#257 Emmanuel Gaillot componist, psychotherapist, humanist & programmer

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Emmanuel Gaillot 0:00
If there's an invitation, whatever it is, just listen inside yourself. Go inside. Listen. And if you hear yes, say yes. And if you hear no say no, that, if you hear yes. Don't say no. And if you're if you hear No, don't say yes, that probably be the thing I would like to say to people who are considering their journey. You know, beginning a journey is going to be specific. Right? Everyone has a different path. I'm sure that from all the paths that you've been recording that people will know that but I think it's worth saying it that there's no one right path to do that.

Tim Bourguignon 0:35
Hello, and welcome to developer's journey, the podcast, bringing you the making of stories of successful software developers. To help you on your upcoming journey. I'm your host team building. On this episode I received Emmanuel Gale, in Mandeville, besides being a fellow Frenchman, he's a man of many hats, going wherever he is two feet and passions bring him your master's degree in software engineering, and another in performance arts. He's been a professional programmer for the past 20 years. And that's why I invited him, but also a published theater translator for the past 10 years. And using Virginia says, here's the real cutek approach in various contexts for the best five years, or my dietpi. Why I invited him was he was the founder of HR open friends conference, and coding dojo in Paris. He currently works at Omni city, a core threaded company of which he is one of the CO the owners, founders, co founders, workers. That is where I think he says workers owners that's

Emmanuel Gaillot 1:39
yeah, that's what I said.

Tim Bourguignon 1:43
Early his values centers of interest in projects, Emmanuel, he's relentlessly exploring how to shape and nurture self organizing communities and learning and CO learning spaces. And I feel we have so much in common. I'm not sure where is this is going, Emanuel a warm welcome, deftly.

Emmanuel Gaillot 2:01
Thank you very much. I'm so happy to be on this podcast with you.

Tim Bourguignon 2:07
I am as well, and you are actually, you live in France. But you're now in Canada. So I'm double happy that this is working. Really cool for you to take your time. From there from from your trip and join us. But before we come to your story, I want to thank the terrific listeners who support the show every month, you are keeping the dev journey lights up. If you would like to join the spine crew, and help me spend more time on finding phenomenal guests, then editing audio tracks, please go to our website, Dev journey dot info, and click on the Support me on Patreon funding. Even the smallest contributions are giant steps toward a sustainable dev journey. journey. Thank you. And now back to today's guest. As you know, this show exists to help listeners understand what your story look like. And then imagine how to shape their own future. So as is customary on the show, let's go back to the beginnings. Where would you place the start of your debt journey?

Emmanuel Gaillot 3:15
Probably early 80s. It was around 10 Then, and I still can't remember exactly how or why. But my father took me to a computer club where there was programming. Introduction, some random guy was was teaching people how to write in basic. There was there was a lager backs, she was obviously PC, kind of French Italian made. PC. Yeah. late 70s, early 80s. And yeah, and there was GW basic on it. And that's, that's what started for me. So and I remember the first programming where we wrote was like, What age are you and if you were between that age, and that age, there was this kind of joke and that age, and that age, there was another kind of joke. And I found that hilarious. That was something that I felt was so great, so amazing. Yeah, I still have that from memory. So my father came with me to get programming lessons, and maybe two, three times, but then he gave up and I continued for a while. And then the guy was sport. Teaching this programming, and I continued on my own there, it was a club. So basically, it was people going there. And most of what I did at that time was playing games, written in GW basic, but but also because it was written basically, it was compiled so you could actually look at the program. And I remember this exciting moment where I realized that I could actually change the program. To make it do something different, like for instance, have infinite number of lives, or, you know, much more power than the opening or whatever. And that was so fun. And I remember I was like frantically printing listings, you know, program listings, and then spending the whole week reading them at home. And then going back to, to just try out new things on the computer. I mean, you know, 80s, early 80s, and so not so much access to the internet, open source code, not so much either. What was happening is that we had like magazines and books, you know, where they were listening in them. So I would spend hours typing listings, you know, just to see what the program would do. And, and, of course, sometimes the bait, the basic was not exactly the same as GW basic, or she had to adapt some things. And of course, it was making typos and was not working. So there was a lot around, trying to figure out what's supposed to happen, what's happening the way it's supposed to, or not. And, yeah, it was a lot of investigation, you know, like creating what's on the screen reading what's on the paper and trying to figure out how things were working. And yeah, I remember loving that. Love that spending innate amount of time doing that. Yeah,

Tim Bourguignon 6:25
that brings a lot of memories for me as well. Until it discovered whether it was checksum is and what is for, and they're on some magazines, who are check some the end of lines, and you could double check. Okay, where is where is it not working? Because I didn't figure out really either there was some kind of compiler or interpreter back then was giving me hints where the problem was looking at the papers say, it looks the same. Come on. I'm not sure I got even one program to really, really work and work fully. But

Emmanuel Gaillot 7:01
yeah, that was that was the time. And it was a time also were having a computer at home was definitely not a given. For me. It's like it was normal to go someplace to use a computer like four hours a week, you know, and that said, I remember dropping hands at home, it may be for Christmas, we could die computer and trying to get my parents understand why this was such a cool thing. And I remember actually that I don't know exactly how consciously it happened. But I remember that one year, I said I'd like to have a motorbike because you know, all the friends were having a motorbike. It was in junior high school then all of a sudden parents say okay, Munnabhai How about we go to computer shop and see there's something and so that's that's the other part of the beginning of the story is that you know, the I could have chosen to get them out of buying but it really

Tim Bourguignon 8:07
was what is it control conscious scheme.

