WEBVTT

1
00:00:02.310 --> 00:00:03.499
Byron Mackay: There we go.

2
00:00:05.340 --> 00:00:07.140
Byron Mackay: Alrighty.

3
00:00:09.450 --> 00:00:10.939
Byron Mackay: Oh, hello, everyone!

4
00:00:14.340 --> 00:00:16.540
Byron Mackay: Just kidding. Let's see here.

5
00:00:19.870 --> 00:00:22.260
Byron Mackay: That's not what I wanted there. Okay.

6
00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:23.729
Byron Mackay: Hey, everybody!

7
00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:31.850
Byron Mackay: Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm gonna actually stop sharing my screen just for a moment while I get a few things configured here, and then we will go from there.

8
00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:38.130
Byron Mackay: Let's see here… hope everyone's having a good, good evening.

9
00:00:43.990 --> 00:00:45.260
Byron Mackay: Alright…

10
00:00:50.970 --> 00:00:57.890
Byron Mackay: Okay, here we go. We're gonna go… Here we go. Alright.

11
00:00:58.310 --> 00:01:17.039
Byron Mackay: Okay, everybody, I have got chat opened up here. If you have any questions, feel free to pop them in there. And, we're gonna go get started. So, my name is Byron. I'm a Director of Learning here at Gauntlet, and I'm gonna talk to you tonight about a topic that I've seen a lot

12
00:01:17.310 --> 00:01:32.239
Byron Mackay: as of late here, here at Gauntlet, we do a couple of things. We teach people how to use AI, and we teach them how to build AI products. That's a big one, right? I think that's what we're generally known for.

13
00:01:32.380 --> 00:01:42.419
Byron Mackay: And then the other thing is we help people through interview processes so that they can get great positions, high-paying salaries, with this new skill set that they have.

14
00:01:43.570 --> 00:01:47.390
Byron Mackay: Having gone through this experience a number of times with a lot of people.

15
00:01:47.570 --> 00:02:01.870
Byron Mackay: I have seen the impact of knowing good system design, and how much more it has become a thing as companies start to embrace AI. Now, I want to hit this

16
00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:15.549
Byron Mackay: topic tonight with all of you, and share some of my experiences that I've had. These are experiences I've had with other challengers that we've had come through Gauntlet who have gone through this process.

17
00:02:15.740 --> 00:02:22.689
Byron Mackay: Who have gone through the interview process, and just the stories, some of the stories that they've shared with me, and what we can learn and take away from that.

18
00:02:23.170 --> 00:02:31.370
Byron Mackay: So, before I do anything, I want to just share a really quick story that happened to me when I was talking to a friend.

19
00:02:31.370 --> 00:02:47.519
Byron Mackay: And this friend needed to buy a product for his company. He needed… well, he needed something for his company to make it work. It was a SaaS platform, and I said, oh, there's a lot of great SaaS platforms out there, you should really go look into one. And I was giving some suggestions, and while I was talking, he goes.

20
00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:54.239
Byron Mackay: well, wait, I just built it, though. And he, like, showed me, he's like, yeah, while we were talking, I just vibe-coded this one up. Can I just use this?

21
00:02:54.880 --> 00:03:09.660
Byron Mackay: And I kind of look, and I smile, and I go, you could. But there's a lot of decisions, that go into making good software, that really make

22
00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:14.920
Byron Mackay: What he just did, unstable and, quite frankly, not trustworthy.

23
00:03:15.070 --> 00:03:20.480
Byron Mackay: Not that he's not a trustworthy person, he is, but his application is not.

24
00:03:20.750 --> 00:03:26.709
Byron Mackay: And that's where we have some issues that I think a lot of people don't really see.

25
00:03:27.010 --> 00:03:30.690
Byron Mackay: They vibecode these things, they get to build these amazing apps.

26
00:03:31.130 --> 00:03:44.230
Byron Mackay: But there's a lot of thought that they just left out. They're not even aware that they needed to think about some things before they pulled that trigger. Now, it's fine on small little projects, but if this is something you're going to rely on for your business.

27
00:03:44.490 --> 00:03:47.390
Byron Mackay: That's where good software engineers come in.

28
00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:52.450
Byron Mackay: So… I want to talk a little bit about what was actually built.

29
00:03:52.680 --> 00:03:53.840
Byron Mackay: So…

30
00:03:54.230 --> 00:03:59.820
Byron Mackay: he built this UI that looked really good, that seemed to have some functionality. That's what he built, right?

31
00:03:59.910 --> 00:04:17.929
Byron Mackay: What did he not know? He didn't know the schema. What kind of database schema was put into this system? Is it expandable? Did he think about how one document might affect another one, or how one table might need to pull some stuff out so that he could make it more flexible in the future?

32
00:04:18.149 --> 00:04:32.900
Byron Mackay: He had made none of those decisions. And for anyone who has, anybody who has built a database schema knows there's a lot of thought and intention put behind every single data field and type

33
00:04:32.900 --> 00:04:40.530
Byron Mackay: That goes into that. And… but that was, you know, obviously he just decided that he didn't need to do that, or he just even realized that that was something he needed to do.

34
00:04:40.660 --> 00:04:47.359
Byron Mackay: Second, security. Was there auth? What kind of auth was it? Do we have roles?

35
00:04:47.490 --> 00:05:00.850
Byron Mackay: Could an LLM go through and build those things out? I'm sure it probably could, but to what extent… to what extent, and to… and, how much debt would there be that they might have to go back and fix later? And what kind of holes would exist?

36
00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:13.410
Byron Mackay: And then finally, scale. That's one that really stands out, because LLMs don't have this foresight of saying, I'm gonna build this for the future. They're just building for whatever you prompted it with. That's all the context it's going off of.

37
00:05:14.200 --> 00:05:18.619
Byron Mackay: So, I'm sure now, I'm sure we've all seen this, we've all probably done it ourselves, right?

38
00:05:18.740 --> 00:05:34.769
Byron Mackay: Here we've got an app, we want to build it, so let's put something together real quick, and and make it work. Look, I do it, I still do it, from time to time when I just need something really quick. But this is something his business was relying on, and I told him, I don't trust this one bit.

39
00:05:35.330 --> 00:05:48.060
Byron Mackay: So, let's talk about some metrics. Let's talk about some of the things that we're seeing in the world today of how people are responding to what AI is doing.

40
00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:58.989
Byron Mackay: First off, what is AI doing? Well, here's some statistics for you. Some of them might shock you. They are real, they are prevalent.

41
00:05:59.260 --> 00:06:13.030
Byron Mackay: Let's start with the top one. AI-authored PRs produce 1.7x more issues than human-authored. Now, that might sound like it's not very much more, but compounded it does, but let's look at what these issues are.

42
00:06:13.400 --> 00:06:24.709
Byron Mackay: So, let's see, so we've got more logic errors, okay? We have 2.74 times more security vulnerabilities. We're gonna talk about security vulnerabilities a little bit more later.

43
00:06:25.170 --> 00:06:32.550
Byron Mackay: But that's a big one. That's a big, big issue that we're seeing, and the market is actually responding quite a bit to that.

44
00:06:32.780 --> 00:06:36.650
Byron Mackay: We see 8 times more I.O. performance issues.

45
00:06:36.910 --> 00:06:39.609
Byron Mackay: That's a big one, right? We are seeing

46
00:06:39.800 --> 00:06:45.329
Byron Mackay: A lot of issues there that, were just performance is just degrading.

47
00:06:45.720 --> 00:06:46.620
Byron Mackay: Okay?

48
00:06:47.700 --> 00:06:55.740
Byron Mackay: And of course, readability, that's gonna be a big problem as well. How can we… how can we maintain something we can't even go in and dig through and read?

49
00:06:57.380 --> 00:06:59.219
Byron Mackay: Alright, here's a scary one.

50
00:06:59.470 --> 00:07:11.419
Byron Mackay: This has to do with security issues. So, it used to be that when there was a security issue, it took nearly 2 years for that to be exploited.

51
00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:18.200
Byron Mackay: Right? Two years. More than two years. Almost two and two years, two and a third? Anyway…

52
00:07:18.890 --> 00:07:23.339
Byron Mackay: No, that would be just a little over 2 years. Don't do math live. Alright.

53
00:07:24.090 --> 00:07:25.520
Byron Mackay: What is it now?

54
00:07:25.810 --> 00:07:31.879
Byron Mackay: Less than 2 months Less than 2 months, and these exploits are being found.

55
00:07:32.590 --> 00:07:41.280
Byron Mackay: So, combine that… With the fact that there are nearly 3 times more security vulnerabilities, We've got a problem.

56
00:07:42.030 --> 00:07:43.690
Byron Mackay: We have a problem.

57
00:07:44.190 --> 00:07:45.710
Byron Mackay: And it's up to us to solve it.

58
00:07:46.580 --> 00:07:48.040
Byron Mackay: So how do we solve it?

59
00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:53.359
Byron Mackay: Well, let's see how the… let's see what the companies are doing as it relates to jobs.

60
00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:57.539
Byron Mackay: They're hiring more security people. That's their solution.

61
00:07:59.910 --> 00:08:19.289
Byron Mackay: So, we are, so that's what they're doing. They're hiring more security. All right, great, great. We have more security issues, more security roles, let's do it. You know, doubling, right, year over year. AIML roles, those are increasing, right? Of course we know that's increasing, because there's so many more opportunities for that nowadays.

62
00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:26.050
Byron Mackay: Cybersecurity engineers, you know, that's growing. Open cybersecurity roles, nearly half a million.

