Logo

Software Developers Journey Podcast

#67 Kapunahele Wong's kindness as a practice

Transcript

⚠ The following transcript was automatically generated.
❤ Help us out, Submit a pull-request to correct potential mistakes

Kapunahele Wong 0:00
Our field has this, this reputation of, you know, geniuses who you know that we're surrounded by people who can just, you know, power code everything out and everything's great. And their prs are spectacular and, but in reality, we, all of us are just in a different stage of learning. And they we do have these high profile people who who can do amazing things. But it's, it's, a lot of times it's because they've just been doing it for a long time. And they really have they're comfortable there. It's like playing a musical instrument.

Tim Bourguignon 0:41
Hello, and welcome to developer's journey. The podcast shining a light on developers lives from all over the world. My name is Tim Bourguignon, and today I received kupuna Haley Wong kupuna. Haley is a developer and Angular JS fan, who works on the angular Doc's writing guidelines and developing example apps. She also enjoys Native Hawaiian practices, textile arts, and marveling at little in conspicuous plants growing in full cotton places outdoors. Governor Haley, welcome to the journey.

Kapunahele Wong 1:17
Thank you so much for having me.

Tim Bourguignon 1:19
So let's get right to it. What did you first step into software look like?

Kapunahele Wong 1:26
Well, you know, I wasn't there. And this is funny, because my mother and my stepfather met in a COBOL class, they were both being trained in COBOL, when I was a kid, and they weren't, they weren't together yet. They that's where they met. And they, they ended up getting married. Three, six weeks after my, after they met, my mom, and my stepdad got married. And so my life changed completely. And he was a programmer for the US military. So that's probably where the very first little inkling started. But I didn't, myself didn't really get into it until a lot later. And I was, I was actually in college, and I was a dance major. And I injured myself badly I ruptured both of my Achilles tendons. So I could, I couldn't dance anymore. I couldn't do point, did ballet. And I couldn't do that anymore. And if I couldn't do that, I wasn't interested. So I switched into computer science. And that was, I was a little bit you know, I was very young, I was only 18. And I was my interests were still all over the place. So I ended up actually changing out of that after a year, and I majored in comparative grammar of the romance languages. So totally unrelated. Again, I went through college, got my, got my degree and went out into the world. And when I, when I was in college, I, I paid my way, by working two jobs. And both of them were tech related. So one of them was in a language lab, helping people learn how to use software that taught different languages, and then another was doing hardware repair and just working on the college's computers. So by the time I got out of college, the job market was way more interested in anything tech related. So I ended up working in that out in the field I had studied and, and later on, I moved to New York, and I decided to take full advantage of the town and I had been working there doing technical support, and I needed to do something more artistic for myself. So I actually started going to the Fashion Institute of Technology where I studied, metalwork and jewelry design, the the actual fabrication of jewelry, and I ended up going to graduate school for textile conservation at the same school. So I really just indulged in, in the experts that were there. And I ended up working at the school. And after a while, I just didn't know quite how to make the two parts of my interests meet up. I had this I really had loved math for a long time I enjoyed logic was one of my favorite classes in school. I liked programming, though, of course, I wasn't very practiced in it at all, but I liked it. And and I liked art, of course. So one day it just struck me Oh, I should do web design. And so I started just teaching myself from zero and I started just practicing with tutorials online and Eventually, I was able to convince some very nice people to hire me as a junior web designer. And it was actually a half and half job. So I would design what I was the site that I was working on, and then I would build it. And they had a CMS. So it was mostly styles and a very little bit of, of JavaScript. And then after that, I realized I really preferred the coding part. So I pushed harder in that direction, and started studying more in that way. And I ended up working for Capital One as a front end developer. And I would pair with designers there. And so I kind of understood where they were coming from and in what they were trying to achieve as a designer. And then I would build it, and I really enjoyed the building part. So. So that's, that's kind of how I got got into it. And then, when I was at Capital One, my boss on my interview asked me, hey, do you do you know, angular? And this was, I think this was 2000. This might have been 2013. Teen, maybe. And I didn't, I had no idea what he was talking about. Or maybe it was 2014. But it's been a while. And I said, No, but I can learn. And when I feel when the conversation was over, I literally went to my computer and searched for Angular tutorial. And I just started there. And that was AngularJS. And I just liked it. And I found it. For me, it was my very first framework. So it wasn't intuitive to me, because I was learning my way around everything. And so. So I just kept at it and kept doing tutorials over and over and over again. And then eventually, I capital, one would send us to conferences, and I wanted to go to I wanted to go and just learn more from other people. So at one point, I was able to go to mg comp. And that's where I met some really great people on the team. And, and eventually I said, Hey, I'm going to help out, I want to learn, but I don't, I wasn't at a point of doing something like fixing the compiler. So I started, I started helping out on the docks, and just just learning my way through the kindness of many other people. Just sort of learning my way through all the basic stuff of open source to also Angular stuff. So long story.

