Chris Biscardi: [00:00:00] Hey, I'm Chris Biscardi and this is the Party Corgi Podcast. Today. We have Anjana Vakil who suffers from a debilitating case of curiosity. They hold a masters in computational linguistics, background and formal logic and spend time teaching and thinking about how to teach others, how to program.
Anjana Vakil: [00:00:17] Welcome.
Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.
Chris Biscardi: [00:00:21] Thanks for coming on. so first question, a big one. How should we teach people how to program?
Anjana Vakil: [00:00:27] Wow. Really? It really just opening up Pandora's box right out the gate. How should we teach people to program? I mean, that is a question I feel like I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out and probably not find a definite answer to.
But I would imagine that there are some elements that, um, that we can, that we know are true. So, um, one thing I think is incredibly important when we teach people to program is that we. Don't just teach them like how to write code syntax, but how to basically think about software and computers in the wider context of the world that they live in, which is usually like why people are interested in, in learning to program in the first place is because there's something that they're trying to do or build, or because of the career opportunities that offers them.
They want to exist in a particular industry and, and work in it. And so I think, um, teaching people the. Uh, that the, the quote, unquote non technical, I don't like that term, but the quote unquote soft skills are that the stuff around code is I would say, you know, just as important as teaching people. The syntax and the logic and all of those components.
So that's one element of it. Um, and then in terms of teaching people, the syntax and the, and the logic of it, um, and those sort of, you know, um, the more mechanical aspects of coding, um, I think we, we need to find ways to help people, um, get started with wrapping their heads around those problems without needing to also wrap their heads around.
Setting up their development environment and learning different code editors and figuring out how to exit VIM and nonsense like that. Right. So trying to, um, you know, I love projects where, um, Where folks can use, uh, an introductory review source, like even on their mobile phone, like they don't even need a laptop to start, you know, writing some code in their browser and things like that.
Um, and so really like meeting people where they are and not trying to, to gatekeep and like say you need to be this tall to enter the world of computer programming, I think is another really crucial aspect of how we, how we need to teach people to code. But as I said, it's a huge question. I, uh, yeah, I, I, I intend to try to figure out better answers as we go forward.
Chris Biscardi: [00:02:56] Cool. Yeah. So like the introductory resources that you just sort of mentioned in like that extra scaffolding makes a lot of sense to me. Um, I think that get hub like yesterday, uh, announced something where you can basically launch like a vs code instance online from your iPad. Do you know of any other sort of like already existing, maybe don't need a beta access code places to go to do things like
Anjana Vakil: [00:03:22] that.
Yeah, well, so there are a lot of great resources, um, online that are, that are pretty, uh, web. Centered and therefore, um, friendly to folks who are just getting started with like a web browser on their, on their iPad or on their phone even. Um, so one, uh, book that I really like and recommend a lot is eloquent JavaScript, which is, uh, eloquent, javascript.net has a bunch of.
Coding exercises just built right into the HTML version of this book, which is freely available online. So even on your phone, you can mess with the code examples and run, run them and see how the code changes when you, when you edit it and stuff like that. So I think, um, you know, publishing introductory materials and that kind of format is really awesome.
Um, I believe there's also, you know, there's a lot of. Sites, uh, or, or organizations that kind of compile materials from elsewhere and really create these great, um, courses and these great, like kind of learning experiences. Um, folks really, really love like free code camp, um, which I believe is free code camp.org.
And, uh, I think they have also, you know, a huge focus on like making it as easy for folks to get started as possible. And, um, I would also be, I guess, totally remiss if I didn't mention, um, the, the programming tool that I work on, which is observable, um, observable makes these interactive notebooks, uh, for doing things like data visualization and, um, creating interactive.
Articles and things like that in your browser and in all of those examples, like even without having an account, um, you can read somebody's notebook that they've published on observable and you can mess with the, uh, with the charts, maybe change the sliders that they've given you, or, um, select different algorithms to explore.
If you're, if you're looking at like sorting algorithms and things like that, and seeing visualizations of how they work and you can edit all of that text, um, right in your, in your webpage, right? In your device, whether it's yeah. It's on, on mobile or, um, on a laptop or an iPad or whatever you've got. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks working in this space and really trying to, um, help make it easy for folks to get really hands on with the code.