Emmanuel Gaillot 8:57
i That's That's what I don't know. You know, I I'm not sure exactly. I was definitely not a conscious cheapskate on my part that might have been in the park with my parents. But anyway, it did work, you know, it got me started now had a computer at home. And I could start you know, just dabbling doing basic again. Anyway, then then high school study Pascal, there was there was, again, France and the 80s There's like this program called Computer Science for everybody at school, they would give computers they were programming classes, how to use a computer, how to type this kind of things. So, there was a computer or several and I could take a class in in computers something. So that part of it was like understanding what a database is part of. Part of it was understanding how to program in Pascal. How to understand legal T's around not cook programs you're not supposed to copy? Well, that's where I learned that you're not supposed to copy games from one flop and use to another flop it is if it's protected by law. And well, I knew about that. Anyway, so there was that class and again, there was a computer club. At high school, I could spend, you know, lunchtime. And my new thing was, I still had my listings, you know, the basic listings I had tried to figure out, Okay, could I translate that in Pascal and Turbo Pascal? And I was not understanding anything about procedural programming. Of course, I was, you know, there was a lot of go twos. So my methods were called 1010, and 1020. And 1010 was calling 1020. Which is, you know, insane.

Tim Bourguignon 10:50
We've all been there.

Emmanuel Gaillot 10:51
Yeah. Okay. I don't know if we won't be there. But, you know, trying to make something work from what you know, is definitely. So there's the impulse of eight, I should be able to do some to program something with a computer and, and maybe I could, you know, adapt. And then well, of course, you do what you can. But anyway, so that's it. I, you know, nothing really serious at that time, I was struggling with what I wanted to do later. Working as a software developer, didn't really cross my mind. I wanted to be a musician. My parents were not exactly crazy about this. I guess they had my best interests at heart, valuing a lot of scientific reasoning. The like, the fact that was good at school said, Well, you can have music later, you know, maybe you could, you know, scientific studies or something. So that's what I did. I wasn't sure exactly how to go from there. But eventually, one thing that was cool is that I sort of found the best of two worlds that I got into an engineering school. And I could also prepare music minor studies at the time. And, yeah, realizing that I wasn't that good, all of a sudden, at playing the piano, that people were much better than I was. And the problems with piano is that once you have someone playing the piano, and you love history, you don't need two or three pianos. So Well, that wasn't great. And but I was spending a lot of time playing music instead of studying engineering school, I'd say. And there were things that were making sense others, and we're not, we had like, like two or three hours a week of programming, you know, like, so again, Pascal, trying to program ways to Catskill to calculate pi to the decimal something like this. Anyway, learned object oriented programming then. But really, I was into music. And then all of a sudden, I want to I mean, so there were like two years of common, you know, common engineering things. And then you could take a specialty. And I wanted to take architecture, like building buildings. Really, that was my new things. Hey, that's cool. You know, you're making models, and then you can see the whole thing. But realize that my rank, my ranking grade ranking wasn't so great. There were like, very slight chances that I would get into architecture. Like, like, choice of specialty. So then, my best friend then told me, Hey, how about we go into computer science class, and we can start a video game company. And I say, Cool. That's, that's amazing. Let's do that. I love it. I had no idea how that would work. But somehow, we started skipping projects about how we could make this happen. Anyway, nobody wanted to go to computer science was supposed to be a dork thing. Geek, very geeky thing. So I went, it was easy to get into it. I had a good grades for that. And maybe I would have had the good grades for green architecture, we'll never know. But anyway, I went into three years of computer science engineering school, still doing music a lot at the time, it was not sitting the piano anymore I had given given up on that. I found a better place at amusing writing class. All of a sudden, I was studying music writing and specifically electro acoustic music writing studio recording using microphones to do all kinds of scratches and things was fun was not a fun and what I loved about that, and believe it or not, that really resonated with with computer programming for me is that it's defining the languages it's like you're you're you're recording