#283 Moriel Schottlender from astronomy and physics to architecting Wikipedia

Resources

• Mooeypoo on Notacult.social
• Moriel on LinkedIn
• Moriel's Website
• Wikimedia Developer Portal
• Google Summer of Code
• Outreachy (GSoC for Underrepresented Communities)
• XKCD Comic #2347
• Cover Legends by HoliznaCC0 is licensed CC0 1.0 Universal License.

Highlights

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Transcript

⚠ The following transcript was automatically generated.
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Moriel Schottlender: 0:00
find where you're passionate about, because I think it's true for every place, not just open source every place has their pros and cons. You have, like, the great moments and then the problem moments. Open source has that too. It's online, it's on the internet, it's exposed. Everybody can see your stuff, Everybody comes in, has opinions, all of it. So with that, you also have that. So if you find, find yourself either a group or you know some, some project you're passionate about to join in, so that you find people like you that you will connect with and will have your back right, We'll remind you why you want that. That will will put aside like some of the noise that you're hearing, because everywhere has noise Open source a little more. And so find the place that is good for you and there are lots of places like that and you can, you can search for that are many places to search and there are many places to look for them. But find a place, not just that, you know. Oh, I just want to start. I'll go to whatever I find, because sometimes then it you know you don't get into it whatever. Find a place that will support you and that you can find your passion in that's. That's the biggest.

Tim Bourguignon:

1:06
Hello and welcome to developers journey, the podcast bringing you the making of stories of successful software developers to help you on your upcoming journey. I'm a host team On this episode. I receive more of shot lender, more of the physicist turned software engineer, turned system architect currently working on modernizing Wikipedia's architecture and features. She is an open source enthusiast, right to left, language support and localization evangelist and a general domain hoarder. I'm going to try to guess which one you last pull out of your nose, which one you last registered, but let's keep it for later. Shall we.

Moriel Schottlender:

1:54
Oh yes, Morel, let's keep everybody in intention to see what it is.

Tim Bourguignon:

1:58
Exactly the first day. First, a warm welcome to everyone. Thank you very much, I'm very happy to be here and it's our pleasure. 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 this fine crew and help me spend more time on finding phenomenal guests than editing audio tracks, please go to our website, devjourneyinfo and click on the support me on Patreon button. 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, morel, the show exists to help the listeners understand what your story looked like and imagine how to shape their own future. So, as is customary on the show, let's go back to your beginnings. Where would you place the start of your Dev journey?

Moriel Schottlender:

2:59
Well, when dinosaurs run there I'm just kidding, I always say that because I'm a little, you know it all starts so early. Everything has an origin. Well, my origin, I would say, was, I think, when I was around six years old, which for me was a long time ago. It was in the 80s, when dinosaurs run I'm just kidding, but close to that at the very least, when computer dinosaurs, right, like you know, when we had like those really old computers. And so when I was six, due to a bunch of kind of like my dad's job, my whatever, I got kind of this opportunity to join a computer summer camp and it all came about because my dad was a photographer and there was like a starting out this, this like a PC magazine, and he was, you know, taking pictures and you know, for that magazine and and they kind of like paid him money but also gave him, you know, paid in stuff. So I had a computer when I was growing up, around six years old, which was one of the first in my class that had, you know, an actual computer, not like the one with the, you know the XT, the one with the like green screen. I had like a real one, a 286. Yeah, ibm it was like. And so I started just like playing around. And I started playing around and like doing things with it, but not not completely, just like getting myself familiar, and there was not in not a whole lot of you know things with a UI like there are today's like a lot of stuff. You had to learn how to do commands and whatever, so started getting into it. And then I had this opportunity when I was six to go to a computer summer camp and of course I loved it. I was the youngest there but I loved it. It was like I don't know a couple of weeks and we would, you know, try to program something and whatever. And what I did? I remember this we took like a Lego, you know, lego that you build like Lego, and they used to be I think they're probably is still today, although it probably is called something different. It used to be Lego logo. Okay, I don't know if anyone remembers this programming language called logo. It had a little turtle in the middle of it and you just gave the turtle instructions. So the programming languages. It had loops, it had a lot of stuff, but it was basically you move the turtle places, so you say like five forward means like five step forward, whatever, turn right. And then five forward and whatever. And you draw things on the screen, right, with that turtle. So what we did logo Lego. You would take your, your turtle, whatever, but it would send instructions. Instead of just the turtle on the screen, it would send instructions to a motor or two motors that you can then build logo around Lego, right. So what I did? I was six years old. What I did was I made a coffee staring machine because my dad loved coffee and I was like I'm going to build for my dad. I was a little machine with a little hand that held the spoon, the like the teaspoon, and you had to put the coffee and then the sugar yourself. Okay, cause it wasn't that. You know, I wasn't as smart as I thought it was, but then it would like dump the thing pretty fast. So you had to be like careful with the glass there were. You know, that wasn't a bug, that was a feature. It would dump it in, yeah, and then it would drop itself into the cup and then just go circles and circles and circles around to like stir it, and then it would stop very dramatically, lift itself up, and then you could take the glass and I was so proud of myself, I was so proud. I was like, look, I did it for my dad. It was great. And that was basically my first kind of real interaction with what happens when you give instructions to a computer and that you know that just opened it up and ever since then I kept on doing these kinds of things. I never thought I'd like work in it. I didn't think that it's going to be the thing that I'm like very good at or whatever, but it was just for the convenience sake, from the wonder sake, like you know. It just kept on coming back and forth and then I kind of dropped it a little bit. Like you know, it was okay. Whatever, I used computers when I needed to, but there were other things that I wanted to do. I got into sciences a lot. I really loved Star Trek. I wanted to go and be in Star Trek. So I meant you know, explore space. But other people told me I need to be in Hollywood to be in Star Trek, which I guess officially is correct, although that's not exactly what I meant. I was kind of like I love the fact that they're in space and they're exploring, and you know, it took a while for me to understand that what I actually want to do is study astronomy. But initially I was like, oh okay, I want to go to Hollywood. So there was a lot of kind of like these you know kid aspiration stuff. That happened and I kind of dropped the computer stuff. I was in junior high and I remember this because I had this, this like smart C kid in class that was kind of like walking around in the studio, owns the place. You know one of those kids and he used to tell everybody that he looked, he programs in visual basic six, vb six. I remember this. And I remember there was like I didn't, I wasn't really interested in kind of like being like hardcore program or whatever. It was okay, I kind of did stuff, I did a little HTML, I did like you know that stuff, whatever. And then I don't remember if it's what happened. I just literally needed something. I just I want. I was, I was lazy, you know. You know engineers build stuff usually because we're lazy. We want something else to do our thing for us Right we spent now weeks and weeks working on something so that we can do something that would have taken us five minutes, but basically right. So basically that's what happened to me in, like you know, junior high. I needed something I don't remember what, whatever and he kept going on about kind of like I program in VB six, maybe six is so awesome, and up until then I made like web pages and like Jocities or whatever it was. It was even before that, I think. So I went over to him and I was like can you teach me how to, how to do VB six? And he looked at me. The most condescending Like this was, I think it was great because it planted. So it was so condescending that I wanted to prove him wrong kind of thing. You know what I mean. Like he looked at me and was like it's too hard for you. And then he said, like well, you just like open VB six, double click an image and do like button click and like you know something very vague I'm like. So I started thinking to myself like gee, okay, whatever I would like, I'll open it up and look myself. And I literally did what he said. I was like opened up an image and then double clicked it and a code to open it up. I'm like, wait, what happens if I do click Like he said? It clicks, huh. And then, by the end of that year, I programmed something bigger than what he did, which was awesome. Because, just because like oh, I can't do it. So sometimes people tell you you can't do things and you're kind of like really that's crazy, yeah, I know Really. So yeah, so that's kind of like. You know how I got back a little bit into it, but still it was a little bit. It was mostly a hobby, Like my passion. When I understood that Hollywood was, I mean, I loved to be, you know, famous actress, but that's not actually what I wanted. When I started to understand that the passion was actually, you know, the astronomy aspect of Star Trek, I started leaning a little bit towards there, and so computers remained. But there were kind of like this convenience thing, Like if I want to do something so that I can do like electrical engineering better or astronomy better, kind of like communication better, yeah, I have that thing here that I can like touch on, but it's not like obviously I'm not a professional at it, and so that's how everything kind of started and I can keep going on how it continued, but I don't know, do you want me to?

Tim Bourguignon:

11:13
Absolutely. I want to see where you went. Of course, you started as a robotics engineer and then you wanted to go towards astronomy. Somehow you took a wrong turn and ended up as a software engineer.

Moriel Schottlender:

11:25
So I call it. It might be because I'm a very big advocate for right to left. I call all my turns right turns.

Tim Bourguignon:

11:31
Okay, so you took a lot of right turns, but if you make three right turns at some point you come back on your tracks, so that's good.