That's, you know, uh, all around them really like all, all around the web, um, and allowing folks to really get more visibility into that and play with it more and learn by doing, you know,
Chris Biscardi: [00:05:49] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, you mentioned obviously observable, uh, where you work. Is that like just a JavaScript, uh, application or can you use other languages or.
Yes.
Anjana Vakil: [00:06:02] Yes. Yes, it is. It is JavaScript. Um, it is based in JavaScript, although we know that, uh, you know, a lot of folks are used to using those kinds of interactive notebooks. And for example, the Python world through Jupiter and, and, you know, formerly I Python notebooks and, um, Uh, so there are, there's also some, um, tutorials on our, on our site about, uh, how to kind of migrate over from one to the other.
Um, but yes, we're focused on JavaScript because, you know, it's all, it's all web based technologies. Um, whether or not we might eventually support some other languages. I honestly would be pure speculation to say to this point, but, um, but suffice it to say, you know, JavaScript is one of those languages that because of it.
Ubiquity, you know, on the web. Um, I think it's, it's a really useful to at least be exposed a little bit to it and be, you know, have some degree of comfort with reading, um, if not writing JavaScript. So, um, I feel pretty good about, you know, asking folks to, if they're curious about. Digging into the code behind one of these awesome visualizations that they see to maybe, you know, start learning a little bit about, about JavaScript and about, um, about programming on the web.
Yeah. It makes
Chris Biscardi: [00:07:13] less sense to me. Um, and to connect that back to something that you said earlier about, uh, soft skills as you call them, I tend to like to call them catalytic skills. Um,
Anjana Vakil: [00:07:25] cause I really don't like the term soft skills. Um, I wish we had that
Chris Biscardi: [00:07:29] people do
Anjana Vakil: [00:07:30] catalytic skills. That's a great term.
Chris Biscardi: [00:07:33] Yeah. It's something that I forget where I learned that one from, but I felt like I thought somebody used it and I was like, Oh, obviously I'll just use that forever now.
Anjana Vakil: [00:07:41] Great. I would love to read up more on that. Yeah.
Chris Biscardi: [00:07:44] But you've taken basically these catalytic skills and your interest in teaching people how to do things.
Uh, into your position as a developer advocate. Um, so I was going to ask you, uh, what is developer advocacy, since this seems to be a good lead into that. Um, and then maybe we'll go from there
Anjana Vakil: [00:08:04] for sure. So yeah, developer advocacy is one of those huge, uh, terms that, that pretty much everyone who uses it means a slightly different thing, I think.
Um, but the way that I think about it is a developer advocate is somebody who, um, It's kind of a go between between the usually. Developer focused product, um, or somehow, you know, code oriented product, uh, that a company is building and the wider community of folks trying to do stuff with computers, which we sometimes refer to as developers, but that term in and of itself.
It's it's much more than that, right? It might be folks who are designers or UX researchers or data scientists, or all kinds of other things. They might not identify as developers, you know? Um, but so suffice it to say that I think of a developer advocate as somebody who is a go between between those two, um, Those two communities, basically the one that's internal to the company, that's building this tool or this product and the one that's external.
That's like the wider community of people who are trying to do stuff with code and a developer advocate. We'll often do things like, for example, help, um, help teach and, and really give people out in the community, the tools to, to do what they want to do with the technologies that are available. So that might look like, um, you know, workshops or talks at conferences or blog posts, tutorial, things like that.
But then they also are out and kind of talking to those people and hearing their stories and their experiences as they work with this tool or as they work with other tools. And because a developer advocate usually is kind of a member of that community first, like is a developer or a data scientist or whatever.
Um, they understand that pain, you know, they understand like the struggle of trying to, trying to build this beautiful data visualization. Just not working and why, you know, and so then they're able to take that, that, um, sort of empathetic, um, viewpoint on the experiences people are having with these technologies and bring that back to the team, working on the product and say, Hey, you know, this is, this is like, what the thing is that we need to build or change or, um, teach better to help people do what they're trying to do.
Chris Biscardi: [00:10:24] Yeah, that is like a lot of work. It's sort of like doing user research and then also helping people build stuff and teaching them how to do it. And then also taking that user researching, like coming back to the team and being like, well, people are having this experience. We need to do something about this and like some way or the other.
Um, and that's, that's like a whole, that's really big. Like a job description, right.
