S1:E8
Todd Libby: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Front End Nerdery podcast, a podcast about front end development and design. I'm Todd Libby, your host, and my guest today is co-founder at Whimser.io, software engineer and former aspiring rapper Rahat Chowdhury. Rahat how are you today?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:00:21] Doing good. Yeah. Thanks for having me on here.
Todd Libby: [00:00:25] Yeah, it’s a pleasure. I had some questions. And I know we talked a little bit on Twitter, so about getting you on. So, I was you are on my list of people. So, we had, we frequented some online spaces together
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:00:48] Yeah, yeah
Todd Libby: [00:00:49] and on Twitter. So, I wanted to get you on, so why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:00:45] Yes. So, I'm Rahat. I am a bootcamp grad. I switched into software engineering from a career in customer support, managing customer support teams. Very much like not having to talk to people all day and get yelled at by people now. So, that's definitely a plus. Before my customer support days, I was trying to be an aspiring rapper. That very obviously failed, and which is why I'm a developer now. But yeah, I mean, something I still do from time to time outside of my dev work and, yeah.
Todd Libby: [00:01:30] Cool. So, the first question that I usually ask my guests is how did you get your start in web development?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:01:37] So, probably like many in my age group on Myspace. But aside from Myspace I used to do like a little bit of like, just really basic HTML, CSS kind of stuff. And I was like working on my website for like my music stuff like that, dabbling in it a little bit. And that was, so that was kind of like that interest was sort of, kind of always there just a little bit.
And once I went into customer support eventually like I made like pretty decent career for myself in there. And I was managing teams at different tech startups. And at this one the very last customer support job I held was that a company called Newsela and there I was managing their customer support team.
And it was also kind of like looking at sort of the process of getting bugs and issues reported by customers, putting them in Jira, getting them fixed by engineering and like just overseeing that kind of whole process. And, that kind of like inspired me to say, okay this is cool to be kind of the messenger and like give the good news, but I kinda wanna do the thing myself and fix all this stuff.
So, I started playing around with that a little bit more. My wife encouraged me to go into doing a bootcamp. So, I did the bootcamp. It was like a part-time thing. It was a trilogy bootcamp. It was like a full-stack coding thing, took you from like CSS, JavaScript and all that out to react node, that kind of thing.
And yeah, from there, I decided I really, really enjoyed what I was doing and decided to go full in and look for a job. Got one within about three months of after graduating, which is awesome. Overall, did not like, I mean, I liked my first job. I love the people, but it was, it was kind of like the first thing that came my way I grabbed it and that was it.
But I just kind of took it, got whatever experience I could and then moved on to something that was more, I guess, fulfilling for myself.
Todd Libby: [00:03:47] Right. Yeah. Yeah. I remembered the first tech job that I had. That was, I got I got it for the same reasons it was there. It was it was presented to me and yeah, that's I, I understand that completely.
So, I wanted to talk about Whimser because I I was checking it out last night and it really interests me. And I, I believe at some point you had talked about it in a couple of the spaces that we were in a couple of groups. So, it uses a CBD, CBT based approach to help you understand your emotions better and root out cognitive distortions.
So, could you explain that to the listeners?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:04:42] Yeah. So, CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a type of like I guess talk therapy. It's something you might commonly do with like a therapist in a session. It's something that helped me when I was kind of like trying to take care of my own mental health a little bit more.
And what it, what it does is like you try to challenge some negative thoughts that you might be having in some way. You do this by first, like identifying what's called a cognitive distortion. Which is just a fancy way of saying a thought that tricks you into basically something that your brain tricks you into thinking that isn't actually true.
So, identifying what distortion you're facing and then with that information, trying to challenge it in some way. And that's sort of like the full scope of it on like, I guess a basic level. So, the way it would kind of work is like just as an example, maybe like when I was applying for jobs or whatever, got a bunch of rejections, you know, it happens.
