Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Developers Hangouts podcast.
Speaker: My name is James, and again, we have a special guest.
Speaker: Why don't you introduce yourself, tell people who you are, and we can hang out.
Speaker: Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me, James.
Speaker: And now it's the introduction part.
Speaker: So my real name is Maciej Pemdziak.
Speaker: If you're not from Poland, there's no way you're pronouncing that correctly, so you can just call me Mac.
Speaker: I'm a 17-year-old high school student from Kielta, Poland.
Speaker: And I'm a view enthusiast.
Speaker: If web development and programming were a Super Smash game, then I would say I main JavaScript, TypeScript, and B, as I mentioned, but I'm also looking to switch my main somewhere in the future to C Sharp.
Speaker: Well, once again, thanks for having me, James.
Speaker: My first time doing a podcast.
Speaker: Very excited.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: You've been sort of circling, at least in the online spaces that I frequent often.
Speaker: You attend...
Speaker: a vast majority of my live streams when you can.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I think we, I think we met in probably the, um, in James quick's discord is probably where we first met.
Speaker: Yup.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Yeah, it's been interesting kind of watching you sort of progress in different parts of web dev and then also some other stuff.
Speaker: You know, we've talked about C Sharp and how I feel about C Sharp and I think C Sharp is cool and all those kinds of things.
Speaker: So outside of school, can you sort of give people maybe a quick rundown of kind of projects that you've worked on and things that you've done in the dev space?
Speaker: Because you are pretty active and you do write some blog posts and do some other stuff.
Speaker: So I'm sure people would love to hear about that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So one of my kind of longest maintained ones, the most actively maintained ones, I should say, is SpotifyPlaylistArchive.com.
Speaker: So as the domain name suggests, this website allows you to browse through
Speaker: the certain archive found on GitHub.
Speaker: And it's very interesting because it doesn't use a traditional database, but instead it uses the GitHub repo, the Git repo itself to store all the previous playlists, snapshots.
Speaker: And since it's collected, I will have well over like 4,000 playlists or over 4,000 playlist entries in that archive.
Speaker: I thought that would be really cool for, quote unquote, layman to be able to browse through the repository without having to use Git history or let alone downloading, like cloning the whole repo, which as we speak, weighs around nine gigabytes.
Speaker: in total.
Speaker: So all you have to do is to either start typing in the playlist title or you can also paste its URL and it should be found just fine.
Speaker: And just like in the Internet Archive, there's a calendar where there's a date highlighted in green, which means that a snapshot, a new snapshot has been captured on that particular date.
Speaker: And that's pretty much the essence of it, the core features, so to speak.
Speaker: And that's one of my proudest projects right now, like so to speak.
Speaker: Yeah, and this is a really cool... I'll make sure to link this in the show notes.
Speaker: It's a really cool kind of...
Speaker: way to like browse through playlists on Spotify, find something that maybe like, you know, that you've listened to in the past, but like has been changed and things like that.
Speaker: It's really, really simple.
Speaker: If you have no, like if you, like you say, a layman or somebody who doesn't know any programming, you literally just type in something that you know or the URL and then you click a link.
Speaker: And then it shows you the snapshots on a little date picker.
Speaker: It shows you statistics.
Speaker: It shows you all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: Really cool project that I remember...
Speaker: finding, I think, before I even knew you sort of personally in the digital space, I think I'd randomly stumbled upon this, not knowing it was your project.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, this is a super cool project.
Speaker: And then figuring out that it was actually you, um,
Speaker: after the fact and then being like, oh, this is super neat.
Speaker: And I'll make sure to link this in the show notes so that people can go and check it out and check out the work.
Speaker: It's a super cool idea.
Speaker: And I think, like you said, one of your proudest work.
Speaker: And I think it really is one of the coolest projects I've seen
Speaker: in a while that isn't some crazy sass that somebody's building.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: And a cool way to kind of keep a historical playlist, which is super cool.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So you'd probably want to follow it up with the text tag question.
Speaker: So I think, as you may have guessed, the front end is Vue 3 or Nuxt 3 in this case with PrimeView as the component library.
Speaker: It's super feature-rich, component-rich.
Speaker: So choosing it was a no-brainer at the time.
Speaker: And as I've also mentioned, it uses GitHub API as this sort of REST backend, which was really interesting because while it's not really straightforward when it comes to querying the data in that same format, but at the same time, it wasn't that difficult
Speaker: to interface with, to write custom API routes around it.
Speaker: So in the end, I would say it turned out pretty nicely.
Speaker: When it comes to that tech stack choice, I don't regret it.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: The tech stack is definitely something that I think people should just
Speaker: you know, embrace the tech stack that you love, right?
Speaker: That's always been my thing.
Speaker: Like, I've always liked Next.js.