Anjana Vakil: [00:10:48] It certainly touches on a lot of things. And that's why I think there's like as many different notions of developer advocacy as there are. People who say the word developer advocacy. Um, so I think, you know, different people like different folks might have that title and the industry.
And in my case, this is my first job where I do have that title. Um, people might have very different jobs and still have them all lumped into like that, that sort of, uh, title or that role. Um, and so what that work actually looks like is I think really different, uh, team to team and person to person. Um, and it's also, you know, it doesn't exist in a bubble, right?
Like it's also a lot of this work sometimes happens on engineering teams or on the marketing team or on, um, like the, the kind of education outreach branch of a bigger company or things like that. So it's really, um, it's, I think of it, it's just like a highly kind of interconnected role where it's, it's really it's about the people who build.
With these tools with these technologies that we create it's about those people and what they're trying to do and trying to make their lives easier and trying to build better things to make their lives easier. Um, so yeah, it's such a, it's like a huge expansive thing that again, I feel like I could spend my entire life trying to figure out, uh, you know, what it is, uh, or all of the possibilities for doing it.
Chris Biscardi: [00:12:08] Yeah. I really like that. Your definition of sort of like people who do things with computers. Because I feel like any definition of like, uh, of programmers that doesn't really include people who use Excel is sort of like a deficient definition. Oh, I liked the way that you sort of included everybody.
Anjana Vakil: [00:12:25] Yeah.
Chris Biscardi: [00:12:26] Like trying to do things,
Anjana Vakil: [00:12:27] right? No, absolutely. I mean, Excel is like this awesome, you know, reactive, functional programming environment that like tons of people know how to use and don't even realize they're doing reactive, functional programming. Super cool. Um, and, and, you know, and beyond that, like anybody who's like, I mean, I got started, um, I guess the first things I ever did on the web was probably like messing with my like blogger template back in high school and like changing the CSS a little bit and like adding some HTML elements to the page and stuff like that.
And, you know, would I have called myself a developer at that time? No, but like, was I doing things with a computer? Yes. So, yeah, I don't know these labels, like, I mean, you know, words are tricky, right? Like labels can be useful so that we can all know what we're talking about, but they also, um, they have a lot of power that we.
Don't necessarily, you know, want to be always giving them too, especially in the case of, of, you know, computers and anything related to computers. I think a lot of time, these labels, they really keep people out. Um, and then at that point they start doing more harm than good. And so I think we just really need to be critical of like what we're talking about when we're talking about coding or what we're talking about when we're talking about developers or software engineers.
So yeah, absolutely.
Chris Biscardi: [00:13:42] Yeah. I totally agree with that. Whenever we're naming a group of people. It's very important to be aware of how that name draws the lines, so to speak and who looks at those lines and goes, ah, that's not me, even though it actually like is or should be, or could be right.
Anjana Vakil: [00:13:59] No, absolutely.
I was, I was gonna say, you know, going back to your earlier question of like, how do we teach people to code? Well, I think one really important part of that is we teach everybody to code. We don't just teach some people, the people with certain privileges or people with certain personality types or a certain amount of time to spend, you know, banging their head against, um, like a really terrible error message or something like that.
So I think that's, you know, that, that that's part of the, um, That the catalytic side of things, if I may use your term, um, that we need to think about when we're, when we're teaching people to code is like, who am I reaching with this kind of, um, the, this kind of resource that I'm building or this kind of approach that I'm taking, like who is, who is going to be able to see themselves learning through that and who is going to feel excluded and kept out?
Chris Biscardi: [00:14:47] Yeah. What, how are you thinking about, uh, the groups of people that you try to reach in this sort of new world of, uh, primarily virtual interactions?
Anjana Vakil: [00:14:58] Yeah. Reaching people is always hard, I think in person or virtually. Um, but it's especially interesting times in the developer relations world right now, I think.
Um, because so like many folks I, uh, often, you know, do a ton of in-person, um, Events in-person conference talks and traveling a lot to, you know, meet communities face to face, which I love, I absolutely love, um, you know, touching down in a totally different country and finding all of these people that are super excited to nerd out about the same things I'm excited to nerd out about.
And we get, I get to. Talk to them about like what their experiences are and how they're able to find, uh, you know, learning resources and communities to help them learn and things like that. And I love that. I love those face to face conversations. And so of course, you know, trying to reorient around, um, A complete lack of ability of having those in person conversations and having those events and having those local meetups and those, um, those, those occasions to go physically to someone else's community is really tough, you know?