Tim Bourguignon 7:44
That's awesome. That's awesome. And there's so much to unpack. So if you might, I would like to, to go back to the beginning and and unpack it's a step by step. Sure. So you were first, a dance major in college? And after this injury? Yes. How did you come up with the idea to start a computer science major?

Kapunahele Wong 8:07
You know, I don't really remember I just, I remember one day, I was like, I want to open up a computer and know what's inside of it. And this was, you know, back before laptops were everywhere. So it I was just curious about it. And I I wanted to know what made them work. And that was around the time. And this will, this will give some context to my age. But that was around the time that Windows 95 was coming out. And our college had had Linux terminals, or I'm sorry, Unix tournament terminals everywhere. And I loved them. I loved working in that kind of environment. And they switched to Windows 95. And there were this few dedicated people that we just really, really liked our little terminals. And so we got squished and squished and squished into these off the beaten path kinds of labs. And, and I just I liked the interface. I I think terminal to this day is really pretty. I like it. I like I like just the speed you generally feed but I like it. So I just thought it was it was just aesthetically pleasing to Me a very simple reason for getting into it. And there were there were there were jobs in the schools that I could get that would help pay my way. So that was helpful to

Tim Bourguignon 9:31
her. Were you always in STEM before or interested in stems.

Kapunahele Wong 9:36
I liked I liked math. Specifically. Especially just from from the get go from the time I was a tiny girl like, I remember my first grade math workbook. I just liked it. Again. It was just it was almost something about the aesthetic. It's hard to explain and I liked the idea of numbers. I wasn't I wasn't a math whiz, or anything I did well, I always had very high grades in math. And it was, it was easy. So there was there was that, but it wasn't. I wasn't, I wasn't one of the kids in high school in the programming classes. So we did have them in high school. And I was, I was aware of them and aware of the kids who were in there. But I had steered a lot of my energy toward toward grammar of the romance languages, specifically, already, by the time I was about 14 or so. So I find that very, I found that very interesting. Because when I was little, I had this, this kind of this way of perceiving that when I would hear people speak, and this would happen a lot with my parents, or if I went to another house or something, and I heard another family, I didn't understand what they were saying, even if they were speaking my language, I just couldn't understand him, it would get garbled. And so by the time I was about nine or so, I had, had come up with this idea that, well, every family must have their own little language that they speak. And that's why I couldn't understand people. And maybe my parents had some advanced way of speaking or something like that, and I just couldn't get it, then I remember people trying to speak to me. And I, I understood that I couldn't, I knew that I couldn't understand them. And so that's what got me interested into language and language, and because by the time I was 11, or 12, and this would continue to happen. And it still happens today, if I'm in a very noisy environment. But what happens, what happened for me was I wanted to dissect what they were saying. And I wanted, I wanted some reason and some logic behind it. And that was the draw to grammar for me. Of course, I found out later that no, this was a, this was a perceiving difference in the way that just my brain works, which is totally fine with me. And because I found it, I was I was kind of interested in this phenomenon, even when I was four and five years old, because I mean, obviously, to me, this was normal. But but I was still I was still aware that, you know, my mother was speaking directly to me, why couldn't I understand her. And then a few minutes later, I'd be able to understand her. And I remember they went to they had my ears checked, they did all this stuff. And when I was in elementary school, they would alternately this is this is kind of funny, they would alternately send me to classes that were I needed, where they thought I needed remedial help with something, and then they would send me to classes for gifted kids. And so I was going back and forth between both kinds of classes. And I think what it was, was really just that I didn't understand, I couldn't always understand the instructions that were being given in class. So they go, you know, what she needs extra help sent her to this class, for a special attention to help her understand just how to do school, basically, it But then one on one, I would do very well. And I understood everything once the environment was really quiet. So and then at the same time, you know, I'm going to the gifted classes. So it was a it was, they weren't really sure what to do. And at that time, there wasn't really much emphasis on, on trying to figure out some of these details, because I think psych psychology just hadn't gotten there yet. It was still that was those were these perceptual issues, were still fairly new. So I, I've really felt like, okay, there's something going on here. And there's there is a system that I can begin to pick out to unravel this.