Moriel Schottlender:

11:36
That's true Effectively. They might be turning me towards the left, but they were right turns.

Tim Bourguignon:

11:43
So that was first right turn. Let's take the second one now.

Moriel Schottlender:

11:47
Yes, so I did. I went to study. So initially I still planned. I had this. When you're a kid you have this vision of yourself and for the longest time I had a vision of myself of kind of like I want to go to Hollywood because that's Star Trek where I want to go. But even when I realized that that's not really what I did, I was like what I wanted to do actually is astronomy. I still had that thing in my head of kind of like, well, hollywood, whatever. So the initial plan was actually to go and study script writing, like screenwriting. And then a whole bunch of things happened. So that wasn't even a turn, because I kind of realized that it's a case where there's not a whole lot of money in it and I'm not an advocate to choose something to do only because there's money in it. But I'm saying like if you know that you're going to run into challenges, like look, there's not a whole lot of money in it, you need to be really, really in love with what you're doing and really passionate with what you're doing. And I realized that I love it and I'm kind of I like it, but I don't know if I'm that passionate about it to be able to do that. So that kind of like got me thinking. I'm like, hang on a minute, is that really what I want to do? No, I actually want to deal with space more, and so that's what I did. So I went at first into electrical engineering and the idea there was that, again, I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could do physics. What do you mean? You need to be like a master genius to be, like you know, phd physics. I'm okay, you know, I did a little physics in high school, but like I didn't really like math and whatever, like nah, so I'm going to go at it from the electrical engineering angle, which deals with, like you know, the radio antennas, right, and kind of like the equipment of it and kind of like the signals and all that kind of stuff. And I was like that's really cool, and I did. And in order to do that, I moved to the US and I had a job and I studied at the same time, which was not very easy. But not only was it not very easy, because you know, okay, fine, you're working full time, you're studying full time. It's kind of like I realized that if I want to continue doing engineering. One of the problems with engineering is that it's very, very rigid. If you don't take the amount of classes that you need to take within one specific semester now, your entire next semester is delayed. It's really rigid. So if you do kind of like shift work or whatever and you're saying like, okay, I'll take maybe these courses instead of these courses, there's very limited. So that was one problem. And the second wasn't really a problem. I took physics 101 because we all, you know, you're kind of like in the US especially you're kind of taking the first year to be kind of, you know, interest to a lot of things. And so I went to physics and I already studied a little bit of physics in high school and this physics 101 was very, very basic. So I basically sat down and did nothing in class because I already knew everything and apparently that impressed the professor. I don't know how he didn't kick me out, but apparently it was impressed with me. I was a little bit of a smart ass. I remember one class he was talking and I already knew the material and I did all the homework and I was fine. So I was kind of like spacing out. I don't know. I think I filled a sadoku in the middle of class or something, and he was asking this physics riddle. I think he was like, if I have a cup and the cup has, like you know, water on it, I put ice in the cup and also water up to the rim, and now I wait for the ice to melt. Who thinks the water would be like lower right, and then people raise their hands. And who thinks like the water will be higher, will drop out of the cup? People raise their hands. Who thinks it will be the same thing? People raise their hands. And I didn't raise my hand to anything because I didn't listen. I was kind of like I was all spacing out. I don't know what happened. I was doing my own sadoku, whatever it was, and so the professor noticed, so he looked at me and then he pointed at me and he was like Moriel, what do you think? And so initially, of course, panic, because what? I don't know what you were asking. So you know, in your own mind, you're like rewind. So I'm like rewinding to myself. I was like what just happened? Wait, da, da, da, da, da. And so while I'm doing that, panic rises because I'm in front of everybody. So the first thing that comes out of my mouth is like, well, it depends. And he was on the floor because it's true, it does depend, it absolutely depends. And then I kind of rewound by that time and now I'm stuck because I said that depends. Now I have to continue with why it depends, and he looks at me and I'm like, well, you know the air pressure and stuff. And I'm just at this point like, seriously, he knows that I didn't listen. I know I didn't listen, but he loves it. So he came to me after class and he was like, listen, you have to do a major in physics. And I'm like what are you talking about? How did you get from this to like doing a major in physics? And he's like you have it, you have to do a major in physics. And so I did. I was kind of like, all right, well, it's working out with engineering, but not really. I just swapped to physics. And I even remember I went in order to do that, you have to go to your advisor, right, like you know, to kind of say, all right, well, I'm going to switch to the advisor in engineering, looked at me and he was like you're going to switch to physics from engineering. And I'm like, yeah, do you not like money? I was like, well, that's an interesting point. But to reiterate my previous one, if you're passionate about something, you know, I'm good, but it was an interesting point to make. So I did. I started studying physics and I did. I finished my entire degree. I did my bachelor's in physics. I loved it. I went to do some internships that were extremely interesting. But I realized something in the middle Again one of those right turns. I realized that in order to look, in order to be an astronomer, in order to be like a PhD, you need to go into academia. Right, you do that, and then after that you could. There are ways for you to then say, ok, you know what? I don't want academia anymore, I want the industry or whatever. But you have to be an academia and you have to be an academia for quite a long time. And it's very, very tough, and I'm not just talking about the materialist stuff, I'm talking about the environment. It's very, very tough, especially for women in these kind of things, in physics in general and chemistry a little too, also Quite, and in astronomy. There's another aspect here that people don't think about a lot is that when you do go to do your PhD, you a lot of times have to go and be in remote places, because a lot of the radio telescopes and the telescopes are in the middle of the desert or middle of remote. And that adds to the difficulty, because whatever other difficulty you have with being a woman or just being in tech and being in this kind of environment, science right is then going even bigger Because you're not also Alone in that