stuff, and stuff becomes patterns that you can use and arrange in certain way and all of a sudden you're inventing any new language to talk about whatever you want, it's, it's both very concrete and very abstract. And and that truly influenced me into writing software is like, Okay, you have the basic box and embed, but you can invent your own words, you can invent the name of the methods. And all of a sudden, next thing you know, is that with a ninja you have, it kind of inspires you to write certain sentences in a certain way on out. So to and this is kind of, I didn't know the name domain language, then that, really that's that when I got accustomed to anyway, so I wasn't sure I still wanted to be an engineer. At that time, I'm really slowly wanting to be a music composer. That's, that's what I found cool. I was finding cool. And I was also studying Japanese because it was very exotic, and I could, and I loved that. Just, you know, I mean, it was very, the school, the tradition of that school was like, we want people to have an open mind about many things. So you know, broaden your perspectives, running your options. And yeah, sure, do another. Study another language. And you can study many different languages. You can do sport if you want things like this. And I studied Japanese. And then next thing I know is I want to go to Japan because I love Japan love Japanese culture. It was so fun. I couldn't speak like three words in a row. But you don't, hey, I couldn't do it. And then I go to the administration department ministration say, Hey, do you have like a Japanese Foreign sister school there? I could do that. Sure. You can. I had no idea I could full classes there. Wanting to go didn't happen. Eventually. It was just too complicated in too uncertain. But the year after I was still determined to, to go abroad. And I went to the United States figured out okay, I know how to speak English, I can follow classes in English. I could go to England that really what would be cool is that I would go far away just to see so could go to Canada, but it's really, as I said, one of the states. That's interesting. So I spent my last year I've come to Stanford School, in the States, in Washington University in St. Louis, where I picked much of my troubled accent. And yeah, a strange way of speaking English. I remember a time when I was proud that the bus driver was telling me, he was not telling me anymore, what country to come from. And he was like, what's going to come from? It's feels like this part of it. That's New York keys. And part of it that's, you know, from Louisiana, like, yeah. Anyway. Oh, well. So anyway, I don't know if I want to keep the story short, because I realized, sorry, but anyway, so. So I go to the States. He's totally clueless about how to do things. So it's just, it looks like the pattern may you may story is like, you know, things happen. And they say, yes, that's pretty much it. Or sometimes I say no, but really, something unexpected happens, that would be cool. Actually, I have no idea what it means with what's been before it. But but let's do it, but just to see. So I get to the states to that place where I can study and enroll all the classes I want in the master's degree of computer science, or software engineering. And I could still do Japanese this time much more seriously. And I could get into the music class as well. Of course, my advisor was like, There's no way you're gonna make it. But hey, you're a foreign student, you're you know, you want to be if you don't get your degrees or whatever, do whatever you want. So this is what I did. And I remember being highly successful in the Japanese intensive class, in the music writing class, as well. Not so much in computer science. But anyway. Anyway, I don't know. I really liked the class on computational geometry and advanced algorithms wasn't good at that. But it was cool. There was a class on artificial intelligence I really loved as well. But yeah, I don't remember much about what I studied, unfortunately. Sorry for my teachers there. What was cool is that before I left France to the states as my music reading pilot teacher said, Hey, I'm going to the States with what do you suggest which and I remember to this day, he said, go to the dance people. They're very nice folks. And write music for dance people. So I go there. So you know, I mean, the French guy, the French school is guy comes to that university. Beautiful, great, wonderful university. So okay, let's go to the poor coming out to DEP and say, Hi, I'm Emmanuel. I'm French. I write music. Do you need a music writer for anything you're doing? You know, I mean, chances that this goes somewhere. Not actually the guys, actually, yes, we have a guy that I will name call Mark Ferguson. He's having this project for his thesis of doing a show. And he really, really would like to have a sound designer, and go, Cool, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do it. And this is this is what I'm turning points in my career. So brace with me. I mean, I mean, this guy, we didn't come instant.

