You have to embrace who you are. You know, we said to him, what you always want to be able to tell your kids when you look in the mirror, be proud of what you see. Be proud of what you see on the inside. Be proud of who you are as a person. Hello, and welcome to the Pie Bytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome back to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. This is Julian. I'm here with Bob. How's it going, man? It's going well, thank you. We're back. How are you doing today? Good. Very good. It's a bit admission of a day, but I am feeling good right now, and it's nice to be back on the podcast with you again. We. We take too. Our breaks are too long in between. Yeah, yeah. Some amazing guests. Right. But when was the last time we recorded? Two weeks ago. Three weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, two or three, but, yeah, I was pretty bummed. I missed the episode with the, uh. With Russell and, you know, the whole teaching thing, that was, um. That was. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah. Amazing what stuff they're doing. So happy. Uh, we got them on the podcast. Yeah. And for everyone who couldn't see it, the wall of all the. Of all the pie byte certificates on the. On the kids classroom. That was. That's amazing. That's really cool. Still linked in the episode as well. Yeah, if you want to check it out. Yeah. So, what about you, man? How are you doing? Good. Yeah, good. I've been coding a lot. It leads into the winds, I guess. We launched our own CMS system, so, um, everybody. We talk with everybody or relationships, we all manage them now in our own CMS system we built with Django. And we could ditch Asana, basically, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was. It's such a cool story in the sense that we're eating our own dog food, as we like to say all the time, because this was me wanting to, you know, do some more coding, because I've been coding less and less lately as we build PI bytes. Right. And so it was really nice to dive back into coding with you, Bob. And we coded it as if we were coach and mentee, as if someone who joined the PDM program. So I was the one who joined, and you were coaching me through it. It was really cool and over five, six weeks, was it? What are we at? Yeah, I think it was five weeks, but whatever it was four sessions. Yeah. Six weeks of development time. Exactly. And yeah, now we have this, this CMS app that we can use for ourselves. And the best part is you're scratching your own itch. And this is why we love PDM and everything, because we built it for ourselves. It's customized for our own stuff, it'll scale, it's scalable for other people to use eventually, but it suits our need and it's beautiful. It's, it's simplistic, it's easy to use, it's straightforward and it just does what it's designed to do. There's no fluff, there's no extra stuff on the top to slow us down. And it's just, it's amazing. So I'm happy and I'm proud. So that's a big win. Even encryption is not slowing us down. Oh yes, exactly. As usually, we had to do some research, learn new things. We encrypted the data, we did two factor authentication this morning. We implemented some nice JavaScript thing that we can add, mention each other and fires up notifications. It's cool because it would have been very, and I will stop. It would be very easy to get stuck in tutorial paralysis because building CMS is not easy. But purposefully we kept it simple. Our first iteration was very simple. We got something working and deployed and now we're just adding features to it and we just go with the flow. Yeah. And as we've said in past emails and stuff, by deploying that simplistic, really base model, mvp of the product, we were able to use it and then go, okay, well, what's the most important piece that comes next? And that was really fun. So, all right, we need to be able to edit these fields and then give me a back button and let's have a feed so we can communicate and all sorts of stuff, you know, so it's, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. So that's, I think our win, but. Yeah, well, I will, I'll take that. You'll take it? Oh, well, then I don't have a win. I didn't. Here's what I prepared earlier. No, I've got a slight win, but that dives into the episode. Then are we ready to go? Let's go. Yeah. All right, so this, this one, everyone listening. Thank you as always for listening. This is going to be slightly different from, from what we normally talk about. It's still career and mindset related, but it is something very personal to me. But I just really wanted to tell the story. I thought it was really a touching, moving story and I thought it might provide some thought forever and some food for thought. So I'm setting a timer to actually stop myself going on for too long, Bob. So here I go now, today. So as you all know, I've got, I've got kids and I've got a six year old son. And he came home from school today and he actually asked me the question. And for everyone who hasn't seen me, if you haven't seen me through the website or something, you know, I've got brown skin. And he came home and he said to me, he goes, you know, daddy, why is my skin brown? And I said to him, I said, well, you know, your, your skin's a mix of mummy and mine, you know, so my wife's canadian and so her skin's quite fair and she's Caucasian and I'm brown. So he's got a mix of that. And he said, why? And I told him that. And he said, oh. And I said, why do you ask me that? And he said, because someone at school, when they were playing sports today, someone from another class said to him, your skin is brown. And they didn't do it maliciously. It wasn't, you know, something aggressive. He didn't feel. It