The Scrimba Podcast

Bob Ziroll (00:00):
Actually that's legitimate. People getting good at video games, they do it by repeating the difficult part. You die in a video game and you start over, and you try it a different way and you try it a different way. Anything in this life that you have gotten good at, you've done it because you practiced, you practiced the hard parts and got better at it.

Alex Booker (00:18):
Hello and welcome to The Scrimba Podcast. On this weekly show I speak with successful developers about their advice on learning to code and getting your first junior developer job. I'm Alex and today I'm joined by one of the most appreciated React teachers in the world and the head of education at Scrimba, Bob Ziroll. Did you know Bob learned to code at a bootcamp, where he eventually became a teacher, then director of education? There he helped hundreds of students hands-on with their coding and career challenges, but there was a problem. As a bootcamp teacher, you can only help so many people, those who can afford it, those who had the time, and even if everyone could theoretically access it, there's only one Bob Ziroll with only so many hours in a day. Since Bob started working at Scrimba, he's been taking everything he learned from helping these bootcamp students hands-on to make brilliant courses, which are viewed by millions and offer you advice that he knows works when it comes to learning to code aptly and landing a job.

(01:20):
In this episode, you'll hear about some of the common mistakes Bob has seen newer learners make. And you're not just going to learn how to avoid them. No, no, no, no. Bob is going to show you what to do instead, so that you can get the most from your learning and become so good they can't ignore you. Disclaimer, even if you're really good at coding, they can still ignore you if your resume and portfolio don't highlight your awesomeness. If you're really good at coding but not good at coding in a team and you can't take criticism, they might also ignore you. For more details, check out the archive of The Scrimba Podcast. Helping you stand out with soft skills and confidence is literally what this podcast is all about. Let's get into it.

Bob Ziroll (01:56):
Back in high school, I used to tinker around with my little TI-83 calculator, T-83 Plus rather, and I would make programs that would help me remember formulas for my math classes. And I remember following a tutorial that made a little spaceship flying down a cavern sort of game. Had no idea what I was doing, but it was actually really fun. And then of course my foray into making a Dragon Ball Z fansite on GeoCities. I'm, of course, probably dating myself here, but this is back when you're getting the dial up tone when you're connecting to the internet. And then a long time after that, my real foray into development as a professional, I studied advertising and just struggled coming out of school. I had an amazing internship at BBDO New York, which is the largest advertising agency network in the world, at least it was at the time.

(02:47):
And I struggled to get a job after that. I searched everywhere. I interviewed all over the United States and everybody, for these entry level positions, was looking for two years plus experience doing advertising work. And so I actually started a little company with my stepdad that sells a device that desulfates lead acid batteries, so it had absolutely nothing to do with what I had just spent a bunch of money doing in school, but it gave me just enough experience on my resume that I was able to get a job at a digital marketing agency. One of the clients at the digital marketing agency was V School, which is the coding bootcamp that I ended up going to because I had just lived in New York as an unpaid intern, had no money at all and was like, ''I'm going to struggle to go spend a bunch of money at a bootcamp back in New York City or San Francisco.'' Which is, at the time, it was at the beginning of boot camps and it's really where they mostly were.

(03:39):
But then I found V School here in Utah, which was a third the price, right down the street, and made it a million times easier. So I quit my job, I went to V School. At the time, the program was not that great, and so I offered my help to make it better and started writing tutorials for our own students, myself included. And then eventually worked my way... I was a teaching assistant, and then one of the teachers, and then the lead instructor, and then the head of education. And also was doing some development work for a sister company that they have, that was a dev shop called Verisage and did a little bit of work with them. Had absolutely no idea what I was doing, just complete handholding from the senior developer on the team, hours a day, him telling me, ''Okay, now type this.'' In retrospect, I was super grateful for the amount of handholding and time that they spent with me. That was very helpful to me.

Alex Booker (04:29):
It sounds like you started by dabbling with code, but then you went down the advertising route anyway. What drew you to advertising and stuff at the time? And then looking a bit further ahead, what eventually pulled you back to coding specifically?

Bob Ziroll (04:43):
I got interested in advertising because it was an interesting combination of creativity and analytical measuring. I had an experience where I was in charge of creating an event for a group of people who traditionally were not great at making it out to the event. And so we tried to do something completely different and thought outside the body. It was just problem solving, foreshadowing my career in software engineering, and we killed it. So many people came out. It was really exciting. We were there monitoring and seeing this event and it was super exciting. And so that got me thinking like, ''Oh, I like this sort of messaging, problem solving.'' And found a connection with advertising, and then it turned out that advertising was super fun in school, but personally was pretty boring to me in the real world.