And one thing that kind of helped me there using with using CBT was like, if I would, if I was having a bad day after a certain job rejection, like, you know, got like an automated email or whatever, saying that they're not going to move forward with me. And you know, one thing that I would try to do is like, try to see kind of, okay, I got this rejection, my initial first thought was like, crap, it's another rejection I'm not going to get anything.
This is it. This is what's going to happen at every single job interview I take. And one of the cognitive distortions is like jumping to conclusions. So, one thing that I kind of like tried to tell myself there is like, you know, I'm jumping to the conclusion that every single company is going to say no to me, you know?
Eventually I, I just need one person to say yes. So, taking that and like remembering the fact that, you know, I might have another job or job interview or two lined up, or I could go on Twitter and like try to make some more connections or whatever, or do something there to like get some more interviews.
And that kind of helped me get through it and like, was a way for me to combat those negative thoughts that I was having during the job search. So, things like that really helped me in like, dealing with like pressure and anxiety, that sort of thing. And I remember at one point looking around on like the app store and everything for, you know, apps that, you know, kind of like facilitate this a little bit more.
So, like I could do it outside of session, a little bit. And there were, there, there are a bunch of apps that do it, but like not, I guess to the extent that I hoped. So, I decided, okay, I'm a dev, I can build it.
And so, I started, started out on my own kind of building out this app that takes a lot of that cognitive behavioral therapy stuff, puts it into like a journaling type application. But does things like, you know, there's a whole, like, I, I just like went through one example of a, of like one cognitive distortion, but there's like 15 different ones. And like, no one has the time to like, think about every single one of those distortions and figure out what they're like actually facing.
So, what the app kind of does is like an, a, it uses natural language processing to suggest potential cognitive distortions that you're facing. To help you like categorize, like what might be a good way for you to challenge that thought.
And at the end, like when you're having like a sort of like a bad day or whatever, it'll look for like a relevant good thought that might be able to help cheer you up or help, you know, challenging those thoughts or anything like that, because CBT is great when you're like with someone who can like remind you of those certain things, but it can be pretty tough when you're like sitting there by yourself.
So, like, it's kind of like solve that issue is how we brought that like natural language processing bit in there.
Todd Libby: [00:08:57] Nice. Yeah. And I, I don’t I know all about those rejection emails and the and, and all the feelings that are, you know, that somebody who's looking for a job in tech feels when they get those rejection emails or those rejection letters. And it looks like a terrific tool to help people and I'll definitely put the link in the show notes that so as a. So Whimser w-was, or is a startup?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:09:31] Yeah, it is a startup now. So, eventually as I was going through and building it out, I realized, you know, there are certain things about this that I'm good at.
Certain things I'm not so good at. Mainly around like marketing around like you know, writing out like good content, things like that. And I started looking for like a co-founder at some point as I was like, kind of like partially through building it. And before, like I had found a co-founder Whimser was like pretty different and not as I guess, refined as it is right now.
So, I, I knew that I definitely needed someone who could like tell me to stop, you know, building new stuff on top of things and just like put stuff out and like, not worry about just like constantly building. Different things like that. So, I had actually just like made a post on AngelList just to see what would happen.
And o-one of the people who had reached out to me after seeing that post was actually someone who I was friends within high school. We, we were like, we weren't like close friends. We knew each other. He was actually also a rapper, so he we'd actually like collaborated and everything. So that was pretty cool.
And he reached out saying he really liked the idea. We started talking. At the same time, I was also talking with another person who I actually previously mentored after coming out of bootcamp and like one thing led to another and the three of us became co-founders of this application.
So, the guy from high school, his name's David. He's, he’s like, he's got like a good background in sales, that type of thing. So, he kind of took on the role as like a CEO. And the other person, Jason, he and I were both like the technical co-founders and we were like working together on building things out.