wasn't something to attack him, but he felt self conscious instantly because no one's ever said it to him before. No one's ever felt the need to point out that his skin is not caucasian, that he's got brown skin. And he was suddenly thinking about it as a six year old, thinking about this stuff and worrying about it. So he came home to tell me that. And when I explained this to him, he actually said to me, and this was heartbreaking, right? Hearing this, he said to me, he goes, I kind of, you know, I kind of wish that you weren't here so my skin wouldn't be brown. And you can imagine how that must, how that would feel hearing your six year old son say something like that to you, right? It's, it's, it's mortifying. It's not something you ever want to hear. But, you know, again, mindset and everything. So I'm not worried about it. In that, from that perspective, he is clearly just playing with what he knows. He knows that he was made to feel uncomfortable because someone pointed out his skin and he's just, he's just verbalizing that. And as sucky as that was, you know, we had a chat all evening, myself, him, my wife, my other son, and we talked about it. And we were talking to him about how you have to be comfortable in your own skin, you know, and pun intended, right? But you have to embrace who you are. You know, we said to him, what you always want to be able to tell your kids when you look in the mirror, be proud of what you see. Be proud of what you see on the inside. Be proud of who you are as a person and own it. You know, if someone ever. So I told him, I said, if someone ever said to you, your skin is brown, don't get defensive, don't get angry. Just say, yeah, damn right, it's brown. It's great. It's fantastic. I love it. It's awesome. Let's celebrate that. You know, and to me, this was just this moment, and it's almost indicative of the workplace. And this is where I'm connecting the dots with what I do day to day, what I see day to day, when we all go into new jobs and coding roles, you name it. There is an imbalance, right? And there are times when people are going to walk into the workplace and they're not going to look like everyone else who's there. You know, you can't deny that this is going to happen, right? And the important thing is to own it, is to embrace who you are and just get on with it, you know, and not be afraid of being who you are, not be upset about who you are, you know, and be proud of that. So that's the sort of messaging I was going through with my son tonight. And, you know, the reality is, at his school, it's pretty much everyone's caucasian. When I go to school pickup every afternoon, I am the only brown person at that school out of a couple of 100, 300 something kids. And it's just, it makes. He must have this feeling of, without even realizing what it is, that he must feel different. He must know that the other people around him don't look the same. And he's probably thinking that now. If he didn't before, he's probably thinking it now. And that makes me sad. And that is sad in general, but it's also just something that's going to happen. If it didn't happen now, it happened in high school, it happened in the workplace, it happened at university, whatever. But again, the important message here, and I'm actually under time, this is great. The important message here is just, we have to be comfortable in our own skin. We have to be proud of who we are, not be phased by things like that. And again, this other child, I'll say this as a disclaimer, was not malicious. They just saw that, hey, in this surrounding where every other kid is caucasian, here's a brown kid. So I'm just going to. As a six year old as well, I'm going to say, hey, you're brown. That's cool. And non intentional. They're not trying to upset my son, but that's just how he took it. And that's another perspective. And sometimes the things we say and do maybe completely innocent from our perspective, but I guarantee that kid who said it to my son is not thinking about it late into the evening like my son was. Guarantee they're not having a talk around their dinner table. That, hey, there's a kid in the class that is a different color. Right. And so this is. This is all indicative of a lot of things. But, yeah, the message I want to get across is just, yeah, let's be comfortable in our skin and be proud of that. And it's going to be a challenge for many of us as we move into different workplaces. When you move overseas, different countries, different cultures, it's just the nature of being human in the world today, but we should just embrace it. So there you go. Bob, thanks for letting me talk for five minutes. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Great story. Thanks for sharing that here. Look at that. My timer just went off. I nailed that. Concise, but, yeah. Thank you, everyone, for listening. That was not an easy one to talk about. We actually had something planned for tonight, but given this just happened, I just thought, you know what? We should. I'll bring it up. I'll bring it up and we'll see how it goes. So, also, yeah, kudos on how you guided your son through it and also how you took it yourself. Right. Because that's pretty heartbreaking. Right. What he said. And of course, you know, he's six years old. Right. He's. He probably is not aware of how that came across, what he said to you. Right. So he. So you. You had good perspective there, right. Because it's. As a parent, it's very easy to take that personal. It's emotional. Yeah, yeah. Kind of have that empathy and put yourself in his shoes where he is, you know? And. Yeah. So, yeah, no, we'll be fine. And, yeah, he's sleeping outside tonight. That's. I took away his screeds. He's out of the will. No, no, it's