Emmanuel Gaillot 20:45
It's not any more instantaneously, friends. But close, close. Like, he was intense. I was intense. And we were resolved to do the best postmodern contemporary art in theater. And he was working on a play called Hemlock machine, by Hein Aluna. A very angry is German writer. And that was beautiful. It was 10 Panties up raw, very raw theater. I love that. So I want to write music for that. See, cool, do it. And I did. And so the show is about 45 to 50 minutes. And I write about 25 to 30 minutes of sound on the top of that. So, you know, it's insane. And what was cool is that I worked with, with with the team, the theater team theatre company the whole time, like, since the beginning of the rehearsals to the end, so I knew exactly what they were doing. I could show them rushes with the try stuff. The new thing. I remember the actors saying, We have no idea what we're doing this is this is so bizarre. Immanuel, save us do some using do something because really, I mean, this is going nowhere. And I don't know, I think it was it was kind of a joke. But let's face it, it was like very strange process, very strange. But eventually the show happens. And it comes together. And it's great. It's great, great show. It's very unconventional, very daring, both on the material contents, and also the director. So it's a beautiful show. We have very interesting reviews in the local papers. And at the time, I'm super friend with all those guys. You know, I mean, I'm not hanging with the computer science guys anymore at all. I'm just spending my days with an evenings with actors and dancers. And it's wonderful. And I'm going at one of the shows it was for a whole week. They were they were doing whole week shows and one of them toward the end, I go. And I sit with the director of is my friend, I'm a fair person. And I just started and there's no music. Like what's going on? We don't know. And there's no music, no music, no music. What I learned afterwards is that he was on tape and the person hadn't rewind the tape and they didn't know exactly what's going on to figure it out. Okay, we don't know what's going to be no sound tonight. And I remembered so Mark telling me Emmanuelle was going to be no sound Next, shut up, I don't know what's going to happen. And there was none. And there's a point where there's a song, and they have to use that song to do something. And one of the actress start singing the song. And the other actors are starting playing the soundscape the soundtrack, because they knew the heart. And, and that was a meeting. And then all of a sudden, you know, there's this big Technic piece where they have to go wild and they're doing it singing it. And, and I still have goosebumps on the day. You know, when when I tell the story. It's like the accuracy of the show. I mean, there was something and what happened, what, what made it happen, and it was like people were getting out of their roles to to save the coherence, the structure of the whole thing. And I loved that. And that started me on self organizing teams, because this is really what was going for me and I remember much later, reading from a Japanese core graph for tennis, she says Zuki saying, this is like no theatre, in no theatre. If one of the actor falls dead, another can step in and take these role and do it because the home they didn't know. They all know the whole show. And anything can happen and it's still the shock and awe. And that's discipline that's something that we don't have to go on like to go I'd like to do but but still, I really I was really impressed by what happened that evening. And yeah, that was my beginning of falling in love with theater people and magic things that happened in theater. So I get my CS degree in France, presenting a personal project and artificial intelligence. And next thing I do is I go to Thailand, for two years during my civil service, I build computers. That, really next year, I want to do computer science. That's not my interest is writing theater and getting back to theater. And the theater offering is very small in Thailand, just just to let you know, specifically, if you don't speak Thai, but that wasn't the back of my mind. And I eventually applied back to the to the university saying, I, well, writing tomorrow and saying, Hey, I really missed the time that you know, what we're doing. And he said, Well, the only thing you have to do is take your suitcase, come back, you know, and apply for a main theater, and I'm sure, with what you've been doing, as a non theater guy, you know, I'm pretty sure that they will take you in. Okay, so I write my application, I actually get it get a grant. Which is, again, I mean, you know, fairly amazing from chances that, you know, out of the blue, I said, Hey, I really like you guys, I'd like to do something with you. And say, Sure, we'll give you money for that. Very random from me really, really random. And, and eventually, I'm so so this is the end of Thailand, of my time in Thailand, my civil service. And I explained to my parents, okay, I'm gonna go to the States to study theater, which, again, having my best interests in the heart, very, very uncertain about that. How about you certainly being serious about your career something? And in a subtle, and that's a subtle way? They told me okay, how, how's this gonna work? Money wise? How do you gonna make it work? What kind of money do you have? You know, how can you? How are you going to sustain yourself? If there's a trouble, you know, how are you going back to France and stuff and eventually, I chickenshit I, you know, I was scared. And I said, Okay, fine, I'm gonna find a job in Paris and said, Good, cancel everything now find a place in Paris find a job. And I did. And I did. That was the last time I listen to my parents. There's a point in life, I guess that you have to stop listening to your parents and swearing to yourself that you're going to think by yourself. Anyway. So I go to Paris, I have my job. I mean, this is we're talking about beginning, beginning end of the 20th century. Everyone's talking about your 2k bug, you know, and audience, and all of a sudden, we need many people who know how to read code and say smart things about code. So it's easy for me to find a job again, and things seem easy. I hate it. I hate I mean, I've been spending at a time when you're in the states two years in Thailand, coming back, and getting to a place where people thinking you know, paying a car going to the movie, you know what kind of apartment it will happen. I am bored to death. I I don't like it. And also I know I feel pretty an asshole for saying people, you know, my story is better than yours. So I don't even know how to tell them that I'm boring. You know? Because pretty insulting, actually. So and I'm pretty sure actually they've realized on board. So this is this is really, really tough time. And, Mark, that guy comes in France at a time that you're he comes to Paris and we have like, good time together. I go to he's in Germany, and I go to Germany to see him. He comes to France. And I think I made a mistake. Biggest mistake for me. Well, I really know that when I see Fight Club in a movie theater, and I mean fight clubs. Very cool movie. I really, really like it. But what I realized that this this is a kind of energy, this kind of work I want to be part of, you know, not only to encode for y2k bugs, what I wanted to say I want to do something meaningful that you know, when I say this, I feel so inspired, so energized, energized that this is the kind of thing I want to do. And I said Mark, you have to go see this movie with me again. We need to talk about it. I want to say this is the kind of work I want to do. This is a very megalomaniac, by the way because, by no way I'm David Fincher. But anyway. Or Brad Pitt, but this movie blew my mind and I Ah, so tomorrow, I think I made a mistake. I'm in no position, may the path I'm following right now there's no way it's going to bring me to a place where I do this kind of work. And he says, Well, he's just I'm still amazed also, by the day that he told me, I said, Well, how about you write to the university? And how about you tell them that you made a mistake, and just switched me and that you will be very happily reconsidering their offer for the year after? Which I did? And they said, Sure, yes, we'd be very happy to have you and the grand steel.