environment you don't have. So all of that came in and again I did this assessment in my head of like Look, I am not this, this like Incredible mind that can sit down and do these all, like you know, mathematical equations in my head. And da da da, it's just not me. I'm more creative person, so I can do a lot of the astronomy stuff which is creative, of like analyses and stuff like that. But but how Passionate am I? And doing that, given what I'm going to have to go through in order to be successful in it, given the amount of of, like you know, things that I have? And I wasn't entirely sure I Didn't decide it that I wasn't, I was just not entirely sure. So I said, okay, I'm going to Either way, I'm going to have to do, like you know, the exams and whatever the GRE and and all that kind of stuff which is already you have to like study, like mad, for I'm going to give it a little bit of time For now. I continued. I had like an internship that turned into a little bit of a job to be responsible for like a website of the American Institute of physics, some some department in the American Institute of physics. So I worked in physics but I did like website work and so I came back a little bit to the, to the programming stuff. But again it was kind of like a side thing and and that when I was thinking about kind of like, okay, well, what am I doing with my? So like, where do I want to go? Do I want to continue this physics thing? Like I can't really, you can't really do a lot of the astronomy stuff only with the bachelor's. You need to do the PhD stuff, like you can't. You know you have to be that. Do I? Am I willing or do I want to? Or can I find myself in a place where I'll be and I'll feel very, very passionate about and succeed? I don't know. But what I do know is I'm kind of liking what I'm doing with this computer stuff right now. I don't know, it's kind of cool. Maybe I can find, you know, a place that will hire me and then see what it's like. And that's what I try to do. I try to find kind of like a place that you know, kind of like as a junior engine, like you know, software developer, try to see, like you know, if I can get back into it. I didn't know anything about like working in a team or working professionally. I was like, but Because I was a student in the US, the visa type I was only allowed to work in, what I graduated from, which was physics. Yes, and there are ways to kind of like, make the point of like, physics is very broad and Computers is probably related, but a lot of but the company needs to agree to that to make that case. And so another consideration came to mind and I was like well, how about I take a masters in Computer science? And then that will do two things first of all, it will allow me to say, okay, I do have a masters in computer science, therefore I could go work in something related to programming. But it will also get me back into this computer stuff that I didn't do a long time you know, I did it as a side thing and maybe give me some principles to remember. This is what I did. So I wanted to a masters and I actually really enjoyed it. I think that, you know, school is not for for everyone. I'm not like a proponent of saying kind of like, you know, jobs are only for people who did a degree or stuff. I don't think so, but I do think that some people really, you know, if you connect to it, I think it's really cool and I do, I really love that. So I did that and at the end of it, towards the, towards the second, the end of the second year, I Saw interships. I was like, oh, you have to go to internships or whatever. And Again, with my self-esteem being awesome, as this is a recurring thing, you see, here I can't do it. I also was kind of like, oh, come on, I don't have experience in anything. Who's gonna take me? So I kind of I I submitted, but it was like half-hearted, like I don't, I don't know, nobody will take me, it's not gonna work out. And then I saw Google Summer of Code. And Google Summer of Code was this internship still going today that allows you to go and work in an internship with open source organizations? And I was like, okay, I, I know WordPress because I've been doing websites and I know wikis, because I've been doing some websites, I Don't know, maybe one of them will want me. And so I kind of posted. There was a way to kind of like say I want to join this, whatever. And initially it was actually really funny because I went to the Wikipedia one right, the media foundation was was part of the organizations that and I went in into one of the forums and I put in that I'm interested and I Gotta reply. Someone replied. Someone say, like oh, it's so cool that you're interested. Oh my gosh, like, hey, reminding you that if you are interested, you should also do this, like send this message to the mailing list. And I was like I'm not even in yet. They responded I'm not even working for them yet, oh my god. And so I was so impressed and so like, oh my god, maybe maybe there is a chance here. That I did. I went to the mailing list and I posted and I kind of like hey, I want to do an internships here. My idea for a project is one of the things that you need to come up with, an idea for a project, and my idea for a project was a some extension to Media wiki, which is the thing for Wikipedia, that that does visualizations for physics. I was like this is great, I know physics, I could do this, whatever. And the next thing that happened was that nothing. Nothing happened, like it was Chirp, chirp on on the mailing list, crickets, nothing. And I'm like Someone needs to accept my idea in order for me to do an internship. What's happening? Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe, like just no one you know, like I don't know if anyone really knew how to do the physics thing and whatever. There was no buyers. And Then a person saw that I speak Hebrew one of the people in the, in the foundation of me and he contacted me and he's like, listen, you know how to program, you speak Hebrew. We could actually use help with our editor, with our just text editor, to make sure that it kind of, like you know, supports Right to left languages like Hebrew and Arabic and Farsi and stuff. And I'm like I don't know how to do that. It's like you know, you don't know and you don't need to know a lot. I'll tell you, like you know the rules that I know. I just need to know that there's someone that can do programming and understand that and I'm like, okay, I'm sure I can give it a try, why not? And that was my project for the summer. There you go, you got it, I got it, I was in, that's it, and yeah, and, and that you know, since then, this is this has been like One of one of the biggest things when I talked to people about like you know how to white, to get into open source and what's it's a little whatever. Well, when I developed for Wikipedia, I was an intern and within a month of me just working on Just stuff, I had two patches that were in production. Billions of people who visit Wikipedia just saw them and I was dancing around and one of them was like a tiny little CSS fix. I didn't even matter. I was like look at me, you and you look at it. What other place like there's not a whole lot of places where, as an intern, you're like your stuff is already in production, like you know a month. Right, it was just. It was just like and that's it, I'm there. I'm there since then, since 2013. Wow, that that was yeah, so that's how it started.

