This is something that is definitely more special to me, not just because it's the idea, but because of the potential impact that it could have, but also just the idea behind it is just different, where it's not just creating a solution for a simple problem, it's creating a solution, a potential solution that could really impact men in a more positive way. And even if it means one person doesn't die by suicide, or one person doesn't is able to overcome addiction, or one person's able to get through any life phase, then I've done my job, and it's 100% fulfilling the medicine. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. 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 the Pyrates podcast. This is Bob Elbows. This week we have a special guest, James Dikas, a teacher in the US, and we talk about how we got into Python programming, how he recently really made a big jump in his skills. He was in PDM and built a quite mature project, mainly in Django, scratching some of his own itches around men, helping each other overcome mental challenges. So we talk about the app, talk about this journey, mindset, books. It's all there. I hope you enjoy this episode with James. Let's dive straight in. This is Bob Baldebos. I'm not here at Julian this week, but I have a very special guest with me today is James Dikas. James, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me. It's definitely a pleasure to be here. Indeed. Yeah, thanks for hopping on. And, yeah, we invited you because you did quite an interesting switch in your career, going from teacher to developer, and you've just completed PDM, where you put some real fire under that transition and built some really cool stuff. So I just wanted to talk about that and, yeah, share with our audience, yeah, how you've grown, really. So, yeah, maybe to kick it off, you want to introduce yourself to the audience. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You know, thank you for having me. So, you know, sort of the background that I have right now and that I've sort of been trained with is that I'm a high school teacher. Um, I work in a maker space, so I used to be a middle school teacher, middle school science teacher. Um, back in, like, what, 2016? Uh, yeah, 2016. I was a middle school 2017. So I had middle school science teacher, moved out to Florida, joined the Broward county. Oh, sorry. Joined the local public school district, um, as an instructional specialist and instructional facilitator. Grant facilitator role. Basically just helping coach teachers and work with the different sort of programs that the district was creating to help meet students needs, both social, emotionally, and academically. But additionally, from there, the opportunities that I gained from that experience was going to the current school that I'm at, where I am an innovative specialist. And basically what that means is I take traditional curriculum. So, basically, you go into your math class, or you go into your science class, you do a sit and get where your teacher is kind of just lecturing at you. Instead, the teachers come to us, we talk with them, we work with them. And instead of just teaching you something like, you know, just for simplicity sake, how to add, instead of just sitting there or having you sit there, they are there, they're at the whiteboard, like, we all had to do and learn two plus two instead. It's sort of those things of, let's do this through a project, like learn how to do math or science or whatever curriculum piece that we're talking about through a project. And so we kind of follow along with a lot of project based learning practices. So we kind of break a lot of the curriculum up. We have curriculum experts, which is our teachers. And fortunately, I work at a very fortunate school, that a lot of our teachers are actually really experts in the field. So we have a lot of doctors teaching our students. We have a lot of people who have been, if they're not a doctor, they don't have a doctorate, they've worked. Like, there's this one lady that she was one of our art teachers, and she had worked with the FBI and stuff like that. And it was really cool to hear a lot of her background and the expertise that she brought. But getting into this field, or, sorry, getting into the current role that I had before that, I went to Southern Methodist University, got a master's and maker education, or STEM education, and I got a lot of experience there, where I was also exposed to. To Python. And that exposure to python, although I didn't pick it up at that time, allowed me to just get a better understanding of what computational thinking or computational logic meant and just breaking down those complex steps. And it was weird, because I never grew up really liking puzzles like Sudoku or something like that. I didn't like it. I just didn't pick it up and run with it. But then from the moment of just a simple little scratch program and then into a python program, and it was like, okay, this is actually just like solving problems, like, computer problems all day. And it just is a constant challenge. So it was just like almost a competition to beat a computer at its own game. You know what I mean? Yeah. So getting into the position that I'm in now, I was able to, uh, you know, connect with. And I'm. I know you. You all know, I'm Sean Tybur. And with Sean, talking with Sean and. And just seeing all the stuff that he was doing at our school was just purely amazing to me. Like, I mean, he was using the, uh. What was it, the, uh. I think, yeah, the Arduinos for, um. He was using them and using the Wi Fi stuff with it. And all of a sudden, I was just seeing him do. What was it? It was like a little. It was like a hand sanitizer thing. I forget exactly what it said, but it was like, when you want. It went over. You got hand sanitizer during COVID It was like something all of a sudden popped up, and it was like. It went around. It was really cool. I forget what it was now, but it was just