Emmanuel Gaillot 30:39
That was, so that was amazing. I mean, I still feel very lucky that that day that it could do that. So then that was two years of struggling, financially speaking. But, you know, for the first time being serious about what I'm studying, and feeling, okay, I'm going to be a great theatre maker. And then this is the time where, so I had a job for the poor in the in the States, but I need to renew my papers. And that was a time where some people thought he was some ID to bring planes into towers. And all of a sudden, adding papers means a long time. And I'm checking in for the second time and saying, Okay, this, this feels too complicated. Everything's been so easy, so simple. And then all sudden, there's this obstacle that feels very, very hard. And, yeah, let's, let's get back to to France, and I'm going to be a theatre maker in France. And that was a time where there was like, a huge theatre crisis in France. It was the fundings, the subsidies by bad government were cut. So I started seeing theater directors in like theater venues and say, I'd like to work for you and say why, I mean, you have a degree in computer science, do something that it's going to be useful for you. And that will not take a job from people, you know, in France who have a hard time getting paid. And I mean, I understand the logic, and I, nobody knew me, there was no way I could do that. So I stopped that, and I actually and a friend said, Hey, we need someone my company, would you say, yes. So that was the beginning of my computer science. How do you go that consultant, there was 2003 to 2002. I had no idea when I was talking about. And I was writing reports and software. I remember the piece, the piece of software I had to write, the first one was kind of a website, I was doing things not sure exactly how it worked. I was kind of ashamed that, you know, I had a degree in engineering degree and I couldn't write a website. And eventually it works. And like, two or three months after, there's like some vendors who are like, you know, wanting to demonstrate to you to show the quality of code, you know, and say, Well, I had this piece of code, you can use it, they will and I remember the blank looks thing, but it's still global variables. I mean, there's not so much we can say about it, after we write everything, okay? This kind of things. Okay, realizing that there's all the endeavors and all the love, I can put my work in eventually, there's also the technical level of what I have, which is