Tim Bourguignon:

26:23
You turn, right turns as you and you landed when I see your smile and how you're dancing, talking about this, the right spot. I think so too yeah passion is where I don't know if the money is there, but at least the passion is there and the willingness to do it.

Moriel Schottlender:

26:39
So I think so I think this is this is the thing, right, and this is a lot of times when I talk to people again about kind of like open source and stuff. We all know that there's open source can be very tough right, because it is online, with everything that has to do with online. It could be the good, good, good things and the bad things and there are bad things too in it, but this is what I'm saying, like always, as a device to people to get into open source. It's like find yourself, your community, that you have passion and they see you right. And this is just what happened to me. I I went in to a place where I had backing. I had people who wanted me there, who could support me when things weren't as great, who could teach me when I went, when you know, and help me out and whatever, and when I was passionate about this, and I think that combination just worked. I suddenly found myself in a place where I didn't know where I was going. I was kind of like I don't know physics, not physics, I'll do this. I tried to keep physics in the picture of kind of like you know, when I was programming, I was like this is what I'm good at. Maybe I have a degree in it. I must be doing something. Okay, like it was all like this, and then, just out of out of nowhere, you stumble in. I think, and I think some of it is just recognized. I recognized you know which one of the doors that opened for me Made me feel the best and I just walked into that one.

Tim Bourguignon:

27:57
It was you know, yeah, I want to be a bit polarizing a little bit and and then have, have me, have you correct me? Um, so when I think about open source, I I have the one picture Uh, that's xkcd picture for one guy in Nebraska Holding the the world On his shoulders because he did or she did some kind of small open source software and maintaining it since then. And if they remove it, pad left and and the world crumbles on. Or you have the other way around, maybe microsoft size or google size enterprises, um, publishing something on the internet as open source, whichever licenses they use, and then I'm making a face there, but somehow it doesn't feel open source. They're just creating a giant software, it's a big enterprise and somehow this lands as an open source software on the internet. I'm sure you're somewhere in the middle of this, but how does Wikipedia or Wikimedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, works in terms of open source, is terms of working together on that spectrum and beyond?