And so yeah, now it's the three of us as well as a couple more team members. We have someone who like works on content with us. We have a designer, and we may or may not have an advisor. Like sort of in the actual mental health space, like an actual clinician. We've been talking with a few folks on that level because at the end of the day, we don't want to be like another bunch of tech bros making something that, you know, isn't guided by actual people in the space.
As much as like we're going off of our own experiences with building this our experiences might not necessarily reflect everyone else's. So having a professional in this space is something that we made a decision to have early on and as soon as possible.
So that's kind of what we're in the process of right now, just to make sure that like we're doing things in a way that is I guess, medically correct. If that's how you would say it, I'm not sure, but just having that oversight from actual professionals before we put something out.
Todd Libby: [00:12:39] Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, and as, as this was your startup, where were you as far as where you at at junior junior dev level, or were you more of a, I guess mid, mid-level developer?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:12:56] Yeah, it was definitely a junior level developer. I was still, when we started this, I was still in my first job. Kind of still learning, developing my engineering skills a little bit. Getting mentored and things like that. And it was definitely pretty scary at first, like get up and decide, you know, what, I'm just going to build a company.
So that I had I had a few folks who kind of who I like talked to about the idea. Some people who didn't give the best feedback a couple of people who tell me, like, you know, you're, you're, you're not really at the level to do this. This is a good idea. Don't ruin it. And that kind of like pushed me to try harder to make it as good as possible.
One thing that I've tried to sort of do is like I'll reach out to like more senior engineers. So, like go over maybe some ideas or questions or things like that. Randomly asked like questions on Twitter about different technical stuff. And like, I get a bunch of answers that I can research from there as well.
And I've been using that as kind of like a sounding board to like, try to get to those different, I guess, best practices, quote unquote. But the more that I was just like going in and doing this. I realized that, you know, a lot of these senior engineers don't really know what they're doing either.
And it's kind of like, try it out, see what happens. So that's been what I've gone, gone into it from like the technical side of things.
Todd Libby: [00:14:32] Yeah, and so the process. How, how would you describe the process of building a startup for any junior devs out there who are thinking, you know, I have this idea and I, I wanna, I wanna build this and I wanna make I go I wanna build a startup now.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:14:51] Yeah. I think one of the main things is really just like identifying a problem and like making sure that it's a problem you actually care about. Like, for me, this was like on a personal level. I wanted to have a tool that helped me out a little bit better than some of the ones that already existed out there.
You know, personally, just for my own mental health. As I was like taking care of myself a little bit more. So really just like, if you're going to go for it and try to make a startup, it should be something you're at least, even if you're not like and from that professional space and like able to apply like your previous professional back backgrounds of things, at least like something that you've experienced or something that will help you in some way.
And also, like be open to talking to other people who are, you know, also experiencing who might be using this type of app because the more perspectives you can get, the more you might realize that, you know, you're kind of only building for just you and it might not work for other people with different experiences.
So, like, if you want to build a, a product, or a startup or whatever just be open to like probably changing things around to better accommodate more people and understand that you're not just building for you and you're building for people who are actually going to be using the product.
Todd Libby: [00:16:20] Right, right.
Yeah. Yeah, that's something that I talk about a lot in on the accessibility side of things where I build for people, the users. And I have to remember, you know, there are users out there that are, you know, disabled users, you know, people that are not like me who for the most part are. I’m able to do a lot of things a lot of people aren’t. So, I I I understand that completely.
So, I checked out also the link to the Sylar Project. And that's a curated list of mental health resources organized by location that you have. And that's, that's your creation?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:17:09] Yeah. That's an open source project that I started. So that's like open for contributions for, you know, anyone who wants to add more resources and things to it.
One thing that I like also realize like, as I was like looking for different mental health, you know, resources and things that like in my area it's like, it's really hard to find things because you know, there, there might be some like state run websites that are, that have some of those resources, but they haven't been updated and they might have like old links that don't really work anymore.
