Sarah Gray

User groups with lots to say, interviews and more, no way, sharing great ideas in the tech community. Fascinating conversations, a plethora of information, find out for yourself today at uktastic.com I’m not a talker like Corey. Yeah, no, you’d be surprised. Once we start going, then it flows. And actually it’s recording now, but we’re not officially in the interview yet. But I’m going to just turn, I’m going to do the introduction, and then we’ll go. Sounds great. Hi, it’s Mike with Uktastic. I’m at SCNA 2013. And I’m sitting there with Sarah Gray, who gave a talk yesterday morning on Mark by Mark, and it’s a long one, so I have to read it. Mark by Mark, some reflections on writing new worlds. And I particularly, this metaphor you used for creating new worlds resonated with me because it was a book, a children’s book. It’s a book called Harold and the Purple Crayon, and he creates worlds with his purple crayon. Well, first, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me. And what was, how did you come to use a metaphor of a child with a purple crayon for software development? Well, thanks, this is, when I was thinking about my talk, I was really, I was focused on my evolution of how I write codes and how I write tests. And one of the things I’ve been focused on so much over the past many years, and especially the last few years is using the tests as like a descriptive area to write what I want the code to be before it exists. So like the test files, I’ll actually be like, what might be some names that I would want to name this thing? And that just reminded me, it’s just like the sense of, you step back from the framework and you step back from, I have to write an active record model or I have to write an array and just be like, what, what do? I want to write, what should it be? And then I was like, that book, Harold and the Purple Crayon is so much, you know what I mean? It’s so much like that because he’s there and he’s writing again. And one of the things I was thinking about with us as developers is that we’re writers. Right. That was, I had thought about even making my talk more focused on the fact that we’re writers as developers than I did. But Harold is a writer and he’s got that tool and he spends his whole time just describing things before they exist. And it just felt so like, that’s what we do. Right. And so just for people who might not be familiar with the book, what is, what is the book? Okay. So Harold and the Purple Crayon is, it’s a children’s book and it’s famous. It was around when I was a child. It’s around now. It’s just like super famous. And it’s a very simple illustrated book with a small boy named Harold. And he has a, literally a purple crayon and every page it’s like, Harold wanted to take a walk. So he drew a path. Yeah. Harold wanted to go to bed. So he drew a bed. So it’s like, what does he want to do? And he just draws it. So it’s this amazing journey of imagination. And on occasion his imagination gets away from him. And it gets away from him. So he’ll do like a, like this big scary dragon. And then he’s like, oh my God, I don’t know what to do. And then he like draws an ocean because his hand is shaking. Right. Or like we talked about, he draws a mountain and climbs up to the top and hadn’t drawn the side down. So he’s, he’s like, I’m going to fall off the mountain. And I read that book to my, to my children and it’s a, it’s a favorite of my son, but I changed it to be Conrad in the purple crayon and I actually, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s so simple, but I even feel a little dread when he falls off of the mountain, you know, but, but you feel that sometimes in software when you’re like, oh, this is great. I’m drawing, I’m writing this thing and then you get to the top and you fall down. You know, you realize you’ve written yourself into a corner or you’ve written like, so, such a big structure that you don’t know what to do with it. Right. And then you’re falling and then you realize, oh, that’s right. I got myself into this problem with software. I can write software to get out of it. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so you, you, you, you took this book and you, did you have the book in mind before the talk or did the talk start and then you. I think the talk started and it was really the early ideas around the talk. We’re really about how we’re, how we’re writers. Like we sit at a keyboard, whatever, eight hours a day and like make characters, which is, that’s writing and I don’t, but I don’t think that we think of ourselves as writers in general, as a community. If I was like, are you a writer? You probably would be like, no, I’m a coder. Right, right. And so that idea and just like thinking of, of references about how writing and programming overlap just brought that book into my mind and it seemed like such a great, like, wow. That’s perfect. And, and I, I find it interesting in your previous works, you like to take concepts and, and try to illustrate them using simple animations and, and illustrations. I, I