Moriel Schottlender:

29:13
So, as you're pointing out, this is not polarizing at all. No, not at all. Let's go into it, why not? So, as you're pointing out, open source is an entire world and arguably some places call themselves open source when arguably they might not be OK. It depends who you ask about the definition of open source and the definition of open source, if you go backwards and forwards, there are official ones, but then the things that are practically. There's a whole bunch of mess here. I would argue personally that a piece of application that comes out with a license that doesn't allow that license itself is not open source. The software is not open source, even if the code is visible, and I think that most people agree with me on that. I would further argue that, even if the license is OK for you to fork and do whatever you want, but if the software itself doesn't accept contributions so, for example, android is open source, I believe, also the license. I need to check into that. Please don't kill me if I'm wrong, but I think I believe that you can technically take it and fork it and whatever, but I don't know how much. If I want to put a patch or whatever, it will immediately go in and depending on how easy that is, because there are other examples of that kind of thing I'm not entirely sure on the scale of free and open sourceness I would put it. I would say, ok, it might be open source, but it might not be, as and we're talking about the foundation and the Wikimedia movement we're pretty set on making sure that we are very, very much open source, arguably sometimes a little much, and again, please don't kill me, everybody who listens to this I'm not saying that being open source is bad. I am saying, however, that everything has a price, right. Everything has kind of like a balance of things, and you allow, and we do out of principle, right, like we are saying what made Wikipedia great was not the tech, what made Wikipedia great was the technical idea, and then the people who used it right, the amount of users that came in and just had a vision for this and changed it and come in. And then the people who then came in and said, ooh, ok, I'll add this in and I'll add this in technically. And that happened because it's open source and because it's free and not free. How would you call it? Not free as in freedom, not free as in beer?

Tim Bourguignon:

31:40
Free as a kitten.

Moriel Schottlender:

31:42
Right, exactly, and in this case, it's both. It's both free of money and free of freedom, but it is something that we really, really care about, and this is something that also, as you can see when I'm talking about it, I'm very passionate about this, because this is, I think, a thing that really impacts the world, and I think this is the one thing that, for me in Wikipedia, is one of the biggest reasons why I'm there and why I'm staying there and why I stayed there for so long Because I have impact. I literally I feel that, and I had impact when I was an intern, and I have impact today, and this is impact that outright does something to the world. There's no doubt about it, and part of that is absolutely to be with the mentality of open and collaborative, both in the content to make sure that our communities can put the content and the way that the content needs to be what everybody can edit and in the code, and so, of course, there are also hardships with it, and these are the things that I'm dealing with right now with my team. It's the idea of look, we want to be open source, but then open source and there's different ideas about the one sister, the bazaar and the cathedral and all that kind of stuff, ideas of who's running. How do you run your open source so far? And people also have opinions about whether it still is open source, if it is more cathedral style, and whether it is open source if not. Whatever it is, the way that you run your open source software impacts the way that your software is then built. And when you have a software like MediaWiki, which is a software underlying to Wikipedia and 11 other projects right, it's not just Wikipedia. We have Wiktionary and Commons that does image, and we have Wicked Data that does graphical connections between small bits of knowledge All that kind of stuff is the same software and for 20 years we kind of pulled that software in all multiple directions because that's what users came in to do. And that's beautiful in one aspect, because you're kind of like no one would have guessed this would happen. Jimmy Wells, when he just released it, would not have guessed, I'm sure, where we are today. On the other hand, when you look at the architecture of your software, it is messy. It is messy because there was no plan in the beginning. You didn't come and say, ok, the architecture needs to be very solid because, blah, there was no true, solid, single vision for the product, because people just came in and made the vision and that is beautiful, but then technologically that could be challenging. So that is kind of like a lot of the problems that I love dealing with, like, ok, give me that problem, what do we do with this now? How do we keep it, this freedom thing, this free thing that everybody could still do stuff, but we've got to have some rules, because otherwise it'll be like this everything on top of everything, that everything collapses and whatever, and we won't be able to do anything. So how do you find that balance to make it sustainable for the next 100 years, with whatever other? There's new technologies coming up and everybody's yelling that PHP is dead, even though it's just by thinking about how many WordPress websites there are there, it seems to me like PHP is still alive and well and kicking, I think. But OK, it's kind of like oh, you should the amount of people, by the way, that I hear that tell us that we should rewrite the entire Wikipedia and go.