And the more I ran into that, the more I realized like, okay there really needs to be a better way to do this. What I eventually want it to become is like an API that you can integrate into like any type of app or blog that you might be building. So that like based on like your reader's location or your user's location, you can provide resources like mental health resources in their area if you're like building in that space.
But like as a first iteration it’s really just going to be like a list. And hopefully I want to like build that up from there. With the help of whoever wants to help. It is a free resource. Can be accessed by anyone. It started off as like a hackathon project.
Like I had the idea from before, but like I never really sat down and decided to just do it. So, this like hack hackathon started. I'm like, okay, this is a good excuse to just sit down and just do it. So, I took that idea, went to the hackathon. Didn't win.
That's okay. Still came with a open source project that right now doesn't have a lot of resources, but again, it's just me kind of like adding things to it. So, I'm hoping like you know, the more people kind of see it, the more people like add to it and eventually it can become a pretty big list of, you know, resources for folks.
Right now, it's just kind of like listing resources in the United States. What I'm hoping is like people in other countries might fork it and create something for like their country or, you know, the languages and things like that.
Todd Libby: [00:19:27] Right. Yeah. We'll get that in the show notes as well. And we'll get the word out there. Definitely see if any if anybody wants to help out. So, we're on the topic of mental health for, for devs. And, you know, I I belong to a few groups that are focused on self-care.
And, so with that what, what, as far as your, you go, how do you maintain self-care with work and side projects and other stuff as well?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:20:10] I mean, like, I definitely don't take my own advice a lot. But I've been trying to do that a little more. I do talk some like mental health in tech and like a couple of things that I've been trying to do a little bit more is like be more mindful of like taking more time out to like, just be with family.
Spend time with my daughter or, you know, with my wife and friends. Like the other day when I finally went out with went out for lunch with some friends, I haven't seen in like a year.
So that was awesome. And yeah, just like kind of trying to remember that there’s stuff outside of like work or building my startup and things like that. Another thing that I kind of do like to keep my, I guess to keep my mind fresh, because like, usually it's just like what I'm doing at like my day job, what I'm doing for Whimser.
And it can get very I guess monotonous, like doing the same thing every single day. I might take a break from something and maybe like work on something else that's more fun. Or just like play video games or watch Netflix, you know, stuff that all the hustle porn people will tell you not to do, but
Todd Libby: [00:21:35] Right.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:31:36] Yeah, all that stuff helps. It's it's definitely a good way to keep your mind off of things and come back in refreshed.
Todd Libby: [00:21:40] Yeah. I've been doing that a lot lately, as far as, you know, getting away from a computer and watching something on Netflix or even even a YouTube video just, you know, maybe like 10, 15 minutes just to get my mind off of the coding and stuff like that.
Yeah. Yeah. So, what do you work in what's what's your, I guess what's your stack or what's your preferred stack if you have, and—
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:22:10] Yeah. So, at Whimser the stack that I've been using there has been NextJS with CapacitorJS to build out the mobile app. We were initially using React Native. But then, you know, eventually we realize we're a team of web developers and we're trying to actually utilize the skills that we have, especially being a small team a little bit better.
So that's when we pivoted over to using Next with Capacitor cause it just let us focus on the skills that we kind of already had. Things we were already kind of good with and train a mobile app with that. So that has been stack there in terms of like styling, we’re using CSS modules and for our future products it'll probably be like something along those lines.
I'm pretty partial towards Next gets, gets the job done pretty quickly and yeah. A lot of front end stuff, kind of the same type of thing at my day job too. So, I'm very much in that React kind of world.
Todd Libby: [00:23:13] Right, right. Yeah. And how do you, like what Next JS is that? What 11 now?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:23:17] I think, is it 11? I thought it was 10, one of those.