Speaker: That's what I've always used pretty much in the Jamstack React before that.
Speaker: And then before that was Java and C Sharp and a bunch of backend stuff.
Speaker: And like using the stack that you enjoy and using the stack that like,
Speaker: you have familiarity with, especially when you're building out a project that maybe you've never done before, right?
Speaker: Like interacting with GitHub and things like that you may not have done previously.
Speaker: So having that experience allows you to sort of build upon the knowledge that you have and the building blocks.
Speaker: And yeah, I think it's a really cool project.
Speaker: I'll make sure to link everything
Speaker: in the show notes, including the GitHub repo, if you're interested in looking at the code, because the code is kind of interesting, especially if you've never really played around with Nuxt and some other stuff.
Speaker: There's some cool stuff in there.
Speaker: So that's been your big project.
Speaker: Have you done anything?
Speaker: I remember you working on a project, and then you decided to sort of stop working on that project, and you kind of deprecated it.
Speaker: And I can't remember what that was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it all started way back in August, in early August this year.
Speaker: So how does it go?
Speaker: Actually, it wasn't August.
Speaker: Well, I think even days back as far as April this year, because there's another Discord apart from LearnVillTeach.
Speaker: It's called Frontend Horse.
Speaker: I know you're... Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, you frequented it.
Speaker: as well.
Speaker: It's another great one.
Speaker: I'm also a regular there myself.
Speaker: But I met this guy that goes by the name PSV on Discord.
Speaker: And he works for this company called Slim AI.
Speaker: which offers a container hardening, a Docker container that is slimming services.
Speaker: And they wanted to try out other new feature that revolved around slimming Nuxt free containers.
Speaker: So the initial plan was to build some sort of small to medium scale demo and write a blog post around it or maybe have me feature on a live stream of sorts because they're also on Twitch.
Speaker: But again, this was the...
Speaker: At that period, so as I said, April, mid-April, that turned out to be very busy, surprisingly, even if we're talking very close, somewhat close to holidays here in Poland, which is mid-June.
Speaker: You know, one of the last tests you will have, so very close to getting ready.
Speaker: So at that time, nothing really came to fruition, honestly, but we picked it up.
Speaker: back in August, that's where I confused it because around the same time, a Superbase Laundry Hackathon was announced.
Speaker: And the idea was to create this self-hosted
Speaker: platform where you can load up your own Game Boy or Game Boy Color games.
Speaker: And based on that library, just enable the user to play these games via a web browser.
Speaker: So the huge pro, in my opinion, at least, was that it was a cross platform solution.
Speaker: And it was also legal because once again, you're bringing your own games to the table.
Speaker: And so there's very little to no risk involved when it comes to hosting these games, because again, it's all down to the user to bring their own ROMs.
Speaker: And Nintendo can get very picky.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: They can go after you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the reason I cancelled it, quote unquote, is because the development actually turned out, didn't really go as smoothly as I'd planned.
Speaker: And I only had a week to implement all the necessary features I wanted.
Speaker: And there's like throw in a bit of like IRL stuff into the mix.
Speaker: And yeah, like soon enough, I found myself like only with only 24 hours remaining until the deadline.
Speaker: And there's no way for me to just add polish to it.
Speaker: You know, for a Polish person, that is great.
Speaker: That's one thing.
Speaker: And so instead of just throwing it into the recycle bin on my computer, I decided to just open source it and immediately have it archived.
Speaker: I may pick it up somewhere in the future or maybe turn it into another public platform, which would then put more emphasis on having users sign up to the platform and post their own homebrew games for others to play.
Speaker: But yeah, so far I have no plans when it comes to this project, because again, school years long started and I'm already super busy with it again.
Speaker: I was going to say school is always rough and I totally understand that, you know, it's hard for me to keep
Speaker: you know, my schedule with streaming and YouTube videos and everything else.
Speaker: And I, you know, don't have to, like when I finished my nine to five, there's no homework or no other work involved.
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Speaker: It's just like, cool, I'm done for the day and I don't have to worry.
Speaker: So I can only imagine like,
Speaker: going to school, doing the education, doing the extra work, it takes its toll.
Speaker: And I think it, me personally, like I thought it was like a great decision knowing that how busy you had gotten and you just like didn't want to put something out that was like, wow,
Speaker: half a project or half an idea.
Speaker: You made that mature decision to be like, okay, this is not going to get done.
Speaker: I know it's not going to get done.
Speaker: So let me just open source it and maybe I'll come back to it.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Maybe in a year's time, I'll be like, oh man, I've got time right now.
Speaker: I really want to build a project.
Speaker: Let me finish that project off.
Speaker: Or maybe somebody else will be like, oh, hey, this is a cool start to a project.
Speaker: Let me see if I can make this better.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I would say maybe not have done, I would say 90% done.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I was very close.