Um, and so for me, it's been, um, thinking about how I can still kind of. Touch base with different communities without physically being there. Um, a lot of, lot of meetups and conferences, you know, moving their events to virtual is great for that. But personally, I really love these like more real time, um, kind of interactions of like chatting with you on this podcast or, uh, or coding with Jason Lank store on his learn with Jason stream, um, pairing on that, or, um, having these kind of, uh, observable meetups that we've been doing where we'll have.
Folks, come on and share something about what they're working with and we can really have a conversation about it. Um, I think it's, it's one thing to be a viewer of one of these online events. Right. But unlike at a conference, you can't just go sort of tap somebody on the shoulder afterwards, um, or it's, it's harder to do that digitally.
And so I really am curious to see, you know, what we can come up with in terms of ways to help people. Um, actually connect like as close to face to face or voice to voice as possible through these online events, but without compromising, uh, things like security and privacy and, um, you know, preventing all of the unfortunate, horrible things that tend to happen when you have massive.
Public online, uh, events and engagements. So I don't have a great answer to this. I think this is something that I'm trying to figure out. Um, I've been trying to, you know, change my teaching style to fit better for things like videos I've been working on, um, on a series of, uh, tutorial or rather introductory videos for observable, for example.
And I'll be thinking about, you know, um, giving more and more virtual talks and kind of changing the way I. Teach and present, uh, to, to match that. But, um, in terms of like the wider cultural questions of like, how do we go from a community that's really reliant on these in person events to one that can find those real human connections without having people in the same room is a, it's going to be interesting to see how we figure that out as a group.
Chris Biscardi: [00:18:15] Yeah, I definitely think it is. Um, you mentioned your learning with Jason's dream and I was in the audience for that one and it was a wonderful stream. So, uh, well done on that.
Anjana Vakil: [00:18:24] Thanks. We had so much fun. That was like a blast. Yeah. We built a, uh, amazing emote graph and it was very cool.
Chris Biscardi: [00:18:34] Um, you mentioned that you're creating some videos around sort of observable and stuff like that.
Where can people find them?
Anjana Vakil: [00:18:40] So they will be published on the observable YouTube channel, which we're going to be, uh, posting a lot more content to in the coming weeks. So, um, you can go to YouTube and subscribe to the observable HQ channel. Um, our, uh, our, our videos that we have up there right now are some walkthroughs of like building cool data is in observable, but they're, um, a little bit old, maybe a year or two, and they.
Uh, the, the UI has changed slightly, but they still give you a sense of, of how you can, um, build some really cool, like interactive data visualizations, and even like at breakout game and stuff like that and observable, um, and going forward, we're going to have, we're going to be sharing, um, recordings from our meetups and all of the cool talks that we've been having.
Um, like my former coworker of from Mapbox was just on our meetup the other week, um, sharing his. Uh, how he's been sort of using data visualization in his own life to, you know, understand how his workout schedule has been and, um, and, and all kinds of other stuff. And so, um, you know, these cool kind of like, again, these conversations and these like glimpses into each other's lives, we're going to be sharing those from our meetups.
And then we'll also be sharing some more, um, kind of introductory videos around like, What observable is and how it works and, uh, yeah, you can stay tuned for all that good stuff. Nice.
Chris Biscardi: [00:20:03] I feel like I should now take a, I started, I stopped wearing my Fitbit now that I'm just like at home all the time, like the numbers are kind of awful.
I feel like I should put it back on now. And, uh, it goes, start up and observable. Uh, I don't know. Do you call them notebooks or pages or
Anjana Vakil: [00:20:21] notebooks? Okay, definitely. Um, yeah, if you're, if you're into the personal fitness. Data tracking thing, go for it. I don't have a Fitbit. I, uh, wouldn't be terrified to know what a Fitbit would say about me.
Um, so, but, uh, but whatever you're into, you know, whether it's like fitness data or whether it's, um, a lot of people are, are, um, finding, you know, ways to explore data about COVID-19 and, um, you know, The measures people are being, are taking to try to prevent the spread and, and whatnot. Um, and also other stuff that's, you know, completely like different, uh, sort of things like, like computational art and procedural art and stuff like that.
Or, um, or whatever else you can think of really understanding algorithms and computer science stuff. So there's tons of great notebooks that people publish on there. It's a really cool community. I'm highly recommend checking it out.