Todd Libby: [00:23:24] I think it’s 10, 10 or 11. But what do you, what do you like about NextJS? Cause I've, I've dabbled in NextJS, and I like it personally, if I were to use something like that, which there are instances where I do use that in in my other preferred, I guess stack, I guess for lack of better term would be eleventy, but how do you like NextJS?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:23:47] I like it a lot. I do like sort of the routing out of the box. It makes a lot of things much easier. I really love doing, when they introduce like their API routes and like, I didn't have to like create a whole backend to do things like can just pop it right in there and write some services functions.
And it's great. So, I feel like Next has made it a lot easier for folks like me who are like more front end focused to like actually build out full stack applications. And I've definitely appreciated like a lot of the developer experience type of things that they've gone and made a little bit easier for folks like me.
So, definitely love it for that, for that reason. And like I just like, I, I used to use, you know, Create React App for like everything when I wanted to like, make a small project or whatever. And I, I definitely see that like between the two of them, like if I wanted to add something just to like a little bit more complex, Next probably has a lot of it already kind of built in like with the API routes and routing.
Whereas with like Create React App I would have to install like react router and a whole bunch of other dependencies and figure out how to build all that. So, I do like Next for like being one of those frameworks that help me kind of like focus on, I guess, the business logic versus like the same thing that you'll do in every other app.
Todd Libby: [00:25:13] Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I also like that stuff about Next JS too. The more I, the more I dig into it, the more it just grabs my attention and keeps me there. So yeah, I haven't done any major kind of project, but just, just playing around with it. It's, it's a lot better than Create React App for sure.
As far as I go anyways. So, for tools, are there any tools out there you use to help you in your development and what are they? And do you prefer, what, what, is there a tool that you prefer, and you'd recommend to people to use in their development to, I guess, life?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:25:59] In terms of tools, like, I mean, there's like, like small extensions and like VS Code that I'll use just to make things easier for me.
Like Like the bracket colorizer just to like, see where stuff ends, because when everything's the same color, it's very annoying. Just like, I feel like the best tools are just like the small ones that do little things like that, just to make productivity a little bit better. So, there's yeah, that bracket colorizer.
There's like, there's this like really cool new one, Fig, I think it's like for it's just for the terminal. But like, it gives you a whole bunch of like auto suggestions and things when you're doing like different get-commands which is super useful. I really love what they're doing there.
I haven't dove into it too much, but like, from what I had seen of it it's, it's awesome because like, it's, like I had saw like one thing where it like suggested a bunch of different, get-commands you could do, like after adding something like, did you forget like the actual syntax for the commit message or whatever, things like that?
It'll like suggest all those things for you and it’s great. Other than that, like, I like writing in like custom or aliases and like my like I use ZSH for my terminal. So, I'll put in like different aliases for things I use a lot, like, I’ll have, like at work, I have like one command that just like CDs into whatever folder I need and starts it.
So, I don't have to think about it too much.
Todd Libby: [00:27:55] Yeah.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:28:21] So, different things like that to just like, make the small things that you have to do, like every single day easier and just like automated are I feel like the best tools. Just the small things.
Todd Libby: [00:27:55] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a fondness for the bracket colorizer too, because like you said, it's hard to, and especially with me getting in up in my age, it's hard for me to distinguish between what's what, without that. Yeah, I have a lot of extensions on my vs code. I'll have to look up. Now, Fig is an extension as well?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:28:21] Yeah. Fig is not necessarily for VS Code
Todd Libby: [00:27:55] Okay
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:28:21] it’s more for like like your terminal.
Todd Libby: [00:27:55] Okay
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:28:21] I'm probably not doing a good explanation of what they do. And I'm sure like if someone from Fig listens to like, oh, we should've said this or that.
Todd Libby: [00:28:40] Well, I'll, I’ll, I'll look it up and I'll definitely put that in the show notes as well. So yeah. So, let's see. Talked about Whimser and you know, everything we're doing. Anything else about Whimser that you want to talk about? Because I want to go back, you know, I wanted to focus on that a little bit more because it's just, I, I was looking for something myself.