63
00:08:26.410 --> 00:08:27.210
Byron Mackay: Now.

64
00:08:27.830 --> 00:08:38.339
Byron Mackay: I'm not saying we all have to become security experts. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that the security issues are being felt.

65
00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:51.799
Byron Mackay: They're being felt in a very big way, and companies are making adjustments for it. I don't think everybody, every engineer needs to drop what they're doing and go become a security expert. In fact, I'm going to advocate you don't, unless you really like security.

66
00:08:52.350 --> 00:09:07.150
Byron Mackay: But I will also point out the bottom here, entry-level general software engineering roles, going down. Now, is that a surprise? No, I don't think it is to anybody. We can do more with less these days, that is true. That is an absolute, truth there, fact.

67
00:09:07.630 --> 00:09:11.370
Byron Mackay: But, there are problems, and we haven't solved for them yet.

68
00:09:11.490 --> 00:09:14.399
Byron Mackay: So this is what the world is doing, this is what the market's trying to do.

69
00:09:15.070 --> 00:09:19.230
Byron Mackay: But I will show you what I think we should do instead.

70
00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:21.870
Byron Mackay: But first, what does this tell us?

71
00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:28.879
Byron Mackay: Alright, this will lead us into what we should do, right? First, judgment is scarce, alright?

72
00:09:29.730 --> 00:09:37.540
Byron Mackay: the… it used to be that the problem was, is that we couldn't write code fast enough, right? Obviously, that's not the problem anymore.

73
00:09:37.820 --> 00:09:53.509
Byron Mackay: Now we're just writing so much code that we don't even know what it's doing, right? So second, catch it, don't complete… don't compete with it. Companies need engineers who can catch the problems before they get released, okay?

74
00:09:53.820 --> 00:09:55.240
Byron Mackay: And then finally.

75
00:09:56.510 --> 00:10:03.570
Byron Mackay: Asking the right questions before anything is built is the best way to start to solve this problem.

76
00:10:04.170 --> 00:10:06.230
Byron Mackay: I will say this on that last note.

77
00:10:07.310 --> 00:10:08.670
Byron Mackay: Communication.

78
00:10:08.910 --> 00:10:25.860
Byron Mackay: has always been an essential quality of a good leader, of a good coworker, a good peer. We all know that communication throughout history of human history, right, communication has been a very key, thing for us to progress.

79
00:10:26.540 --> 00:10:30.219
Byron Mackay: It is far more important for software engineers to be good communicators now.

80
00:10:31.560 --> 00:10:33.560
Byron Mackay: We need to ask better questions.

81
00:10:33.720 --> 00:10:35.370
Byron Mackay: We need to listen better.

82
00:10:35.500 --> 00:10:39.280
Byron Mackay: We need to articulate better what we want to do, and how we want to do it.

83
00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:42.990
Byron Mackay: I've seen a lot of people go through this program.

84
00:10:43.160 --> 00:10:46.760
Byron Mackay: And by far, the better communicators go a lot further.

85
00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:54.069
Byron Mackay: So, if that's something, where you feel like you need to get more up to, you know, better skills with.

86
00:10:54.210 --> 00:11:00.759
Byron Mackay: Go do meetups, go get presentations, try asking more questions next time you're at work.

87
00:11:00.810 --> 00:11:12.989
Byron Mackay: To go talk to people about the problems that they're trying to solve, and see if you can understand what's going on, articulate solutions to them. This is a very important skill that we need as software engineers, more now today than ever.

88
00:11:13.010 --> 00:11:21.010
Byron Mackay: I think in the past, we could just talk amongst engineers, and we could talk our engineering speak, and it was great, right? I long for those days.

89
00:11:21.180 --> 00:11:22.890
Byron Mackay: But that's not where we're at right now.

90
00:11:23.150 --> 00:11:33.329
Byron Mackay: Now we have to communicate at a higher level and be more meaningful with the decisions that we make. And I'll talk about what I mean by being more meaningful here in just a moment.

91
00:11:34.050 --> 00:11:44.939
Byron Mackay: Because now we're going to talk about what system design is. System design, in my opinion, is the new base skill that engineers need to be successful.

92
00:11:46.160 --> 00:11:57.970
Byron Mackay: It is not enough to just know a little bit about something, and make that your one, you know, specialty. All those specialties can still be important. What you really need, though, is the breadth.

93
00:11:58.220 --> 00:12:01.900
Byron Mackay: Breath is just as important as depth today.

94
00:12:03.160 --> 00:12:07.639
Byron Mackay: We need to understand the decisions we're making, We understand what we're telling.

95
00:12:08.630 --> 00:12:10.949
Byron Mackay: the computer to do, or the AI to do.

96
00:12:11.230 --> 00:12:14.350
Byron Mackay: So that it can build the right thing for us.

97
00:12:16.550 --> 00:12:17.530
Byron Mackay: Alright.

98
00:12:19.030 --> 00:12:27.849
Byron Mackay: So, this… what system design is, is a set of decisions that determine how a system behaves, scales, fails, and changes over time. Now.

99
00:12:28.210 --> 00:12:30.210
Byron Mackay: Take that all in for a second.

100
00:12:30.440 --> 00:12:43.790
Byron Mackay: behaves. Okay? I think we've all done that, right? We've all written applications, we talk about how it behaves. Scales. Sometimes, some of us maybe have had the opportunity to really scale an application. Doesn't mean we shouldn't know how to do it, though.

101
00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:45.730
Byron Mackay: How it fails.

102
00:12:45.920 --> 00:12:52.160
Byron Mackay: I don't like to think about failure very often, but we need to think about failure, because it will happen.

103
00:12:52.440 --> 00:13:03.179
Byron Mackay: And then how can it change over time, okay? These are 4 areas, and they aren't the only areas, but these are some major ones that we need to be very aware of and know

104
00:13:03.520 --> 00:13:07.200
Byron Mackay: How to build an application with these things in mind.

105
00:13:07.710 --> 00:13:08.580
Byron Mackay: Right?

106
00:13:12.980 --> 00:13:27.690
Byron Mackay: So, let me go ahead and move on to the next one here, because I want to get to a certain point here, but what is system design not? I want to make sure that we are clear on what it's not. It is not just knowing one language very well. That's what it used to be. We used to be able to get away with that, right?

107
00:13:27.690 --> 00:13:36.690
Byron Mackay: And I think that's still very valuable. In fact, I would encourage you to still go learn a language really, really well. For example.

108
00:13:36.930 --> 00:13:41.249
Byron Mackay: I used to do an interview with, a TypeScript interview.

109
00:13:41.690 --> 00:13:47.750
Byron Mackay: Where we were trying to gauge how somebody would control state within an object.

110
00:13:48.110 --> 00:13:56.199
Byron Mackay: And what I… what I came up… my solution to it, was to use what's called a discriminated union.

111
00:13:56.850 --> 00:13:59.759
Byron Mackay: What a descript… if you're not familiar with that concept.

112
00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:07.510
Byron Mackay: It's all… it's very similar to inheritance in that a single object could be represented as multiple objects.

113
00:14:08.290 --> 00:14:13.460
Byron Mackay: It's a TypeScript specialty, I would say, but it's one that's very powerful.

114
00:14:13.680 --> 00:14:17.139
Byron Mackay: And I tell ya, nobody I ever interviewed came up with it.

115
00:14:17.350 --> 00:14:36.929
Byron Mackay: And that was kind of surprising to me. I thought… I felt like… now, of course, I wrote the question, so it's probably me, like, manifesting myself in the question, so I'll take that if that was the case. I felt like it was pretty evident, though, and I ended up teaching a lot of people, about discriminated unions when I was interviewing them.

116
00:14:37.130 --> 00:14:46.569
Byron Mackay: Now, I'm not saying that's, like, an end-all, be-all. We hired… I hired people, even if they didn't understand it, because they were good learners, and they understood the concepts really well.

117
00:14:47.050 --> 00:14:51.159
Byron Mackay: But it's worth understanding what tools are available.

118
00:14:51.750 --> 00:15:02.490
Byron Mackay: if I were to prompt an AI to build something, and I wanted to use a discriminated union to help better facilitate messages or objects or types.

119
00:15:02.850 --> 00:15:09.840
Byron Mackay: I would want to be very explicit about that. I wouldn't necessarily trust the LLM to build that on its own.

120
00:15:10.020 --> 00:15:23.310
Byron Mackay: Likewise with every other language or framework that you use, it's important to understand its capabilities so that you can dictate those specific capabilities to the LLM and know what's going on.

121
00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:31.589
Byron Mackay: Again, this is not going to probably… it used to be, if you knew one language really well, you could get a job anywhere. I don't feel like that's the case anymore, I'm just not seeing it.

122
00:15:32.110 --> 00:15:37.120
Byron Mackay: And so, but it is still extremely valuable to understand.

123
00:15:38.470 --> 00:15:40.549
Byron Mackay: What else is not system design?

124
00:15:41.810 --> 00:15:53.259
Byron Mackay: Being able to implement a feature quickly. Alright, we all know this, right? Anybody can do it, right? Anybody can go and type whatever, and it's done. It's amazing. It's still magical to me.

125
00:15:53.450 --> 00:15:54.440
Byron Mackay: Okay.

126
00:15:54.660 --> 00:15:56.340
Byron Mackay: But it's not gonna get you a job.

127
00:15:56.640 --> 00:15:57.450
Byron Mackay: Alright.

128
00:15:58.460 --> 00:16:02.350
Byron Mackay: Breath of understanding matters as much as depth.