Tim Bourguignon 13:49
And so that's what brought you to, to studying more the grammar of things, right?

Kapunahele Wong 13:55
Yes, yes. So because to me, that was the key to figuring out what people were talking about. And I still feel very much that that's the case and, and if you if you really pick language apart, you you start getting these, these models, and they they hold true in, in, in languages in such a way that you know, obviously linguists can look at these patterns and go backwards and backwards backwards until they do something like find a proto, or determine that there was a proto language before certain family of languages existed. And so to me, that was and still is like the evolution of maybe diphthongs, which are a combination of vowel sounds like way, like if you had a U and an E, that that the evolution of those these kinds of sounds is predictable. And so, to me, that was mathematical. And so I started I, my mind started to turn in the direction of mathematical models of language. Whenever In college, but at the time, it wasn't, it wasn't a very popular thing to try to combine what was considered to be liberal arts subject language, with math, it just it just wasn't it wasn't taking off yet. To me, it seemed very obvious that we're going to have to start getting into the deeper areas of language and that you could absolutely use mathematical models to get into, you know, things that we have now, like, you know, like Google Assistant, or Alexa or Siri, something like that. But at the time, it wasn't, that wasn't on the radar in college. So I didn't know what to look for.

Tim Bourguignon 15:42
That let's let's do a big jump forward. How do you think this influenced the way you learn programming languages nowadays?

Kapunahele Wong 15:53
Yeah, so yes, they are very much related. Because at when I first started studying language, I, I just didn't, I didn't understand, you know, some of the some of the paradigms, they just know what was a tense, you know, they didn't really necessarily make sense to me. But then, as soon as I realized, oh, there's one for each one of these ideas of time, things started to click and to fall in place. And, and in similarly, in studying programming, I feel like there is there's that same thing, once you can grasp some sort of paradigm or an image in your head, or some sort of pathway that you're familiar with, then you can start building upon that and, and that the way that it, it suddenly kind of dawned on me as the way to conceptualize it was very much the same in the way that I studied languages and the way that I study programming, but

Tim Bourguignon 16:57
that's very interesting. A few episodes ago, I interviewed Julia Marunouchi on episode 59. And she's a linguist. And who came to programming through the the grammatical analysis of Haskell. And she kind of described the same thing as you are going, really through the grammar and how the language looks like from from a structural perspective, before the the usage of it and more more reliant on analytical understanding of the of the model. And that's something I personally never never, that never occurred to me before.

Kapunahele Wong 17:37
Yeah, I think it's, it's not intuitive. And and in some ways, I think the same about programming, it just isn't intuitive until you start getting a deeper understanding of it. And then you go, Oh, well, I see how these pieces fit together.

Tim Bourguignon 17:55
Fascinating. Okay. Let's, let's unpack some, some more stuff. Um, so you went kind of back and forth between between this tech and this grammar studies. And then again, some some jobs during your studies, working in this language lab and doing some hardware repairs? And what decided you to to then move to New York City and go to this Fashion Institute of Technology, was it?

Kapunahele Wong 18:25
Yes, the Fashion Institute of Technology referred to often as fit. And my it was actually my husband work. He worked in film and television. And so he moved there actually to do some work and invited me to go along. So we weren't married yet. And I went up there with him. And I, you know, it was funny. It was, it was a little bit too dense. For me. It was, it was it was kind of intense. I'm a sensitive person. And it was a lot to take in. But I knew that I was going to be there for a while because I like this guy. And so I decided I was going to really take his take advantage of it. Because there's so much there. There are so many resources and so many wonderful people. So, so he was really what took me there. And I decided to have fun while I lived there. And so we were there for a decade. So I had a lot of fun while I was there.

Tim Bourguignon 19:27
But during during this time you didn't really work on on technology. Did you?

