#5: Building a Blogging Platform with Alireza Savand

Details

In this episode Alireza takes us on a journey of building a blogging platform with Django. On that journey he shares how he learnt to fight spammers and bad actors with ML. We also discuss time based feeds vs AI feeds, learning new programming languages, and hosting your own servers.

Show Notes

Timestamps

0:00 - Introduction

1:13 - Did your journey start with Django?

7:46 - Computer Programming Experience from 80s

9:15 - My personal programming learning journey

11:10 - Alireza's first Django experience

15:00 - How do you learn new things?

21:55 - Self taught vs University

23:30 - GoNevis

26:00 - AI vs Time Feeds

34:30 - Users on GoNevis

36:05 - How do people find GoNevis?

40:10 - Hosting

47:15 - Is GoNevis the main project for you?

48:15 - Integrating Machine Learning

55:40 - FBV vs. CBV

57:50 - Contributing to Django

1:00:50 - Web3

1:05:50 - Wrapping Up

1:09:20 - Advice for people starting the Django journey

Transcript

[00:00:00] Rasul: Hello everyone. This is the BuiltWith Django podcast. And today on my fifth episode, we have a Reza savant. There is would you mind giving us a little intro of who you are, where you are and what are you

[00:00:12] Alireza: working on? All right. Hello Russell. Thanks for having me on the, on your podcast.

[00:00:17] Bulky Django. I'm Annie resist solvent, mostly to give a little bit easier life for people. Just call me Allie. I'm a Django developer, mostly from background and goes back to, I think I met Django around, I think 2012 years ago, 11 or 12 years ago. I work in a bunch of different side projects. Aside from the full-time job that I have in another company where I work as a head of engineer but my side project or any full-time project that I get on my first choice will be Django and Python since I have the most comfortable.

[00:00:50] But,

[00:00:50] Rasul: First of all, let me say I love your name. I think I let, as I was going to call him thanks.

[00:00:54] Sure. And okay, so Django developers awesome. Loved Django. Hopefully everyone who's listening. Love [00:01:00] GENCO. So let me ask you a couple of questions regarding your personal experience with Django and just general in general.

[00:01:06] It seems like you, you said that you found angle about 12 years ago. Would you say that's where your programming journey started or did you like learning even though.

[00:01:15] Alireza: My journey started, I think back in I was much younger. I would say, I think I started programming around 2003, 2004, and mostly was the first thing that I learned was the language C back in days, I would say where I grew up there wasn't much of exposure to a program or anything like that.

[00:01:32] I didn't knew much people about it. And I think the only word that I heard about programming, it was mostly my mother, because Evan, before I was born, she had experiences the programming. But when I got exposure to itself, I learned the first language where C and then I found out about other languages, visual, basic document.

[00:01:51] I That.net wasn't. Time, I think I just found out the visual, this basic studio or something that it could have been forms, but there wasn't really interested in UI [00:02:00] languages. I really all the time I liked regarding pink building pings, for now we call it back in that time, there was no name for it bag and it was just console programs that would call it.

[00:02:08] But I got interested in reputable development. When I first made my first blog. It was a logging engine back time. I forgot the name. It was that you ran in one night only if it exists or not yet. So I created my blood, but the thing is that in my back of my head, I said, I want to know how this thing works, actually, how come I can make so many blocks on the same website?

[00:02:31] And that was a thing in my head. I then later I got proceeding budget, but the thing , so by the time I think I got to Django I got into introduced to while the usual gang Ashima west back then. There was no such thing. It was, but no such thing. Oh, fancy Ajax, or I don't know, JavaScript USPA or something like that.

[00:02:53] It didn't exist that time. You could get an email. As far as I know, I wasn't aware of any [00:03:00] American hospital ATNT or other companies that would provide a Yahoo lifestyle. The only email that I got, I think that it had an inbox of, I think 100 kilobytes or something. It could hold many, I think, 10 emails.

[00:03:14] But so I got introduced you to a wish team and there was purpose stuff. A little bit of chemistry was a weird thing. People create the tiniest, no effects on the pages with it. We're gonna use that anyway. But then I got to I think ASB was it was windows. You could find so many things around it.

[00:03:31] So ASP was the first one. Then it started PHB. I dealt fit PHP. I learned, I think Zen framework played a little while with a budget for the tiny frameworks. I got my first actual project commercial project that I was able to sell it to a client or get it from a gift from client was it'll be unreal.

[00:03:47] I think it was back in 2007, 2008, if I'm not mistaken, I built the architect Kilimnik application for managing their patients. So that was it. But to be honest, I the [00:04:00] thing that really got me excited about. Looking forward to find a new thing. It wasn't that I was tired of what kind of tools away he's using.

[00:04:08] I was tired of the way that things worked. For example, if you look at something like Zen framework in a PHP, it just so much in it. Everything is like they copy Java enterprise solutions and they find to try to shovel it into something like Zen framework. And then there was other frameworks, tiny frameworks that you had to do so many things and still, you wouldn't know, is it working or not?

[00:04:30] Then once you got it working, you wouldn't know what you did. Actually. I wouldn't say those things were bad. I would say I didn't have good enough, a good amount of experience in programming or computer science because my field of study back in school and live. I've been in a in the beginning of the college with math and physics, but I didn't have anything computer science specific.

[00:04:50] So I would say my lack of computer science knowledge was, could cause me in the distance to be lost in it. But however, those old things [00:05:00] completed when we're finished. When I got introduced, when I found Django and especially their, I think their documentation, everything was color. And when I got things, it made sense to me.

[00:05:09] I'm not saying that gender is best for everything. The thing is when I found it, it made sense everything was in a place. Yeah. There wasn't like view model, template, whatever, but the way that all the things get in harmony together made perfect sense. And later when I go further with it, I found that I think this is the one I want to just to stick with it.

[00:05:29] So back once I learned Django, I didn't go to, to find other good frameworks. I knew them. I found. The bad thing with January is that once you get comfortable with Django, you're going to compare everything with Jack. You're not going to say that you're going to ask why there is nothing, the similar energies for it.

[00:05:48] And so while the no JS, they like everything to be light, didn't connect everything together, but all so I built something very going to be my migrations. I want to handle migration back then. It was, we got introduced to south [00:06:00] migrations and later they implemented in the car and you were all right, how am I going to handle the migrations?

[00:06:06] I have, I don't want to run sequel on the production or do those things whenever I change something. His family doesn't have it. Where's the session happening? Oh, where is it? I think the kitchen actual, I cannot find anything that the way that I think education is being given an agenda. So it was, it becomes actually a little bit difficult once you get comfortable.

[00:06:23] I think it's in any tools, once you get comfortable, you can not move easily to something. Yes. Because you're always going to compare it. And I want it to just masters, whatever. I wouldn't say a master, but I wanted to just learn as much as possible with whatever heart. So every work, every job opportunity, every contract that I got was I stick to Jenga and I had my reasons, not like a stable.

[00:06:45] And we'll just explain why we should do this. I haven't remember. I got hired in a company that I measured it and there were no jets and they would use Golang and they want to create an API. And I hired, I got hired there to do that. Got a contract, but the issue was everything would just [00:07:00] one of them use.

[00:07:00] I don't know. No, just the other team will use PHP and the other team would use, go there. You didn't know what's going on. So I, for the LPI, I said, I'm going to use this JAG or it's give a just one more. Let's just add one more to the trouble. Maybe it's worth it. So yeah, I built that.

[00:07:15] I built that API, the use of that, I think it's still using production nothing much. I think a couple of times they got in contact with me to just upgrade it and do some tiny changes, but they said works. So I'm not saying that I'm the best programmer, but I'm saying we had something that was supposed to work and it was right tooling.

[00:07:32] So it works. That's why I stick with Janga. So to answer your question. Yeah. I think it was a long answer. Yeah. I got into this Django after trying and a bunch of other things and learning other stuff.

[00:07:46] Rasul: That was a lot because so many things that I am. No. I want to ask as a follow up first of all, I don't think I've ever talked to a person who was, who had so much experience in programming.