129
00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:04.440
Byron Mackay: And I really believe that.

130
00:16:04.930 --> 00:16:14.719
Byron Mackay: I really, really believe that. We have to understand all the… all the different facets of what we're dealing with so that we can make really smart decisions.

131
00:16:14.970 --> 00:16:16.569
Byron Mackay: With what we're building.

132
00:16:17.350 --> 00:16:24.879
Byron Mackay: The… letting the LLM decide how to architect is not a good answer. In fact.

133
00:16:24.980 --> 00:16:26.710
Byron Mackay: It's probably the worst answer.

134
00:16:26.850 --> 00:16:27.920
Byron Mackay: Quite frankly.

135
00:16:28.340 --> 00:16:31.569
Byron Mackay: Companies don't want that. They could do that on their own if they really wanted to.

136
00:16:32.090 --> 00:16:35.569
Byron Mackay: But to be very intentional, that goes a long way.

137
00:16:37.510 --> 00:16:46.060
Byron Mackay: Alright, I'm gonna pause here for a second, because I know the chat's been going down. I just want to make sure I'm not missing any questions. I don't think I have so far. Well, there might have been one here.

138
00:16:50.330 --> 00:16:53.569
Byron Mackay: I wanna, I wanna highlight,

139
00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:55.760
Byron Mackay: I want to highlight something that Josh said.

140
00:16:56.110 --> 00:16:57.890
Byron Mackay: You don't know what you don't know.

141
00:16:58.650 --> 00:17:13.750
Byron Mackay: That is a huge issue. I'm gonna tangent here for just a second, because there's something that I love. I can't remember the exact name of it, but there's… there's four quadrants of knowledge, that's how I like to put it. There's the…

142
00:17:14.500 --> 00:17:16.340
Byron Mackay: You don't know what you don't know.

143
00:17:17.050 --> 00:17:19.330
Byron Mackay: There's the, you know what you don't know.

144
00:17:20.280 --> 00:17:23.560
Byron Mackay: There's the, I know what I know.

145
00:17:24.140 --> 00:17:26.360
Byron Mackay: And then the really fun one is…

146
00:17:26.470 --> 00:17:28.089
Byron Mackay: I don't know what I know.

147
00:17:29.140 --> 00:17:30.150
Byron Mackay: Now…

148
00:17:30.930 --> 00:17:42.179
Byron Mackay: There's another way of putting it, and I won't get into… there's, unconsciously incompetent, and consciously competent, and all these things. I won't worry about that, that's just… that's… but big words, won't worry about that.

149
00:17:43.670 --> 00:17:50.180
Byron Mackay: But Josh is absolutely right, we don't know what we don't know. And that is where learning starts, and it's the scariest step.

150
00:17:50.800 --> 00:18:00.639
Byron Mackay: Because we don't want to get… we don't want to admit that we don't know something. It's true for… I think, generally speaking, most humans will feel this way. I definitely feel this way.

151
00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:06.589
Byron Mackay: It takes a step. It takes a step of faith to go out there and discover what you don't know.

152
00:18:06.740 --> 00:18:11.530
Byron Mackay: And then… start to try and learn it. The great thing is today, so we have LLMs.

153
00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:22.560
Byron Mackay: And LLMs are really great tools for figuring out things that you don't know. And they're really helpful to learn those things really fast. So that bar to learn is actually significantly lower than it ever has been.

154
00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:32.540
Byron Mackay: So, it's an opportunity for us. I'm actually going to come back to that thought here in just a second. Dan, Rumsfeld Matrix, the Rumsfeld matrix. There we go.

155
00:18:33.900 --> 00:18:34.880
Byron Mackay: Love that.

156
00:18:35.100 --> 00:18:36.080
Byron Mackay: That's it.

157
00:18:37.470 --> 00:18:38.590
Byron Mackay: Yeah, alright.

158
00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:42.820
Byron Mackay: Let's talk about…

159
00:18:42.940 --> 00:18:51.200
Byron Mackay: some of the most important decisions we can make when it comes to system design. These are one-way doors. Now, if you're not familiar with that concept.

160
00:18:51.360 --> 00:19:02.929
Byron Mackay: In business, and in engineering, and in most of life, there are one-way doors, and there are two-way doors. One-way doors are the ones you walk through once, and it's really hard to come back out.

161
00:19:04.230 --> 00:19:08.200
Byron Mackay: These are decisions that you make, and when you make them, you better be certain.

162
00:19:08.360 --> 00:19:11.479
Byron Mackay: Because if you make them wrong, it's gonna be a lot of pain down the road.

163
00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:24.639
Byron Mackay: Two-way doors, on the other hand, are very easy to switch, right? So, if you have a two-way door, you make it as… if you're spending a lot of time deciding on a two-way door, don't. It's a two-way door. If you need to backtrack, you can.

164
00:19:24.870 --> 00:19:32.549
Byron Mackay: Knowing which one's which… knowing which one you're dealing with is a really important piece there. But we're going to talk about some one-way doors here.

165
00:19:32.660 --> 00:19:35.319
Byron Mackay: Where backtracking is really expensive.

166
00:19:36.730 --> 00:19:37.670
Byron Mackay: Alright.

167
00:19:38.250 --> 00:19:49.030
Byron Mackay: Database schemas. My favorite. I actually really like database schemas. I love designing tables, and where data goes, and the relationships,

168
00:19:49.300 --> 00:20:00.499
Byron Mackay: I really enjoy… I think it's a really fun exercise, and it really causes me to be very intentional about how things fit and how I perceive things in our application.

169
00:20:00.800 --> 00:20:02.680
Byron Mackay: I think it's really, really fun.

170
00:20:03.060 --> 00:20:04.670
Byron Mackay: But it is a one-way door.

171
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:10.029
Byron Mackay: Which is… A good thing to stop and take a lot of time to figure this out.

172
00:20:10.610 --> 00:20:21.269
Byron Mackay: Because you have to think… you want to think about every table and every object that you hold, and all the data you hold, in a certain way. Do I want this to be, you know, for example.

173
00:20:21.590 --> 00:20:26.660
Byron Mackay: I never… I wanna make sure I…

174
00:20:26.990 --> 00:20:35.759
Byron Mackay: when I use the word never, I want to make sure it's true. I don't think I ever have. I've never combined the company data with the user data.

175
00:20:36.180 --> 00:20:53.589
Byron Mackay: Right, my applications. If I have a company that uses my app, I have a company table, I have a user table. I do not mix those two into one table. If I need to, I'll link them, right? The user should have an ID to the company, but I don't want to link them. Now, I think most LLMs will make that distinction and just make the decision for us.

176
00:20:53.590 --> 00:21:01.580
Byron Mackay: But that's not true about many other things. And the reason is because we can't possibly give the LLM all of our information.

177
00:21:01.700 --> 00:21:03.410
Byron Mackay: Right, all of our context.

178
00:21:03.950 --> 00:21:20.689
Byron Mackay: And so there are trade-offs to be made. There's ways that we're thinking about, how this data works, and LLMs are going to fail eventually if we let them make all the decisions. So, I would personally say anytime I deal with data-based tables and what… and constructing them.

179
00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:25.910
Byron Mackay: I'm making that call, I'm making it very, very explicitly. I'm using LM to help me design it.

180
00:21:26.200 --> 00:21:28.639
Byron Mackay: But I'm the one signing off of it every time.

181
00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:37.279
Byron Mackay: Because you do not want to migrate that table differently if you have to go back later. That is a painful, painful experience. I'm sure many of you are familiar.

182
00:21:38.670 --> 00:21:43.339
Byron Mackay: Of course, architecture compounds. Point number 2 here. Wrong choices today.

183
00:21:43.720 --> 00:21:45.780
Byron Mackay: Become bigger problems 18 months from now.

184
00:21:46.280 --> 00:21:50.779
Byron Mackay: You want to make sure that you are very intentional about that as well.

185
00:21:50.980 --> 00:21:56.030
Byron Mackay: One interesting thing here that I want to point out is that as we make these intentional decisions.

186
00:21:57.190 --> 00:22:09.809
Byron Mackay: The LLM of the future does not know our intent. It sees the code, and it has to interpret what that intent is from the code, but it does not always make the right assumption, right?

187
00:22:10.030 --> 00:22:13.479
Byron Mackay: We know the assumptions. We need to understand what those are.

188
00:22:13.620 --> 00:22:16.550
Byron Mackay: In fact, it's always kind of baffled me a bit.

189
00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:22.400
Byron Mackay: When, like, how companies with lots and lots of engineers working on one application

190
00:22:22.540 --> 00:22:24.399
Byron Mackay: And by lots and lots.

191
00:22:25.110 --> 00:22:27.380
Byron Mackay: Like, what do I mean? Like, 10, 20?

192
00:22:27.580 --> 00:22:29.970
Byron Mackay: 20 feels like a lot to work on one application.

193
00:22:30.110 --> 00:22:44.579
Byron Mackay: And yeah, I know companies that have 20 people working on one application, and not just, like, one back… a couple backends, a couple… no, like, maybe the mobile app has 20 engineers working on it. How in the world are they supposed to pass that tacit knowledge back and forth and intention? They can't.

194
00:22:45.280 --> 00:22:59.770
Byron Mackay: And so there's ways of organizing that and making that work, but if you think you can't do it with a human, try doing it with an LLM. It's a whole different ballgame, because they make it look really good. And we're in trouble at that point, because then they'll make decisions that we really don't want.