remember one where you were talking about how the enumerable works and it was like a little factory and a little funnel and so is that something that, that predates software that you use these images and these, these. Visual metaphors? I think it is. I think it’s one of the ways that helps me think. Um, I didn’t, a lot of times when I’m looking at a, at a, like a computer science concept, sometimes I’ll start to feel just a little dumb, honestly, just like, I’m not sure how that works or that the space is so conceptual and it’s such a two dimensional space that to help myself grasp things, like I’m, I’m an experiential learner. I’m a visual learner. So just to help myself kind of, I think experience what the thing is, I will, I will try to be like, it’s like this and, and simplify it so that I can understand it and put myself in like, like enumerable, like it’s a structure, but like you just write some code again. It’s like flat 2d code, but it’s like, what if that was a three dimensional structure? How would it work? I think, you know, it’s, it’s very funny that you are very appropriate that you chose Harold and purple crayon because when you were talking. Now I think of, um, uh, of Sarah and her mechanical pencil, who’s, who’s, who’s in the land of software development and trying to take these concepts and dealing with what’s in these concepts you’re being introduced to and you say, and then Sarah needed to, uh, go and create a list. So how did Sarah do that? And then you draw, you draw the, uh, the machine that does it and then that helps. She helps me learn. Like, I think I’m such a physical learner and being a physical learner in a software space is a little bit of a anomaly maybe, or it’s, it’s not the normal way that I think people learn, or at least that’s encouraged, encouraged to learn. And so I don’t know, maybe we all learn like that and, and, or, and I just don’t know it or I just need it. So it’s like my own learning aid. I think there is some kickback towards that. And when, when you look at stuff like the design by, uh, or, or excuse me. Uh, what was it? The headstart, um, the headstart books with, uh, that try to use images and, and broken up, uh, layouts to be able to reach an audience that wasn’t, um, brought up in that purely kind of dry, here’s text, here’s example, here’s text, here’s example that might also be out of context or, or they’re just a little bit ADHD and they’re trying to, to get these concepts and learn them in a, in a short order. And it’s already hard enough. Um, I, I think that there is a movement towards breaking away from these staid, um, I don’t want to say outdated, but their heritage seems to be from an older… Almost more academic in a way, like academic texts. Yeah. So, so yeah, so by moving away from that and, and being able to embrace it, an entirely different, uh, type of, type of learner, I think there’s, there’s seems to be a movement towards that. Yeah. And I think what you’re, you’re doing is representative of, of that, um, zeitgeist, that, uh, that concept of trying to get away from just here’s, here’s a, here’s a bunch of slides, here’s some text. Right, right, right, get it. And I’m gonna just come at you with a bunch of information and good luck. And I’ve seen a lot of, like, I’ve been in the, in the, like, the blank face position and I’ve observed a lot of people, like, also in the blank faced position when you’re, like, and it, like what you just said, here’s a lot of slides, here’s a lot of text and people are like, hm? Yeah. And even, you know, and I, I’ve noticed people respond well when I, when I break things out, so maybe I’m not the only one who needs. Well, it, there’s, there’s a phenomenon where people, where, I don’t know what the name of it is, but they, it’s, it’s where we, it’s almost like a, a mass hysteria. Where, uh, where everybody is, thinks they know something. Yeah. And, or they think they understand and we’re all looking at it together. Yeah. And we’re, we’re, we have the feeling of understanding it. Right. But as soon as you walk away. Right. Like, what did I just did, was I? Right. And I think, like, individually, a lot of people in those moments are kind of like, oh, shit. Yeah. I don’t really understand it. And then, when I do that, I’m like, well, how would I understand that? Right. So, so, taking it and, taking that dry information and turning it into something for yourself. Yeah. And then, another, it’s been kind of a theme with some of the interviews is taking the information that would be for you and then when you just open it up and let other people see it. Right. Then it can become for everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then. Yeah. That turns into a talk. And then it turns into a talk. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down. Thank you so much, Mike. Appreciate it. Yes. User groups with lots to say. Interviews and more. No way. Sharing great ideas in the tech community. Fascinating conversations. A plethora of information. Find out for yourself today at ucdastic.com. ♪ ♪