Tim Bourguignon:

35:02
Absolutely.

Moriel Schottlender:

35:03
Let's do it tomorrow. Yes, just like, go ahead, give it a try. All right, sure, but yeah. So you want to still make sure that in 100 years time, wikipedia is still here, and so you do need to think about these kind of things with this.

Tim Bourguignon:

35:20
So these are the things that I'm getting really, really excited about and really how did you, did you travel from this, from this internship in this part of Wikipedia that you love and in this activity that you love? Was it? Was it just well, a bit like like the Valve software handbook, but they describe well, you just go wherever you think you can add value and just do it. Or is it really trying to climb the stairs with big air quotes, of going into the architecture of Wikimedia and having to prove that you can do this and really having to? I don't know how that works.

Moriel Schottlender:

35:58
So it's a little bit of both. So when I joined in, I joined in 2013 to the visual editor team, which is now the editing team, because they're not just doing visual editor as a front end engineer also, front end is my expertise even today. And I joined in and, as I said, my job as an intern basically was support for Hebrew stuff or support for right to left right, and I knew Hebrew and because of because I, like you know, I fell into this passion very, very quickly, I started doing things that were part of that, of that support, but we're not necessarily part of, like, the tasks that I was given. I was kind of like I remember that there was, for example, one of the tasks was we want to make sure that, you know, templates are being supported, and then I noticed that in order to support templates templates there was a new thing coming out template data. And template data is a JSON string, and so users can kind of like save this JSON string that gives like a some sort of definition about what a template is, that then the software visual editor can read and tell you how to fill it out, whatever. And I noticed that when you put the JSON in the wiki in English. It's a little annoying but it's okay. But if you put it in a right to left wiki in Hebrew, arabic or whatever, it is completely mangled. You can't understand anything. In fact, it gets worse because it's so mangled that you know how you have key value in in in right to left they flip. So now you have value key and you don't know which one is which and whatever. So it was just unworkable and I was charged with kind of like helping out how to do it. And I'm looking at it and like I don't. There's no way to do this with JSON properly unless we were like rewrite the internet. So I built a little interface to kind of like instead of you writing down JSON, here's like a UI for the user to say what key values they want and then it produces the JSON for you, right? So I took a lot of stuff where I saw right like opportunities a little bit. Again, some of it was because I was too lazy. Too lazy to copy paste it to somewhere else. And then I was like I want something to automatically do it for me. And there you go. It's kind of you know, engineers are lazy inherently, which is how we come up with great stuff to save everybody time. So it started kind of like with this right, and then after I finished, after I graduated, I was looking a little bit further out and whatever. But I kind of knew that I wanted to continue with the foundation and I joined in and then I was. It was. It was a little bit of both in terms of where can you go, because there were other teams and you could see that there's like openings done. So there were a little bit changes and I moved to another team where we worked on something slightly different. There was still front end, so it was different. And then there was an opportunity to lead a team, to be a tech lead of a team, and I just I, you know, I thought about it, I submitted it and I went in there. So I became like a tech lead of one of the teams and that exposed me a little bit to kind of like this higher level questions, right, instead of just looking at like the code that you need to deliver specifically the task whatever. Now you're looking at kind of like how should we do things a little bit higher level what is the architecture of my product, who do I need to talk to, and stuff like that. And then a couple years after that, the team opened that was the architecture team, which was the tasks on basically thinking about these kind of questions, but in a much higher level of like what is the systemic architecture of Wikipedia and everything else? And they joined that and now we're doing basically a lot of thinking about media wiki as a product instead of just this, this platform project, and now we're doing so. A lot of it was kind of like these opportunities that opened up. Some of it was a little bit of self advocacy, of kind of like Okay, I think I can do it and raising my hand. For some of it was just like seeing a door open and checking into it. It was a little bit of a mix, but a lot of people ask me if kind of like oh my gosh, you're nine years in the same place. That is so unusual. Usually software engineers just move places right, like you work three years in one place and then you move to another. And then I asked those people why do software engineers do that? Usually they do that one of two reasons either to get more money, right, or to get promoted, and unfortunately that's because the way that the industry is. But I did get promoted. I started as an intern and today, nine years later, I am a principal engineer that works on a lot of strategic stuff. So I did get this promote. I didn't need to go, and as long as and I don't I mean I don't want to say I don't care about money, but I don't work for Wikipedia for the money of it, right, like I work for the mission, I work for the you know, and so I didn't need to switch jobs. So I'm not saying, you know, never switch jobs though, whatever, but I think that that I would caution against falling into these like expectations that people might give. You have kind of like, well, if you can't work in some place like for so long, because then, I don't know, you'll come out and people will wonder why you didn't shift. Well, here's my answer for why I didn't Right, and I learned a lot and I did a lot. So a lot of it was basically open doors, just recognizing them.