Alex Booker (05:31):
And that's when you naturally stumbled upon V School, became a student, then a teacher, and climbed up the ranks essentially. That's just amazing. I think you hit the nail on the head when you abstracted it down to problem solving. Was it a difficult transition, leaving the advertising knowledge and the experience you'd built up and a little bit of a track record? Was it hard leaving that behind to start from scratch and learn to code?

Bob Ziroll (05:54):
I was working at a job in digital marketing where, very honestly, I wanted to show up as early as I could and then take as short of a lunch break as I could, so that I could go home as soon as I could. It just didn't feel right. It didn't feel like life, I guess. I wasn't excited to go to work. I was dreading Sunday nights, because Monday morning was around the corner, and was so thankful for Fridays and I just knew that's not what I wanted.

Alex Booker (06:19):
We call those the Sunday Scaries.

Bob Ziroll (06:21):
Yeah, I like that. Your stomach and your heart just both sink. You're really not excited for anything. And I would get excited about anything technology related. I started like everybody else doing CodeCademy. I don't even think freeCodeCamp was much of a thing at that point. But I would pull my friends aside and be like, ''Look at this thing I just made, it's as a background on a website.'' And they're like, ''Cool.'' But I realized that's what's exciting me. And when I learned about there being a bootcamp in Utah, it just felt right. Other circumstances in my life worked out, because at the time I was thinking about moving away from Utah and then this popped up and it just felt like the right thing to do. And so jumping in didn't feel too scary, other than the fact that I did not have the money for the bootcamp at the time, and so I was financially jumping into some deep water. But yeah, it felt right in all other ways.

Alex Booker (07:12):
Your path through the bootcamp is really interesting because... Well let me start by saying that a lot of new developers at the beginning of their journey try and architect this perfect path and plan it flawlessly. But the problem is when you're at a standstill, you don't really have the information to make a really good plan. Action creates information, so you get your hands dirty, you start making progress anywhere, somewhere, and then you start to levitate towards different things and you think, ''Oh, maybe I should specialize in this.'' Or, ''Maybe because I hang out with a teacher so much I should become a teacher.''

(07:44):
And you probably see where I'm going with this line of questioning, because you definitely seem to levitate towards making the bootcamp experience better. That was the problem that you latched onto that you wanted to solve. And whilst I appreciate you were doing some coding with the sister company, based on what you're doing today, being arguably one of the most famous React teachers, this is something that clearly resonated with you. Take us back to that time, what was it about improving the bootcamp and teaching that appealed to you?

Bob Ziroll (08:11):
I do remember the feeling of diving deep into what we were learning at the time. We were learning AngularJS or Angular 1 and Django, Python Django as the backend. I just remember diving in and having a series of those Aha! moments as I was discovering more, and then wanting to help the other students in our class who very understandably, with the quality of what the bootcamp was at the time, were struggling to... I wanted to help them understand what I had just learned. And so I would open Google Docs and just start typing down what I was learning and a step-by-step process for how to do something, screenshots, put it in there, and just writing the tutorials.

(08:50):
And that's what I found myself up late at nights doing, while I was at the bootcamp, not 24/7, but every day of the week, like a job. And that was exciting to me. And I'm not sure exactly what it is, but for me, just very deep inside, there's something that I get a lot of enjoyment out of, in taking something complex and breaking it down into simple, understandable steps for other people to learn.

Alex Booker (09:13):
Right. Because the only way you can deva successfully is if you deeply understand it yourself as well. You can hide some complexity from a student, and that's okay because it might be an edge case or something that you use 1% of the time. That's such an art I think. And you yourself mastering it, learning it in depth for as much as is reasonable, and then putting yourself in the shoes of the learner and presenting it in such a way that they can relate to the topic. I think that whole process is almost invisible when you watch courses.

Bob Ziroll (09:42):
Yeah, absolutely. And I can't pretend that there isn't a selfish aspect to it, because the Feynmenn Technique says that to learn something the best way you need to teach other people, and it really requires you to take those complex things, to break them down and understand them deeply enough. I don't have a YouTube channel right now. I'm very seriously considering starting one, just because it would be a great way for me to get my feet wet into new technologies that I haven't had time to do or I haven't made time to do. And because I would be teaching people in the way that I like to teach people, by breaking it down into understandable pieces, I would selfishly get to learn a lot of those new technologies that I just haven't had a chance to deal with.

Alex Booker (10:23):
Don't start your own channel, come and upload on the Scrimba YouTube channel with me.

Bob Ziroll (10:26):
I'll do that too. Yeah, we'll do it both.