[00:07:58] It's first of all, it's a, [00:08:00] it's crazy to know that your mother was, you've started 2003 and your mother was programming. Even before that. I don't think programming was, nearly as popular, obviously, there was computer programmers. I don't mean like in nineties, maybe even ages because they were computers back then, but still a, the number of people was so small.

[00:08:17] If you don't mind me asking, what did she do? What's

[00:08:20] Alireza: so I burned in 92 and she was doing programming before I was born. So I would say, I think beginning of 90, if I'm not mistaken, the language was basic. And she, I think was getting prepared to work in banking systems or railways. I never got to understand which specific industry, but I knew that was, I didn't think that the good.

[00:08:40] Back then. I didn't know when I got this information about how it was when I was already five or six years into programming and then was mentioned to me it wasn't something because I think the time that she was have a sprinkling on me, she stopped. Doing that shit. So she got to raising me or the family, she just choose a family over the word [00:09:00] and when that happened.

[00:09:01] But yeah, it was basic as far as I know the language baser and she was meant to get either it was banking systems or the railway system. I'm not sure which one. Exactly. But it was one of the,

[00:09:14] Rasul: one of those things. It's pretty cool. I think actually Q basic was one of the first languages that I was introduced to.

[00:09:22] It was like in middle school in Russia, and they'd want us to do some basic. And we build like a game and I, I often hear people if I talk to someone who is into web development or even not talk, but just see like their Twitter feed or something, but usually the story goes like this.

[00:09:37] Like I, when I was a kid, someone showed me how to make a website or I would really want to make a website. And then once I did it, I was hooked and then I'm making websites for the rest of my life. And I always find that not weird, but just, I cannot never agree with it because first, like when I was a kid, I got introduced to Q basic.

[00:09:52] It was fun. We built an actual game, but I didn't get hooked. Then later on in high school, they taught us how to build a website with HTML and [00:10:00] CSS or JavaScript back then. And I thought it was fun but didn't stick with me. And not only then in university, I got to got. I was doing economics and mathematics, and I really needed to learn how to do data analysis with the computer programming, with programming language.

[00:10:13] And then I chose Python. And then later when I was like having issues, finding a job, I was like, okay, I need to make a website. And then I tried some static websites. I can't remember what's the name is the one that uses Ruby. I don't remember it. That doesn't matter. And then I okay, maybe I need to do something else because I got introduced to in the hackers community on top of building a website, maybe I can do something else.

[00:10:37] That's when I got into Django. And when I tried it, then I fell in love. It was a very cool, but it was 2019 or 2020. And when you started with Django, I think it's a completely different world. Like it's a, you mentioned south migrations. I had, I never had to. Touch south migrations.

[00:10:53] I know people like when I have issues with Django, I search. And like for example, migrations is probably one of the biggest thing that [00:11:00] people have issues with when I search like some questions on stack overflow are from like 10 years ago, like with south and I'm like, oh, I'm so glad. I've never had to encounter that.

[00:11:10] So you will the, like one of the first user psychic, I imagine I'm not sure extra. First introduced into the world. I need to learn this. I built a Django.

[00:11:19] Alireza: If I'm not mistaken. I think jangle was the first, was it 2006 or 2007 or something like that? That 2006, I think somewhere around that the Django came in was published or was it 2005?

[00:11:31] Something along that line. So I got introduced to January, 2007, 2008, if I'm not mistaken and yeah. Sometimes I see a prize and they have this legacy or backward compatibility with south. They will have a staff folder where the migration isn't so lengthy once the January itself got the support from immigration, all this migration was in the south.

[00:11:52] So we're seeing. Ah, I feel a little bit old now we can, it, this package is that time. [00:12:00] No it's pretty good. You don't feel all video actually getting something to get good at it. If you make your poet on it, you decide that, Hey, I want to get good at this. If I want to spend my time, I rather to spend my time on this.

[00:12:12] So I'm going to get good if I just want to go in was it who wrote it? I think it was joined on software Judas that he said the programmers are like that they see shiny things on the job pointed and they just get distracted. I I noticed that when I was jumping around things, I noticed that when I found that, the first time that the goal line.

[00:12:32] It was really a boom. It was all simplicity, everything, Google builder. Can you believe it? Google loved it. We're going to use that. I thought I was getting it misdirection. It's good trying things, learning things. I know go like I've done a bunch of projects, but I never actually wanted to put everything aside.

[00:12:49] And now it's a new thing. Every cool kid using Golang let's use Golang because the next thing that came out was Rossland. Should they go and get a master of that? It's impossible. So I [00:13:00] keep myself to be busy most of the time it's Python and Django all this this thing. Some people call it. It's a dying language.

[00:13:06] It's boring. It doesn't have a, it doesn't run on. Multi-course just hand it's worst one, one CPU core. So your whole system is wasted. I'm fine. I don't care. I'm not building a rocket. I'm not building something that is so performance sensitive. If I want to do that, I can use some, see, I can't, there's a bunch of better libraries.

[00:13:25] All this machine learning and data crunching libraries that exist, they leveraging for Tron or C and bunch of other things, and they make a binder. The thing is, I just want to get things done once this performance became a thing I'm going to deal with it. But I have no idea if my project has got to be used by 10 people, I'm going to be just myself.

[00:13:47] So it lets me to create things boilerplate and build MVP as, as quick as possible. Get it out, talk with the client. So whoever that is responsible for a project of myself or myself, that's it. If it's a slow, if isn't [00:14:00] scaling. Sure. I'm happy for my project to have scaling issue. That's a wonderful issue.

[00:14:05] They're going to, you're going to solve it. That's fine.

[00:14:08] Rasul: It's funny that you say. You used an example of building a rocket, like I'm a building a rocket, but the funny enough, I believe NASA, they use Django for that. Obviously they're not building rockets with it, it's funny

[00:14:20] That's true.

[00:14:22] So I think John was fine for building rockets as well course. And actually I only had four episodes, but usually I have, as I mentioned, people less experienced. And I usually ask like, when you were learning Django, what was the hardest thing? What resources did you use? So it doesn't very much apply to you because you're, you have much more experience and it's much harder for you to remember like what you were doing when you were just learning.

[00:14:47] But regardless, I think even if you don't change, switch up the language to us to go, and you still encounter new things when you're working on a project. So if

[00:14:57] you. [00:15:00]

[00:15:00] Our building go notice for example, that, which we'll talk about later and encounter an issue, or you want to learn something new in the Django, how crucial was the grows and adds new features?

[00:15:08] How do you learn being the experience program that you are what's? I think people might find it useful to know, like what.

[00:15:14] How you tried to make it as efficient as possible, I guess what's your preferred,

[00:15:18] Alireza: In case of January self or any like problem solving problem domain,

[00:15:21] Rasul: My question was intended for Django specifically, but if it's very different from other things than show, I would love to sure.

[00:15:26] But that as well,

[00:15:28] Alireza: the Django was, the documentation was pretty good. And I found a bunch of tutorials, a bunch of things around the internet, and they were describing how to build things, house things. The first time that I see it, when I learned Python to be honest to Django because I didn't have any use for Python itself as I was doing with developable.

[00:15:47] And so it was, I wasn't doing anything else. So Jaguar itself, I want a bunch of tutorials. I think I was able to get some really old books around it, but the thing is they were not helpful. I think the [00:16:00] first book I purchased around yah, for Django. I actually two years, three, three years after I was started with Jagger, but I wanted to learn something, but I don't remember the name of the book, but the code wouldn't work because the version has been changed.

[00:16:14] A bunch of other things came in, so it was useless, but I learned some stuff in it, but I would say that to turn it on the internet itself, I'm a self-taught developer. So things, after a while, the thing is the hardest part about learning something is that regardless of whatever you are learning is in my opinion that you have to learn how to learn.

[00:16:36] As long as you don't know how to learn, you cannot teach yourself how you can teach anything. Evan really messy tutorials or books or whatever, as long as you don't know yourself, how you're going to learn things. You cannot learn things once you get comfortable. Once you push a little bit yourself out of that comfort zone of getting things ready to your brain once you go a little bit, push yourself, Things get easier, much easier.