195
00:23:01.490 --> 00:23:19.809
Byron Mackay: Alright, next one. Auth. Auth is expensive, derivative fit. You also can… it also can be expensive if it goes wrong, right? So you want to make sure that these really important points, these single points of failures, or these ways that people can break into your system, we want to make sure that we understand what's going on here.

196
00:23:20.260 --> 00:23:27.610
Byron Mackay: Right? It's not enough just to understand the code, but it's also important to understand these other components that go into it, like auth.

197
00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:31.400
Byron Mackay: We must understand auth better, if you don't already.

198
00:23:31.530 --> 00:23:46.750
Byron Mackay: It's very expensive to go back and try to fix, or maybe you want to switch it out for something else. You've got tokens you gotta manage, you've got re-encrypting that you have to do. It can be a very painful process. So you want to make sure you get that right, and you want to do it with intention.

199
00:23:47.750 --> 00:23:51.049
Byron Mackay: Alright, this last one is… depends. APIs.

200
00:23:51.570 --> 00:24:04.869
Byron Mackay: If you have a public API, that can be expensive. That's kind of a one-way door, right? You don't want to make a… you don't want to make some massive change and then break everybody else's apps, and then they're all mad at you, right? And of course, there's strategies around how to manage that.

201
00:24:05.110 --> 00:24:20.439
Byron Mackay: If the API is internal, alright, it's a little more of a two-way door there, right? Because I control what the website receives and how it manages it, so I just have to make this, you know, maybe a rollout plan, right, where

202
00:24:21.520 --> 00:24:26.240
Byron Mackay: you know, where I can add some fields here, make it backwards compatible there, and then we're okay, we're good.

203
00:24:26.420 --> 00:24:31.279
Byron Mackay: Hard to do that when it's public. So, again, kind of depends a little bit there.

204
00:24:32.290 --> 00:24:33.230
Byron Mackay: Alright.

205
00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:40.660
Byron Mackay: Now, these are just a couple examples. I'm not going to go through all the different things that we could go over, but I just wanted to highlight some of the big ones.

206
00:24:41.140 --> 00:24:51.979
Byron Mackay: And just explain that, once again, this all comes back to system design. And just understanding not just what one piece is doing, but what the whole is doing. And being able to work

207
00:24:52.150 --> 00:25:07.690
Byron Mackay: Through those… make those decisions in that… in that space, so that you can build a application that can then scale and fail, one that you can change, one that you can, continue to build with.

208
00:25:09.060 --> 00:25:09.760
Byron Mackay: Alright.

209
00:25:10.080 --> 00:25:11.769
Byron Mackay: I'm gonna pause here for a second.

210
00:25:11.970 --> 00:25:14.080
Byron Mackay: Just go through, let's see…

211
00:25:16.350 --> 00:25:24.240
Byron Mackay: Let's see… there is no repo today, but I do have something that I'm going to share with you after.

212
00:25:24.630 --> 00:25:25.830
Byron Mackay: But no repo.

213
00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:51.130
Byron Mackay: Alright, Josh has an interesting, story, it looks like here. I recently ran into an issue with a one-way door. It built a rag pipeline that uses Voyage AI for embeddings. My database table stores vectors of 1024. I was going to switch to a more performant AI model, but it only outputted in 1536. That's too bad.

214
00:25:51.580 --> 00:25:54.120
Byron Mackay: Yeah, there you go. So,

215
00:25:54.310 --> 00:25:58.109
Byron Mackay: Yeah, what do you… what do you do, right?

216
00:25:58.290 --> 00:26:14.140
Byron Mackay: I know exactly… I'm laughing because I know the problem personally as well. But now you know, right? It's a tough lesson, but yeah, that's those kinds of things where it's like, you want to understand that beforehand so you know what you're getting into.

217
00:26:14.350 --> 00:26:22.040
Byron Mackay: And we just… we haven't… we haven't always hit, that extremely well. I will say this,

218
00:26:22.890 --> 00:26:25.000
Byron Mackay: When it comes to system design.

219
00:26:26.610 --> 00:26:38.729
Byron Mackay: It used to be that this was the kind of thing that got you promoted. It got you pushed up that ladder, you became a leader when you understood how systems worked, and how your company's systems worked.

220
00:26:38.970 --> 00:26:47.910
Byron Mackay: That was a big deal, and now it feels more and more, from what I can tell, that this is becoming more of an expectation of all, not just a few.

221
00:26:48.650 --> 00:26:54.509
Byron Mackay: Or at least it's expected that everybody will learn to some breadth of what's going on, more than just a few.

222
00:26:56.060 --> 00:26:58.580
Byron Mackay: So… There you go.

223
00:27:00.060 --> 00:27:01.479
Byron Mackay: Let's go on to the next one.

224
00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:09.640
Byron Mackay: Alright, the trade-off layer. I alluded to this earlier, but I want to emphasize this again.

225
00:27:10.060 --> 00:27:12.469
Byron Mackay: AI sees only the code.

226
00:27:12.710 --> 00:27:15.449
Byron Mackay: Not why your team made the decision to do it.

227
00:27:16.350 --> 00:27:18.850
Byron Mackay: I think this is really important, too.

228
00:27:19.150 --> 00:27:22.829
Byron Mackay: To underst… to… to accept, right?

229
00:27:23.490 --> 00:27:30.940
Byron Mackay: AI only sees your code, so when it's looking at the code, and when I say your code, it's probably not code you wrote, right? It's what other LLMs wrote.

230
00:27:31.530 --> 00:27:35.249
Byron Mackay: But when it sees the code, it has to… Infers so much.

231
00:27:35.420 --> 00:27:38.519
Byron Mackay: From that information, and only that information.

232
00:27:38.700 --> 00:27:52.430
Byron Mackay: Now, you can write CloudMD files or agent.md files to kind of help it know more about intention. I think I would encourage anybody to do that. But at the end of the day, there's still trade-offs that you made, that you consciously made.

233
00:27:52.660 --> 00:27:56.500
Byron Mackay: Hopefully, that you are consciously… that you consciously made.

234
00:27:56.840 --> 00:27:59.820
Byron Mackay: that the AI will have a hard time inferring.

235
00:28:00.390 --> 00:28:05.860
Byron Mackay: So… Really important that you take the time

236
00:28:06.380 --> 00:28:11.329
Byron Mackay: To understand those trade-offs and somehow document those. Or…

237
00:28:11.850 --> 00:28:17.979
Byron Mackay: With a smaller… if you have a team where you can all discuss these trade-offs and understand the implications.

238
00:28:18.470 --> 00:28:22.409
Byron Mackay: Then you can, relay those into the prompt.

239
00:28:22.790 --> 00:28:26.450
Byron Mackay: Right? Or you can at least detect it when the PR comes out.

240
00:28:27.580 --> 00:28:37.470
Byron Mackay: But this is invisible context, right? This is what's… what context is not necessarily known that sometimes we hope the LLM will figure out on its own.

241
00:28:42.090 --> 00:28:48.319
Byron Mackay: So, there is this idea of comprehension debt, which is not… it's technical debt, comprehension debt,

242
00:28:48.800 --> 00:29:04.749
Byron Mackay: But this is a problem that we see a lot of with, of course, LLMs producing so much code, and nobody really understanding all the nuance inside of it. I'm not saying that you need to understand all the code line by line. I really don't think that's a requirement these days.

243
00:29:04.910 --> 00:29:10.279
Byron Mackay: We can get by doing a lot better if we do understand the interfaces.

244
00:29:11.340 --> 00:29:21.340
Byron Mackay: So, if we have a component in our application, we understand the interfaces of how it interacts, that will go a long way. The business logic inside, we should review and make sure, at least at the time that it's working.

245
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:27.299
Byron Mackay: But we don't need to understand all the ins and outs, right? We don't need to understand so much of the deep detail that

246
00:29:27.670 --> 00:29:32.110
Byron Mackay: That would take way too long. And quite frankly, we never have.

247
00:29:32.260 --> 00:29:33.100
Byron Mackay: So…

248
00:29:33.620 --> 00:29:41.070
Byron Mackay: And we've worked just fine without it. But understanding the interfaces and understanding the components it's working with, all very important things.

249
00:29:42.130 --> 00:29:43.050
Byron Mackay: Okay.

250
00:29:43.160 --> 00:29:52.669
Byron Mackay: So we've gone through a lot of, you know, what makes system design important, what are the pitfalls that we can pull into when we don't have good system design.

251
00:29:53.320 --> 00:29:56.899
Byron Mackay: What do we even want to know about system design? Where should we even begin?

252
00:29:57.510 --> 00:30:07.379
Byron Mackay: And what are companies doing about it? Like, we've seen them hire a lot of security roles. I talk about all the system design stuff. Let me give you an example, really quick, two stories.

253
00:30:07.670 --> 00:30:10.739
Byron Mackay: Of questions that were asked in interviews.

254
00:30:10.960 --> 00:30:15.930
Byron Mackay: That related to even just basic understanding of system design.

255
00:30:16.980 --> 00:30:26.689
Byron Mackay: And the outcomes that happened there. The first instance was when an interviewer asked the other… asked the interviewee.

256
00:30:28.140 --> 00:30:31.349
Byron Mackay: What is the difference between Postgres and Mongo?

257
00:30:34.150 --> 00:30:37.439
Byron Mackay: And that's what… that was the whole question. There's nothing else to it.

258
00:30:37.840 --> 00:30:41.269
Byron Mackay: Now, some of you might go, oh, I know exactly what that is.

259
00:30:41.390 --> 00:30:48.399
Byron Mackay: And some of you might be going, I actually have no idea. And you're fine either way. I'm not here to call anybody out.