Chris Biscardi: [00:21:14] Cool. Uh, you mentioned earlier, uh, some stuff about communities and then one of the communities that I know that you sort of became a part of, uh, is the Recurse center.
So I wanted to ask you about your experience with Recurse center, and maybe you could start off with like, Just the definition of sort of like what the Recurse center is. Sure.
Anjana Vakil: [00:21:33] For sure. Yeah. So the Recurse center is a community, I would say, based in New York city, that puts on what they often refer to as a programming retreat, kind of like a writer's retreat, where you go, you know, somewhere and work on your craft with a bunch of other people who are working on their craft, uh, sort of like that, but for programmers.
So for people who are. Uh, either who are at various stages of their learning journeys when it comes to computers and computation and programming. So you get a bunch of these people, you put them together in, well, usually it's like in a physical space right now. It's happening virtually of course. Um, And there's no classes, there's no curriculum, there's no teachers.
It's all just a bunch of people who are really excited about learning more about computers at whatever stage they're at. Some people are like, have just learned to code. Other people have been working professionally as software developers for 40 years and everything in between. Um, lots of folks, you know, switching into software or learning more about.
Programming from different backgrounds from maybe the sciences or the humanities, or what have you, you get all these people, you put them all together. And this really magical thing happens where everybody has this really self directed learning experience. Um, and people are really excited to share knowledge with each other.
And so you end up learning a ton from the people around you because everyone is coming at it from different perspectives. And so maybe I can share some knowledge about. Python with this person over here, and then somebody else can tell me about functional programming and JavaScript or what have you.
And someone else is doing a workshop or a paper reading group on machine learning, something like that. So it's like this very organic, um, experience where. Anything that you're curious about in the world of computing, you have the space and the freedom and the support of a community to explore.
Chris Biscardi: [00:23:36] That's awesome.
Really good things. It's
Anjana Vakil: [00:23:41] great. Highly recommend.
Chris Biscardi: [00:23:43] Uh, one of the things I really like about, uh, what I've heard about Recurse center is the, um, some of their, like, I don't know if they're rules or just like things to live by or like something like that, but one of them is, um, no feigned surprise. And it is something that I consider it to be extremely important.
Uh, and that I sort of like enforce in the communities that I'm a part of that I have any say over.
Anjana Vakil: [00:24:07] Yeah. Yeah. I love these. So, so I think you're referring to the social rules as they call them. Um, which you can read about, uh, if, if you, uh, want on the recurse.com and they're in their user manual, there's a whole section about these social roles and what they are and why they have them.
But yeah, there are these basically. Kind of guidelines, like, as you said, that people sort of agreed to live by that they're intended to really keep it like a, a safe space for learning. And so, like we were saying earlier, how there's all this gatekeeping, unfortunately, in, in computer science and there's all these things like, like what people do and they say, you know what?
You've never heard of react. You've never heard of view. I can't believe it. I'm so shocked. Like, Oh my God, giving me the most. Shocking information overheard of my, um, they, you know, they, these, these things, when people do that, even if they're genuinely surprised, even if they're genuinely shocked to know that you've never heard of some front end framework or whatever, um, All that does is make the other person feel bad and make the other person feel like they don't belong in that conversation.
And like, they are somehow defective in their learning or their knowledge, which is not useful for anybody. So, yeah. So the no feign surprise rule tries to eliminate that there's others that are like. No. Well, actually's, I think we all have run into those of like the, well, actually there's one tiny, tiny detail about what you said that's false.
And so instead of focusing on the 99% of what you said, that was correct, I'm going to focus on that 1% just to make you feel like I am superior to you. So, um, there's, there's a variety. There's a couple others. There's about four. And, um, they really serve to like help create this environment where people.
Are never shamed for wanting to learn something or for not knowing something. Right. It's all, we're all learning. Like the recur center's motto is never graduate because learning is like a lifelong process. Right. You're never done. Like, I will never know computers right. There will always be more to learn.
And so. I think I'm just trying to really create a social community where like everyone takes that as the baseline expectation of we are all learners here. We're all at different points in our journey. And like everybody's journey is different and all we're here to do is help each other learn, like trying to set that, those social expectations to create that.