Speaker: I was, again, super close.
Speaker: But at the same time, it wasn't 100%.
Speaker: And I wanted that 100%.
Speaker: So Massive just mentioned that it was
Speaker: It was so much better for me to just have it open sourced and let somebody pick it up or just enable myself to pick it up somewhere down the line in the future.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So outside of school and projects and development and hanging out in discords, what else do you do for fun?
Speaker: What do you do outside of maybe, you know, being a developer or learning to be a developer?
Speaker: Is there anything else, kind of hobbies you have or anything like that?
Speaker: Oh, so I can't say so far from development, that's really difficult because I want to spend as much time doing all the programming related stuff whenever I can.
Speaker: But whenever I don't feel like it, I
Speaker: I sit back, relax and play some racing games.
Speaker: I've recently found myself enjoying Garth of Rally.
Speaker: It's a very cool game.
Speaker: It's like I would say it's somewhat of a tribute and homage to rallying history.
Speaker: that with a super career mode where you start off with relatively basic cars from the 1960s and you go all the way to late 1990s and you just go through a lot of different sign locations where the art style is very
Speaker: minimalistic, it's low input instead of where you have all these AAA games that pull a lot of emphasis on photorealism, 4K graphics, 60 FPS and all that jazz.
Speaker: Art of Rally takes a completely different approach and uses low poly models for both the cars and the whole environment.
Speaker: Well, another notable thing about is that where in typical rally games, you would have a co-pilot.
Speaker: So a person that will give you like very brief notes as to how to control the car based on the stage.
Speaker: So like kind of the track, call and quote, you're racing on because you've got limited visibility.
Speaker: Here in Rally, there's actually a top down camera so you can actually see everything in advance.
Speaker: So it actually makes sense for a lack of a co-driver and having an amazing soundtrack playing in the background instead.
Speaker: Yeah, I saw this game when it was released on October of 21 or something like that.
Speaker: And I'd seen it and I was like, oh, this is super cool because obviously I grew up with Colin McRae.
Speaker: Oh, that's a great one too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was the error of rally driving games for me and all rally in general.
Speaker: Um, if you're not from the UK or from Europe, you'll probably won't find rally very interesting or you just don't know what rally is.
Speaker: Uh, but like for me, like that was on the TV all the time.
Speaker: I grew up with Colin McRae flying around in Subarus.
Speaker: Um, it was awesome.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, I saw this, I haven't played it yet, but it sounds like I actually want to play it now.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: Yeah, definitely should.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think I may end up picking it up.
Speaker: I just got myself a Steam Deck.
Speaker: It finally arrived after months and months of waiting.
Speaker: So I'll definitely buy it for Steam if it's available on Steam and play it on my Steam Deck where I seem to be playing everything at the moment.
Speaker: Yeah, it's super, super different than any other kind of rally game they've put out.
Speaker: Obviously, everything has been like, oh, we need to make it as ultra realistic as possible.
Speaker: Every car has to look like the car that you can see in the street or whatever.
Speaker: And I'm glad that somebody decided to do like a more arcadey, low poly style game.
Speaker: Yeah, and just looking at the ProtonDB side and The Art of Rally is available on Steam and also Epic Games if you prefer.
Speaker: There will also be a physical release for a Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5.
Speaker: There will also be a special Deluxe Edition if you're into these collector's editions and collectibles and all that.
Speaker: And just looking and as I said, the ProdenDB site says it's got the gold status, so it should run just fine.
Speaker: Definitely going to pick a copy of that up.
Speaker: So these are my final pieces to the podcast.
Speaker: The final section of the podcast is called Top Picks.
Speaker: Top picks essentially is something you've done in the past 30 to 60 days or longer, depending on on just life in general.
Speaker: And basically, it's just a list of things.
Speaker: So the first one is a movie or TV show you may have seen recently that you thought was something that somebody should watch or something that you really enjoyed.
Speaker: Has there been any movies or TV shows lately?
Speaker: When it comes to movies, not really because I don't, because again, with all the school life and development and the Rally sometimes, also rarely taking up all my free time.
Speaker: I remember watching Breaking Bad in late July.
Speaker: So that makes it over 30 days.
Speaker: So it counts again.
Speaker: It's a movie series rather than an actual feature length movie.
Speaker: But still, because it's got so much praise, there are also dozens upon dozens of memes out there with various characters in the cast.
Speaker: So I decided to give it a shot.
Speaker: I don't regret it, honestly.
Speaker: It's still one of my favorite shows of all time.
Speaker: I watched it when it came out.
Speaker: I watched it every week.
Speaker: I watched it when it went on Netflix.
Speaker: I watched it again recently.
Speaker: It's still one of my favorite shows that's ever come out, even though I've probably seen it a half dozen times now.
Speaker: It's such a good show.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: Very good story arcs, very good character development.