[00:16:59] You will [00:17:00] see some people, for example, some really successful people that you see them regardless of what they do in most cases, regardless in what they do, they are exceptional. I don't want to make it this as a praising, Elon Musk or bill gates or any other successful people. But the thing is you can see anything.

[00:17:16] I want to see anything they touch, but things they, they pursue, they have this persistency to learn it themselves, they never say I'm going to hire X and Y and they're going to do it for me until they don't learn that they cannot do it. So it was the same thing for me. They like learning languages.

[00:17:31] Back then, I still am confused how I got started with C because see, right now I'm looking at C in something. So how could I learn this thing right now? If I, if you give it the C language to people that learning from some boot camps or coding camps or whatever they say, you what's that, what does that start?

[00:17:51] That pointers. Talk about pointers, but the thing is, once you try to do that, you will find much more other things much easier because [00:18:00] you got to that after that point. Now, when it came to Jaguar was the tutorial. But one thing that really was useful. I talked about lack of computer science fundamental for me was I think damaging the way that I was working with other technologies.

[00:18:17] Oh. As that, once I got to January. The source code has like the source of truth. Actually, everything was explaining the curving, if not properly documented, you would see what things are. But some people, they said, I would say a complaint that there is so much magic in rails or so much magic in that language or that framework.

[00:18:36] I didn't find that much of magic in January. It wasn't just, you installed PIP install, let's say upload their file upload, everything works. I remember in razor, I wanted to upload that habit, upload it, and I think it was a package of. I find proper something or pepper something like that.

[00:18:54] You wouldn't install it and put the template tag or something. And it works. Everything was working [00:19:00] like magic. I could do that, like to hold it, but it came to the point that I want it to change it. I want it to show a tiny progress bar. So we are weird on the cook. And I had no idea how, I didn't know how it's going to be paused.

[00:19:13] I was confused where the find is actually good at actually modeled. And I couldn't find it, but I think standing up was easy. Where the file is, just find the class, see the source code, everything is there. And the thing is jangle will make you suffer sometimes because. If not, then I take care of most for you.

[00:19:30] You have to take care of it, just going to have some constraints. Here's the path that I'm going to let you to deal with. For example, you can see in Django for admin files, you have to put it in admins, that's by models, his models views his views, right? So it tells you or settings, et cetera. There are a bunch of things that tends to where to put them and how you behave as if it's an opinionated offending works.

[00:19:52] So some other people based on their experience have decided that it's better for you to deal with that or the authentication [00:20:00] supposed to be like that, or migration is supposed to be like that. So some bunch of things are there ready for you, but the rest of the thing, you have to do it, it's not as just installed over fall and everything's verified.

[00:20:10] So it boosted my learning really much faster. I started learning really quicker with Django. I think one of the reasons I got much more comfortable with it was I believe anything that I get problem with, I can go to the source code and find out how it works or how to change it.

[00:20:27] Rasul: That's probably that's true.

[00:20:28] Like when you reached it, when I started learning Django, I knew a little bit of Python and source code. I don't talk about source code. I could not look at it. It's just too confusing. Even to be honest, the official documentation, I was I don't, I'm not sure what's happening. I started with tutorials and just doing something and then something, and then, like you said, I want to change something.

[00:20:50] I don't want to do exactly the same that the other person did and then it breaks. And then I have to find how it works. I usually know very helpful people in Stockholm will help. And then bit by [00:21:00] bit, I learn and learn. And then when I searched for something I get on Google or go I, the first result, usually what I get is the official docs or the official Django website.

[00:21:12] And at some point when I started using. And I started using the source code and it made sense to me, it was a very pleasurable experience when I think it's just a it's the next level of understanding when you understand the code and you can search for solutions that someone didn't ask or someone didn't answer on the web.

[00:21:28] It's very cool. It's the next level. And I hope that, people who are listening to this they, if you are still a beginner, you kind of stick with the language, you keep learning, keep improving. And then at some point you'll find the comfortable working with source code.

[00:21:40] And when you do it's you can solve any problem. There's no, no stopping. That's one and I was going to ask something else, but I forget now I spoke too much. I was going to ask if you if you were self-taught or it sounds like you're self-taught or you have any Official learning in university or anything of that self-taught [00:22:00]

[00:22:01] Alireza: to extend on that is that to a time to my struggling to find that how to learn language, I was trying to learn.

[00:22:08] See, I got interested. There was a, I wanted to learn something that I had access to resources right now. I found a book called. The translation will be the Java reference and that book was really big, like really bad. I cannot, I'm not sure how many pages, but I'm pretty sure more than 600 pages.

[00:22:25] And I got that. It wasn't like how to do things. It was just a reference like Java and that's it. I had to be honest, I started like completely freaking out. What the hell is programming? Actually? If a language is supposed to have 600, 600 pages and just talk about the language, is a novel.

[00:22:43] So what else I have to learn? Because I didn't learn anything from this. So I tried to find some institutes to teach on anything and I went there and they would complete teaching some really weird things. Like mostly it was like IP and stuff like that. Nothing specifically on the language. And I [00:23:00] F I think I found that there wasn't an instances that they had a course.

[00:23:04] They would talk about how to implement a very house management system. The course language was Delfi Pasco or Delta, one of these things. And I have no idea what I'm going to sell. It was a little bit difficult. So yeah, I took it upon myself that I have to learn. Then I went completely in a non academy way or to in-store to, to, yeah, to just,

[00:23:26] Rasul: yeah, you don't get overloaded with the official stuff.

[00:23:28] You just do what you need to do and that's it. Yeah. Let's talk about going to this. So go nervous is the project that you have on built with Django? It's I think it's one of your projects. You have many, but I think it's one of your mains. So fun fact is that you submitted the project last year, so you're going by and we're having an interview about it and right now blog is something that is very Hello.

[00:23:48] We're like right now in, in the web. So before, when you're trying new long language, usually have an exercise of doing some sort of hello world, like print statement. Right now, when you learn web dev, a lot of the [00:24:00] times it's either like a personal website, let's build a personal website or let's build a blog.

[00:24:04] So why did you decide to build a blog? A blogging platform rather. Sorry. And yeah let's start with that. Like why decided to do that?

[00:24:13] Alireza: All right. My, the reason of going to this as a blogging platform, as you said, yeah, the new head of ward is building block right now. So the reason to start going to Ms, or attempting to it in the beginning of an eye, before I get into programming, I had a personal blog.

[00:24:29] I would write things. Lately I got much more interesting because even though I was a math and physics student, even before high school I was mostly in math. You could call me a dork, some kind of that. Not getting along with many people, but one thing I was really interested in for me was writing myself.

[00:24:44] I had a school newspaper for a while, a couple of years or something. So I was comfortable with writing. Now, my first exposure to internet was writing on a personal library, this kind of thing. Going forward. I think I started also [00:25:00] using a Blogspot blogger.com, which is owned by Google now.

[00:25:03] And back then, I had so many, I think the maximum amount of followers that that time I had, I think it was like 9,000 people. 9,000 people. It wasn't like you see someone on Twitter, Southern half, 500 K people are just writing two lines stuff, that back then finding people interested in you was really achievement.

[00:25:25] And I really liked it. I would write short stuff, like stuff, teasing with my audience, like cool. As you can see, they call them my audience. So it was really achievement and it was a joy. I would follow other blinds. I would go with them. There was no social kind of platform that people write on a timeline.

[00:25:44] There was a bunch of blogs that was really interested. So I remember still, I would go every day, there'd be like, I think there was like 50 or 60 or sometimes less or more of these blocks that those were my internet. It was my internet. Right now people go on three or four [00:26:00] websites and that's, it that's the internet, right?

[00:26:02] Either a Twitter, Facebook, a bunch of other timelines. And that the joy that waiting for you own some writer that you enjoy the reading and they're getting close to them. It was really joyful. What time passed time passes and then social network get ahold of it like Facebook. And I think the killer the breakthrough was the time that Google reader that's RSS feed reader Google has stopped it and continue to completely discontinued.