Kapunahele Wong 19:34
I did. I did tech support. I had a couple of jobs there as a network administrator. Okay, so that was Yeah, and that was around the time that the iMac came out a little fruity colored ones. The very first one, you know where they were Mac, you know, Apple really kind of hit it big. Yeah, it was a huge success. It was around that time.

Tim Bourguignon 19:57
Yeah, the round ones.

Kapunahele Wong 20:01
Yeah, a little bubbly ones. They're cute.

Tim Bourguignon 20:06
You spoke about, about the textile conservation school?

Kapunahele Wong 20:10
Yes. Yes, I went. So I was working at the school and, and there, I had a really good deal, you only had to work part time to get free tuition. And, and I needed to go to school full time, because I needed the health insurance. And the health insurance if you were student was only about $200 a semester, which was very, very cheap. So so I was sort of caught in this really fun bubble, of working at the school, and just taking classes. And I, I took lots of art history classes, and I took anything that was that appealed to me patternmaking everything that I felt like taking. And at one point, I said, I, you know, maybe I should point this at something that has a goal. And so I applied to their graduate program in textile conservation, its fashion history, textile conservation and museum studies. So anytime you go to the museum, and you see an exhibition of, you know, clothing from their Sire, or tapestries, or, or something like that, that that was the kind of thing that we were focused on. So I did an internship, actually at the Cathedral of St. JOHN, the divine, at their textile conservation laboratory. And it is so cool. It's all, not all, but mostly tapestries from about the 16th century forward. So you really get a chance to get your hands on real. It's like a, you get your hands on art on fine, old art that you get to appreciate at a very minute level. So that's not really directly related to what I have to do today. But it was something that required lots of attention to detail and to work your way, you know, one or two people across 15 foot tapestry stitch by stitch to conserve it is very time consuming. And I feel sometimes that you know, the work that we do in programming is very similar that there that you there are so many little things and you know, we call them bugs, but you know, they're all these little things that you have to go work out or things you have to update or you must be aware of exactly how everything is going to behave together. And it's the same in textiles. If you have, you have to know the chemical composition of your of the fibers, because they're going to behave in this particular way.

Tim Bourguignon 22:49
Yeah, this attention to details. And something that you've seen many times since we started talking is the aesthetics of things. And it came up when you when you talked about Unix it came up when you talked about mathematics. It came up when you talked about grammar, it came up afterward when you talked about design. And I hear it again, when you're talking about textile and things. It seems to be to be always in the background when you do something does it?

Kapunahele Wong 23:22
Yes. And I think you're being really perceptive because I didn't realize it at any time. But But, you know, when I was in college, I had had several classes that really appealed to me. And they weren't just my favorite classes. One of them was discrete mathematics. Another was non Euclidean geometry. And this is I was at this point, I was a language major. So these were just, this was just extra stuff that I liked. And then my third favorite class was advanced grammar of Spanish. And the reason that those three were my favorite was because to me, I was each one of them was a perspective on something that to me felt this really the same. So that I was looking at a beautiful gem that from one side was non Euclidean geometry, from the other side was different sizes of infinity, and from the other side was in a special sequence of tenses that you might need to use in Spanish. So you're right. And I do see a common thread through all of these things in it. And it is something that I find beautiful, and I'm always drawn to something that's beautiful. I don't I don't know that. I don't know that I could work on something that I didn't think was beautiful for very long.

Tim Bourguignon 24:51
So how does this influence what you work on or how you work today

Kapunahele Wong 24:59
well I think a lot of it, a lot of it impacts the way that, that I feel that. So here we are in a pivotal point in human history, with the revolution that we're that we're living in, and we are all, we're all contributing in this way that is, it is deliberate, it is constant, sometimes the work that we do is so detail oriented, but where we are together, weaving something that is growing and growing and continues to grow. And so so, you know, we are human. So obviously, you know, we have to, sometimes we, we do little things, like I can't tell you how many times I've, I've just done some sort of goofy error, and I'd have to go back and fix it. And I think, oh, oh, this is on, on GitHub, and everyone can see what I did. Here I am being human. Right. So, but at the same time, we all were in this together. And so we we work on this, in such a way that, that I hope that at some point, you know, maybe far in the future, we'll have scholars that look back, and can really take into consideration the work that's been done in much the same way that maybe we look at, you know, a 17th century tapestry, and look at the work that was done, then. And you can really go in so many directions with that, with that, kind of with that kind of beauty. And so, and and I think there's, it's almost obvious when we, when we think about programming, and how some people's code is just beautiful. I mean, it's just, it's, you know, it, it does definitely come to a level of art and creative expression. And then, you know, it's like, there's that there's that obvious sort of, well, this is our to this is beautiful I do is is coming from a deeper place within me that I'm trying to express this, this idea isn't this great. And then there's also the more subtle part, that is how we are engaging with each other subtle in that, that we're not we don't take classes, to do it, we just kind of have to figure it out. And that's not always so easy. And so I think that the the part where we engage with one another, just on in comments on GitHub or in person, our relationships between our mentors, and people who are working closely with a mentor, that those relationships are, are where we can lay the ground for further stronger growth as we go forward. So I hope that answers your question. I know it's Yes. It's kind of a broad answer.