Now the search was not an extensive one. But I, I really didn't see anything that caught my eye as well. So is there anything else about Whimser that you'd like to talk about and get out there and perhaps, you know, maybe get, get some. Funds if anyone is watching from the VC part of that.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:29:31] Yeah, definitely. If, if anyone has money that you want to throw my way, I'm definitely open to that.
I think one of the things that a lot of these types of apps kind of stop at is like, they're just aimed at being a self-help app. And like, that's it. And they might throw in some meditation there, or some other like a bunch of different techniques and tools.
I feel like the thing that we're trying to do to differentiate us is like focus really on beyond the CBT aspect is like sort of a collaboration aspect between yourself and like a clinician. A lot of the apps, I think almost try to replace an actual therapist or an actual mental health professional, which is one thing that we wanted to make sure that we did not do, or like did not try to do.
What we want Whimser to be is more of a tool and like one thing that can help you. And beyond that help you to collaborate a little bit better with your therapist. So, there is a level of sort of like data tracking that we're implementing in there that would only be visible to the actual user and should they decide to share it with like a permission.
They can do that, like export some information to share with the clinician, like during or before or after sessions or whatever. Just so you know, the clinicians now have like a better idea of like how to help you out or how to like, kind of hone in on like, where you might want to focus on during those sessions.
Because at the end of the day therapy is expensive. I, I could only afford to do maybe once or twice a month if that so, and there's just like what 45 minute sessions? So, like we also wanted to just make it easier to figure out what you wanted to focus on in those 45 minute sessions, because it's a ton of stuff that can happen.
And so that's kind of like the future sort of roadmap of Whimser for where we want to go. Of like being able to facilitate that collaboration a little bit better. So, you like, you have a better understanding of what you might want to focus on or like maybe a clinician can help you figure out what you should be focusing on a little bit more.
And there's like plans we have eventually like maybe going beyond CBT and making it more of like a platform where, you know, if you're seeing a therapist who is under or like using Whimser with their patients to be able to like give you assignments or different things to try out, you know when you're not in session.
So, ultimately, that's where we want to be going of like, figuring out how to make that collaboration a little bit better, bringing therapy sort of into the 21st century a little bit more. And yeah, just giving folks more tools to get to like a better mental health kind of space.
Todd Libby: [00:32:25] That's awesome because yes, it is very expensive, especially if you don't have insurance
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:33:50] Yeah
Todd Libby: [00:32:25] and I've been on both sides where I've not had insurance and it's a lot of money
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:33:50] Yeah
Todd Libby: [00:32:25] just to see somebody for 45 minutes and talk to them. And then on the other hand, you know, I've had sessions that have been taken care of by insurance. So, luckily, and gratefully so. Because as you said, a lot of money and you know, I don't know, 45 minutes is for me not enough time to unpack a lot if I'm having a bad day.
I like, you know, the appeal of Whimser and I hope that I hope that it goes places for you, because it sounds great. Sounds like a great tool for people to have people to access and use. So, wish I wish you good luck with that.
So, getting it almost a time so where I want to focus on there’s three questions, I usually ask my guests and let's get into those and see what we can have fun with these. So, what about the web these days excites you and keeps you excited? And what you do is my first question.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:33:50] Think So I've been trying to figure out how to get into like the whole web three blockchain type thing a little bit more. I don't understand a lot of it.
Or like, what it actually does or why it exists. But that's been something that I guess the mystery around it is what sort of excites me, like wanting to learn a bit more on that. I signed up for this like free boot camp. I think it's from a company called Chain Link.
Who they go through like some basic stuff, like some blockchain stuff and like programming and solidity for getting into that side of things. So, wanted to go and see, see what, see what, what, what exactly that side of things is before I guess making a judgment on whether it's some shady, weird stuff or not.
Which is the general feeling I get when I see stuff on Twitter about it. But yeah.