[00:26:26] We had so many RSS feed and comment and salt can go into so many discussions about things, but it was there. Now you had to go back and find your blogs, but where the blogs actually moved was either Google. Facebook discussion on the void of Twitter that no one knows where things go. Everyone's shouting, everyone becomes defensive or people get offended so nowhere.

[00:26:50] And now if you go to your Facebook account and you will see just an ad to a generator timeline by algorithm, that shocked you troth that three deaths. This [00:27:00] is for you actually we found that thing to be really interested for you. And after a couple of weeks of following bunch of people, you get stuck in a bubble filter of the social networks, which is, if you let's say, if you have some kind of policy column, a view or anything, your whole timeline is that you're not going to get out of it easily.

[00:27:20] You're not going to be exposed to something outside of your bubble, because you're just going to be the person that it's in liking that. Or you can try them in your Instagram feed. Click on bunch of pictures and everything that you will see. There are a lot of that picture. That's it?

[00:27:36] Rasul: Just I told you, I agree. I don't, I used to use Instagram a lot. I delete it. Don't use Instagram. I don't use Facebook. And I hate the, AI feeds, I hate the feeds in general. And your sentiment towards that, the computer is telling you, we know what you like, and the feeds you in the feed feeds you.

[00:27:56] And the premise there is that I think is that, you know what, computer, I know [00:28:00] what I like myself, because the Google reader, I loved Google reader. I used Google, I followed so many things, so many people and they've stopped it. And it's very annoying. And the premise of the previous point is that, I know better.

[00:28:11] Let me just choose what I want and then I'll get, but not in defense of Instagram and Facebook. 'cause I don't like them. But it works. The eye works. It knows what you want because people scroll for hours and hours. So it's, so it is entertaining. So the computer actually does know what your deepest desires are, but

[00:28:28] Alireza: that's true.

[00:28:29] Rasul: That's true. It's pretty evil. I

[00:28:31] Alireza: have to say. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I think that one of the platforms that I see actually gives me, I would say has the highest rate of open links when they send me a newsletter is Cora cora.com people ask question. And they weirdly send me things that I'm actually wanting to know about.

[00:28:48] And that is good. But the thing is, if I'm in a sphere of. Python or blogging. And then these things that I learn on that thing, or upvote or comment on it for the rest of my life, [00:29:00] I'm going to just receive this email newsletter about that. And the thing is the more that you, the people rely on these things, they lose that kind of appetite to go and discover other things.

[00:29:10] And then it's just there waiting to be feeded right now. Here's what happens. Let's say you're going to have a really tough time as a beginner in YouTube to grow a channel. Now you all these people that have millions of subscribers, they started in a different. Now he cannot do that anymore, but it's, you can, it's really difficult.

[00:29:30] You came out, grow an audience easily, unless you become a master of social networking and get some courses to grow some followers on Twitter. Those bits, the big people, or this algorithm will favor them. Then you as a creator. And the audience they want just to get something interested in pass time, or it gets in some arguments, whatever they want to pass their time.

[00:29:50] And it's fine. But when it comes to the creators, you don't have any chance. The internet, it seems to me the social networks, they are like clapping for the big boys [00:30:00] or big guys or pickers or whatever to push them forward. Richard Rich getting richer rather than poor getting poorer.

[00:30:08] So it seems that way you, don't not going to get anything. But other than that, what you said, I know what I want to say. And here's the thing. Just let me see what I want to say. If I want to you to show me I can have a decision, I can choose on it. So that, that became the thing. So I went to the board first for creating my own life.

[00:30:29] Having done the program, I could create a light or a static, larger editor. The thing is I really don't have a time to do that. I don't want it to go. And I don't know, Pellicano Jack Hill or something and create a static. It's cool. You're going to write in mark down and something's going to generate life for you.

[00:30:45] But I don't have a time. I want to just go right. Publish it and goodbye. If I want to have a share uploading common thing, I want to be there. So I choose to WordPress or blogger in. I didn't like it. I didn't know where my content is. I choose video. I started writing on medium.

[00:30:59] I [00:31:00] think I wrote a bunch of good articles on it. So I'm filling four articles, but what happens was I would just get nothing. I said, wait a minute. Isn't medium.com about getting me exposure to people. What I'm seeing, I'm just writing article. I go on LinkedIn. I go on hacker news. I go on my social media and post it.

[00:31:21] I get people to, but where is the promise of medium gonna show you to your audience? Where's the audience, right? And then it was just a stop there. And some days I will say some people like I'm going to have so visits, where's this coming from? I don't have it. And the thing is these people will just find you completely randomly.

[00:31:40] Or sometimes it is that about, or is that just some tiny thing? Someone's just messing up with things. And then I would say for six or seven months or eight months, no one having ever in a single visit on any articles. I right, so what happens that more clickbait things? It's true for whole internet, but thing is this platform, even though [00:32:00] they promise that they're going to give you exposure, they don't, they simply don't.

[00:32:03] You have to do the work and you will find medium that owns the license while of your work, which is really annoying to me. So I didn't like social stuff, social networks. Or these things, I didn't want the privacy concerns I had with them. I didn't want to be another, I'm not saying we're content or gold, even a tiny handle, and that shouldn't be there.

[00:32:23] I can own it myself. So I said, all right let's create a blogging platform. The first thing is that I like about it. I want it to be simple. I don't want it to be complicated. I don't want to have an add-ons there to click have my, I don't know, e-commerce website and a bunch of partners, a bunch of ads.

[00:32:36] I go into board first.com. I click and open a dashboard. They're going to be 200 kinds of different records going to third-party services, collecting data. I have no idea what's going to improve my experience with this right now. I built go

[00:32:49] nervous to be able to.

[00:32:51] Just be a blogging engine, that's it?

[00:32:53] I don't want anything else. And it's still, even though I have the knowledge that in 2013, 2014, I was working on this [00:33:00] machine learning system that would give you a recommendation of the different shops or things that the customer will buy. I was working in the company overseeing the whole thing, how it works.

[00:33:08] I learned a lot of things. So I think do the same thing. Now tons of library to build a really sophisticated recommendation engine or the state. I have not deployed anything such that I'm going to go in there. It's just there for at least myself to the time that I missed, the way that it was blogging, it was about a bunch of creators on it.

[00:33:28] People writing on it, people will discover you if they want to follow, they can follow it and they will see you in a dashboard. And that's pretty much it. And we try to build. Not all this install, this plugin install that put this on. I agree to this. And let's just find the whole later and their thing.

[00:33:46] Now we usually don't have any kind of tracking of an ongoing service. We don't even have Google analytics or any kind of analytics on it. I don't care about that. If it, my kind of, I would say my kind of measures and how people happier [00:34:00] is about when I get a feedback from them by email and how many angry emails I get sometimes depending is most of the happy people.

[00:34:07] They will not tell you. They're happy about it. They might mention it, but most time you get angry. People complaining about things, right? So that's how I get a feedback. And I love the angry emails that I receive from people because I can eat rate on it. Whenever I see something that is not working as expected.

[00:34:23] So we are, attempt to. Get my, get myself at least blogging place and other people that will look like, to have a long place like that.

[00:34:33] Rasul: How long, how many people would you say you have a, like a, I was going to say how many people have an active blog, but it's very hard to define what's an active blog.

[00:34:42] But in general, like roughly what your, what's your feeling about it?

[00:34:46] Alireza: Myself? I go into miss I around. I think I follow like 50 blocks in going to these that are pretty active. At least myself. I follow them excluding my brothers. I don't follow them,[00:35:00]

[00:35:02] but yeah, there's 50 people that I follow, but there are many others, but I cannot, I don't know how many artists it's, now I cannot go and look at the database to see how many new posts coming. There are so many posts. Like I have to run some analysis on them to see who is actually active.

[00:35:16] And I don't know, what's the measure of active because the belongings. If different segment by segment, if someone is a marketer is different, how to deal with it, they could post a blog every two days or every day. There's some people that keep a personal thing and they don't have a schedule. But I can say out of this, for example, per month, we have around seven to 8,000 new posts that have been published and going, wow.

[00:35:40] Like I think 20% after course that we'll see is most of them are just drafted. Don't get published, but later, next month they get published. And by now I'm not sure I haven't checked by. I think we have over 80,000 posts in a database now we don't advertise going this anywhere. Like [00:36:00] putting out advertising or whatever.