Emmanuel Gaillot 33:47
sort of could go on, I was still in the state. And before that, and I had stumbled into extreme programming, just the library for some very bizarre reason. I at the bookstore, I read Extreme Programming the ken Bates book, in a bookstore while studying theater, and mixing in a sense to me, not computer science wise, but theater making wise like like, this is how we should make theater. It took me a few other years to realize that someone in computer science had done the exact same thing like writing about how theater doing things how to people or doing things saying this is how we should write software. That Okay, well, it's doomed. It's doomed that but self organizing teams, XP, middle of that sense to me, and I started reaching out the XP community when I was finishing my thesis in St. Louis, going back to France, and there was one of the French guy who was doing the XP French, it was like 10 people at a time in France in Paris. And he said, Hey, you can come to meeting and Something and by the end of 2003, I'm going to explain meetings, Extreme Programming meetings in Paris. Realizing I know, pretty much everything about XP, except the technical part, like specifically, test first development, test driven development, TDD. And, and then, one, one guy, Christoph Tebow, who pretty much taught me everything I know now about one everything at a time, he taught me a lot about programming, and stuff, very gracefully and gently as to hey, I mean, if you want, we could sit once a week, you know, and pair and we could just do a very small exercise and practicing it together. I think great. And, and I saw the light, really, I am so much indebted to those, you know, Howard's that we took to get together and trying to write like, two lines of C, debug the make file, like, like, write a test and see how we could make it work. And he was very pedagogical. And that really, really inspired me to say, Okay, now I know something. And next website I've write is freezing Java for a client. And all of a sudden, I'm doing it full, full, full, full TDD, I'm just writing by myself, but I don't have any pair programmer with me, but but I'm doing 14 at the whole thing. It works flawlessly, easily, night and day with with previous experiences and relax for life. And whenever there was something complicated, yeah, but this this database stuff, how do I do TDD around that, and then someone tells me, pray that Martin Fowler article and brilliant, I, you know, one step after another, he was studying clicking, it was like, all of what I knew all the sudden, I could put into practice. And, and I could feel competent, what I was doing, I loved it. I just loved it. The company, the company I was in was at that time. And I had been hired as a beginner, but all of a sudden, I was not a beginner anymore. And they were not really understanding the value of what it is like to have a programmer that can actually write programs with significant less amount of bugs than the guy next door. So eventually, we, I grew up frustrated. And around that, I also wanted to host meetings, like expand formal meetings, and the company director would say, Well, I'm not sure I want to share the competitive advantage we have with others. What are you talking about, you know, what are you talking about? So I started actually doing these hiding in secret. But but eventually figured out, I have nothing to do in this company anymore. And another friend from that community from the community. Another friend told me, Hey, we're a consultancy firm. We really would like to do XP, we would like to have someone who knows what they're talking about helping us you know, selling XP. I'm sure some people would be very sad that I got hired to sell XP. But anyway, that's so I went to this consultancy firm, good firm, actually, it's good firm, it's just consultancy is it's good to see a lot of different landscapes, a lot of different people to chew on very different meals. But eventually, I think it's hard. Because you're supposed to have an opinion about everything, without actually having to live with the consequences of the opinions that you share. So it's formative in a sense, but also very delusional. Like it's easy to feel that you're always right. When when you're a consultant. And and next thing is that I was coming for So in 2005, was going to Yeah, be an extreme programmer. But what I knew all this and and it was consultants, consultants in so called Agile teams who were a lot in crisis. And what I'm doing is crisis work with teams. And that friend who had took me TBD somehow I got him in the company as well in the consulting consultancy company. And he says, Well, maybe you could read this book. This is not about writing software. I mean, it's about speaking with software writers or like you know, organizing as a team. The name of the book was people were from somebody Marco and Tim Lister. And that was another turning point in my life. Then all of a sudden, okay, there's, there's people in software. Interesting and stuff was working, some of the stuff was working, and I got into the chair Weinberg community and so, Dinah lotion I see Derby, Nami, Curtin, Jerry, of course, Jared Weinberg. And so yeah, stuff was working. It's like, there were recipes in the cookbook, and I could apply the recipes. And two thirds of the time it was working and 1/3 of the time, people were saying, stubbing therapy with us when you're talking about therapy, and actually he was, it was, it was just something that the questions were so close to what a therapist asked that for people who were going in therapy, probably, there was a lot of trigger in that, you know, I mean, where are you going? I mean, what you're asking my emotions, my feelings, what is it, I mean, we're, you know, computer science guide. And anyway. And eventually, one of my colleagues got very upset with me doing this work, the way I was doing it is that you have to stop doing that. You have to do therapy before you're doing therapy with others. I still had no idea what therapy is. And what I knew is that I had access to Gerry Weinberg. So I went with him to say, you know, why are people telling me that this is therapy? What's going on? And can I actually do it? Can I can I do that work with with clients in it. And the thing is, Jerry was, was a student of veteran yesterday, here, if you're used to being a psychotherapist, from 50s, to the 80s. And eventually, she developed an approach that was much bigger than just curing mental illness. She's actually doesn't believe that. She didn't believe that people were ill and mentally ill that she was saying they were obstacles in the way they wanted to grow. And we all want you to grow. So she went more into personal development eventually. And this is where Jerry comes into the picture. And Jerry brings the constituents work to computer field. And Jerry, Jerry presents me to two different of him, who's Jim McClendon, and Jen becomes a friend and Jim's a therapist, who's actually doing therapy with many people, including company owners. And and so I really like what Jim is doing makes a lot of sense to me from what I see in conferences that I attend. And I tell her my story, and you know, can I actually do this in companies, you know, and she's like, well, I don't know. But yeah, I mean, if you want we can we can explore that more together in a workshop is going to take place in 2008 which is like the 20 year legacy of etching Sapir and there's gonna be people there. As a cool, I'm gonna go and it's in Vancouver. Well, in Gabriola Island close to eventually, it didn't work because one of the trainers Maria Kumari was seriously ill in 2008. So it was reporting 2009, postponed to 2009 and I went, so it was like a 20 day itch long. Workshop. And people were like, Okay, this is where we understand about pitching stitches work, how you apply that in a clinical environment, how you apply that for personal development, how you apply that and companies. I was great. It was amazing. What I didn't know then is that I was actually having like