Speaker: Everything about it just feels just perfect.
Speaker: And I'm glad that it was made and I think the cast was super awesome too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then the next question that we have is, is there anything that you've done recently that has been interesting or exciting or something that you may have never done before?
Speaker: Anything like that?
Speaker: It could be longer if obviously with like the summer and stuff, like if it was in the summer before school started.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anything?
Speaker: So apart from all the development stuff I'd like to mention, so if I were to pick one topic, one event, one awesome event outside of the area, outside of development, I would say it's a photo shoot I did in late August, in early September as well for my local language school.
Speaker: Because last year I took my exams and I passed with flying colors, like maxing out three parts out of five with my average, my aggregate score.
Speaker: or an average, I should say, being 208 out of 210, which turned out to be the best in my, we don't call it state here.
Speaker: It's a pretty tricky name, Voyevode ships.
Speaker: I probably messed it up by against.
Speaker: It doesn't work as a state.
Speaker: But anyway, I think I was top three or top five in Poland and top 50 worldwide.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: When it comes to my results.
Speaker: So it's not every day you get that result.
Speaker: And that's why the headmaster, the owner of the school contacted me, asked me whether I wanted to take part in that photo shoot for their adverts, for the leaflets and whatnot.
Speaker: And I said, of course, I agree.
Speaker: And here I am.
Speaker: Honestly, that's one of the awesome events.
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds awesome.
Speaker: That's definitely something that, you know, one, you should be praised for doing so well.
Speaker: And two, it's probably an experience that you probably won't get to do again.
Speaker: And that's awesome.
Speaker: That's definitely something to talk about.
Speaker: And congratulations, by the way.
Speaker: Thanks so much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then the final question I have for you, is there anything that you have, this may not apply, but is there anything you've eaten, let's say, you know, recently or in the summer, or maybe you went to a restaurant, or maybe you had something that, like,
Speaker: you've never had before or something you knew that you've experienced?
Speaker: Anything like that?
Speaker: Oh, well, when it comes to food, I'm a very picky eater and I admit that's the area where I don't really like experimenting, I'd say, but it's kind of changed the question a little bit.
Speaker: Something I would recommend that's not your regular type of food.
Speaker: If you can call it like that, it's got to be stir fried ice cream.
Speaker: But that's also called ice cream rolls or if you were to literally translate it from Polish, that would be fine ice cream, like Thai, not fine as the body part.
Speaker: Pronunciation is tricky anyway.
Speaker: Yeah, there's this really cool place in the main city square.
Speaker: And again, they just absolutely knock it out of the park with their ice cream, the stir fried ice cream.
Speaker: It's not something you can get from your ice cream stand or a typical ice cream van.
Speaker: So again, there are lots of flavors, but also toppings and an equally wide variety of syrups.
Speaker: So you can mix and match.
Speaker: So yeah, 10 out of 10, you should definitely try them if there is a place in your area.
Speaker: There is definitely one.
Speaker: It's not so close now because we moved recently, but where we were before, there was one that was pretty close.
Speaker: And yeah, I agree.
Speaker: One of the best ice cream experiences you can kind of get outside of like, you know,
Speaker: your run-of-the-mill normal ice cream that you can get at creameries or in the store.
Speaker: It was definitely a knock-out-of-the-part 10 out of 10 experience.
Speaker: We've done it a few times, and I'd get it again in a heartbeat.
Speaker: So we're coming to the end of the show.
Speaker: This is where you get to plug literally anything that you could possibly want, whether that's your Twitter account, whether that's Discord, whether that's specific projects, whatever you want.
Speaker: It's all yours.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Take it away.
Speaker: All right, so once again, you should definitely check out when it comes to Discord, Learn, Build, Teach, Front and Horse, Launch Dev, as well as Slim AI Discord, Learn to Call of James.
Speaker: When it comes to my Twitter account, I guess we should also be linked as well.
Speaker: What else?
Speaker: There's so much to choose from.
Speaker: Of course, James Perkins on Twitch, but also Alex Trost, James Quick once again.
Speaker: And wow, that's all I could name in such short periods.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I really appreciate you rushing back from the city to your house to get here.
Speaker: And I had a blast hanging out.
Speaker: Yeah, me too, man.
Speaker: First time on the podcast.
Speaker: I'll be famous.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: Thank you so much for the opportunity, James.
Speaker: Once again, we appreciate it.
Speaker: That was a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's just amazing how time flies.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Time flies.
Speaker: It's been almost 30 minutes.
Speaker: It's crazy how long you can talk about something for.
Speaker: And yeah, it...
Speaker: everybody at home if you did enjoy this episode make sure to to to follow Mac on Twitter follow me leave a review and I'll see you in the next one yeah like the the show has fallen off since you introduced this guest