[00:36:01] We just left it to grow naturally grow organically. No. How do you, how

[00:36:06] Rasul: would you say. Attract more, not attract, but how do people find you? Would

[00:36:11] Alireza: you, do you think in the beginning I put it, I put go nervous in some of websites. I think there was another website such as yours that's with Chandra.

[00:36:19] And I think there was anything Jaguars sites.work, something like that. As I put it in some comparison websites as well, put it there. And that was pretty much it, I think. Oh no. They also recommend that to some people on Reddit. I like post at the moment I put something on Reddit. I did bad for women, either for self promotion or something like that.

[00:36:41] And it's no one like really, the blogs are

[00:36:43] Rasul: skills. You have to package it up as if it's good for people.

[00:36:47] Alireza: Yes. I need to put it there and say, but now I think in the beginning it was pretty difficult to find someone to come. So I just ignore anything. I did not want to spend my time on finding people.

[00:36:57] So what I did, I just. [00:37:00] Keep it healthy, like implementing things in it, because for a while, I would say the first we wanted run advertisement for it, but I feel like that it said let's put it out in, but what we're going to advertise. You are a blogging engine. There are like hundreds of them out there.

[00:37:12] And there are really good ones actually. From the end-user perspective, wordpress.com is good. Medium is great. Ghost is ever self possible. I You can go do that if you're a hiker, if you want to deal with it. So why they choose us, I cannot say yet another blogging engine try us because we are different now that wasn't, we couldn't do that.

[00:37:32] So we try to do what we had in mind about it. Keep it simple. Even though some stuff back into the base are pretty annoying, complex, but we kept. As simple as possible on the front end side athletes. Limited bunch of things, giving us options. Do that. Do you think by the time that we said we want to run ads on it not there.

[00:37:52] I would say until you have a really clear mind clear goal on what you're going to build, you have not decided when I'm going to [00:38:00] actually sell, because if you're not going to sell while you weren't putting out with lights, as going to Ms. NGOs might be one of your questions, but as going to Ms.

[00:38:07] Gold, we don't have any anything in mind. To someone or another company to buy it and get money. But no Ghanim is also started as a kind of place for us to do challenging thing that we had in mind to try things like our playground, where we can handle things. We never looked at it as a commercial product, but not looking at, as it not looking at it as a commercial product also damaged us because I got so many people asking me how you're running for free.

[00:38:38] What is behind it? What's a cat. He's not catching. There is no expenses actually. The expenses was really low for first couple of years, it was like 20, $30 something promoted. I will say we paid for most of the things and it wasn't that much expenses. And I was learning much more. It was a learning opportunity for me and my two brothers that did work on it and people would get [00:39:00] suspicious about it, that we were doing some, we are stealing their pictures or something.

[00:39:04] I said we're there the way this. We should put some paid plans, right? Maybe some people get more comfortable. And if you look at our pay plans, basically everything that is in a paper and they exist in a free plan as religious I'm really thick because we didn't want to sell it. The thing is what going in is, has come.

[00:39:23] We have seen, have not reached the final thing that we had in mind. So what, to my surprise, we had actually, I think two or three people in the first week that we got us up. All right. That's unexpected. That's unexpected because we didn't say anything. We didn't want any advertisement. Suddenly a bunch of people, we didn't even send any promotions or I don't know, email to people that, Hey, we have a pipeline you want to join?

[00:39:48] We've got the street since we didn't have Google analytics or whatever, we didn't know where they came from. So I think people just found us and said, all right let's pay for this and let's get this. But yeah I would say[00:40:00] finding us is just, I think organic people know what people are finding us through Google, a bunch of other websites, but mostly from search engines, they found us and they come to the system.

[00:40:09] Rasul: Interesting. That's very cool. So I'll, do you host the website if you don't mind me asking?

[00:40:14] Alireza: Sure. In the beginning I used Hiroko was good. I used Ruco and when they're beginning time, when they just announced, they were first red company real deployment, but then they had this Python thing and I put my Jaguar things.

[00:40:30] But I put it, I put gun to his on a Hoodoo for a thing, the first one to one or the second year, but I didn't like it because it was really limiting. I wanted to change some of the stuff on it and genetics wasn't possible. I wanted to deal with some sensory stuff. I think at that time, it, of course, Chris, we'll try some different things.

[00:40:51] What the thing is here is I think I got tired of her basically. I wanted to try something else. So after two years, one year and a half, and also the [00:41:00] ex I wanted to increase the dinos, charges fine. I'm not saying they're expensive, whatever, but when you want to get bigger, especially if you're not having a funding or whatever, you're not going to survive in that because running for process of your web server to handle much more requests coming in, it becomes expensive.

[00:41:19] So what I did is I said, you know what, I'm going to run. It I'm my own thing. But here's the thing I went and looked around. I went back, we had the project, I also worked in the past thing services like work with open VZ or this reshot container system. So I had experienced with running a dedicated servers and weaknesses or whatever, but still I didn't like it because whatever I wanted to get, it was it could become easily and easily, like couple of hundred dollars per month.

[00:41:46] If you want to get a good dedicated server, not a VPs. I didn't want to use it EPS because I wanted it to shuffle. So I got crazy about it. I was like, you know what, I'm going to buy a server and hot in a data center. And I got that and I purchased that. They put it [00:42:00] there, there's a server in St. Petersburg in Russia.

[00:42:02] I put it there. So the server is a screaming there and I have going to be sent a bunch of other, we have two servers there just for processing everything and then also have one server for the Postgres. So I put them in a conflicted, which are private VPN, so they talk to each other. So there's one database, one server.

[00:42:18] Rasul: So you bought an actual server, so you have physical servers somewhere set up? Yes. Oh, wow.

[00:42:26] Alireza: Yeah, it was first if I was one of them that I said, you know what? I cannot run Postgres in back here anymore. I don't like it. So I installed everything with Dr. SWAT, right? Is it like a tiny thing of the Kubernetes Haley didn't one-to-one it could be needed because the Kubernetes just consume a lot of thing and is completed.

[00:42:45] Different operations is nothing I would say. So I just run it with Dr. Song in the beginning, it was the Postgres database that we mostly use in our project was running inside a Docker with persistence volume. So what I did, I just purchased another one. We got done in the one [00:43:00] just for the database.

[00:43:01] And it just uses only as a database. And we got two other servers there to put it there. Now there's a Dr song that has all these things due to networking everything there. And this engine next to in front of it and low balance and then cloud sending request to there. And we have that encrypted key rotating.

[00:43:18] The assessors gets it's pretty good. It's really enjoying when you have things, but it gets really annoying when one of your hardest fails, then you have to actually call it. To go and actually change that heart of this. And it's it's not ah, when digital ocean droplets, just stop working.

[00:43:36] Let me send the ticket. No, you actually, now you're in deep trouble, but now that the thing is I'm not going to scare anyone. It's not scary to think. I encourage everyone to do that because look, your costs will become really young. So to give you a cost in comparison, my server is a 256 gigabyte of Ram and it has a two CPU's I think, 12 cores.

[00:43:56] Yeah. 12 to 12 core CPU. [00:44:00] 24 cores grows to 48 risk Intel. And it's an HP server SP 360. It's a kind of an old system, but it's fine. I think five or six years old, seven years old. But the thing is, once you do co-locating, as it's called co-locating you're only going to pay for the locating of your server and so racks and that's it.

[00:44:22] So I'm going to give also the side of it, each server that you're hosting there, like we have three VP, like $35. So now once you clear the payment for your colon, that the actual physical server that you purchase it from there, you're going to pay a really tiny amounts for whatever public uses you have, right?

[00:44:43] So it's much more economic, actual, and you can buy this service on eBay or whatever. Sometimes you can buy good service with 64 gigabytes, ready to go for $200. Most of these companies that they have this big data centers, they dump all these things in an eBay and you can just purchase them, but I'm going to purchase.

