Robbie talk with Zach about elevating developer productivity, why Zach chose Rust, how Zach classifies the best engineers, a sneak peek at Warp's new features, and how he hopes Warp will revolutionize the developer experience. 

Key Takeaways

• [00:50] - An introduction to Zach.
• [01:57] - A whiskey tasting. 
• [09:36] - A final whiskey review. 
• [13:31] - Why Zach chose to tackle the terminal. 
• [17:02] - Why Zach chose Rust. 
• [21:10] - The method behind Warp's madness. 
• [29:05] - How long it took Warp to scale up. 
• [33:22] - What Zach learned as the interim CTO at TIME. 
• [37:28] - A Kanye, dogs, and sports-themed whatnot. 

Quotes

[15:13] - "One of the kind of root product ideas behind Warp was, could you build a version of a text-based interface that brings that same power to a much larger group of developers so it makes that power much more accessible." ~ @zachlloydtweets [https://twitter.com/zachlloydtweets]

[29:40] - "My general philosophy for when you're building something like this is to try to pick the tool that's going to get you to the best product experience. And so it's always like working backward from what user experience is going to be best and then how do you pick the tools, and the stack, and the technology to try to achieve that." ~ @zachlloydtweets [https://twitter.com/zachlloydtweets]

[30:33] - "In my experience, the best engineers who I've worked with and who I prefer to work with are people who are seeing the technology as a tool for achieving an end-user result or for solving some problem." ~ @zachlloydtweets [https://twitter.com/zachlloydtweets]

Links

• Zach Lloyd [http://@zachlloydtweets]
• Porsche Experience Center [https://www.porschedriving.com/los-angeles]
• Warp [https://www.warp.dev]
• Google Workspace [https://workspace.google.com]
• Figma [https://www.figma.com]
• Stellum Bourbon [https://www.stellum.com/bourbon]
• Maynard James Keenan's wine (Caduceus) [https://caduceus.org]
• Pappy Van Winkle's Whiskey [https://www.oldripvanwinkle.com]
• Jim Beam [https://www.jimbeam.com/]
• Total Wine [https://www.totalwine.com]
• Seelbach's [https://seelbachs.com]
• Chuck on Twitter [https://twitter.com/CharlesWthe3rd]
• MGP of Indiana [https://www.mgpingredients.com]
• Heaven Hill Distillery [https://heavenhilldistillery.com]
• George Dickel Whiskey Distillery [https://www.georgedickel.com]
• Jack Daniel's  [https://www.jackdaniels.com]
• High West Whiskey [https://www.highwest.com/products/american-prairie-bourbon]
• Rust [https://www.rust-lang.org]
• iTerm [https://iterm2.com]
• Google Sheets  [https://www.google.com/sheets/about/]
• JavaScript [https://www.javascript.com]