Todd Libby: [00:34:48] Yeah. I, I saw that, and I was like, yeah. Cause I remember when web 2.0 came was a, was a big budge buzzword back in the day. And it's like now I'm seeing web three and I'm like, oh, I don't even want, understand this, I don't think I ever will, but I just that that's one area yeah, I just don’t understand.
And I don't know, I, I, I don't, I don't really look into it. But next question, if there was one thing you could change about the web that we know today, what would that be?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:35:25] Is that specifically about the web or the people using the web? Or?
Todd Libby: [00:35:28] It could be anything either or both.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:35:34] I would eradicate all tech bros from the web, but I don’t know. I feel like, I feel like in general, the web is pretty good for like innovation and like figuring things out. There's definitely depending on how you use it, some negative effects, or positive ones.
I don’t know. I, I feel like overall, like depending on how you're using the web or who's using it it can be awesome. They can be not so great. So ultimately, I think it really, I think, yeah, I can't really think of anything on a technical level, I guess, for things to change. But definitely I guess how we're using the web definitely we should, we're kind of using it for like more positive things.
I used to kind of, I, I used to do a podcast as well, like talking to folks who were using tech in general to like do positive things in the world. And I would love hearing those stories and just like loved hearing how, you know, people take like you know what might be like seemingly simple you know, websites with like some crowd fang, functionality thrown into there and like using it for like something good.
Like I remember talking to one guest, I had his name's Lee Warrick. He used to be like in the healthcare space and he's like, you know, we, healthcare in general is like, backwards and in the past and all the tech behind it is just like, not up-to-date.
And there's like so many little simple things that we create to make healthcare just a little bit more manageable, a little bit more easier, even if it's just like, you know, simple, dumb crud apps that like help you kind of, you know, keep track of prescriptions or keep track of patient information a little bit better instead of like going to three people in the same building and getting them the same information over and over again.
But yeah, I think, you know, ultimately the way we use it is how we can make it better overall.
Todd Libby: [00:37:46] And and you're not the first to say, get rid of tech bros. So, you're actually in very good company. So favorite part of front end development or design that you really liked the most and that you nerd out over? What would that be?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:38:07] It's usually the smallest thing of like, just getting something to work on the screen. Like it could be as simple as like I clicked a button and a console log showed up, like something is working. That feeling of like, you know, writing something and then watching just like some interaction happen is like one of the biggest things that I love about front end development.
And one of the, that, like, in my past couple of years in this career, like I remember getting a, one of my first tickets merged in on my first at my first job and then seeing it live in production. And I just going in and clicking around thinking like, oh crap, I made this and that feeling of like, pouring a whole bunch of like frustrated coding sessions and confusion and research and whatever altogether and seeing people actually being able to use it is definitely the best part of it for me in terms of front end development.
And I think that's probably why I specialize a little bit more in front end, just because I want to like, I like being able to see what I've made, and I like getting feedback from people and like them actually being able to see what it is and interact with it. Front, I mean, back end development is great too.
It, you know, it's the backbone of a lot of things that we do. But as for like with front end, like when you can see the stuff more, it's it just sparks a little bit more joy for me.
Todd Libby: [00:39:41] Yeah. Yeah. I, I can relate to that a lot because that's, you know, I get to say I've had that you know same feeling ever since, you know, I learned programming on a Commodore 64.
And I learned Commodore BASIC along with a few other types of BASIC and couple of other languages and just getting that program to run. And I remember being so psyched about it running, and then that only led to bigger and better things as far as creating and seeing that come to life, like, you know, like you said in front of you and that, I love that feeling.
I still love that feeling to this day. And even like you said, clicking a button and seeing a console pop up is probably after doing the tutorials one of the greatest achievements I can have during the day. So yeah. Yeah, I get that. So yeah, we've pretty much talked about everything.