A catalytic, can we, can we use it, their environment? Um, I really need to like learn this term better, but, but the idea, the idea being
Chris Biscardi: [00:26:42] like,
Anjana Vakil: [00:26:44] Oh no, I've ruined the catalytic term. No, but to create this, to create this environment where people, I mean, it really does. It, it accelerates learning. It accelerates.
Um, you know, your integration into this really difficult field, it's really difficult industry. So, um, I think that, that social aspect that they've, they've just done such an amazing job of creating this, um, this atmosphere and this community that it has such a high respect for learning and for the diversity of experiences that people, um, have when they're, when they're coming into a learning experience.
Like that is just awesome. So yeah, I think we can all learn a lot from how they've set that up.
Chris Biscardi: [00:27:22] Yeah, I w I was a wonderful way to put it, um, speaking about things that are like, sort of hard, like you mentioned, sort of getting into computer science or engineering, or being a developer as kind of being hard or whatnot.
Anjana Vakil: [00:27:35] Yeah. It's really hard. No, I don't. It's hard. They're, they're so smart and so dumb at the same time. Anyway, go on. Sorry.
Chris Biscardi: [00:27:45] I'm going to bring up your, uh, masters in computational linguistics, which, uh, For me and probably a bunch of other people that might be listening sounds like this very big, very grandiose, like hard thing, like akin to I'm going to go buy like Donald Knuth books and read through them level of like on achievable.
So, um, maybe if you could go into like what computational linguistics is. That'd be a cool start.
Anjana Vakil: [00:28:12] Sure. Um, computational linguistics is another one of those giant terms. That means so many different things to so many different people for, I don't know. I, I tend to gravitate towards these terms in my life.
I, and that's something I'll have to examine after this call, but, um, I, I would say that the way I think about computational linguistics is it is. Pretty much a huge catch all for anything at the intersection of human, natural language and computation. So usually, um, that tends to fall into two main buckets, I think, which is one is using computation and, uh, computational methods.
And, um, Analytical methods to study language and to understand human language better. So, um, for example, using like these huge corpora that we have of text, um, from, I dunno, from, from things like every book ever published or, um, all of the tweets, all of the tweets, right? Like taking, taking these huge datasets and using computational and statistical methods to.
Understand what they're telling us about language, as opposed to trying to understand language by like sitting down in an armchair in our ivory tower and think about whether or not a certain sentence makes grammatical sense. Like that's, that's the computational, uh, sort of linguistics aspect of it, like doing linguistics with computational methods.
So, um, yeah, the scientific study of language, just with computational methods. Um, and then the other side is like, Knowing what we do know about language, taking those lessons from linguistics and related fields, um, like psycho linguistics, which studies like how brains process language, or like socio-linguistics where we're studying, how, um, how language exists in society and the wider kind of cultural, sociocultural context, taking learnings from those fields and applying them to technology to create.
Better what are called human language technologies. So better technologies that make use of. Human natural language. So this is stuff like speech recognition, right? Or, or, um, natural language understanding, which are both crucial components of something like Siri or like one of these voice assistant, um, type tools.
Um, or maybe it's doing things like creating better predictions, right? Like when you're typing on your phone's keyboard and it's like, I think you want to say these next. Words, and then you get some funny tweets out of that by just using auto complete, like that sort of stuff. Right. So using kind of what we know about language and how it works and how computers can do it, um, to create better language technologies.
So yeah, those are kind of the, the two main prongs of it in my mind.
Chris Biscardi: [00:31:04] Cool. So I got my start in linguistics, like literally yesterday, uh, from a recommendation from, uh, Maggie Appleton who gave me this book or gave me a suggestion for, uh, metaphors we live by,
Anjana Vakil: [00:31:18] Oh my gosh. Love it.
Chris Biscardi: [00:31:20] And as somebody who literally has no idea what he's talking about, where would I, like, where would you suggest that I go to get started learning about any of this.
Anjana Vakil: [00:31:30] Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it's one of these huge, huge fields, right? Where language, I mean, in so far as language and humans, pretty much go hand in hand, like language is everywhere and studying. It can affect everything. So it is, it is a daunting task for sure. Um, I think something like the metaphor of book, which I'm guessing is a that's the George Lakoff, um, Like ops work.
Yeah. Which I love that Maggie always talks about. And how important, like understanding metaphors is to, to teaching and things like that. Love it. Love it, love it. That's a, that's a really cool Avenue to start with. Um, for me personally, I entered it from kind of more of the applied linguistics side, which is sort of like the linguistics that you might want to learn.