260
00:30:48.690 --> 00:30:53.200
Byron Mackay: But the fact is, that was the question… those were the kinds of questions that I'm seeing me ask more and more and more.

261
00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:59.259
Byron Mackay: There are people who are asking these kind of questions to see, do they understand the breadth?

262
00:30:59.620 --> 00:31:04.480
Byron Mackay: Not necessarily the depth. That question is a fairly high… is a very, very high-level question, I would say.

263
00:31:05.110 --> 00:31:11.549
Byron Mackay: But, do they have that… they want to see if you have that comprehension of understanding the decisions

264
00:31:11.860 --> 00:31:25.659
Byron Mackay: Of when to choose one or the other. And you may not even be a database guy, right? I mean, I talk about building schemas all the time, but did I ever live outside of, relational databases? Hardly ever, right? I'm a relational database guy.

265
00:31:26.190 --> 00:31:30.740
Byron Mackay: I don't know if I'm a traditional database guy, but that's what I've worked in a lot, and I'm really good at building those tables.

266
00:31:30.870 --> 00:31:32.680
Byron Mackay: Understanding them, and going through them.

267
00:31:33.220 --> 00:31:39.690
Byron Mackay: But I would, but anyway, in this particular situation, the person had no idea.

268
00:31:40.510 --> 00:31:44.349
Byron Mackay: And, as you can imagine, That… went down.

269
00:31:45.760 --> 00:31:52.270
Byron Mackay: Daniel, you nailed it. Postgres structured, relational, Mongo, unstructured, document-based.

270
00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:57.209
Byron Mackay: I don't think it's too overly simple. I think for that question, that's perfectly fine.

271
00:31:57.570 --> 00:32:05.959
Byron Mackay: Now, they might go deeper, right, after that first question. Maybe it was one of those cases where it's like, let's start high level and then dig down and see how far they go, but he didn't go very far.

272
00:32:06.590 --> 00:32:07.680
Byron Mackay: Obviously.

273
00:32:08.470 --> 00:32:10.460
Byron Mackay: Let me tell you another interview story.

274
00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:29.799
Byron Mackay: This was from a very accomplished engineer who went into an interview, and they said, they were talking about their architecture, and they said, we're using this Postgres database, and here's all of our systems, and here's how everything works, and so she had a pretty good idea of how the data was being passed through, and the person asked.

275
00:32:29.830 --> 00:32:34.500
Byron Mackay: What would you do when you got to 50,000 users in the database?

276
00:32:35.340 --> 00:32:42.149
Byron Mackay: Now, that is… I'm missing a lot of context here of how this answer was produced.

277
00:32:42.380 --> 00:32:44.110
Byron Mackay: But that was the question.

278
00:32:44.650 --> 00:32:54.370
Byron Mackay: And her response, and again, I can't explain it entirely, because I wasn't the one that interview, and I was hearing this from her, was I wouldn't use Postgres anymore.

279
00:32:55.770 --> 00:33:00.929
Byron Mackay: I thought that was such an interesting answer. But then she goes on to explain why.

280
00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:06.670
Byron Mackay: And the person agreed with her. He said, that's absolutely right, that's what we should do, is get off of Postgres at that point.

281
00:33:07.320 --> 00:33:22.510
Byron Mackay: And I thought that was so interesting. There was this understanding that she had of what happens when you start to scale an application. I don't think 50,000 is necessarily super big. I don't know, and again, I can't remember all the details, but she had this understanding. This is a separate company, by the way. Different company.

282
00:33:22.700 --> 00:33:30.870
Byron Mackay: Asking similar questions. They want to see our breadth as engineers. This is what we're seeing, this is what's happening.

283
00:33:31.350 --> 00:33:39.289
Byron Mackay: And so we need to… we need to figure out, we need to obtain this breadth so that we can become…

284
00:33:39.640 --> 00:33:48.090
Byron Mackay: engineers that companies want to hire. Features right now today are so cheap to build, anybody can build them, right? So what do we offer? Judgment.

285
00:33:48.340 --> 00:34:00.489
Byron Mackay: We offer breadth of understanding. When we build systems, when we build an application, it's not just the website anymore, but it's everything that goes around it. And how do we make those decisions? How do we make them very clear?

286
00:34:00.550 --> 00:34:17.090
Byron Mackay: And how do we articulate that? When we tell somebody in business we're using Mongo over Postgres, we need to come up with a good reason to explain why. Well, maybe not to them, they'll just take our word for it. At least that's what I usually have seen in the past, when I've offered Mongo over, you know, or something else over a relational database.

287
00:34:17.949 --> 00:34:25.580
Byron Mackay: But how do we make sure that our decisions are going to help the product scale and build, and fail appropriately, and all those kinds of things?

288
00:34:25.739 --> 00:34:27.270
Byron Mackay: So,

289
00:34:28.050 --> 00:34:39.929
Byron Mackay: Anyway, I'm sending this out to you all to say this is what we're seeing, it's becoming very evident, and this solves, by the way, coming back a little… coming back to what I talked about in the beginning.

290
00:34:40.010 --> 00:34:49.079
Byron Mackay: In a lot of ways, knowing how to design a good system will resolve a lot of the security errors that we're starting to see.

291
00:34:49.810 --> 00:34:52.010
Byron Mackay: We will understand how…

292
00:34:54.620 --> 00:35:03.079
Byron Mackay: how encryption works, how roles work, how access to data works. There's all these pieces that we need to be very aware of.

293
00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:05.810
Byron Mackay: And companies are picking up on it.

294
00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:12.389
Byron Mackay: That's… that's what I want to… that's kind of the big takeaway… one of the big takeaways I want you to have tonight.

295
00:35:12.540 --> 00:35:15.370
Byron Mackay: Is that's where companies are seeing the need.

296
00:35:15.680 --> 00:35:19.669
Byron Mackay: They're afraid of the security issues, so some companies are hiring more security people.

297
00:35:20.180 --> 00:35:34.840
Byron Mackay: And we are seeing the need for companies needing engineers who understand applications at a higher level, so that they can avoid those security issues entirely, but also build a more scalable solution.

298
00:35:35.230 --> 00:35:40.129
Byron Mackay: We can all take a good guess what would happen if we just let an LLM churn on an app for a year.

299
00:35:41.230 --> 00:35:43.059
Byron Mackay: Probably run into a lot of issues.

300
00:35:43.970 --> 00:35:47.009
Byron Mackay: Especially in large legacy codebases.

301
00:35:47.620 --> 00:35:54.689
Byron Mackay: So we need people who understand the system design principles a lot better.

302
00:35:55.030 --> 00:35:56.739
Byron Mackay: And companies are keying in on it.

303
00:35:59.030 --> 00:36:02.059
Byron Mackay: Tanya, I'm gonna answer your question here.

304
00:36:02.620 --> 00:36:08.460
Byron Mackay: Yeah, because I think it's… it might lead into my next point here, so I'm gonna stop here and answer that.

305
00:36:08.830 --> 00:36:16.630
Byron Mackay: How should a beginner with limited hands-on experience in architecting systems prepare for solutions architecture or system design interview questions like these?

306
00:36:17.490 --> 00:36:19.379
Byron Mackay: I am so glad you asked that question.

307
00:36:20.270 --> 00:36:22.499
Byron Mackay: I'm gonna go through a few of those right now.

308
00:36:27.400 --> 00:36:30.800
Byron Mackay: Okay, this is… this part here is largely…

309
00:36:30.940 --> 00:36:33.170
Byron Mackay: Callbacks to something we had earlier.

310
00:36:35.370 --> 00:36:39.959
Byron Mackay: But, so let's… let's… I'll move on here, to this part. How do you do this?

311
00:36:43.350 --> 00:36:48.819
Byron Mackay: First off, this is not in order. Don't do this in order. These are just…

312
00:36:49.090 --> 00:36:51.300
Byron Mackay: Some helpful resources for you.

313
00:36:52.090 --> 00:36:54.559
Byron Mackay: There are a couple books I would recommend.

314
00:36:54.970 --> 00:36:56.560
Byron Mackay: Screenshot this page.

315
00:36:58.090 --> 00:37:01.769
Byron Mackay: Read, read System Design Interviewed Volume 1 and 2.

316
00:37:02.390 --> 00:37:07.370
Byron Mackay: Very, very helpful. Designing data-intensive applications. I…

317
00:37:08.610 --> 00:37:10.239
Byron Mackay: I think this book is phenomenal.

318
00:37:11.750 --> 00:37:22.380
Byron Mackay: I think this book is really hard to read. I wouldn't read this as your first book. Let me put it that way. I would make sure you have a very good foundation first.

319
00:37:23.560 --> 00:37:25.539
Byron Mackay: Before you go into this.

320
00:37:27.100 --> 00:37:30.340
Byron Mackay: Understanding distributed systems is another one I'd also recommend.

321
00:37:31.490 --> 00:37:42.249
Byron Mackay: I've talked about this, number two, I talked about this a lot. Learn all the features of your language. So, I mentioned things like description unions, this is for TypeScript records, type nearing, that's all TypeScript…

322
00:37:42.570 --> 00:37:49.429
Byron Mackay: jargon, if TypeScript is not the one you're using, go learn it for Java, go learn it for whatever else you're learning.

323
00:37:49.980 --> 00:38:09.520
Byron Mackay: But they exist, these features exist for a reason, right? Somebody really smart, probably a lot smarter than me, definitely a lot smarter than me, put these together, and there's a really good intention around it. Understanding that intention and when do you leverage those things, becomes very important, and LLMs will generally regress to the mean, will not always leverage those.

