Joël is joined by a very special guest, Sara Jackson, a fellow Software Developer at thoughtbot.
A few episodes ago, Stephanie and Joël talked about "The Fundamentals" (https://www.bikeshed.fm/371) and how many of the fundamentals of web development line up with a Computer Science degree. Joël made a comment during that episode that his pick for the most underrated CS class that he thinks would benefit most devs is a class called
"Discrete Math." Sara weighs in!
This episode is brought to you by Airbrake (https://airbrake.io/?utm_campaign=Q3_2022%3A%20Bike%20Shed%20Podcast%20Ad&utm_source=Bike%20Shed&utm_medium=website). Visit Frictionless error monitoring and performance insight for your app stack.
Earlier Bike Shed Episode with Sara (https://www.bikeshed.fm/354)
The Linux man-pages project (https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/)
Gravity Falls (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1865718/)
Elm types as sets (https://guide.elm-lang.org/appendix/types_as_sets.html)
Folgers ad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7LXSQ85jpw)
Brilliant.org's discrete math course (https://brilliant.org/wiki/discrete-mathematics/)
mayouko (https://www.youtube.com/@hellomayuko)
Transcript:
AD:
thoughtbot is thrilled to announce our own incubator launching this year. If you are a non-technical founding team with a business idea that involves a web or mobile app, we encourage you to apply for our eight-week program.
We'll help you move forward with confidence in your team, your product vision, and a roadmap for getting you there. Learn more and apply at tbot.io/incubator.
JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville. And today, I'm joined by a special guest, Sara Jackson, who is a fellow developer here at thoughtbot.
SARA: Hello.
JOËL: And together, we're here to share a little bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Sara, what's new in your world?
SARA: Actually, I recently picked up crocheting.
JOËL: That's exciting. What is the first project that you've started working on?
SARA: I don't know if you happen to be a fan of animation or cartoons, but I love "Gravity Falls." And there's a character, Mabel, who wears many sweaters. I'm working on a sweater.
JOËL: Inspired by this character.
SARA: Yes. It is a Herculean endeavor for my first crochet project, but we're in it now.
JOËL: That does sound like jumping into it and picking a pretty hard project. Is that the way you typically approach new hobbies or new things, you just kind of jump in and pick up something challenging?
SARA: Yeah. I definitely think that's a good description of how I approach hobbies. How about you?
JOËL: I think I like to ease into things. I'm the kind of person who, if I pick up a video game, I will play the tutorial.
SARA: It's so funny you say that because I'm definitely the type of person who also reads manuals. [chuckles]
JOËL: [laughs] I'm sure you've probably, at this point, read many sections of the Unix manual. Longtime listeners might recognize you from a previous episode we did on the history of operating systems.
SARA: Yes, I am an avid reader of the man pages. In fact, I wish every command-line tool had man pages or at least more detailed man pages. Reading man pages, reading technical documentation, really, I feel like goes right in line with things like needlework, knitting, crocheting. You're following a very technical pattern description of what you should be doing, how many stitches. It's almost algorithmic.
JOËL: Do you feel like the fact that you've read a lot of man pages and now that you're getting into reading crochet patterns, do you feel like that's helped you maybe become a better technical writer when you write documentation?
SARA: Definitely. Yes. [laughs] There's a common meme going around on the internet of how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: open jar, put knife in jar. And you see somebody putting the knife in handle first