If you're trying to learn or teach a foreign language. So things like freaks, like how does pronunciation work? Like how do speech sounds work? Um, so the field of like phonetics and phonology, or like, how do grammatical systems work? Like why do verbs show up in different places in the sentence, in different languages?
Or, uh, why does this language not have any of this type of, of word like these, um, you know, adjectives or whatever that I, that I don't, uh, that I don't know. See in this other language. So I think for me, um, foreign languages and learning foreign languages and, um, ultimately teaching, uh, so I taught English as a foreign language for a long time was, um, was my door into it.
And I think, I mean, I, I I'm biased, but I just think it's really cool to learn as many languages as possible. I just, you know, yeah. That just sounds awesome to me. So if you're into that, you know, learning a little bit more, like maybe you're taking some dual lingo doing some Duolingo activities in a different language and maybe going and, and reading up a little bit on like, what is the grammatical system of this language?
Or like, how do sounds work in that language? Which, you know, stuff like Wikipedia is amazing. There's like so many great resources around, um, around things like phonology and different languages and whatnot that are just on Wikipedia. So even before you feel like I need to go buy a bunch of. Expensive academic books or something like that.
You know, like there's a lot you can learn just by poking around, um, sites like Wikipedia. And, um, and then beyond that, you know, I, I think my advice for anybody trying to learn anything is basically like follow your interests. You know, don't think that there is like some canonical knowledge that you have to cram down your own throat just to learn this thing.
Like. Read more on the stuff that you are curious about, you know, so, um, follow your nose kind of. Um, and so that, that looks different for every person, but, you know, starting with one book and then maybe like maybe as you go through that book, there's like a really interesting paragraph and you read the footnote and you're like, wow, that's fascinating.
Let me dig into that journal article or that other book or something like that. Um, I think really just following those links for whatever sparks your. Sparks your interest and sparks your creativity is the best way to learn things because otherwise once you lose that interest and that creativity, because you're trying to follow somebody else's curriculum, um, it becomes really hard to make progress in your own learning.
I think
Chris Biscardi: [00:34:38] that's a really powerful, uh, Thank you for that.
Anjana Vakil: [00:34:43] It's just my 2 cents. I mean, everybody's experience is different. Your mileage will definitely vary. Yeah,
Chris Biscardi: [00:34:50] no, but I really think that that's a, like a really good way to think about it. Cause, um, whenever anybody asks me about like how I think people should learn how to program, like, well, what do you, what do you find interesting or what do you need to solve?
Or like, what's your motivation, right? Um, and if you don't follow that motivation, you sort of just stop because you don't want to do it anymore. Alright. So the first like little kernel is always just, how do you keep that interest alive at all? And just following that direction. And then you end up somewhere who knows where you're going to end up.
Anjana Vakil: [00:35:21] Absolutely.
Chris Biscardi: [00:35:22] Speaking of ending up places, uh, how has sort of like your masters in computational linguistics affected everything else that you've done afterwards? Is it useful in your current job? I mean, other than the fact that it's generally useful. Yes.
Anjana Vakil: [00:35:40] Did I need my masters to do the job I'm doing right now in terms of like the skills that, uh, I use day to day now versus what I was working on when I was in grad school.
I would say probably no, but like, I did not need a master's to do the job that I'm doing now in terms of, um, like gatekeeping qualifications. Right. But did I personally need to go through that experience of going to grad school, uh, and, and, and beating my head against like the, the challenges of academia and doing work in that area and.
Learning about computers through the lens of linguistics and through the lens of, um, of, of researching things that I was interested in. Like, did I personally need that? Yes. You know, like my journey. Was through that. Um, of course, you know, we could speculate on like the billions and good Jillian's and infinity of other possible universes where I could have maybe gotten to the same place without going through that path.
But like, that was my path. Um, I, you know, I was following my nose as, as, as we said, um, from, I was teaching English as a foreign language, which I got into just because I was really interested in languages and, and, um, you know, other cultures and, and. Being able to live abroad and, and, um, and work as an English teacher.
And then from there, I got really interested in the applications of, um, of technology in the classroom. How could we use technology to help people learn languages and help people teach languages? And so I got really interested in this field of computer assisted language learning, and then I found out that.