324
00:38:10.050 --> 00:38:13.149
Byron Mackay: But, if we're aware of them and understand how to use them.

325
00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:18.120
Byron Mackay: then we can just dictate to the LLM how and when to use those appropriately.

326
00:38:18.650 --> 00:38:20.199
Byron Mackay: Very, very powerful there.

327
00:38:20.580 --> 00:38:24.079
Byron Mackay: Number 3. This is where I would actually start.

328
00:38:24.740 --> 00:38:26.620
Byron Mackay: Use Claude as a teacher.

329
00:38:26.910 --> 00:38:27.820
Byron Mackay: Okay?

330
00:38:27.950 --> 00:38:33.550
Byron Mackay: And when you, coming back to Tanya's question about where do I begin.

331
00:38:34.290 --> 00:38:37.339
Byron Mackay: I'm gonna give you a resource tonight to help you do that.

332
00:38:37.940 --> 00:38:44.209
Byron Mackay: And I will talk about that here, I think, in just the next… actually, I might do it right now, might be the next slide.

333
00:38:46.680 --> 00:38:58.379
Byron Mackay: Actually, I may have missed this part in the slide, so I'm going to tell you, but we'll come back to it in a second. The fourth thing you do is, once you kind of feel comfortable, try deploying this for real. I think Railway's actually a really great place to start.

334
00:38:58.590 --> 00:39:14.310
Byron Mackay: I always get nervous… I know AWS is where most people are, GCP, Azure. I get really nervous on those, because I've had, as anybody who's probably used them to an extent, has used those, I have definitely cost a lot more money than I intended to.

335
00:39:14.310 --> 00:39:21.069
Byron Mackay: And and I know many other people who have done the same thing.

336
00:39:21.210 --> 00:39:35.050
Byron Mackay: So I get really nervous about using AWS or Azure to try to do anything new, unless I am really comfortable. Like, I can spin up a Lambda just fine, right? But if you're… if I start to venture outside of that too much.

337
00:39:35.370 --> 00:39:37.789
Byron Mackay: I get nervous. I get nervous.

338
00:39:38.470 --> 00:39:40.540
Byron Mackay: So…

339
00:39:40.660 --> 00:39:56.040
Byron Mackay: But Railway's great, because they handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that you don't need to worry about. You can still practice with different databases, you can practice with different servers, and all these different configurations, so it's a really nice place to kind of live.

340
00:39:56.040 --> 00:40:01.839
Byron Mackay: and practice in. It does cost a little bit of money, but you're probably not gonna spend the…

341
00:40:02.180 --> 00:40:04.790
Byron Mackay: Thousands? Tens of thousands?

342
00:40:05.270 --> 00:40:10.170
Byron Mackay: Hundreds of thousands that I've seen some people spend by accident.

343
00:40:10.820 --> 00:40:13.210
Byron Mackay: Okay.

344
00:40:14.080 --> 00:40:17.820
Byron Mackay: So, I'm gonna send out a resource, but here's what the resource is.

345
00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:28.060
Byron Mackay: I'm gonna send out a resource after this that is a top-to-bottom, list of… System design, topics.

346
00:40:28.630 --> 00:40:31.140
Byron Mackay: And here's what I do, that I recommend you do.

347
00:40:31.570 --> 00:40:36.879
Byron Mackay: And I still do this, even today. So, it's right and true method here.

348
00:40:37.590 --> 00:40:47.339
Byron Mackay: You put this into Cloud Chat, or ChatGPT Chat, or whatever it is, and you give it this document. And this document, again, is going to have just a list of all these topics of system design.

349
00:40:47.800 --> 00:41:03.470
Byron Mackay: And you're gonna… you can say something like, okay, I want to get through all of this, and I want to understand it. You are… yeah, give it a role, right? You're going to be a teacher, an expert tutor that's gonna help me understand these, and I would encourage you to say.

350
00:41:03.540 --> 00:41:15.269
Byron Mackay: I want you to occasionally quiz me, or rather, I will occasionally ask for quizzes to help me check my understanding of each topic, and occasionally I will ask for case studies.

351
00:41:15.510 --> 00:41:22.670
Byron Mackay: Those two alone will go a long, long way to learning this. So, to Tanya's question, and anybody else wondering…

352
00:41:23.210 --> 00:41:26.539
Byron Mackay: That's how I would address it. I would set it up that way.

353
00:41:26.730 --> 00:41:39.789
Byron Mackay: And then I would say, let's start from the top. I think the first one's gonna be databases, so they'll go through databases, and it'll go through each kind. And as you go through each topic, at the end, you can go back and forth and ask all the questions you want to, get all the clarification you need.

354
00:41:40.010 --> 00:41:50.099
Byron Mackay: And then at the end, you can say, okay, quiz me. Quiz me right now. Let's find where the gaps are, right? Coming back to what I don't know what I don't know.

355
00:41:51.580 --> 00:41:58.180
Byron Mackay: Even after you learn it, sometimes you don't realize you don't know it, so get the questions, take a quiz, and based on those answers.

356
00:41:58.590 --> 00:42:03.060
Byron Mackay: You say, okay, anything I got right, put into another document called mastered.

357
00:42:03.640 --> 00:42:07.329
Byron Mackay: And anything I got wrong, put into another document called Review.

358
00:42:08.950 --> 00:42:12.520
Byron Mackay: And then you keep going. Okay, next topic, next topic, next topic.

359
00:42:12.730 --> 00:42:21.860
Byron Mackay: Every once in a while, after a few topics, I encourage, and you can do it after every topic if you want, but sometimes some topics are simpler than others, I stop and go, okay, give me a case study.

360
00:42:22.010 --> 00:42:27.879
Byron Mackay: Give me a case study to help me actually implement this. And, of course, that generates some pretty decent case studies.

361
00:42:28.760 --> 00:42:44.019
Byron Mackay: Usually not very… anyway, I won't get to that, because your experience is probably going to be a little different than mine, but in terms of the output the LM gives you. But those case studies are really critical, I find, because it gives you these problems where you have to make a decision, and it's not always clear what to do.

362
00:42:44.650 --> 00:42:47.350
Byron Mackay: Which is great, because life's like that as well.

363
00:42:47.610 --> 00:42:55.799
Byron Mackay: So, it produces this case study, you work through it, and it can give you great feedback and highlight areas where, hey, you missed this, you missed that. Again.

364
00:42:55.990 --> 00:42:58.219
Byron Mackay: If you miss anything, put it into review.

365
00:42:59.140 --> 00:43:02.269
Byron Mackay: And you can continue that way, just going through it.

366
00:43:04.080 --> 00:43:12.270
Byron Mackay: After a few days of this, you can go back to it. If you find the time every day, you do this for 30 minutes, do it on a walk.

367
00:43:12.720 --> 00:43:15.460
Byron Mackay: Do it between sets if you work out.

368
00:43:15.660 --> 00:43:21.930
Byron Mackay: Just find little pockets of time to do it, and after a few days, you say, okay, let's go over everything in review.

369
00:43:22.170 --> 00:43:33.390
Byron Mackay: Give me a quiz on everything in review, let's review it. And you'll review it, and it'll start to strengthen those connections in your brain to help you understand the material better. That's spaced repetition for everybody who knows that concept.

370
00:43:34.360 --> 00:43:35.560
Byron Mackay: Anyway…

371
00:43:35.970 --> 00:43:43.530
Byron Mackay: That has helped me solidify so many topics that I've always just kind of let exist without really digging into it.

372
00:43:43.950 --> 00:43:57.570
Byron Mackay: And you can go through this full list, and it can just keep going. After every topic, you can say, let's go deeper, or let's do an adjacent, or let's just go somewhere completely different, so it really gives you a lot of flexibility, to go into these different spaces.

373
00:43:58.010 --> 00:44:07.659
Byron Mackay: Anyway, Tanya, that's where I would start, and for anybody else, that's where I would start. I'm gonna have that resource be sent out to everybody after this, and it'll have…

374
00:44:08.060 --> 00:44:09.850
Byron Mackay: It'll help you get started.

375
00:44:10.360 --> 00:44:16.050
Byron Mackay: From there, I would actually start, recommend starting with that, and then going to the books.

376
00:44:16.270 --> 00:44:18.889
Byron Mackay: Reason being is because those books will assume you already know that.

377
00:44:19.460 --> 00:44:23.210
Byron Mackay: So start with that, get Claude, get Claude to help you get up to speed.

378
00:44:23.420 --> 00:44:29.070
Byron Mackay: Then go to the books, and the books are fascinating, because the books cover topics that Claude does not even realize exist.

379
00:44:29.180 --> 00:44:30.020
Byron Mackay: Okay?

380
00:44:30.780 --> 00:44:31.550
Byron Mackay: Alright.

381
00:44:32.210 --> 00:44:38.020
Byron Mackay: I'm gonna pause there for a second and go through some questions here. So, give me just a second.

382
00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:42.609
Byron Mackay: And then I have a little visitor. So… one second, sorry.

383
00:44:42.820 --> 00:44:43.580
Byron Mackay: Hate.

384
00:44:43.980 --> 00:44:55.669
Byron Mackay: Can you go upstairs? I actually cleaned up the toilet. Good job. Alright, you need to go upstairs now. Your niece now. I will after. Okay, I'll see you later, okay?

385
00:44:56.390 --> 00:44:57.070
Byron Mackay: Bye.

386
00:45:00.960 --> 00:45:01.810
Byron Mackay: Alright.