Jan Arsenovic (10:28):
Hello, it's Jan. I'm leaving this in because I want to keep Bob accountable, because I do want to see him on YouTube, but also because I want to use this opportunity to invite you to check out Scrimba's YouTube channel. We have live coding, we have interviews, and we also have a lot of videos that don't necessarily teach you how to code, but teach you how to learn to code. It is youtube.com/scrimba. See you there.

Alex Booker (10:54):
We'll be right back with the amazing episode of Bob Ziroll in just a second. But first Jan, the producer, and I have a quick favor to ask of you please.

Jan Arsenovic (11:03):
Word of mouth is the best way to support a podcast that you like, so if you're enjoying this show, we would be really thankful if you shared it with someone, be it on socials on Discord or in person. If you're learning to code and you're getting value from this, why not share it with someone who's at a similar spot? We are a weekly show and there's a new episode dropping every Tuesday. One week we're talking to an industry expert like Bob, and the other with a recently hired new developer, so you can hear how they learned to code, how they got the job and what their interview process looked like. There's a lot of great info every week and if you want to make sure you don't miss any of it, you can subscribe to The Scrimba Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And now we're back to the interview with Bob.

Alex Booker (11:51):
Just so people know, making a Scrimba course is an incredibly in-depth process because it's very polished essentially. Every character of code has got some thought behind it, and for every minutes of a scrim you might watch, probably hours went into preparing and recording it. And that's great, but it also means that we can only make so many courses and we have to be very deliberate about what we invest our time in creating courses about.

(12:14):
But on YouTube is amazing because the barrier is a lot less. You might not end up with something as perfectly polished or comprehensive, but you get to throw lots of content out there and yes, learn it better yourself. But also one of my favorite things about uploading to YouTube is the comments, because I don't know what people want to see necessarily, or where they're struggling, but when you open up the comments, people will typically tell you. They'll be like, ''Oh man, this is awesome, but can you make a video about X?'' Or they might ask you a clarifying question, then you realize, ''Oh yeah, maybe I need a better analogy to explain that.'' And I just love YouTube for that reason because it creates such a good feedback loop.

Bob Ziroll (12:51):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Like I said, I haven't really done much on YouTube, but that makes sense because I get comments, or I get people messaging me on Twitter and in our Discord server asking like, ''Hey, can you make a course about this and this and this?'' And I'm like, ''I don't know if you understand that you're talking about a three to four month endeavor that you're asking me to do.'' But it makes sense if it's a YouTube channel because it's like, ''Oh yeah, maybe I'll spend a few hours and I'll throw this out there, because it's content that people want to have.''

Alex Booker (13:19):
Going back to your story and timeline a little bit, help us understand where Scrimba came into this.

Bob Ziroll (13:26):
I first came across Scrimba because I organically happened upon Per's CSS Grid or maybe it was the Flexbox course, one of the first courses that he uploaded. I even remember telling my wife when I saw it, I was like, ''There's this really cool technology but it's not quite there yet. I can tell that it's going to be something big.'' But there's something that didn't quite jive or didn't quite work, it was probably a little bug at the time that got fixed the next day or something. But then I think a few months later I came across it again. I needed to... Like I do all the time, I'll learn Flexbox and then I'll forget everything that I learned when I don't need it anymore and then I have to go back and learn it again.

Alex Booker (14:04):
Yeah, I can relate to that.

Bob Ziroll (14:05):
So I took the course again and realized, ''We could use this at V School.'' We were in the middle of struggling hard with having a time-bound course. Someone would get sick for two days, three days, and suddenly they're way behind the rest of the group and there was no way for them to catch up, because we were marching on whether they were there or not. It was this constant problem. And so we were working through how we could change the course to be a synchronous with still having the benefits of a bootcamp, not just turning into a Udemy course.

(14:36):
And so I remembered Scrimba, I contacted Per and was basically asking him, ''Is Scrimba going to die soon?'' I don't want to start recording all of our content from V School into Scrimba and then have Scrimmba just be like, ''We're closing up shop, it's not working out.'' And he assured me that because of the format of scrims, because it's not video based, every scrim that we record is not a heavy asset that they have to maintain. So even if they decided to close up shop, they were planning on continuing to maintain the server, or just let the server live forever.

Alex Booker (15:10):
I see your concern completely because if you're thinking about traditional videos for a course, that could be gigabytes and gigabytes, not only of storage, but bandwidth, and that's super expensive. So very legit consideration. But then obviously Scrimba being task-based, we're not talking about gigabytes, we're talking about kilobytes or megabytes at most, so it worked out.