[00:44:59] And then IBA, I got it [00:45:00] from vendor here that had a partnership with SB. So I got it there and I got it like installment. So it was pretty easy to own it. Then that's all pretty good. I didn't pay the whole amount in one go.

[00:45:07] Rasul: It is awesome. Very quickly share my experience when I built with Django app.

[00:45:13] Or maybe even before that, I did hear Hiroko simple way of deploying stuff. I could not figure out what was going on. What do I have to do? I was like, okay. Go away. So what I tried is digital ocean droplet and I'm very glad that it turned out to me that I decided to go with self hosting because I learned a lot about servers and stuff, and I don't have any physical threats service anywhere.

[00:45:38] But I certainly, it was somewhat enjoyable process of setting up a engine X server wiring up and together do let some Crips, it was a fun learning experience. And I certainly suggest everyone do that. It's pretty fun. And in the future, I certainly want to play, I, when I'm rich and I have a house and everything, I'll have a separate room for servers for server rack and, but managing the [00:46:00] thing is it's fun.

[00:46:00] You're having own server and stuff. Yeah. But I have never heard of anyone actually hosts having an actual server and hosting. That's pretty fun. That's pretty cool.

[00:46:09] Alireza: That's one thing I is that they are. There's 12 fans on him screaming loud, like Reed. I went to that data center once to actually to see, I don't know how I went to that day, that data center after one year.

[00:46:25] I didn't even see the actual servers that I purchased. Because he was in St. Petersburg and his couple of hours to go there. I didn't have the time. And he was also around the previous pandemic is independently, so I didn't want to go, but I just did everything completed email today.

[00:46:39] And after a year I went there a couple of months ago, I went there and I saw them and they were screaming at me, screaming just loud. And I said, God, thanks. I've been working in this data center. I'm just happy to see this from dashboard from my virtual machine or whatever when they're passing him. [00:47:00] But yeah they're pretty fun.

[00:47:01] It's really enjoyable.

[00:47:02] Rasul: Let's go back to the go nervous platform. So you mentioned that you had, when you started with your brothers, you had an idea of what you want it to look like, and it's not there yet. So two questions. How often are you active? Is this your main project in a sense that are you actively adding features and stuff?

[00:47:18] Alireza: No, it's not. Basically I would say whenever I get a time, sometimes, maybe two hours, 10 hours a week, we made gummies to be stable. Like we don't get any bug reports. We don't get any errors or anything that kind of, yeah. Sometimes one of the Docker image just stays alive so long we're salary just doing these crazy things and that's it already not being completely able to handle the loads, but that is pretty much it.

[00:47:44] No box, nothing works as expected. So we are not in Russia of anything else. Now I don't touch it because mostly three of us working as a consultant on other projects full-time I would say, so we have less time. And the thing is, I still want to think properly. [00:48:00] What's going to be next. I know what's next word, but I want to start dealing with.

[00:48:06] If any of you have a proper time to sit in, actually completely stab at it. I don't want to just have no what we're going to just do a couple of hours to there. Do a couple of hours next day. No that's completely planned for it.

[00:48:16] Rasul: That's interesting. That's cool. Let's talk about one of the features I think you added recently is a machine learning algorithm that stops from people posting spam like spam type of content.

[00:48:27] That's pretty cool. Again, at the time when I was researching, I didn't know, you had such a huge amount of experience. So what I was going to ask is cause you actually posted the code. You meant you made a blog post about it on your blog, hosted with the gonads. And it's very detailed.

[00:48:41] Like your blog posts are very detailed. I highly encourage people, go check it out then I'll leave a link in the show notes and stuff. I was looking at it and it's very complicated algorithm, complicated code. So I was wondering like if you build a. Oh, yeah. I want to do some ML and let's learn to do that.

[00:48:56] It's good. It's not the way. And plus you, you said that you had like physics mathematics background, I'm sure you have [00:49:00] like more experience with machine learning beforehand. And. I wasn't sure how many users you have on go nervous, if you say like you have 80,000 block posts, the hosted already.

[00:49:08] Yeah. I think it's, it was getting hard to manually look through things and then,

[00:49:14] Alireza: oh yeah. I'm not saying, going to be this big, it's pretty tiny. Yeah. Compared with other things, but at least for whatever it is right now for this scale, very highest. I go to the admin panel and I refresh the page where a couple of, I would say minutes and I say 10 more right now.

[00:49:29] I'm not going to be on my computer to check all of them. And every day to see what's going on. Yeah. There are a bunch of things that goes out of a hand and later we found that. And then based on that algorithm that we haven't destroyed in that blog post, we found a bunch of things that are not the things guidance.

[00:49:42] So we just put it in the machine and in pipeline and there are taken care of. But yeah it's getting annoying to deal with. We have a guest post. guess common thing, I would say, not guest posting, guest commenting and the guest posting a comment commenting it's supposed to be taken care of because we, because now you [00:50:00] don't need two people to verify or whatever.

[00:50:02] Someone leaves a comment. It goes in a database. The other time could be added a live post. Another time we had been attacked. I These attacks, but now they come, I'm happy that these kinds of attacks becomes completely specific about the plot. Because someone decided we going to mess up with this system.

[00:50:20] And they designed a script for it. Now, the other time someone was abusing the, just commenting, I think they taught we're going to post guest comments on these blog posts and they're going to be all published. What they didn't know was whenever you make a guest post, comment, you have to refine your email.

[00:50:36] And somehow we were able to do that as well. And then I put them just simply in the shadows and they also got it's really, I always say this kind of a character or getting really smart, to be honest, it was like someone sitting and actually trying to make it perfect attack to, just to what purpose?

[00:50:53] To be honest, I have no idea sometimes. Yeah. There is like a scamming purposes around them, whether we say there's like bigger [00:51:00] platforms. There are so many more people on it. Why don't you go try that? Don't waste our times. Both of us don't do that. We're game for you there. But yeah, those things.

[00:51:09] Rasul: It's interesting cause I'm I already have a feature on the Delta jangle where you can comment on the actual project. And I remember at some point in my programming career two, three year career when I was building, I built a form that it was any that anyone could fill in.

[00:51:26] I don't know what it was for exactly, but I was surprised. I was like I thought people will use it normally, but then a bunch of boats, a bunch of computers or a bunch of bad people, I don't know, they just start using and I'm like, oh, okay. And I just removed. It was like, fuck this. No thank you. But this was built with Django.

[00:51:41] I decided to only allow no guest posting no guest commenting. I I only authorized users and I think that kind of solves that problem for now and I'm going to keep it that way. So I think it's fine. But for, blogging. You want to have, any person to write this so you can easily solve this.

[00:51:59] So [00:52:00] it makes sense. One question I had about this ML algorithm is that in the blog post, you mentioned that, your website is built with GENCO and, but your machine learning algorithm to do the text pump it's Python code that you host, but you're exposed to the world with fast API.

[00:52:14] Correct. And so presumably it's separate from a Jenga. You just from like, when someone submits a book post it, it sends like an API get request or post request to that fast API ser ML algorithm goes through a little and then it tells you it's good or it's not good, but something like this.

[00:52:28] Did you have in mind or if not, do you have in mind? Cause it's a separate thing to turn it into. A separate product that will allow people to use it for that kind of purpose. Have you thought about it?

[00:52:42] Alireza: I have. And thing is, that was something that I was looking at myself as well, before I ever an implement that thing.

[00:52:50] The problem is these kind of things are pretty specific to use case it's not about detecting nude pictures, right? That is well in every mind in every people mind every [00:53:00] person the nude picture is a nude picture, but the thing is what we have implemented here, or some kind of tastes analysis is that you have to build it specifically for your own use case.

[00:53:08] What is not good for me when my platform might be completely good for other things, for example, I'm going to be, we don't allow pornography right. Or something much new about it. But just a second. Sorry.

[00:53:25] My cat just got out of the favorite disparate that she has. So she wanted to go out. All right. So I was saying, yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty use case by use case, right? So if I want to say, Hey, I'm going to give it as a product. Evan. If I can give it as a product, the thing is no one might be able to use it because well, in that person, product or your product, you might not see the content that I get as a bad product, which is a specific a bit for me.