something that sparked my interest. And then from there, I met Kelly and just have been running with it ever since. So I went to her class a couple of times. Unfortunately, because of the work responsibilities, I got caught up, and I just had to do a lot of self study on my own. So this is about a year ago now. January last. Last year. And then I started studying on my own. I went through a boot camp or. No, sorry, January, a year and a half ago. Went to a boot camp during last summer. Did that. I did my own Django course on Udemy. And from there, I had a lot of experience with just sort of some fundamentals. And I built an application for our robotics teams. And then I just wanted more. It was something I enjoy, something I love doing or found love in doing. And I wanted to be better at it. So I started doing my research, looking into different programs. I was looking at some master programs because my academic background, I used to view schools as, like, just, you know, the lighthouse or the beacon of hope, if you will, for education. And it was amazing, really, to kind of get into the weeds with coding and figure out that you don't need to go to a school. You have tons of resources available to you. And so upon that, finding you all and contacting you all, there was the different things going on that I really wanted to try to begin to make this transition and did the program with you. And here we are. Here we are. Yeah. Yeah. It's a completely different, completely different place, too. So, yeah, nice. So, yeah, it was all triggered by, you know, the puzzling effect of solving problems and, yeah, I was happy to hear that you got that inspiration from Kelly and Sean because they're shout outs. Right, to them and teaching Python podcasts as well, and they're doing some amazing things. Sean was actually on the podcast as well in episode 93. Similar story, right, from teacher to software developer. We titled that episode like that. And, yeah, that tinkering, right? So you definitely got the basics. You came pretty far with self study, yet you joined PDM. Do you want to share a bit about your journey and what you built? Because you came out with a pretty impressive app, did a lot of django. Right. So maybe you want to tell us a bit what you built, what you accomplished. Yeah, absolutely. So starting PDM, my main project that I really wanted to accomplish was I wanted to build a peer mentoring platform, if you will. And I kind of was thinking of it in the sense of, like, almost like a Facebook or an Instagram type of social media platform to offer and more of a friendly and just a friendly opportunity for people to connect on it, but also providing not the social media platform of, like, anything goes, and then you get all the fighting and stuff. So my idea is a peer mentoring platform for men specifically. And this is not, like, not necessarily meant to be like an exclusionary thing, but this idea was built out of a lot of the research that shows, and I mean, just society speaking as well, that research shows that a lot of men have a lot of chronic issues. And then socially speaking, we don't talk about them a lot of times. Also, we don't have strong connections with other individuals anymore. And a lot of the research is out there actually showing that up to 33% of men experience or exhibited and disclosed that they feel like they have absolutely nobody that they can talk to about the most pressing issues that they have. And that kind of was an interest that led me into psychology. There was an interest that led me into plenty of different fields because one of my best friends in high school ended up ultimately, you know, taking his own life and going throughout. Me and my family have just had multiple instances of individuals. You know, what is it? I'm trying to just committing suicide or. Or not committing suicide, but completing the act of suicide, if you will. And ultimately, to me, if we had something that we just had a platform where we had the ability for men to just kind of connect, whether it's anonymously or whether you want to actually put your information out there. That's not a concern of mine. More of along the lines of being able to build these connections so that if you have the issues, like, you know, recently going through a divorce, not having social connections and that social support, and now, you know, if you're recently going through divorce, you're not seeing your kids, you don't have the social connections with maybe your spouse or her family or something like that, or his or her. Sorry. And so my idea is, put this platform out there. We have groups that you can join if there's a group that or an interest group that you can join. So basically the idea is you create these groups based around these problems that you're facing. And so if you're going through a divorce, created a supportive divorce group. If you're going through a career change from teacher to software developer, you have a support group for that. But instead of having it to where it's that traditional support group that mentioned have been pushed into, they're not pushed into, but the support group that people talk about men being a part of. But there's no real solutions for it. So this is my solution. Have this platform group, you can join a group. If there's not a group that is available that you want to join, you can create one. Within these groups, we were able to make a forum post type situation where you also can comment on it, but then additionally we also added the feature of being able to have live chats. So the point behind this for me was say that, you know, you're in a situation in which, like, you, let's just talk about going through a career change, right? And I'm the teacher. I'm looking at software developer jobs. I go into the software developer interview, do absolutely atrocious, don't get the job. I'm going through a point where it's like I'm just in my head running, you know, all these negative thoughts coming