387
00:45:03.080 --> 00:45:11.239
Byron Mackay: Let me… oh, it looks like a lot of questions have been here, let's see. I'm just trying to find my spot here. Okay, here we go.

388
00:45:11.470 --> 00:45:12.410
Byron Mackay: Alright.

389
00:45:12.780 --> 00:45:14.640
Byron Mackay: Let's see…

390
00:45:15.020 --> 00:45:26.539
Byron Mackay: Daniel, Opus, I've… can't remember which one I've been using. I want to say I've been using Opus, but maybe I've just been using Sana, and it's been fine, I think, for myself. Opus 47, yeah, there's…

391
00:45:27.190 --> 00:45:31.940
Byron Mackay: I don't know, I don't feel like it… they did a great job with that one. I'm with you there.

392
00:45:32.310 --> 00:45:35.090
Byron Mackay: Okay, let's see.

393
00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:42.589
Byron Mackay: Okay, yep, there are… Peyton points out the certifications, those are out there too.

394
00:45:43.640 --> 00:45:45.670
Byron Mackay: Very, very helpful.

395
00:45:48.010 --> 00:45:49.490
Byron Mackay: Awesome, awesome.

396
00:45:53.270 --> 00:45:55.870
Byron Mackay: Okay, I don't see a lot of questions. A lot of great comments, though.

397
00:45:56.420 --> 00:45:59.840
Byron Mackay: Okay, Lauren has a question here.

398
00:46:00.270 --> 00:46:15.479
Byron Mackay: I've been using ChatGPT to teach me about some design combined with my own learning of articles and YouTube videos and do mock interviews. Excellent. Well done. Do you think it would help me if I build my own system so I can see how I can fail and scale? Yes.

399
00:46:15.590 --> 00:46:29.480
Byron Mackay: Absolutely. It's not enough just to know, we've got to be able to do, right? We have to understand there's nothing like actually doing to show you what you don't know, and that's, that's oftentimes where we get stuck. So, it's wanting to walk the walk.

400
00:46:29.700 --> 00:46:31.070
Byron Mackay: Talk the talk.

401
00:46:31.670 --> 00:46:41.260
Byron Mackay: but it's something else entirely to sit down and actually implement. So I would recommend trying to set up some simple applications where you can test some functionality there.

402
00:46:41.830 --> 00:46:51.030
Byron Mackay: Sometimes when I do mock interviews, I draw a blank. Yeah, that's… that's… that would be helpful with just some practice. And I think you're doing that.

403
00:46:51.400 --> 00:46:57.239
Byron Mackay: But yeah, that's what I would… that's what I would go with. Definitely go with some implementation. Go… start simple.

404
00:46:57.400 --> 00:47:03.310
Byron Mackay: It doesn't need to be huge, but definitely be intentional, right? If you want to test,

405
00:47:03.840 --> 00:47:17.709
Byron Mackay: you know, encryption, right? Try various encryption methods out, that exist. Of course, learn security, right? If you don't know what OWASP is, that's a really good place to start.

406
00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:34.370
Byron Mackay: You know, understanding all those things so that, you can have that context and build on it when… and again, even if you're not, like, a system expert, you're just building the software, still great to understand what those… those different pieces are so that you can… you know how your code is, is interfacing with that.

407
00:47:35.540 --> 00:47:39.270
Byron Mackay: Alright, let's see here…

408
00:47:39.600 --> 00:47:48.620
Byron Mackay: Do, Tonya asked, do professional cloud certifications from Amazon or Google add value? And Daniel answered, and I would agree, and big companies, yes.

409
00:47:49.050 --> 00:47:55.550
Byron Mackay: It's not bad to have them, doesn't hurt you to have them. Nobody's gonna think less of you if you have them. So, always good.

410
00:47:56.840 --> 00:48:05.760
Byron Mackay: Alright. Let's see here… Alright, let's see. Is there a question here?

411
00:48:07.950 --> 00:48:11.269
Byron Mackay: Okay, let me keep going…

412
00:48:14.210 --> 00:48:22.079
Byron Mackay: Rob, thank you for your comment. Yeah, apparently my daughter cleaned the toy room, so… we're a happier family now.

413
00:48:23.780 --> 00:48:42.010
Byron Mackay: Okay, so Josh, brings up, mentioned at the beginning that AI-authored PRs produce 1.7 more issues in humans. Wondering if this is related to the fact that AI-authored PRs are an average 1.5 to 2x the size of humans' PRs. More code doesn't mean better. Hope CEOs will take notes sooner rather than later.

414
00:48:42.010 --> 00:48:51.379
Byron Mackay: I would agree with that to some extent, yeah. I don't know if it's this… it's… I don't think it's the sole, sole reason, but I've definitely seen PR bloat, as I'm sure many of us have.

415
00:48:51.380 --> 00:48:56.350
Byron Mackay: And that can definitely lead to a lot more issues. The more code, the more opportunities for failure, right?

416
00:48:57.500 --> 00:49:00.060
Byron Mackay: Okay.

417
00:49:00.570 --> 00:49:08.050
Byron Mackay: Alright, those are all the questions. Alright, so, I want to make a couple of…

418
00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:22.910
Byron Mackay: plugs here at the end of this. Again, this recording will be available, and I will also make the slides available, and I'll make this resource that I'm talking about available that you can drop into any chat and say, let's get started on learning system design.

419
00:49:23.050 --> 00:49:30.470
Byron Mackay: Now… a couple things. First off, I want to, highlight,

420
00:49:30.500 --> 00:49:50.360
Byron Mackay: And Sunny, stop me if I'm stealing your thunder here, but I want to highlight that we have Gauntlet that we would… if you are interested in learning more, and having a lot of time to dedicate to just learning AI, learning how to leverage it, learning how to build AI products.

421
00:49:50.360 --> 00:49:55.070
Byron Mackay: Learning how to be a more proficient software engineer.

422
00:49:55.190 --> 00:49:57.099
Byron Mackay: Come and talk to us at Gauntlet.

423
00:49:57.230 --> 00:50:05.039
Byron Mackay: Come and talk to us, we will help you get to that where you want to be. We'll help you get placed at great companies with great salaries for engineers.

424
00:50:05.370 --> 00:50:08.230
Byron Mackay: I also want to put another plug out there.

425
00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:10.290
Byron Mackay: for,

426
00:50:11.100 --> 00:50:17.589
Byron Mackay: for a special event that we're doing in Austin in, in about two and a half weeks here.

427
00:50:17.710 --> 00:50:24.470
Byron Mackay: We're calling… this is an event that… where you get to come and do gauntlet for a day, and we're calling it Fired Festival.

428
00:50:24.770 --> 00:50:38.879
Byron Mackay: This is, it is an opportunity… it is a chance for you to come in and learn, have an opportunity to learn about AI, learn about how to build it, and just experience our learnings the way that we learn here at Gauntlet.

429
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:45.909
Byron Mackay: and then have time to build and work alongside, current Gauntlet students and also our staff.

430
00:50:45.930 --> 00:51:05.720
Byron Mackay: to really push the limits of AI, and really gain a lot more knowledge and understanding, and also learn about the job market, and what's out there, and what companies are looking for. We're gonna have some, we're gonna have somebody come in from, from another company, a CEO, and talk about what they're looking for.

431
00:51:05.720 --> 00:51:15.369
Byron Mackay: And, and software engineers these days, that'll give you some very valuable insight. We're gonna have some of our instructors talk about Agentech harnesses, and how we can leverage those.

432
00:51:15.490 --> 00:51:29.179
Byron Mackay: some of the details that go into that. We're gonna… you're gonna have an opportunity to come into our office and learn right alongside with us. It's a great opportunity, to come in and just learn, or if you want to see the Gauntlet experience and what it's like.

433
00:51:29.250 --> 00:51:48.799
Byron Mackay: We will feed you, and we will have prizes at the end. So, awesome networking opportunity. If you live in Austin, and you want to apply, or you want to come to the Fired Festival, come on in. We'll post a link, and you can register there. It's going to be a lot of fun. Really excited for it. So…

434
00:51:48.800 --> 00:51:57.279
Byron Mackay: Alright, I just, put a few more feelers out there. I'm gonna check one more time for some questions. Sunny's got some of those links there in the chat.

435
00:51:57.390 --> 00:52:09.700
Byron Mackay: So I want to… let's see, I did see, Daniel had a question here. Bit of a tangent, but can you comment on what you've seen with AI-proficient, super icy engineers and Comp?

436
00:52:09.920 --> 00:52:17.820
Byron Mackay: Yes, they do get some pretty high… we've seen some amazing, highly high salaries.

437
00:52:18.250 --> 00:52:37.890
Byron Mackay: what I've seen those individuals do, I think there's definitely… they have, kind of, all of the skill sets in space, from communication, system design, good coding, acumen. They have the experience that backs it up, right? They've done a lot of things where they've built a lot of great things.

438
00:52:38.370 --> 00:52:42.270
Byron Mackay: a lot of scalable things. Those are just skills that…

439
00:52:42.470 --> 00:53:01.289
Byron Mackay: you know, not everybody even has an opportunity to… to work at such high… high levels of scale, and those people are highly sought after. So, I think it just comes with opportunities, I think it comes with knowing, know-how, and, just taking, and again, being a really good communicator with somebody that can work well with leadership.

440
00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:17.139
Byron Mackay: But yes, it's interestingly enough, I've seen… I've seen… I would say, generally speaking, salaries have gone up. And on the other side, the number of positions may have… it feels like theirs are decreasing.