Tim Bourguignon:

41:13
And you have to make your own like. It's very important to be able to organize the doors to be able to grab them when they open. If you're not ready for that, you'll miss them. That's true. And I guess you came back to the, to the passion piece. You're where your passion led you and you've been talking and moving and making gestures all the time. So I guess you found the right place and that's that's enough for me to not ask the question why have you been there for 13 years? It's it's enough, or 10 years, I don't know Almost 10.

Moriel Schottlender:

41:44
Yeah, almost 10.

Tim Bourguignon:

41:47
No, fantastic. Thank you for this, for this ride of your life in just about 40 minutes.

Moriel Schottlender:

41:53
I know I can't believe it. I was like, All right, we're all. The rest of the five, six questions. I'm like, Wow, this has been the story of my life.

Tim Bourguignon:

42:03
A little bit.

Moriel Schottlender:

42:04
I'm sure a lot out.

Tim Bourguignon:

42:05
Yeah, for a different discussion. That's true. Before you get there, what would be your advice? If somebody wanted to get into open source, what would be the way you would advise them to get there?

Moriel Schottlender:

42:18
Oh, okay, there's a whole bunch of ways, but what I would recommend I think I talked a little bit about this in the beginning Find where you're passionate about, because I think it's true for every place, not just open source every place has their pros and cons. You have, like, the great moments and then the problem moments. Open source has that too. It's online, it's on the internet, it's exposed. Everybody can see your stuff, everybody comes in, has opinions, all of it. So with that, you also have that. So if you find, find yourself either a group or you know some, some project you're passionate about to join in, so that you find people like you that you will connect with and will have your back right, we'll remind you why you want that. That will will put aside like some of the noise that you're hearing, because everywhere has noise Open source a little more. And so find the place that is good for you, and there are lots of places like that and you can. You can search for that are many places to search and there are many places to look for them. But find a place, not just that, you know. Oh, I just want to start. I'll go to whatever I find, because sometimes then that you know you don't get into it whatever, find a place that will support you and that you can find your passion in that's. That's the biggest.

Tim Bourguignon:

43:32
I love the answer. The answer I kind of saw in myself when I started searching in open source was okay, what can I do? And searching for that? I can do C++, I can do C sharp, I can do Java, I can do it. So let's search for projects like this. And I went right into a wall. That just doesn't work. You have to find a community, you have to find a passion, you have to find something that really propels you in learning whatever language you need to learn to participate.

Moriel Schottlender:

44:00
And you know what, Find that person in XKCD right that holds with their bare hands the one thing that all the, by the way, commercial companies that don't pay for it use, and if it will fall down, everything will find them because you use it. Right, Like you probably use something. Find them and then go help them. Right, Like, find something that you use, you know you have passion about, and then everybody will accept you because passion is something that people want to see.

Tim Bourguignon:

44:28
Indeed, we do Amen to that, boyle. It's been fantastic. Thank you so much. It's been great. Thank you so much. Where would be the best place to continue this discussion with you and rub off some of that energy about open source and get hyped about going so?

Moriel Schottlender:

44:44
there used to be a network that I was always in, but now it's a little bit gone from the front and who knows where it's at right now.

Tim Bourguignon:

44:50
Let's not mention it.

Moriel Schottlender:

44:51
No, so I am in Mastodon. It's not a cultsocial Slash MuiPu. I can give you the stuff, so it probably will appear and you can go to my website. All my contact information, including anywhere that I'm online Morieltech. I'm basically anywhere everywhere as MuiPu too, so you can feel free to contact me, talk, ask questions. I would be really, really happy, especially if you're interested in getting into open source or interested in learning about right to left stuff. I am around and be happy to help.

Tim Bourguignon:

45:28
And I'll add a link all the links in the show notes, so you didn't get them. Just scroll down and click and you'll be covered. Moriel, thank you so much.

Moriel Schottlender:

45:38
Thank you.

Tim Bourguignon:

45:39
Thank you very much, and this has been another episode of Dev First Journey. We'll see each other next week. Bye, 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 those stories. You can find the links to all the platforms the show appears on on our website, devjourneyinfo. Please subscribe. Talk to you soon.