Emmanuel Gaillot 43:41
superspeed therapy for myself, like everyone was actually doing it. And it was, again, a turning point. It was like, Oh, my God, I'm learning so much about me. I feel so much more at peace about everything. It was amazing. Amazing. And I fell in love with a woman called Maria Kumari at the time she was 89 years old. She was and her friend, John Denman saying, Well, if you want to say something to Maria, you should really say she'd say Pranab, because she wants to last forever, you know, and actually, she lasted much longer but but yeah, I remember saying to her, I want to study with you. I mean, there's something that was drawing me to that. Pretty much the same as something was drawing me in computers when I was 10. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but there was a calling. I wanted to answer that. And I came back, I changed company went to a cooperative business. I was one of the worker owners. It was a very small company. Yeah. We I was shaping it as an artist experiment. incorporated business. Everyone was fully responsible for what was happening. Everyone could draw the money from the bank they wanted. We got into serious troubles financially speaking, I mean, not because Anyone drew all the money from the bank? Because we didn't know what we're doing. So we filed for bankruptcy eventually. And from there, we decided, okay, maybe maybe it's like software that you're refactoring. You know, like, like, Okay, you made it work. Not work great, but maybe we could actually, we had the structure, could we could we keep the structure functioning and changing what we're doing so that it's actually financially viable? Don't do that. But anyway, we did it. And you know, there's the same. I mean, I remember a step like the saying from Mark Twain. It wasn't the kitchen door is like saying they didn't know they couldn't do it. So they did it, you know, something like this. Exactly. Words, but But yeah, we did that for, you know, years and years, figuring out how to make the company viable again, and eventually repaid all the debts, and it is liable. By the time it was valuable. I wasn't sure what it was doing there anymore. I was not having so much fun in the company anymore. Because Because as long as we're together with a common objective to say, Okay, let's, let's bring some money back in the company, so that once the money is there, we can do whatever we want. But six, seven years in the in the way, you know, other than what we want is different, you know, what I want to do is therapy, what some other people want to do is video games. Other people want to, you know, do coaching. And obviously, then it's it's not. It's strange, it's strange. So all of a sudden, I was having more fun with clients worked with one of them's trendline. Working for them for a year and a half. I loved it. I loved it, create great company, great people, the team was awesome. All of a sudden, it was people who were saying agilely sucks. We don't want to hear about agility. I don't want to hear about Scrum. Nothing. You know, I mean, we're programmers, we actually program we do code, we're proud of what we're doing. That was kind of an imposter in that, but I could program I could program and all of a sudden, I wasn't a pair programming anymore. I was like, with myself having to do something. For the first time, it was like a blank, blank slate, you know, and I had to read something, it was very daunting, very daring for me. But I was good at finding bugs, writing tests that were putting the evidence that there was a bug and then fixing it. So this is what I did was, was at the time, and gained confidence that I could actually write code that myself. So we're way longer in the road, you know, like, like, it's like now 20 2016, something like this. And, but eventually, I started feeling okay, I kind of deserve what I'm doing. I was getting paid before for writing code. But mostly it was like writing code with others, showing examples or looking at what they were doing and saying, I think that you're missing semicolon here, which was okay, but but not okay. All of a sudden, I was like writing something. And I was proud of and and people were trusting me. And that felt so good. Having the feedback of a support team saying, Hey, we really like thank you for caring for fixing bugs, really, really helping us with the clients and was like, okay, cool. That's great. That's great. I remember I realized, that haven't talked about when that was not getting paid for writing code for clients, between all those years, mostly between 2005 and 2010. Ish. I had started something we call the coding dojo, developers dojo. And that was from an ad from from a guy, little Honda Civic, who said, well, wouldn't it be nice if we had a space where you could actually practice programming, like people are practicing judo? You know, and, you know, becoming a black belt karate, just after like, five days of training, you know, in Java, like, like we did in general, you know, says, how about we, we actually do something like you go week after week in practice. And that, you know, I had been doing week after week practicing with with his staff learning TDD, and eventually was okay. And it started something interesting. So we're in, we're in 2005. Going back, you you should be done when when you think it's too long. So we were back in 2005. And so we've been practicing, you know, in pairs, like doing binary chop and showing each other how we're doing it. And eventually, I remember, okay, I'm going to practice at home. And I have something interesting. And I said to people, I'd like to show you the way I solved this exercise. And all of a sudden, at least like one person with a beaner showing the code and like 10 person looking at it, and interrupting and saying, Hey, that's cool. It's not cool, I don't understand. And there was so much energy in the room so much engagement in felt so much like theater noticing, like, like it's performing. It's performing programming. And this is where I started saying, This is good exhibitionism. But it, obviously then you're not looking at the, at the Open Source cord, you end up looking at the end product, you're looking at how someone does it from nothing to the first test to the second to how you actually build a whole path to solve something. And it was very different. It was like, like, like, learning, showing and learning sequence and being with pairs. So really, when we did that, and I didn't know the name at the time, but it's like, it's like a community of learning. And we want to something No, realizing all the energy that was in the room, I know we're on to something. And I go 2005 To conference XP conference, in Sheffield, and with low hobbies, we present, this is the color stojo. And Bob Martin is there in the room. And you won't have too much about but Bob had a flair for this is an interesting, cool thing. And he brings it to the world. And he shows that people you know that you can actually like code in front of others and can be fun. And yeah, so for five years, that's what I've been doing. I've been doing week after week, you know, just just writing code in public for two hours. And practicing until no end in between. It's a can actually write this piece of code without an F, can I write this piece of code with sockets or all kinds of strange things? How can I actually TDD socket? Messaging and, and in very small, absurd things? Can I actually write a TDD framework and assembly language? That was That was hilarious. That was that was creative. That was artistic, that was not really well funded. But some people you know, started asking me a conference, can you actually write code in front of others. And I felt as long as people are writing are paying me for writing code. I'm a professional programmer. But eventually, I became a real professional programmer much later, with air quotes. With the accurate Yeah, exactly. Where to go from there. To to the points where I came back to to to study with Maria glory, psychotherapy, androgen sit here. Just need to sit here was that Ada, but But I studied with Marie Dubois, her approach, infused it back to software, of course, with teams, how can I actually listen to people that I don't agree with? Not always working without stumbling on being an asshole most of the time, because it's one thing to realize, Hey, I know how to program. And I can actually write program and be proud of, you know, having a paycheck for being a programmer. But there's a fine line being between being proud and being arrogant, in a way, like, I know, I'm right. And you should better listen, listen to me. And even actually, the person should listen to me. Just saying it is not cool. If people can learn that much quicker than than I did, that would be probably nice for everyone. But I guess everyone has to do their mistakes. And so I became a professional, ethical performance. Point,