Bob Ziroll (15:30):
Exactly, so he assured me that it was going to be fine. I said, ''Okay, we're going to start recording our material in Scrimba for our bootcamp.'' As sort of a beta test of this asynchronous model that we were working on. And he mentioned, ''Hey, we're looking for React content.'' And I was like, ''Well we teach React, I'd be happy to make a course.'' And so, just in the evenings, sitting in my wife's tiny, tiny walk-in closet, super hot and stuffy, but the only place I could get good sound. I recorded the original React course I think in 2018 and it was great. I pushed the limits for Scrimba courses at the time. Per was like, ''This course is getting really long, I don't know that people want a five hour long course.'' And I felt it was really important to use the Scrimba platform to its full potential, which later we realized that I was only scratching the surface, and people liked it. So yeah, just had a good relationship with Scrimba ever since.

Alex Booker (16:27):
I'm actually just for fun, flicking through this old course.

Bob Ziroll's First Scrimba Course (16:30):
Welcome to an Introduction to React. My name is Bob Ziroll and I'm here to guide you through learning how to build front end web applications. [inaudible 00:16:40]

Alex Booker (16:40):
I'm not sure if it's on Scrimba in its original form anymore, probably not, right?

Bob Ziroll (16:42):
I don't know that we removed too many courses so I think it probably is sitting somewhere probably unlisted.

Alex Booker (16:47):
But it's on YouTube, which is where I'm watching it on the freeCodeCamp channel. It's got 43,000 likes, almost 3 million views and it's just remarkable, because all the slides are in a default Google slide. You have formats and style, and this is going back four or five years now, and it's remarkable how much things have changed in that time. But let me ask you, when you started making this course, and it ended up being five hours long, how did you think about the success of it? Because one way you might reason about it I think is that, ''Okay, this is a five hour course, it's super long, but if all else fails it will be useful to V School students.'' Here we are four or five years later and hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from it. Just tell me how are you thinking about it at the time and its reach and has it surprised you the way things have gone?

Bob Ziroll (17:32):
It definitely has surprised me because I was mostly thinking of it in terms of just Scrimba and had no idea that they had any kind of relationship with freeCodeCamp. And so when I was in the middle of recording it and he said, ''We think we're going to get this on freeCodeCamp.'' I was like, ''Oh this is a real thing. People are actually going to listen to this.'' And maybe that's where I became a perfectionist when I start recording my courses, because I've realized this isn't like speaking to a small group of people, it's more like speaking to a stadium of people. But I'm really grateful, especially for freeCodeCamp. Their community is amazing. The people that they attract are just salt of the earth, great people and I've had great experiences with them.

Alex Booker (18:14):
Just two episodes ago I spoke with the founder of freeCodeCamp, Quincy Larson, on the podcast, so people can check that out, and I think very quickly, based on my interaction with Quincy, they'll see everything you're saying is true. Very sincere and humble person and just an incredible initiative across the board. We're very proud to partner with them and their YouTube channel at Scrimba for sure.

Quincy Larson (18:34):
Adults can actually learn way more efficiently and effectively than kids can, because they've got this big existing associative network. The older I get, the more efficient I get at learning. I didn't start coding until I was 31 years old. I was a school director and I just wanted to make our school more efficient.

Alex Booker (18:51):
The way the numbers work on the internet is not... Say you're a new developer or someone new to creating content of any kind and you get 10 views, you're probably going to think you suck. You're like, ''Oh, 10 views, that's nothing.'' But then you look at a room full of 10 people and you're like, ''Okay, that's not a bad turnout. That's pretty good.'' And more likely you get hundreds of views and then you imagine a room full of hundreds of people, a full auditorium, and now it's intimidating. And then you get to the point of recording popular courses or conference talks or whatever and they're getting hundreds of thousands of views. It's just so hard to wrap your head around those numbers. I feel like I've never really found a good way of thinking about it.

Bob Ziroll (19:28):
Yeah Scrimba's karma system used to be based not on the votes that you got through Discord, it was only for creators and it was how many seconds people watched your content. When my React course came out and my karma started going up after a couple months I was like, ''It's been three months since I released the course and people have watched this course for five years.'' It was absolutely crazy. Just the scale, like you said, is hard to wrap your head around.

Alex Booker (19:54):
The thing that strikes me is that, okay, you started off with this original React course, but it's far from done, it's evolving, so back when you made that course, React was a little bit different. You have a few courses now. Can you tell us how they thread together, what the right order to watch them is, and what else are you working on that people can look forward to?

Bob Ziroll (20:13):
I actually have a video that explains the history of the React courses. I think it's part of my crash course using class components. I created the original React course in my wife's closet in 2018 I'm pretty sure, and then I created the Advanced React course, which was just the next year, I believe in 2019, I'm pretty sure, about a year later. Then I started working for Scrimba in 2021 and my original course was fairly outdated at that point and so I completely redid the introductory React course, and so that was released last year. And now I'm working on a replacement for the Advanced React course in order to make it flow more seamlessly from the new intro course to the advanced course, because right now it doesn't flow great. Like I said, I have a crash course that catches you up on how to use class components, since my new introductory React course does not use classes, but my old advanced React course assumes that you have knowledge of classes.