Tim Bourguignon 28:04
It's let's switch gears again and go toward Angular. And what attracted you specifically to Angular?

Kapunahele Wong 28:13
Um, well, in the very beginning, it was my boss, just saying, hey, do you know, and, and, you know, that was the, that was the most superficial, but then when I got into it, I thought, oh, first of all, I thought this was so mysterious, because like I said, I didn't know any other frameworks. Before that. I knew, like, you know, three jQuery methods or something, it was like nothing. So you know, it was like, there was just the the obvious introduction like that. But then when I started meeting people, and I started seeing how people interacted with one another in the Angular community, I felt, I felt accepted on my own terms, which was really nice, that, that I could just be myself and not that ever felt like, you know, somewhere else. I couldn't be myself, but I don't know. There's just something really comforting about it. When I I don't know if it was my first or my second engine, cough, I might have been my first one. I went to a diversity lunch that they had there. And when I walked in, you know, I was I was really nervous. But it turned out that you know, that the people on the team were really friendly, genuinely friendly. And then later, as I started working on the docs, more and more, I was, you know, especially in the very beginning, I was really intimidated by getting on GitHub and submitting prs. And then, and, truth be told, I didn't understand most of my assignments when they were first given to me. I didn't understand anything, and everyone was very kind in explaining exactly what I needed to do. So for example, one of the, one of my first big projects was to write, to write a guide for reactive forms. And so

Kapunahele Wong 30:08
my,

Kapunahele Wong 30:10
my supervisor at the time, Ward Bell, who is wonderful and definitely took me under his wing said, can you work on this? I said, Okay. And so he said, Okay, go meet with Kara. And as I met with Kara, and this was my introduction to her, I didn't know her before. I think I'd seen her live code at one point, and my jaw just dropped because she's so fast. And, and precise, she, she doesn't really seem to make mistakes. But when she when she makes just the slightest typo, she can just glance at this is amazing. To me, this is a superpower, she can just glance at the slightest, you know, she looks at her screen, which is doing live coding. And if you notice this, she looks at her screen. And she goes, Oh, what did I Oh, there it is. And she finds it instantly. I would I would have to sit there and look at my screen for 25 minutes, whoo hoo, I found you know, the stray calm or something. So. So it was with much admiration that, that I started learning from her about reactive forms. And the thing is, she said, Okay, so our first engagement, she said, Do you know what reactive forms are acid? I had no idea. And she goes, do you know the difference between reactive forms and template driven forms? I was, I was like, Oh, what? How What? No. And so she, I mean, I knew zero. And so she sent me to go look at a few talks and that you'd given and, and so I sat there and I watched these videos, I'm not kidding over and over and over again. And I took notes. And I wrote them on little pieces of paper that I taped up on this board that I had. And then I then I went and I, I built her examples that she did in her talks. And then I took them apart because I didn't understand even how the, like component interaction and and understand anything, right? So I didn't understand all that. So what I started doing was I would just draw little diagrams, and I would take like a line of code. And I would say this, this is talking to this over there. And I draw an arrow from one sheet of paper that would end on that paper. And then I'd have to pick it up again on the next sheet of paper that was taped close by. And, and it sounds so ridiculous. You know, now, I mean, those apps were really simple little apps that she was using as demo apps. But for me, it was every single step. And I would watch the videos over and over again. So yeah.

Tim Bourguignon 32:32
What was your drive to? To do this on your free time? And try to understand this, and then deep as deep as you did?

