Opening Day

Introduction

Welcome to Season 10 of AllWebSD! Has another year gone by? Yikes! As they say, the days are long but the years are short! In just a blink we’re rapidly getting inundated with AI this, AI that, finding leverage between RTO mandates, hybrid and remote agreements and the pendulum swing of high skills being in demand relative to available positions. one could argue that we’ve stepped into The Upside Down.

What’s Hot

• Rise of The Machines—sike…just kidding! But it’s obvious, right? Since ChatGPT’s release back in November of ‘22 it seems that everything now has a CoPilot! How on Earth are we to keep track of that?! Honestly, if you were to ask the last year version of myself, I probably would’ve cursed up a storm and said I don’t know. But now that this stuff has become more saturated into our daily lives, I’ve pulled back on being wow’d by it all. It’s not to be a debbie-downer whatsoever. But the marketing tactics, theatrics and click bait can just go on mute for now. What I’ve come to terms with is to cherry-pick where AI fits into my life. Irrespective of personal or professional needs, instead of being overwhelmed by it all, I’ve chosen to be selective about what, where and why I’d dare to incorporate AI into my daily life. I already feel that no matter what, it will in some respect be integrated into our everyday lives in a low-key fashion without any of us really checking a consent box, but it’s here to stay and I believe the bigger picture now is an unofficial AI Arms Race that now exists between the US, China and other advanced nations. For more details on that, check out Lex Fridman Podcast #459. That said, don’t panic. Channel your inner Vulcan as the audio streams through your pointy ears.
• Open To Work—up to about…early 2024ish, software engineering, web, mobile, coding, IT and all of the adjacent professions which surrounded those worlds was a no-brainer. Hiring frenzies and pivoting from one company to the next was the obvious behavior, but at the time of this recording, it’s quite the opposite. Are coding careers dead? Can a GPT prompt really replace all those years of hard work? Honestly, no. But I concede that we are in a coming of age moment in which AI will take a seat right next to your profession whether you want it to or not, but like a lot of Dev Advocates echo out, it’s still a CoPilot while you’re still THE PILOT. Granted where I sit in my profession…just a web developer storytelling out of America’s Finest City, I’d like to thank my colleague, Lee Baker for this helpful interpretation. And I quote,

Way back in the day, when I was writing DHTML and JS was just coming out, WYSIWYGs like Dreamweaver were the hot new thing and every CEO and small business owner was convinced they could replace their web developers with drag-and-drop software. Fast forward 15-20 years and WYSIWYGs are still here and we are still not using them to build web applications at scale. They’ve gotten much better and have their place, especially solutions like Wix, WebFlow, and others. But, they can’t scale. We need people to thoughtfully scale complex systems and build elegant, performant, and tasteful UI

— Lee Baker

Take what you can from my personal use case and apply accordingly to your world, your profession.

• Integrity—needless to say, I can’t be a hypocrite. The rebuild of AllWebSD was done with the help of my GitHub CoPilot extension…but…before I ever pulled the trigger on going crazy with prompts, I had to set myself up with some foundations. You see, for the last 8ish years, my head’s been wrapped around a framework called Angular which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of that really really really popular UI library…that…well…I’ll give you a clue…rhymes with extract. By the way, check out Angular: The Documentary | An origin story by Honeypot when you have the chance. At any rate, I needed the 101 that you can’t get out of random tutorials on YouTube, so in order to get this domain back in shape, big thanks to Per Borgan and the folks over at Scrimba for creating a very unique learning platform! All this to say, before you shoot, learn how to aim.

Step Up to The Plate

The Open Mat Series Invitational still holds. I put it on myself to kick out a total of 5 episodes once I start a season and that means there are 4 more of these coming through. If you’re camera shy, don’t worry. It’s audio only unless you say otherwise. Irrespective of being a Vulcan, or where you live on this planet, AllWebSD can be your starbase. But of course if you are in SD, why say no when it feels so good to say yes.

So step up to the plate, take a swing and get that base hit.

LFG. Go Padres!

Conclusion

Thanks again for listening in. Remember, I’m here to foster innovation through conversation. So if you’d like to continue this discussion or any topics previously discussed, go head first into our Discord server by clicking the link on the footer of AllWebSD.com. Otherwise, join the movement and let’s bridge the digital divide. For over 25 years, San Diego Futures Foundation has been a catalyst for positive change in SD, providing critical digital services and resources to nonprofits and individuals in need. Their programs have consistently helped bridge the gap between technology access and digital skills. Monetary, technology and volunteering are ways you can genuinely help. I’ll see you in the next round, everyone. Thanks and Aloha!

Attribution

Sound Effect by Gregor Quendel from Pixabay