(21:10):
That's how they thread together. I also have a module in the career path about APIs and asynchronous JavaScript, which doesn't fit into the React ecosystem at all. It is a little frustrating when you release a course and then maybe two or three weeks later or even two or three months later, they changed some part of the API. When I created the new introductory course, it was on React 17 and it was maybe a month or two later that React 18 was released, and it completely changes one of the major beginning points in the course, and so I had to create a little update.

Alex Booker (21:44):
Which one?

Bob Ziroll (21:44):
Just the CreateRoute API, where you no longer say ReactDOM.render, you have to create a separate route and then use that route to render something. It's minor, it's really easy to understand, but it completely changes everything in the course, in a minor way, but it is a thing, it's a change.

Alex Booker (22:00):
But you're saying that you can't just replace it in one scrim, right? You'd have to update every scrim because every app and the app you're building starts with that same line or two of code.

Bob Ziroll (22:10):
Yeah, exactly. If a software engineer were to look at the recording of a course process, they'd probably be dismayed about how tightly coupled everything is, because of the nature of video. I can't make a change in one video and have it affect every video like you can in software engineering. It's just a necessary evil, but at the same time, it also makes it so that I will always have content forever to record. I'll always be able to update things and have new versions of what I had taught before. I'll never run out of material.

Alex Booker (22:41):
You said that back in 2018 or so, you felt like you were pushing for limits of Scrimba, but then later realized, even back then, there was so much more that we could be doing in terms of pedagogy and approach to recording the scrims. What are you referring to exactly? What are some of the key things that you were considering as you record new content that weren't even really on our radar a few years ago?

Bob Ziroll (23:02):
Some of the original creators on Scrimba I noticed were very much treating it as if it were just another YouTube, and so it would just mostly be teaching and then maybe asking that students will do some of the work, but not very much. And so I tried to extend that a bit and make quizzes, that I would say, ''You need to type here into the editor just to answer these questions.'' And actually have challenges in almost every screencast that we did. I think the pedagogy since then has evolved and this has been a pretty concerted effort between specifically Per and I, but everybody has had a chance to contribute, especially the community, the community has great ideas. And just the way that we teach it now is much more suited to the Scrimba format where everything is project-based.

(23:48):
People always say that you should learn with a project, but Scrimba is uniquely poised to make doing those projects really easy. So we can say you are going to be the one that's building this project and then anytime we run into something that we haven't learned yet, we will take an aside and we'll learn that concept. You'll get to practice it out of context and then you'll get to apply it in context and then we'll move on. It's not just a 10 second blurb that's like, ''And then there's this thing called React useEffect and this is how I'm going to use it. Okay, let's apply it to a project and then we keep going.'' And the student just has to sit there twiddling their thumbs, not actually doing anything.

Alex Booker (24:23):
Back then, and even just a couple of years ago to be honest, a lot of the new courses on Scrimba, they were recorded, it was nice, you could click into the editor and it was nice that they used this low file size formats and all these things, but it wasn't really capitalizing on what eventually made Scrimba really special, which is that you can, if the course is made in the right way, feel like you're almost coding next to your teacher. Anything you do passively is kind of boring and when you're bored your mind wonders and then you can't really retain the information as well. Or if you are to have a coffee and turn off all your notifications and zone in and focus intensely, that's something you could do, but it takes more energy and it's more disciplined and less fun. Coding is fun for so many of us when we have the right resources and I truly think for your, Per, and the community's efforts, the new courses, and almost all the content in our database now, really keeps that in mind from the forefronts. It's not just an information dump.

Bob Ziroll (25:16):
Yeah, absolutely. I could talk for hours and hours about the importance of practice in getting better on anything. You and I have had a lot of interaction on Twitter spaces and town hall meetings and everything about my philosophy on practice and how the easiest way to learn something new is to do it the hardest way possible, which is to actually do it and not just passively watch.

Alex Booker (25:37):
I can sum up your philosophy with an example you gave, which is about practicing tennis and how if you want to get better at tennis, you might watch Roger Federer on TV, but you're not really going to get better that way. The only way you can truly get better is by practicing with your hands on the rackets.