[00:53:50] But yeah, completely agree. It can be tenured with the Inalfa abstracts. To each usage, right? I would say it could make [00:54:00] a good amount of money if you try to get a good stab at it because it's a kind of ongoing problem to solve. And most of the startups, and I would say startups, any project it's annoying.

[00:54:10] Imagine if you want to send email, you have to actually create your own email server. You got fine to pay someone else to send your emails. And it's true. It's so good. We pay for convenience. Now the thing is, I talked about it, but the thing is, since I myself, couldn't find a solution for such a simple problem, to be honest, that made me think that probably is not a good idea. If it was, maybe Google will just provide something similar, but what at Google, and I think Amazon, they have this machine learning system or machine learning that you can upload a CSV of classification, and then it learns the thing. Is it learns based on whatever you want it to learn.

[00:54:48] Here's my bad customers. And here's my good customers. You cannot say we know bad customers, we know good customers, and we think this is good for any business right now. That's the thing that I couldn't [00:55:00] think about it, but if it's possible probably as possible, probably we can build something, but then you're entering in the complete hostile territory, much, much bigger players that are they talking about billions now.

[00:55:13] You have to deal with that. And I'm not saying it's impossible. It's completely possible. But then you have to bear in mind that you are in a long

[00:55:20] Rasul: ride. Yeah. I can imagine you you just open up to the world saying Hey, here you go. Try me. I'll deal with everyone. Yeah yes.

[00:55:27] Alireza: We'll cut. Some customers come said, yeah, we have a CSV file. That is like 200 gigabytes. And it's completely annotated with our customers data that we want to learn from this. And you can, I would say, dude, I don't have to have a network of 100 gigawatts of your CSE top load. Let alone to just do some computeration on it.

[00:55:43] That's it. The thing. Okay.

[00:55:45] Rasul: That's cool. Awesome. Let me ask you a couple kind of quick questions on your general experience. Just for people who are interested in you better know what's your preference function-based use versus cost basically.

[00:55:56] Alireza: Oh yeah. Plus recipes, the [00:56:00] moment they came in and said, you know what, no longer function-based use just classmates, I think comes from my background being really over a peanut.

[00:56:08] But the thing is not just OB like thinking that way is that the way that you can abstract things or you can abstract things properly, you can just do inheritance. You can not repeat your career. I really hate that coder always want to dry. Good. So just do everything now. Think about it. Look at the January's framework that they came with their like the model.

[00:56:28] That everything is completely combined together. It's kind of way that they are using a really that the fruit of the class-based system, the way that we are able to now there was a dispatch previously, if we want to not be able to let them non logging in users to come in, you had to put that required, logging the crater on those function-based use.

[00:56:44] Right now we can have a mixing and no longer the creators, because the thing is decorative or sometimes really confusing for beginners to have an understanding. I remember back in 2012, every interview I was gone and Python jobs that would say, can you [00:57:00] explain me? What is it? The creator said, yeah, dude, easy peasy.

[00:57:04] But then I found that probably it's a really difficult thing. Then I later found that, oh, so many people are asking about the greatest. It's easy to grasp, but not for everyone. So then you have to actually use that on every function basis, a view that you have and the time that you wanted someone to learn your curve, it was what is this?

[00:57:20] You had to put your bets on. No junior developers, that seats a medium level developers that they could understand this. Because in any time you had to deal with another decorating that someone had to write either is super user for their grade. But now it comes to be a class-based views.

[00:57:39] Everything plays ship properly, everything is a class so much easier to handle

[00:57:45] Rasul: regarding decorated is I have to say though, the past API use of decorators is very simple. It's very nice.

[00:57:51] Alireza: It's really good.

[00:57:52] Rasul: Yeah. Okay. So that question interests me. Have you ever contributed to the Django a code base?

[00:57:58] Alireza: No, not [00:58:00] directly. I think I haven't sent the pull request to January sprint where they said, you know what? Someone else may have better one, but by the time there. Trying to find shiny new things. I had a prize, it was a marketplace to, it would pull data from Shopify, big commerce and bunch of other platforms.

[00:58:18] And they put it as it was a lot more people could compare them. I built that with Jiva as well. That project is longer because so many other issues that I had not the button project was a legal issues that was around that, that I had to take care of it. Now back then I got paid. I got in my mind, you know what?

[00:58:36] That was what I told him. I said, you know what, my project going to competent, like bulldozer on everything. And I'm going to have clearly gigabytes of data. I should use a web scale. Who is it? Who is that thing? The usual suspect, Mongo, DB and mama did it. Wasn't working with Django, right? That was the thing with it.

[00:58:55] Django never actually, I think I have a bunch of comments, some places in Django [00:59:00] tickets, grinding, Hey guys, it's really good data. It's like a fine guy. So there was a fork of Janga called Django non-retail and Jang Alondra. I tried to be contribute to it. I haven't made a Django Mongo DB cash back in that time, I remember a publisher separately, but that fork was a forklift Janga and I contributed, I think, a bunch of pads to it.

[00:59:26] So I was contributing patches to the main code of the jangle, but mostly in case of it was not the Jaguar itself. I never, the, is that the thing is that by the time that I had with a buck in a general whatsoever, I see so many people have fixed it all. And there are much, much more capable people that need, that can deal with that.

[00:59:45] Then I can see some contribution. I The amount of work that goes into Django code base itself, the people that governing the whole code base, the release management, keeping it healthy, like the whole community around it. And all those things is fascinating. And I don't think I [01:00:00] have a good amount of knowledge with Django.

[01:00:01] I say, cannot see myself that I can deal with Django the open itself for a couple of days. It's a different, complete beast

[01:00:11] Rasul: different thing. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I feel like I'm good with Django. Like. When I was starting to learn, it took me a couple of days to do something. They say it's a quick framework it's built to, for you to build things fast, but, I didn't know it, so it learning style the story.

[01:00:26] Now, when I think of a feature I'm like, oh, I think I can do it. And I usually do it within a day and it's very fun. But as you said, yeah, like governing and managing the actual code, this is a whole different thing. And I think, I wouldn't say it's my goal, but an aspiration at some point in my in my future to be good enough to be able to contribute, not necessarily having a job as doing it, but be seeing an issue and contribute.

[01:00:49] I think it's pretty cool. Can I ask for your opinion on web three have you followed it, learn it face something. Yeah, but basically [01:01:00] the way they say is, started with Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so basically I think I heard this kind of good term, like web two was a revolution in front end.

[01:01:10] Like you had web one was just like basic HTML, but with web two, it's like when you have JavaScript and all this, fun and stuff and web three, they say, that's what I heard. It's a revolution on the backend. So instead of using Django or something, you have like smart contracts that have governed actions.

[01:01:28] So yeah. Yeah, it's connected to crypto to answer your question, roughly. I

[01:01:34] Alireza: think everyone looked jury also heard, not just they're like this Bitcoin or crypto or whatever around it or blockchain. And there was some people, Vetri, by this point, I think would be meaningful, right? And also people think about this and utilizing the OBA because of app too, we let users to produce content and bunch of companies come and take the disadvantage of it.

[01:01:54] Take the advantage of it and hostel everything for themselves. Now the web is becoming closer. Let's now open it and research wise, [01:02:00] now I'm fine with de-centralizing or whatever. And I don't understand where did this crypto comes in or the, this contract? I had some experience with solid language with our fingers around equilibrium project.

[01:02:14] I tried them solidly. I think I've done some stuff around it, that happiness, all, so many wallets, whatever the, I think I was I felt like really old, not understanding. You've probably. I get back to it. I'm not sure if that tree is going to even take off I'm I cannot predict it. It could be something really good, but I'm not sure about it.

[01:02:38] Think about it, the company, the big companies that are choking the whole internet and closing it behind a wall. I don't think this kind of opinion going to go for as long as these Biggers, big players having a big foot on the ground, unless you suddenly, for example, let's say if Google and bunch of other big websites decided to accept Bitcoin, you would see Bitcoin described [01:03:00] right.