I like to, I usually close a podcast out with letting my guests let the listeners or the viewers in the case of the YouTube channel, let the listeners know what you got going on and you know, can rehash some of the stuff, you know, with that we've talked about. And so, what you have going on and where people can find you online these days. So, the floor is yours.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:41:10] Yeah, definitely. We're pretty hard at work at getting Whimser shipped up and out. We're hoping to get a beta out within the next month. So, if you want to know about that before anyone else, you can have to Whimsor.io, sign up on the newsletter there.
And yeah, definitely. Well, I'd love to get people's feedback once we have the beta up. Otherwise yeah, the Sylar Project is something I kind of work on on my off time here and there.
If that's something, you know, interesting, something you want to help out with, definitely check that out. Sylarproject.com. And if you ever want to get in touch, I'm pretty active on Twitter. My handle is @rahatcodes and yeah, that's the best place to find me. I'm also on Polywork now, which I had been playing around with a lot.
So that my account there is just Rahat, which was awesome to find a vehicle, to get a platform with just my first name on. I occasionally message the person who has just @rahat on Twitter, asking them if they'll give it to me because they haven't used it since like 2000 something. And They never respond to me, but I keep trying,
Todd Libby: [00:42:28] I did, I used to do that on Twitter with @Todd and I I can never, and when something comes out and I usually try to get in real quick, I can never find @Todd.
So, it’s very, it's discomforting, disconcerting, whatever the word I'm looking for here. It's, I just sit there and go, well, well, I'll have to use my whole name, but yeah so Poly. So, no, we got, we still got a few minutes. How do you like Polywork and what do you think of it?
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:43:02] I really like it. I've been, so like one of the things that I was doing on Twitter Polywork came out and just like had a really nice interface for. One of the things I was doing for a while was like, I had a thread where I was just like putting in different achievements that, you know, I've had, whether it's like a podcast appearance, or just like little things I've been doing at work or whatever. And that was usually helpful a lot.
Especially when I was doing eight different CBT exercises and like needing to go back and like, look at something for like some, I guess, positive affirmation or anything like that. What I love about Polywork is just like, it's basically that, like, you can just like put in stuff that you're doing. It doesn't have to be just about work.
It can be whatever. And there's like a nice little timeline for it. I remember they even, they actually responded to one of my tweets and said that they're going to have an option for like a private timeline that only you can view.
So, like once that's there, like, that's awesome. Like just having like stuff to go back on for yourself in a nice little timeline is just amazing to look at, look at your overall progression and where you've gone in your career or whatever you're working on.
Todd Libby: [00:44:18] Yeah, I, I, I'm not I haven't been in there as much as want. I got a post or I, yeah, I think I got one post in there and I've pretty much followed people that have followed me. So that's my extent of it. I plan on getting a look, a good look at it hopefully next week. We'll see what it offers but seems like a nice platform in a good alternative, I guess it's a good alternative to LinkedIn. So—
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:44:50] I have a lot of thoughts about LinkedIn.
Todd Libby: [00:44:57] Yeah, me too, me too. So yeah, we'll put that in the show notes as well. And you know, Rahat, I want to thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure to talk to you and see you again. And look forward to talking with you on Twitter and, and anywhere else that we're co-mingling together. So anywhere else, anybody can find you online and you just mainly on Twitter, yeah Twitter.
Rahat Chowdhury: [00:45:20] I’m just mainly on Twitter. Thank you for having me on here I really appreciate that.
Todd Libby: [00:45:26] Yeah, it was pleasure. So, thank you listeners for tuning in to the Front End Nerdery podcast. I'll be back next month with a new guest and new conversation about front end design and development and other topics. If you would please rate this podcast on your podcast device of choice.
Like, subscribe and watch on the Front End Nerdery YouTube channel. Links to transcripts and show notes are there as well. I'm Todd Libby, and this has been the Front End Nerdery podcast. And thanks. And we'll see you next time.