Bob Ziroll (25:53):
Yeah, absolutely. And if you watch professional players, or anybody who's trying to get better at tennis or whatever it might be, they'll maybe mess up a point and you'll watch them recreate what they just did, but fix what they just did wrong. They'll do an extra backhand swing that they just hit into the net, but they'll do it a few times to correct it in their head that something has changed. And whether you're maybe learning a new language or practicing an instrument, you don't mess up and then just keep going, unless you're performing, you try it again and again and again. You get that one problem area, you focus on the thing that is the hardest for you and you do it again, and you start slow and then you go faster and you go faster. I'm thinking of music, like playing piano or violin or something.

Alex Booker (26:35):
Or Guitar Hero. Yeah, I got it.

Bob Ziroll (26:36):
Actually that's legitimate. People getting good at video games, they do it by repeating the difficult part. You die in a video game and you start over and you try it a different way, and you try it a different way. Anything in this life that you have gotten good at, you've done it because you practiced, you practiced the hard parts and got better at it.

Alex Booker (26:53):
A hundred percent. And I also find with video games that if you're practicing something, aim for example, or a keyboard combination, you can get better at it in one day, but you always get better at it overnight, when you sleep and you have a chance to rest and syndicate information or a movement in this case. I think rest is so important when you're learning to code. I don't know if this is common opinion, but I definitely feel like back in the day this hustle vibe was such a thing like, ''Hey, if you're not learning to code on the weekend, you're never going to make it.'' Or like, ''Hey, if you're not doing 16 hour days, if you're not pushing yourself to the limits, staying up late, sleeping six hours, you're not going to be a successful entrepreneur, you're not going to change your career, you're not going to be a success.''

(27:34):
But it's just so wrong, because you can approach something with intensity, but by definition you can't sustain intensity, otherwise it would be normal, right? Intensity means to push beyond what is normal. Intensity can't be your normal, which means eventually you have to come back down, and what normally happens after being intense is that you feel tired and less motivated. And then if you zoom out far enough, okay maybe for five days a week you've had a sick session, you've got so much done, amazing, but over the course of the next three weeks to finish off the month, you do much less. But if you just sustained yourself throughout the month and were consistent, then you would've been in a better place and still be excited and motivated about what you're doing.

(28:13):
And like I touched on as well, rest is so important to actually syndicate knowledge and feel like you can make the right decisions, because even though at Scrimba we try and help with the career path, and by creating content around roadmaps and checklists and things, every day you get to start and choose what you want to focus on, and how you want to approach your learning. I honestly think that by making good decisions, you can speed up your journey exponentially and have a better time doing it, but if you're tired you might just muddle through stuff and end up spinning your wheels.

Bob Ziroll (28:41):
Yeah, it's a super inefficient way to try and learn, to just force yourself or to cram into your brain. Everybody who's gone to school knows that cramming might work for taking the test, but it doesn't work for increasing your knowledge, at least not in a meaningful way. That was a major thing that we came across when I was at V School with our time-bound courses. Everybody was learning at a different rate and we were not moving at a different rate. And so not only would sickness or death in the family, or whatever it might be, derail somebody's progress, but just somebody who needed extra time on a section, that would just derail their progress and all we could do was try to hit the average student.

(29:19):
And so we always had a collection of advanced board students, or struggling students, who were on the other end of the spectrum, and there was no real good way to deal with it. I actually remember one of the students mentioning to someone on our team, ''I needed to let my brain digest what I had learned.'' And at the time we're like, ''That's not how it works. You got to push through. This is a bootcamp, you're drinking from a firehose.'' Which is the comments... The saying, ''Oh, it was like drinking from a firehose.'' And after a while I realized, have you ever tried to drink from a firehose? The analogy is terrible. It's impossible. You blow your face off, it's not going to work.

Alex Booker (29:54):
It's so dumb, isn't it? It's one of those things that sounds good and it sounds right, but as soon as you take a step back you realize it's nonsensical.

Bob Ziroll (30:01):
And everybody's situation is different. As I mentioned before we started recording, I've been binging The Scrimba Podcast while I've been doing some woodworking in the garage, and one of the people that you had on was, I think she was just a new mom. That scenario is going to be a lot different than someone who's like, ''Hey, I'm in my early twenties, I just finished university. I have all the time. I'm living with my parents, I have all the time and money in the world to spend time learning.'' The scenarios are going to be very different and so their learning progression is going to be very different.

Alex Booker (30:26):
Life is long as well. I know there's an urgency sometimes around changing career for various reasons. Maybe you're unhappy, maybe your financial situation needs to change, maybe you just want to prove something to yourself, maybe you have some external pressure. I do think timeline matters to people, that's okay, but life is long. And at the end of the day, a year, two years, two years and a half, whatever it might be, you are hopefully changing career for the last time and this is something you'll do as a profession and a career for decades, and it's really a blip in the ocean.