Kapunahele Wong 32:43
Um, well, I just, I just wanted to learn it. I was just interested. Just curious. curiosity.

Tim Bourguignon 32:51
curious if you can be very strong sometime.

Kapunahele Wong 32:57
Yeah, yeah. And it was, you know, the whole time I'm going, why did I stopped doing computer science in school? That was the thing that would, you know, would feed me later, and I didn't know, I was just, you know, off looking at verbs and textiles and things, but, you know, it all worked out.

Tim Bourguignon 33:16
Really bad. Okay, this, this was one of your first assignments, you said? Is that, right?

Kapunahele Wong 33:24
Yes, my big my first big assignment. So at that point, I had learned how to submit a PR, how to not mess up my commit history, which I did. And that happens all the time. And, you know, for for people who are considering, you know, maybe on the fence about, you know, going and submitting a PR on a large, high profile project. But they're thinking, Oh, but yeah, but what if, what about if I mess this up, it's okay, people do it all the time. I mean, it's like, it is totally fine to mess up your PR and just, you know, try to go backwards. If you can't go backwards, you open a new PR, and you start over again, you know, just copy your work. And there's nothing wrong with you know, when you're, when you're working to say, you know what, I know that Git has all of this built in, but I'm just going to make just a backup copy of these files, and I'm going to stick them over in this other non Git directory. And I'm going to think they're right there for if I just mess up this whole thing, because it can happen. And, you know, for me, it was a given that it was going to happen, and it was going to happen a lot of times. And the thing was that you know, and people would try to help me fix it. You know, I noticed that even even people who really know it very well have to sort of go Okay, hang on, let me see what you did here. And that and that, that feeling of Oh, hang on, let me get my bearings never seems to go away. And that that has made me feel pretty good. It's okay to feel that way.

Tim Bourguignon 34:58
I understand that. Just completely But you created a ripple net called get playground that kind of exactly goes in this direction as a playground to test around and play around with gets features in a non critical environment. That's correct.