Tim Bourguignon 53:38
is this on your LinkedIn?

Emmanuel Gaillot 53:40
Well, I don't have a LinkedIn account, oh, this is this is really strange, you know, like, like, wanting connection with people like finding so much sense into saying this is a social activity. I mean, you know, it's really cool to dialogue with computer. I really like that, because really, I'm dialoguing with myself. And I can see all kinds of things in my mental structure in the programs I'm writing. But in the end, what's really, really cool is when someone's saying, Hey, I'm using your piece of code, either as another programmer or as a seller or as a user, or as a support customer support person. They say, Hey, I'm using your code. Thank you. This is this is great. And I like the idea of being able to say, Hey, I'm using your code, thank you. There's so much reward in that link that connection, and wanting that connection and realizing that it's, it's hard as hell to get the connection, especially when you think you're right and the other person is wrong, and they think that right and you're wrong. And, and how how did you build understanding and listening and talking like, how do you be? How do you bring peace to the team before bringing peace to the world basically? and it's very humbling, I think, very, very humbling. It is. I'm still hopeful.

Tim Bourguignon 55:08
I have to to, to start wrapping up at some point. But I have this burning question. Did you get over this this comment, it feels like therapy and managed to do your work without triggering this.

Emmanuel Gaillot 55:21
Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm much more subtle in the way I asked my questions now. I will say, Can you please share your feelings? I won't say that. But at some point, I'd say, Well, there's a lot of energy in what you're saying. And I suppose, and then personally, yeah. Okay. I'd like, I'd like to listen to you. But it's really, it's hard for me to listening to you to to listen to you right now kicking? I'll tell you what I understood, you know, something like this. But is it? I'm not sure I understood exactly what you said. So this is the kind of things I would do now. I'm not doing coaching much these days, I'm helping some people outside of the programming field. But yeah, I don't do much. group coaching that's been that I've been doing before, what I do is group workshops where people come to, you know, for self development that I do. And this is different setting where, where you're building safety, and, and solidity. And then this is a place where people can risk doing something different. But that's not the professional setting where you know, Pinkel never bowling in a professional setting. No. It's not a good idea to show feelings, you know, professional setting this place for that this place for inviting the feelings, but maybe not in a whole group. Maybe it's not so useful yet. What is it used for?

Tim Bourguignon 56:54
That there's a place for everything? Yeah. Yeah. That's usually a place where I ask for advice. But I just don't want to break the magic. This is such a trip with you. Really listening to you? Obviously, you've been you've been thinking about this and reflecting on your on your story and how things make sense or doesn't make sense. It's been a fantastic. Roller Coaster. Thank you so much. Okay, so great.

Emmanuel Gaillot 57:21
Yeah, just, if I could say something around that. Say, if you feel if there's an invitation, whatever it is, just listen inside yourself. Go inside. Listen, and if you hear yes, say yes. And if you hear no, say no, that, if you hear yes. Don't say no. And if you if you hear No, don't say yes, that probably be the thing I would like to say to people who are considering their journey, beginning a journey. It's going to be specific, right? It's going to be very if anyone has a different path. I'm sure that from all the paths that you've been recording that people will know that but I think it's worth saying that there's no one right path to do.

Tim Bourguignon 58:12
That. That's what I've been trying to highlight.

Emmanuel Gaillot 58:15
Yeah. Yeah, I fully agree with that.

Tim Bourguignon 58:21
Thank you, thank you. It's been a blast, where would be the best place to, if not LinkedIn, and to reach out to you and start a conversation with you?

Emmanuel Gaillot 58:32
Yeah, thank you, um, probably two places. One, and the two places are in French, I speak English. So if we know that now, hopefully, what I'm saying is that if you if you dare going to French website where there's a contact at something, and roping English, that would work. But two places. One is the structure where I promote efficient stitches approach. And my hope my current project is to promote that to programmers, software programmers. So it's different takes on about people considering starting programming career, but but once you're in it, how do you do self development for yourself? So that structure equals Sanjay Gandhi, and it's shortly like change that group. But in French, she can't do that. Alright, so there's a contact that tragicomedy or the other one is a space that I'm building with, with friends with a nonprofit. We call that the forum. But really, it's it's middle seat way under metadata. And it's a forum in the mountains and message sometimes friends and we hope to make it a place where people can share and again this is like a co learning space where people can share their practices to others in a non economical environment. That's a and so the place is MC dash Manor headed fr Ed again, this time contacted MC and contact an MC dash moderator therefore, yeah, I'll

Tim Bourguignon 1:00
:05 put it in the show notes. So.

Emmanuel Gaillot 1:00
:09 Right. So those are the two places that I'd like to advertise. Yeah. Thank you.

Tim Bourguignon 1:00
:18 I have to thank you. It's been a wonderful story. It's a bedtime story for me. It's almost 11pm And I'm stoked. It's been so great. Thank you so much.

Emmanuel Gaillot 1:00
:30 Thank you, Tim, for having me here. Yeah. Thanks.

Tim Bourguignon 1:00
:33 And this has been another episode of developer's journey. I will see each other next week. Bye. Thanks a lot for tuning in. I hope you have enjoyed this week's episode. If you like the show, please share, rate and review. It helps more listeners discover stories. You can find the links to all the platforms to show appears on on our website, Dev journey dot info, slash subscribe. Creating the show every week takes a lot of time, energy, and of course money. Will you please help me continue bringing out those inspiring stories every week by pledging a small monthly donation, you'll find our patreon link at Dev journey dot info slash donate. And finally, don't hesitate to reach out and tell me how this week's story is shaping your future. You can find me on Twitter at @timothep ti m OTHEP. corporate email info at Dev journey dot info