all good. No, thanks, man. I appreciate it. And then thanks for letting me, again, for letting me talk about it tonight. Letting me talk about it or supporting me talking about it. As you said, this is a podcast about Python developer, but also career mindset. And this is definitely in the mindset bucket, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely there. I've been there. Joining the coding team and being the only person that looks like me. It happens. Right. But that's not my self worth in how I look, so. But anyway, all right, so look, in the essence of time, we did have to do our normal wrap up, which is to talk about the books. The books. What's your reading? Well, now you start. I need a drink of water. Okay. Yeah. So I decided to. To stick to fewer books to actually finish them. But I've said that before. Or end attempt. No, but I'm actually reading architecture patterns with Python, Harry Percival and Bob Gregory. And. Yeah, very interesting. Like the design patterns, DDD or domain driven design. And yeah, it really makes you think about how to better design your apps, what goes where. So I find it an interesting read. It's chock full with practical code examples. It's doing TDD, test driven development, even goes into event driven microservices. So, interesting read. It's not an easy read. It's definitely a book. You just have to sit down and really focus and really try to understand the code and stuff. Yeah, that's a. That good read. Like. No, that's cool. I love it. That's really awesome. And again, keeping up that active study. Thanks, man. Always, always. What about you? Yeah, well, actually I'm going to credit this book to Marilla Talboure, who's been on the podcast before. One of our best friends and fans, we love Marilla. She put me onto this book a few weeks ago called the Internet of Money, and it's essentially a series of talks by, I should know the author by now, whatever, by this guy. And it's just this talks on bitcoin and what is really interesting. And I listen to the audiobook rather than reading a physical book. But the thing that got me about this is it's not about the cryptocurrency, it's not about the token and stuff. It's about the underlying technology about it. And that just had me hooked and I was loving the book. So there's another two volumes out now I think I saw after I finished this one, so I might have to pick those up because it was just riveting. I just love it from an interest and technology perspective, how it's changing the world. And it has the potential to change the world. I think that's the important part. And it's just really exciting to me to be seeing and learning about something so new where we can't even sort of imagine how it can change the world. And a lot of the analogies that he uses in his talks are like, well, this is just like we couldn't have imagined how the Internet would change the world and how phone lines would essentially go from copper exchanges and stuff to actually being on the Internet, how cars would change the world, from the horse and cart and so on and so forth. So really great read and listen. So I enjoyed it. Cool. So its not only about bitcoin as the currency, its also about the technology and how thats really revolutionary. William? Well, he barely talks about any cryptocurrencies at all throughout the entire book. Its mainly about the technology underneath, how it works, how its different. But just the fact that were talking about currency when we think about bitcoin is because its just illogical use case at this point in time. But you know, just like the logical use case for roads was the car. But look at how many other use cases we have for it now that they're established. So anyway, that loose analogy, I'm sure I butchered that. But yeah, a good book. I enjoyed it. Really sorry to stay on the topic, but another thing you share with me about that book, and that was really eye opening, was like, well, you feel you're in control with the bank and stuff, but you're not. Like if one day they decide to not grant you any cash, you won't have your cash. And bitcoin technology flips that around, right? Yep, exactly right. It's with you. And that's where it stays. You are, as he says in the book, you are the bank. You're everything. As opposed to, as we were saying, ATM at your bank isn't working and they closed because maybe it's a Sunday and the ATM's broken your money, you can't get to it. So how realistically, how much is that money actually yours? So there's a really interesting take and perspective thing. And honestly, it's something mind blowing in the point that we've been, we spent what, 30 years dealing with the current financial system. So the idea of even trying to think about it as something different is really difficult. But, and there's another podcast in that, just changing the way you think about a topic. So I'll save that one. Amazing. Thank you, Marella, for yet another good book suggestion. Yeah, exactly. We appreciate you, Marilla. Thank you. But yeah, that's it. So you have. She's probably reading it locking. I beat her. I beat her because I listened to it. She's still reading, but she read another book at the same time. She wins. All right, well, look, I'm done. Anything else from you, Bob? No, I think we're good. But we'll be back next week with another topic, be it developer or mindset or both. Brilliant. Thanks everybody for listening. Any feedback, just send us an email info at pybytes feedback or ideas. We always love to hear from you. Tailor our content to your needs and preferences and yeah, other than that, have a great week. Awesome. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back next week. Cheers. 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