Kapunahele Wong 35:18
That's right. Yeah, I, I really, I noticed in there in working in Angular, because I, what I do now a lot of what I do is when I when prs and issues come over for it for Doc's, specifically, I work specifically with Doc's related prs and issues. That, you know, there are many times when people have a very basic questions. And it's, I think that our field has this, this reputation of, you know, geniuses who, you know, that we're surrounded by people who can just, you know, power code everything out, and everything's great, and their prs are spectacular, and, but in reality, we, all of us are just in a different stage of learning. And they we do have these high profile people who, who can do amazing things, but it's, it's, a lot of times, it's because they've just been doing it for a long time, and they really have, they're comfortable there, it's like playing a musical instrument. And then, you know, some of us are just trying to figure out some of the basic, the basic notes. So, and, and that's okay. And that, that, that should that that, that it is intimidating, your first time out to go and submit a PR on something that is so high profile, and has lots of very smart people looking at it all the time. And so I created the Git playground, specifically, because I had, I had heard somewhere on Twitter, about seeing where that someone had been concerned in about a talk that someone had given where that that person recommended contributing to open source. And the concern was, you know, open source can be scary, and this, this can trigger some people make them anxious. And, and, and, you know, yeah, it can be, it can be intimidating to go out there in public, where, where you see some of the smartest people in the world, just displaying their incredible skill, and you want to go out and you want to say I think there's this, you know, this closing curly brace is missing, or, you know, just you want to say something small, maybe you know, or even if you have an a big idea that you want to put out there. And it's can be, it can be intimidating. And I thought, you know, that that situation, just because just because there exists out in the world, or exist out in the world, those who maybe aren't necessarily friendly, if to an issue or PR that maybe has a mistake, or just isn't, isn't appropriate for whatever that repo is, just because those kinds of comments do exist. And because someone has said something not nice, doesn't, it doesn't mean that we should not go out and be in the world and, and make it the nice place we want it to be. So yes, there are going to it's like, it's just like, you know, our children and, and then going out into the world, you know, walking down the street, you say, Look, don't talk to strangers don't know, they're just certain things you don't want to do. If you see some kids doing something, you know, they shouldn't do, you know, you don't go around them. Come back over here and let me know. And I'll help you, you know, navigate the situation. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I tell my son, at the same time, he still needs to be able, he needs to be equipped to go out into, you know, out onto the playground or wherever he's going to go and do the things that that he still wants to do, you know, live it live his dream, you know, head for the swings, and try to see if you can get one of those swings. But just because there's a kid over there who likes to push other kids off the swing and take the swing doesn't mean that you can't, you can't go for it to and you can go for it kindly. You can you can get it with all your manners and tact. It's it you can do this. And and I felt this way. I really I really felt for this person in this situation where they had been critiqued, of saying, Well, you can't don't tell people to go to, you know, to contribute to open source. They might get hurt. And I think the intention was to be protective, but I guess, but personally for myself. I mean, I've given talks based entirely on contributing to open source And try to encourage people to do it. And I and and my, my day to day is encouraging people when they come to Angular and contribute. But I also know that Angular is big, it's the deep end of the pool. It's, you know, this is, this is a really, really cool website, you know, repo with all kinds of really complicated stuff going on, right? I mean, this is amazing to see some of the work that that people put in there, right. It's like, I, something happened the other day, and I understood, I understood a phrase that had to do specifically with like, compiler stuff. And I was, I was like, it was as if I had just had a little piece of cake given to me so. So I know that it can be, you know, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty challenging. And so, you know, so I set this place up so that if there are if people do want to just just try it out, because sometimes on Angular, we do actually get an occasional, just nothing PR, a PR, where there's just, there's just nothing, you can tell that the intention was just to see if the person like, Am I submitting the PR, right, and then they'll go back and maybe close it later. And, and the intention wasn't to actually get anything merged. And so I was thinking, you know, it'd be really nice if we had a place where people could just do that, if they just wanted to open an issue to see what it felt like to open an issue. Or, you know, like, lately, I've had a few engagements with people on the GitHub play, or the get playground, where they just want to practice rebasing, because you basically can be a little bit tricky. And if you don't do it, right, you can all of a sudden, have everything, like every other commit, that is not what you're trying to get merged. But all the stuff that came before, what you've done, and your feature branch, all of a sudden, it now looks like you're trying to commit all of those. And so, yeah, and so and the repo is really simple to so that, you know, it's not a complicated, anything, it's just a few pages, and people can add things and you know, like, put a picture of your dog or, you know, submit a PR, that's just a karma. If you felt like it, that would be fine, too. Or if you're just like, hey, I want to submit this PR, but don't do anything, I'll leave it alone. And then a lot of times, we'll have discussion on there. And we can, you know, discuss how you do stuff, like with specific instructions, and I just share what I know, I don't know everything. I'm not an expert, but I have my workflow that's worked for me with Angular,

Tim Bourguignon 42:30
I mean, to all to say now, on behalf of the community, I can say thank you very much for all you doing in this in this effort of bringing more kindness in this open space open source world. That's That's very nice. Unfortunately, the time box is really over I, I could so much more. And I'm going to skip my last question. My usual last question to respect our time box. Where can people continue this discussion with you? Where would be the appropriate place to start this?

Kapunahele Wong 43:01
I want to Twitter at component LA, I got my first name. And, and I won't get her component, Ali Wong. I'm also on on GitHub, and you're welcome to stop by the Git playground. Or if you have specific Angular questions, you know, if anyone has that they can file issues, they can tag me and in other discussions that are already on there, if they want to engage, I'm always happy to

Tim Bourguignon 43:28
anything special you want to plug in before we leave it off for the day.

Kapunahele Wong 43:33
Sure, um, you know, I, it's okay to take your time. And we live in a world of rushing. And if we don't have to rush, it's okay to take your time and to read and reread your tutorials and redo your tutorials. 50 times over is totally fine.

Tim Bourguignon 43:50
Thank you very much for this advice.

Kapunahele Wong 43:54
Thank you.

Tim Bourguignon 43:55
And this has been another episode of developer's journey. We'll see each other next week. Bye bye. Dear listener, if you haven't subscribed yet, you can find this podcast in iTunes, Google music, Stitcher, Spotify, and much more, head over to www dot journey dot info. To read the show notes. find all the links mentioned during the episode. And of course, links to the podcast on all these platforms. Don't miss the next developer's journey story by subscribing to the podcast with the app of your choice right now. And if you like what we do, please rate the podcast, write a comment on these platforms, and promote the podcast and social media. This really helps fellow developers discover the podcast and those fantastic journeys. Thank you