441
00:53:17.760 --> 00:53:20.260
Byron Mackay: But if you can do it, then those salaries go up.

442
00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:21.330
Byron Mackay: Quite a bit.

443
00:53:22.440 --> 00:53:31.040
Byron Mackay: I have seen it with C. As far as other companies, I can't recall the exact companies.

444
00:53:32.260 --> 00:53:40.290
Byron Mackay: But I have seen things close to that number, or even half that number or more. So, they're definitely out there.

445
00:53:41.210 --> 00:53:42.590
Byron Mackay: Okay.

446
00:53:43.570 --> 00:53:53.299
Byron Mackay: Josh asks, is system design a strong emphasis in the Gauntlet AI program? Are there projects in the program that help strengthen system design acumen? Great question, yes.

447
00:53:53.300 --> 00:54:08.800
Byron Mackay: It is a stronger emphasis, it's becoming stronger as things go on. We've modified the way our assignments work so that you have to think through problems more and implement more system design thought. We have an app that we use internally right now to help learn.

448
00:54:08.820 --> 00:54:12.060
Byron Mackay: System design principles, and to help people get caught up.

449
00:54:12.090 --> 00:54:25.230
Byron Mackay: So, those are all things that we do internally. We also talk about it, and we're developing more curriculum right now to address the system design need there. So, yes, very much something that we focus on.

450
00:54:25.420 --> 00:54:30.769
Byron Mackay: Along with all of the other AI topics that we… I've always covered.

451
00:54:31.150 --> 00:54:37.210
Byron Mackay: Mike asks a forward-looking question here, when will we know the dates for Cohort 8? Okay.

452
00:54:37.720 --> 00:54:41.609
Byron Mackay: Let me think about this, because I have to remember what… we're in 5.

453
00:54:41.760 --> 00:54:47.899
Byron Mackay: 6 and 7 will be this year, and 8 will be the beginning of next year. Look for late January.

454
00:54:48.400 --> 00:54:53.170
Byron Mackay: I think it's about when that one will be happening, so…

455
00:54:53.810 --> 00:55:07.820
Byron Mackay: Alright, Pedro asks, there is any way to learn from Gauntlet if I am not authorized to work in the US, even if I have to pay for it? That is something that I would say you probably could figure out without us, quite frankly.

456
00:55:07.820 --> 00:55:18.170
Byron Mackay: So, if you require sponsorship to be here, or, sorry, to work here, excuse me, then that's… then that's something that… where you would be authorized.

457
00:55:18.500 --> 00:55:25.849
Byron Mackay: And generally speaking, if you're… If you're not,

458
00:55:26.300 --> 00:55:34.639
Byron Mackay: Yeah, generally speaking, if you need a sponsorship, then… then yeah, that's… that's kind of how we would go off of it. There's a… might be one or two exceptions, but very few and far between.

459
00:55:36.160 --> 00:55:37.139
Byron Mackay: Alright.

460
00:55:37.380 --> 00:55:38.700
Byron Mackay: Let's see.

461
00:55:39.520 --> 00:55:45.079
Byron Mackay: Is the program at Gauntlet only for software, engineers? asked Tanya.

462
00:55:45.300 --> 00:55:53.419
Byron Mackay: it does focus on software engineers as it stands. Now, that being said, I have had a few people

463
00:55:53.690 --> 00:55:54.520
Byron Mackay: Phew.

464
00:55:55.150 --> 00:56:00.219
Byron Mackay: Come in with more of a product management background,

465
00:56:00.460 --> 00:56:09.159
Byron Mackay: you know, less of an engineering, but some engineering. Those people, if they are willing to kind of catch up really fast.

466
00:56:09.300 --> 00:56:19.669
Byron Mackay: And they can do it. It's harder… a lot harder, though, and not everyone makes it. But it is possible, it just takes a lot of drive, a lot of grit, a lot of willing to…

467
00:56:20.240 --> 00:56:24.930
Byron Mackay: A lot of willing to just know when you don't know, right?

468
00:56:25.370 --> 00:56:28.869
Byron Mackay: But we do focus mainly on software engineers.

469
00:56:29.850 --> 00:56:33.980
Byron Mackay: Mina asks, any prerequisites for participating in Fired Festival?

470
00:56:34.060 --> 00:56:42.809
Byron Mackay: The biggest one is you have to be in Austin, because it's just in Austin. We're gonna have it at our headquarters, in Austin, so, I would…

471
00:56:42.870 --> 00:56:55.519
Byron Mackay: reach out there, apply, and and you'll hear from me. So, when I say, yeah, just let… yeah, so just go to that website, fill out the form, and we'll… we'll get you, we'll get you put in.

472
00:56:56.710 --> 00:56:59.520
Byron Mackay: Alright.

473
00:57:01.800 --> 00:57:06.289
Byron Mackay: So, yeah, and about Fido Festival,

474
00:57:07.510 --> 00:57:16.369
Byron Mackay: It's… it's… it's really… we're gonna be doing a lot of events, software engineering as well, so if you're not a software engineer, you're probably gonna feel lost.

475
00:57:16.690 --> 00:57:25.260
Byron Mackay: Quite frankly, but, it's, it's, it's definitely something that I feel,

476
00:57:25.730 --> 00:57:31.309
Byron Mackay: But yeah, so if you don't have any, then I probably wouldn't consider too much, but if you do, then why not? Come on in.

477
00:57:31.980 --> 00:57:45.159
Byron Mackay: Is there a place for SDETs at Gauntlet? For those of you who don't know what SDTET is, it's Software Development Engineer in Test. So this is your QAs, kind of engineering,

478
00:57:45.470 --> 00:57:54.000
Byron Mackay: I would say… I think there actually… actually really is. And because… the biggest thing that stands out to me is in the world of evals.

479
00:57:54.380 --> 00:58:02.049
Byron Mackay: Llms require a lot of testing to ensure that they're good, and we need good evals. It's a full-time job.

480
00:58:02.210 --> 00:58:15.830
Byron Mackay: It was my job at the last company. I was part of the platform team, and I slowly migrated over to the evals, because I was the only one that was willing to really take on that kind of beast there. It's a big need, and people are willing to pay a lot for it.

481
00:58:16.030 --> 00:58:35.869
Byron Mackay: Silis, yes, there is this fired festival… yes, there is a little bit of play on words there with the other one. But it is definitely… it's something to help us as an engineering community to really understand the market and how we can continue to be successful in this market as it changes.

482
00:58:36.650 --> 00:58:46.680
Byron Mackay: Alright, lots more questions. I probably don't have enough time, so I'm gonna really quickly try to answer a few, and then we're gonna end it. Can I build something during the first, during the Fyre Fest?

483
00:58:46.680 --> 00:58:58.520
Byron Mackay: thing side-by-side, an expert willing to help. I have something I want to build. So, we will have a specific project that we're building. We're going to talk about a very specific topic, and we'll dig into it really deep that we feel like is

484
00:58:58.520 --> 00:59:11.949
Byron Mackay: kind of where everything's starting to go in terms of AI, so that would be something… but it is open to where you can incorporate… we're not… we're saying you have to reveal it this certain way. We're making it very open. You can apply any

485
00:59:12.130 --> 00:59:17.289
Byron Mackay: vertical, any, other industry to it. So, you probably can, yes.

486
00:59:17.710 --> 00:59:29.079
Byron Mackay: Is Gauntlet right for me if I'm a Scrum Master and familiar with web design and cybersecurity? That cybersecurity one stands out to me. It might be. Apply, let's take a look at your profile and see what we've got.

487
00:59:29.440 --> 00:59:35.629
Byron Mackay: Side of this, have you any thoughts about rolling out to more geographic areas? For Fyre Festival, I'm assuming?

488
00:59:35.830 --> 00:59:41.349
Byron Mackay: Yes, this is our first one, so we're starting in Austin. Be fun to go outside of that as well.

489
00:59:41.550 --> 00:59:43.509
Byron Mackay: Let's see here…

490
00:59:44.470 --> 01:00:02.330
Byron Mackay: I got a good system analyst and design textbook and learned to draw data flow diagrams. Anything else? Or get a good book and learn those data flow diagrams? Yes, as you start going through the topics, you'll identify more and more things that you can learn and build, and it'll be, they'll become very apparent.

491
01:00:03.650 --> 01:00:08.410
Byron Mackay: Hank, you wanna speak a few minutes after this? I've gotta run, actually, but…

492
01:00:08.840 --> 01:00:14.389
Byron Mackay: Feel free to reach out to us, and we can get you the answers that you need.

493
01:00:15.000 --> 01:00:18.490
Byron Mackay: Let's see, a sample application for Gauntlet for America.

494
01:00:18.930 --> 01:00:21.389
Byron Mackay: We are still automatically considered for both.

495
01:00:21.560 --> 01:00:28.880
Byron Mackay: Blaze, that's the answer to your question there. But if you have a preference, let us know. If you want to go out for America, I think it's an excellent program myself.

496
01:00:29.430 --> 01:00:30.960
Byron Mackay: I would definitely just let us know.

497
01:00:31.440 --> 01:00:41.390
Byron Mackay: Alright, when I started scrolling at this point, it was 18, and now there's 21 new messages. So, I am… we are just over time, I don't wanna… I don't wanna… I gotta… I gotta hop myself.

498
01:00:41.690 --> 01:00:58.230
Byron Mackay: But thank you all for coming, really appreciate y'all being here. This is gonna be something that we'll talk more about later, but you all have a great, great evening, and we will go, have, have a great evening, and we'll see you next time at night school. We will see you later.