(30:54):
The best advice I can offer I think is to find a way to start getting paid to learn, or earn to learn is the slightly catchier way of phrasing that, because a lot of developers, they will wait two years, two and a half years and that's okay, don't get me wrong. And you will in that case, probably get quite a prestigious junior developer job with a truly awesome company on day one. But oftentimes there's an intermediate step you can take, where maybe you do take a lower salary or a slightly more junior title, where you work on a slightly less progressive or interesting company, but this affords you the opportunity to actually start submerging yourself in an environment and absorbing information. Because I think when you're learning to code by yourself, don't underestimate the burden of setting up your day every day and planning your week, and the doubts and mental exhaustion of almost managing the process. I think that takes a big toll on people, but we don't really admit it to ourselves.

(31:45):
The really cool thing about going to school, which maybe you can't do, but also going into an entry level developer job, which you absolutely can do, is that you get that framework and that support, and you end up just stumbling upon interesting conversations and projects. And I do think genuinely that's the fastest way to learn, once you get to the point of being able to get a job. And I think that's something that we do a pretty good job of at Scrimba, helping you get to that minimum hireable level. Oftentimes people will push beyond that and get their more favorable job later, but the bottom line here is that every person is different like you say, Bob, your circumstances, your goals. But also not every junior developer job is made equal and there are lots of different opportunities out there. I think you have to be judicious and take a deep breath and be honest of yourself and realize that comparing yourself to others is ultimately a fool's errand.

Bob Ziroll (32:32):
Yeah, I 100 percent agree. I used to have an analogy when I was determining what curriculum I would include. I used this mental process here at Scrimba, but also at V School, and that was to remember that we're trying to make someone just sharp enough to burst into the career. Whereas if we were to try and round someone out... I'm imagining a literal film, like a fabric or a film, and if you were to punch a needle through it, you can actually break through and enter into the other side of the film. But if you are something dull and round, because you're well rounded in what you know, it's going to be tough to break into any given part or career in software engineering. If we can make our students just sharp enough to break into the career, then like you said, they can get their job and then start getting paid to learn.

(33:20):
Because frankly, you will learn a hundred times more as a junior developer than you will as a self-directed learner. Even though you're able to spend as much time as you want or can, learning being around other people who have already done it, and especially if you find a good company that is welcoming to juniors and has a great mentoring program and is able to teach the newcomers, you're going to learn so much more by actually being there. And then you're getting paid, and the stresses of your life will start to reduce, even though like you said, it might not be the most lucrative job that you've ever had. Just being paid to do it will reduce your life stresses, which then will increase your ability to learn, because you're not having this distress around your life circumstance.

Alex Booker (34:03):
Well there you have it. Anybody listening now, you've got the answers. I hope you agree this is a good path. I think the missing parts, which we have to acknowledge, it is the courage. It's such a difficult thing to do even if you know the path. Anyway, I hope other episodes, and this one, of The Scrimba Podcast will give you the inspiration, but also some actionable ideas that make you feel confident about moving forward. Listen Bob, I can't believe it, we're almost out of time and I should specifically mention for people listening, that we have to dart off to do another Scrimba event called the Scrimba Town Hall. This happens every week in the Scrimba community, so if you ever want to join in live and hear from myself, oftentimes, Bob you are there as well, but also other members of Team Scrimba, you should definitely come and give it a listen. But I did want to wrap up quickly, Bob, if that's okay, with some quick-fire questions, since I know a lot of your students would like to learn a bit more about you, outside of your teaching in Scrimba.

Bob Ziroll (34:55):
Sure, I was a little nervous you'd do this because I'm not great at these, but I'll give it my best.

Alex Booker (35:01):
What do you prefer, tea or coffee?

Bob Ziroll (35:03):
I actually don't drink coffee, so if I were to choose the two, I would probably choose tea, but I would take a cup of hot chocolate over either of those.

Alex Booker (35:10):
That sounds cozy. What about electric or gasoline cars? What do you like to drive these days?

Bob Ziroll (35:17):
I have a Tesla Model 3, so I'm biased, but I absolutely love driving it. Here in the US there's some legislation that's happening where they're really not going to allow gas cars to be sold after about 13, 15 years from now. So it's the future, and if you haven't driven one, just get behind the wheel of one and you'll be converted. It's so nice.

Alex Booker (35:36):
There was an incident with your Tesla, if I'm not mistaken.

Bob Ziroll (35:39):
Yeah, I rented out on Turo, which is like Airbnb for renting your cars, which probably sounds crazy to people, but it helped us finance the car and somebody was... They were sitting at a stoplight and someone in a big jeep came and rear-ended them going 40, because they weren't paying attention. But they were okay, their family was okay and the car's fixed and back in our garage, so everything worked out okay.