[01:03:00] Getting everywhere, or the example of IPD sex. And we also IPV four having the IPV six was, I don't know, 20 years ago it came in. But we heard about it recently and no one is using it. There's your

[01:03:17] It doesn't work most of the time. Most of your apps, wasn't a thing cannot get connected to it because the thing is, none of the big players have started going after. If suddenly you cannot access g-mail without your router, your ISP supporting IPV six. I promise you in one week, everyone is going to be on IPV six.

[01:03:34] So it depends like also Bitcoin,

[01:03:37] Rasul: it's a good point. To, to that point Facebook just did change their name to meta. So I don't know. I just heard about it. I don't know anything about it, but just, I think that's their, first of all, that's their try to rebrand because Facebook is just such an evil corporation now.

[01:03:53] And I think it's their plan to enter the metaverse, which I believe I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I believe it's a code word for crypto [01:04:00] stuff. Yeah but my question was around like, You said you tried to solidity, so you did have some kind of injury and you tried it.

[01:04:06] Alireza: Yeah.

[01:04:08] All right. Yeah. Sorry. It's drifting to something else. I think one thing that I didn't like about solar, whatever, this, that this thing was, if I'm not mistaken, I might be mistaken. There was a gas cost in it that like everything that's supposed to be executed, there is a cost on it that someone has to.

[01:04:23] I think they don't understand that. That's why I didn't follow with right. Like every contract or every action that happens is a cost. And I said, wait a minute, we get used to the free things on the internet. Now we have to pay actually in your form. So what we're going to do that. And I don't remember, was it a company that I've worked with?

[01:04:40] The CEO of that company got back to me and asked me, Hey, you know what? I have an idea to create a system with blockchain. And there was about buying some like tiny marketplace that people could buy things digitally on it. And the way that we were discussing. It was clear that the whole idea of this product is just mentioning [01:05:00] blockchain.

[01:05:00] And just creatively with blood. I Thanks God. This whole hype of blockchain is coming down. Everyone got through blockchain, like everything. I would say building a pony, what's a blockchain. Ooh, that's really good. Let me invest $10 million. So I think the hype is coming down.

[01:05:16] It was really distracting. It was really distracting, but who knows? Yeah.

[01:05:21] Rasul: But I think there was a research that companies with the word blockchain in the name or in that kind of title, they had a better performing stocks at the time. Fight for the word.

[01:05:30] Alireza: Now it's now the word machine learning, I think, has gotten to be like, everything is like a to-do list with machine learning.

[01:05:38] Right machine. Yeah. We take care of your secret. Machine learning

[01:05:43] Rasul: AI ML

[01:05:47] Alireza: and to have some numbers like moving around with this kind of CSS.

[01:05:50] Rasul: Yeah, I think that's it. I don't think, I don't think I have any more questions. Thank you for, we spend, I think more than an hour, so [01:06:00] thank you very much.

[01:06:03] You have a very interesting career. You have a lot of experience and I don't think I even scratched the surface, so I would love it if maybe like in some future. We do it again something as something more, it was just a fun discussion. So thank you so much for joining. Thanks

[01:06:19] Alireza: for sharing your experiences.

[01:06:21] Thank you for so much. Thanks so much for having me and also having a discussion. I haven't had a long time. I had not discussed with anyone actually, any, most of the subjects, because with due to being really busy, it's, it becomes really harder to discuss anything going on in subject. I would say you never think that I felt that anyone and everything that you don't have enough experience because whatever experiences I have, you have a community to a years is that because whatever you had needed, right?

[01:06:48] The moment that you get involved with the project, that requires much more. You can see, I'll look at that myself. 15 years ago, I would go and find some code bases, some source code, whatever of an asset. But I would say [01:07:00] when I had a really good experience in programming, I would go on some websites and see some source code.

[01:07:04] I wouldn't know what they are. And we'll just look at them. What is this? Whoever wrote this either way they're out of their mind, or they didn't know about programming or just monkeys, like hitting the keyboard or some geniuses, whatever it is. I don't know. But the thing is the problem is that you don't have the knowledge in that domain.

[01:07:23] The language, differently, you have everything that you need, but you don't have the enormous for that domain right now, if you have not worked with the, let's say a warehouse management system, for example, and you are a master of Django, I keep you, I give you the code base of the best warehouse management.

[01:07:37] You'll have no clue what's being done because of what you're seeing. You're seeing at the whole process of solving a very house management system, right? You're not seeing a Django or Python. You just see someone was trying to solve a business solution. So most cases like that. So I sit to talk to anyone.

[01:07:54] If it's find the source code, there is really hard to find. And you don't know what's going on, either look [01:08:00] at it or just study a little bit. And the problem to me, the domain that is being dealt with right. A panel system. Is it possible to look at it without knowing what is taxation? What is pain? What is that the specific country that this thing is talking about?

[01:08:13] But if you're in the, let's say you create a blog engine or a simple a website or a CMS content management system. You see the source code and know everything about it just automatically because you have the whole experience that, that's the kind of thing that I go to. I read that Django CMS code base, and everything makes sense because I have experienced building with content management system.

[01:08:33] Everything makes sense this from top to down done, but I go look at their Django shop coders. I have no clue what you're doing. What is this? Because they don't have the experience in that. So I would say, never think that you are scratching the surface. I think there are so many people that don't know, they think right now you have one of your experience. There are people that think they're going to get you in 1 million years. The thing is you usually people reach the police. Whenever we read something new, we said, ah, [01:09:00] And that's a good thing, because if you say I'm the master of everything, you're not going to go further.

[01:09:04] You have to know that if you don't know, once you know that depending on you can go in further than this, no more. That's it, that's out now three years, I think is more than enough. Two years is more than people with six months of experience, but you're productive as hell. I've seen it. And I've seen people with 15 years of experience, they're not productive. They don't know what they do. They just create box after box and they call the job. That's the thing that,

[01:09:28] Rasul: what would you say do you have any advice for people who are listening, who are perhaps in the beginning of their journey or, you two months in, do you have any advice and just maybe around Django, maybe in general,

[01:09:41] Alireza: I would say from my own experience and also from people that I sometimes teach programming or mentoring them in the beginning, programming is from my own experience.

[01:09:52] That is really hard. Is really hostile towards you. The only thing that it does, it puts you away, no matter [01:10:00] how much you love it, no matter how much you're going to, you think you're going to be successful at it. It's hostile. It twists your mind. It makes you tire. They're going to be boxed to gloomy issues.

[01:10:09] They're going to be lack of knowledge. You're going to be time that you don't know what you're doing, but the thing is enough persistence. With enough and enough to go. The more power that is push your back, you just go at it. You eventually learned it, right? It's not being, it's not brute forcing your brain is that you are just now dealing with something that had changed people that change humanity for at least this last 60 or 70 years, it's something new to our brain.

[01:10:39] We don't know what it is. You can learn fishing. I would say a couple of days or a couple of months, right? You're someone teaches you. You can learn driving, but after some like 20 hours or 60 hours of the teaching of the driving school, but when it comes to programming, we were dealing with a different thing.

[01:10:54] And it's hard in the beginning. It's really hard is really other specialties. Self-talk but [01:11:00] don't give up on it. It's nothing to be scared about. Once you learn the tiny thing, Lance, once you pick up some breadcrumbs and you're gonna, you're going to grow much faster than the human is, like the brain is like, You give it some exercises.

[01:11:16] And then the previous, yesterday exercise is nothing for it. It needs more just to be, it never stops eating. You get master. And for people who have not, they don't do any kind of programming language. I would say, once you learn this language that you are dealing with, regardless of whatever, once you learn it, you're going to be hungry for another language to learn.

[01:11:35] You will be weirdly excited about finding another thing, right? You get master of nudges and you want to try them get the master of banner. You will find rustling now and remember style. And the thing is you just learn one thing, all that I think are easier to go and just learn something, just find something, never give up, find a problem that you're really excited to solve.

[01:11:59] You're going to have, [01:12:00] you're going to deal with it.

[01:12:02] Rasul: That's a good advice. Push through and need to get any users are going to love it. Yeah, that's a good, they're very helpful. Very helpful. I'll thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us and

[01:12:13] Alireza: yeah. Thank you very much for your wonderful podcast and having me on this.