Computational linguistics was a thing. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I love logic. I love computers. I don't really understand how to tell them what to do yet, but I love them. And I think they're interesting. And I also think language is fascinating and, Oh my gosh, here's this master's program in Germany and it doesn't even have tuition and amazing.
And. You know, like that was my journey, right. Going there. And then having a couple of years to really think very hard about, about language and technology and how they relate and, you know, spend a lot of time, um, learning the, the sort of. Mechanical side of things of like, how do I tell the computer what I want it to do?
Um, and through that, you know, I started like I had taught, uh, no, I'm sorry. I didn't teach myself programming. I read some books that somebody else had written with a lot of care and investment into trying to teach me programming through books. So I learned a little bit of programming on my own before going into grad school.
And then in grad school, I really spent a lot more time. Like sitting in front of a text editor and writing code. And, um, through that, I got really interested in software and how people develop software. And then I found out about the Recurse center. And so I got the opportunity to go there after I finished grad school.
And there, I learned about this whole industry and all these different things you can do in the field of software and computation. And from there, I, you know, one thing led to another and I. Ended up working as a software developer and then giving a lot of conference talks and then becoming a developer advocate.
And so like, that was my personal path to where I am right now. And in so far as I would be a different person, if I had taken a different path, like I couldn't have done it any differently. Um, but does that mean that somebody else needs to take that path? Absolutely not. Um, and I think that formal education, like, uh, like academia, the, the whole world of higher education and, you know, graduate degrees, et cetera, et cetera, is, has, has a lot of.
Issues that make it not ideal for many people on their paths. Um, especially like in the U S where, um, education is so expensive and you can really, you know, put you in an insane debt. Um, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say insane debt, but in, um, in really like, uh, problematic financial situations. Yes. Um, but I think that for me, that was how I ended up.
Getting the kind of intersection of skills that I have today and that I've been able to, you know, with a lot of really, really lucky, um, dips, been able to turn it into a career. And, um, I think it's important to remember that like the, the things that you see people do out there, like those were their path, right.
And, and yours may have elements in common, but. Everyone is different and everyone has to take a different journey and they're never linear, you know? And sometimes you go backwards before you go forwards and whatnot. So this is all a very, very long winded answer to your question of like, did I need a masters to get where I am today?
Yes, personally, that was my journey. Does somebody else? No, definitely not.
Chris Biscardi: [00:40:38] Well, I think that that was absolutely wonderful way to close out the episode. We were running out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to say before we close up?
Anjana Vakil: [00:40:50] Oh, I just want to thank you so much for having me and for, you know, doing all that you do and that everybody listening is doing to really create these communities, which I think it really all comes down to community.
Right? Like if I hadn't found the community of folks in grad school to help me kind of think about what I wanted to do and how I was going to. Relate to technology as I was learning it. Um, or if I hadn't found the community of people at the Recurse center who helped me understand, uh, the, more of like the industry of software engineering and how to have a career in it and you know, how to progress in it.
Um, In my own learning journey. Like if I hadn't found those communities and all of the other amazing communities that I can't even like, don't have time to list all of you here. I wouldn't be talking to you on this podcast right now. And so I think, um, you know, really fostering these communities and doing everything we can to support each other, especially in this very strange time where we have to find new virtual non-face-to-face ways to support each other is just like, Some of the most important work we can be doing right now.
So thank you so much for doing that work and thank you everybody. That's listening and, and going out there to do that work on their own. Um, we need that. We need more of it. Keep it up.
Chris Biscardi: [00:42:07] Thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, where can people find you on Twitter? Where can people find your videos?
Anjana Vakil: [00:42:12] Things like that. Yeah, so people can find me on Twitter at my name on Jenna Vacchio. I am not creative with internet handle. Um, and, uh, the videos that I'm working on for observable, they will be up on the observable HQ, uh, YouTube channel. And you can also follow observable HQ. Twitter, we'll be announcing everything there.
Um, and yeah, folks can, can connect there. And, and in my Twitter bio there's links to my various other online presences get hub and whatnot, but, uh, yeah, Twitter, Twitter's the best.
Chris Biscardi: [00:42:43] That's all we have time for today. Thank you for listening to the party corgi podcast. If you want to come and be part of our community of creators and hackers, you can find a link to our discord channel.
At partycorgi.com. You can also find us on Twitter @partycorgipod. I hope you have a wonderful day.