Alex Booker (36:01):
All right, next question. What kind of music do you like to code or research on new courses listening to?

Bob Ziroll (36:06):
It's got to be something without lyrics and something that is minor in the background. I think it's called lofi beats station on Spotify is amazing. I've been really into using Centered, which is an app for staying focused, and they have their own, I think they call it Binaural Beats. It's research evidence-based music for helping your brain focus in, and there's a few different styles there. So those have been mostly what I've been using lately.

Alex Booker (36:33):
Can people hang out with you on Centered? Is that a thing?

Bob Ziroll (36:35):
When you're in the middle of a session, it blocks you off from everybody, but there is a community. We actually have a Scrimba Centered community that I think has maybe one or two constant users. It would be great to get more people there. You can also record your own voice as the coach, the AI coach, for helping remind you, ''Hey, you probably shouldn't be... I imagine Slack is not helping you right now with your goal.'' Or email, when the email app opens, right now we have an AI that says, ''Stay focused. I don't think this is going to help you with your goals.'' But we can record our own voices and put those in there. We totally should.

Alex Booker (37:09):
If you record it for everybody else and then they're really sitting next to their teacher, ''Hey, you sure you want to be on Facebook right now?''

Bob Ziroll (37:16):
That's exactly what it's like. I've been in Cassidy Williams's group and having her voice pop in is pretty startling, when it's like, ''I think you need to focus on something else.'' ''Ah, okay, I will. I'm closing it.''

Alex Booker (37:28):
Cassidy's been on the podcast by the way. I'm linking lofi beats, Centered, and the episodes with Quincy and Cassidy in the show notes. Also an episode of Guil Hernandez, another Scrimba teacher, because him and I went in depth about Scrimba's teaching pedagogy if you want to learn more. But needless to say, I do not like the idea of disappointing Cassidy by slacking off, such a wholesome positive person. Last question, Bob, if that's okay. I really want to know, since you are some of our students and developers' favorite coding teacher, who is your favorite coding teacher? Who have you really enjoyed learning from and who do you look up to these days?

Bob Ziroll (37:59):
There is someone specific in my history, as I was learning Node.js. I took a course on Udemy from Anthony Alicea, and I hope I'm saying that right, but he taught it so much more clearly than anybody else I had found on YouTube or any other course. It really inspired me to follow his model of taking a complex topic and breaking it down like a real teacher does, not just regurgitating the API, I guess. I don't know if Anthony listens to this, but shout out to him. That was an amazing course. It really directed, I think, the direction of my teaching career.

Alex Booker (38:33):
That's the end of the quick-fire questions, but there is one more thing I want to learn about, which is that you've recently got more involved with the Remix meetup in Utah. I think that's super interesting, and I'm sure people listening might like to know a little bit about your involvement in that meetup outside of Scrimba.

Bob Ziroll (38:49):
Yeah, I went to the Remix meetup when it first started here in Utah, and it's got some big names, Kent Dodds, he actually just left Remix, but he was the... I forget his exact... He was like the director of the community-

Alex Booker (39:01):
Or developer experience or something right?

Bob Ziroll (39:03):
Yeah, yeah, something like that. But he was the advocate. He was the biggest advocate. People probably started getting tired of how much he shouted the praises of Remix. I dabbled with it a very tiny amount and then decided to go to the meetup. And it's weird how Utah, which most people don't even know much about Utah, but it's got some of the biggest JavaScript minds in the world here, and a bunch of them were there at the meetup, and so I was like, ''This is a cool place.'' So I just kept going and then Kent messaged me on Slack and was like, ''Hey, do you want to take over as host of the meetup?'' I was like, ''Uh, I guess, sure.''

Alex Booker (39:39):
What an honor. That's class that he reached out to you. Kent's been on the podcast by the way, and him and I collabed a bit a few years ago. Amazing guy. Really inspiring and such an awesome developer as well. I think you gave a little lightning talk of one of the first Remix meetups you attended, so we'll link that on the show notes for people as well. I don't want to sound hasty, but we're literally running way over time. Thank you so much for spending a bit of time with us, Bob, and helping us get to know you and talking about your courses and philosophy towards them.

Bob Ziroll (40:05):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, and yeah, I'll chat with you in just a second at the town hall.

Jan Arsenovic (40:09):
That was Bob Ziroll, finally on The Scrimba Podcast. Make sure to check out the show notes for all of his courses and all the other resources mentioned in this episode. Next week we're talking to a recently hired junior developer, so if you're learning to code, stay tuned for that. You can subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. The Scrimba Podcast is hosted by Alex Booker. You can connect with him on Twitter and you'll find his Twitter handle in the show notes. I'm your producer, Jan Arsenoic, and we will see you next week.