out, and I'm the person that doesn't have a social group, or I'm the person that doesn't necessarily feel like I have somebody I can talk to about these, but I can't get them out of my head. So instead of going to this group, just posting on it and having people comment, I wanted to have the opportunity to have a live chat to where you can go in, say, hey, guys, I'm struggling with this. Can somebody help me out? Can somebody talk to me? Talk me through it? And that was kind of the infant application, if you will, because then we started adding private chats. We added the opportunity to add friends to it and things like that. And, yeah, no, it's been a heck of a journey. Great. Because I started off with only class based views. We built this whole thing out, the function based views. We were doing crazy things, setters, getters, like, just all this. We'd use channels for the chats. We used Daphne to handle those channels, or all the consumers and everything. And, man, it was just going from writing for loops so that I can populate all my engineering workbook notes, entries onto an index page to now we're doing crazy things where we're setting up redis server to be able to handle all the consumers and the channels and be able to have all the people end up talking to each other or able to talk to each other. So, yeah, it was very exciting from two perspectives, right? Seeing you building your dream map. Right. And having a clear vision. And you were constantly challenging yourself because you were pretty ambitious what the thing had to do, right. And then you had to make it happen. And for me, it was also exciting, apart from the theme, to also see you grow, whereas the start, you were making more beginner mistakes. And as we went through the weeks, you became more advanced and I had to explain less and less. So I could just say, like, go look there. And you were just way more autonomous. Right. And doing more complex things. So that was really, really cool. And, yeah, also maybe, maybe a good takeaway that, you know, you can do small apps, but if you do like, one big project, almost a startup idea here. Right. You can go very deep. And I think that's what we did. So that was really cool. And now, yeah. That lately you just keep taking it to the next level because PDM is over, but you just keep building. And you're now fully autonomous in a sense, as well. Yeah. Because now, prior to the program ending, we were even having chats about how I was looking at optimization of queries and optimization of being able to insert new objects into our database and stuff, looking at using redis as a cache and then also using it for that cache to insert into our database at specific time periods or whatnot. And just that discussion is something I don't think I would have ever even been able to dream of at the beginning of the experience and to tie on to what you're saying is even that big project piece, we learn through little projects, we have to get to the big project piece. If you are not discounting the small projects. Um, but I think that that really leads into sort of, you know, the teaching philosophy that I have as well by learning through, you know, problem based, uh, or, sorry, pbl. So problem based learning, um, or project based learning, and just being able to get into that, see what I need to do, getting the experts and their opinions and, you know, the research that I have, building that into my own repertoire or my own toolbox, if you will, and then replicating that. And I don't think that. I agree with you. I don't think that I could have done that with some of the smaller app ideas that I had versus where I'm at now with this big app that we did. And I think that that was really something that you're talking about, where I was lacking confidence, I was making simple mistakes, and now we're a couple months later, and I just. I feel more confident. I feel stronger in my capabilities. And if there is a bug where there is a mistake, I'm not necessarily reaching out first. I'm actually, you know, going through the debugging process, researching, and, you know, if worse comes to worse, I can't find an answer after 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Guess what? Luckily, there's a little app that came out called chat GPT that helps me out a little bit, which I remember, like, at the start, you're a bit skeptical and maybe not so comfortable using, and now you'll set up the dead, right? Oh, yeah. Because especially with that. That kind of leads, from my perspective of liking, especially with students. Like, it comes down to, like, you know, we don't want to give students the ability to just get an answer and not understand it. And I was kind of afraid that I was going to lean on it for the answer while I was in the period that I was in, where I felt like I didn't have enough information or enough knowledge to really understand what it was saying to me. And I didn't want to just copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. And it was really. It was really cool to hear or to see that the copying and pasting didn't just happen where I was secretly knowledgeable enough to understand what it was pumping out at me. So, yeah, it was really cool to take that jump into a tool and use it. I feel appropriately, at least. Awesome. Awesome. Sorry, we got a lawnmower out here. But definitely it's also increased the productivity of the apps that or the app that we were making. It has increased the depth of knowledge that I have and just grateful for the opportunity to have Bob 2.0 with me still. Yeah, I think at the end you used to do a lot for pytest as well, right, to write your tests and stuff? Yeah, yeah. Especially at the end because we were coming down to days left, high test I hadn't touched yet and I still wanted to understand it, but understanding, you know, setting up fixtures, using those fixtures to feed into our tests and setting up the project structure, that was one of the things that I kind of did on my own and doing all of the, like the project structure on my own, looking at the fixtures and, you know, some of the fixtures I started to create on my own and then using it to just once I understood the fundamentals, using it to just start helping me pump out some of the things that we needed to get done. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, we can link it below, but it's not yet online. You're in the process of deploying it. Anything you want to share regarding the name and the next steps, you're thinking quickly. So with the name? Yeah, we've definitely been thinking about a couple of different names. I think that we're leaning on one right now. I'm pretty confident to share it. I think that we're going to go with bonded brotherhood just because of the simple fact that the brotherhood represents not necessarily a family that you're born with as in the sense of a brother, but a brotherhood being the family that you gain or the, the connections and the, the strong relationships that you gain between two men where it's, I mean, my best friend growing up, I call him brother all the time. He's not my brother, but he's my brother. And so the idea is creating that kind of strong connection between alt, between other individuals so that they feel like they have somebody, they were part of a brotherhood that is ultimately not looking to go, do you know, these crazy inappropriate or maladaptive things. But we're bonding over helping each other through the issues that we're facing in our life. And ultimately some of the biggest issues that we'll face through our life and finding that connection to help us through it, I think is what the name bonded brotherhood really kind of speaks to its support. It's connection, it's creating your own social support system that is not just you going to work and saying hey to your friend. What'd you do this weekend? No, it's, hey, what's up? What's going on? Haven't talked to you in a couple of days. Everything good? Oh, yeah, no, just blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And then an hour later. Now all of a sudden you're like, huh, where'd that time go? And that's what the name means to me. Awesome. So when you have deployed somewhere, you're going to then also probably market it a little bit or at least test it out with some friends first and do a test run, right? Yeah, yeah. I've already got a small group of friends that I've been talking to that we're going to get it going. They're going to reach out to some of their friends, some of their closer connections, so that we can start doing some pilot testing with it to make sure that it's doing exactly what we want it to do. And just the mentality and the mantra of it as well is just behind it. I don't want it to be an idea that I make, put it out there and then it runs wild and it's not what it was meant to be. So, yeah, we have a group that we're developing in the process right now. Super exciting. Yeah. Almost treating it like a small startup. Right? So, yeah, yeah, that's where. That's where, luckily, I do this. It's funny where I do, like, this thing where, I mean, everybody does it, right, where we learn from other individuals, but learning, like the MVP stuff from you. I fortunately have the ability to go at the school I work at and talk to my supervisor who is running one of our big newer programs, our social entrepreneurship program, and. And her. Her side's all about business. So being able to talk to her a little bit about the whole process of testing your idea, not unit testing, but throwing it out to focus groups and stuff like that. And having that. That ability to talk to her is really something that I. I really value, too, because that's where we're going. Yeah, that's. That's also a great reminder. We need different mentors in life. Right? Like, you can have one for the coding, but that might not necessarily be the one for the marketing or, you know. Yeah, yeah, super cool. And, yeah, lastly on this topic, it must also feel great to have this real world project now on your portfolio, right? So if you would go for a developer job or whatever you want to do next with Python in your career, you have something valuable. Whatever this app is going to do, right, if. How many people it's going to have, it's still, at its core also a project you can show on your profile. Right. Pretty exciting. Oh, no, 100% exciting. Because especially came out of my bootcamp, had a, you know, almost like a toy API app, and then I did build the robotics app, which was like a real world project, but it was small and it was, you know, it impacted 1010 of our students and then, or would have impacted ten of our students. There was issues on the deployment side, not with deploying, but just the. The administration issues with the school. And it's nothing bad. It's just protecting students data and stuff like that, and being mindful and proactive in protecting our students. It wasn't something that's able to be deployed with them, but it's still a real world project. And now this is something that is definitely more special to me, not just because it's the idea, but because of the potential impact that it could have, but also just the idea behind it is just different, where it's not just creating a solution for a simple problem, it's creating a solution or potential solution because could not be anything but a potential solution that could really impact men in a more positive way. And even if it means one person doesn't die by suicide or one person doesn't is able to overcome addiction, or one person's able to get through any life phase, then I've done my job and it's 100% fulfilling in that sense. Amazing. Yeah. I think that's one of the most beautiful things we can do right, when our code has that impact on society because, yeah, mental health stuff is no joke. Right? And. Or on the other hand, like, there's all kinds of scenarios where it can have an impact. Last week we had Robert, right, who was also in PDM, and he's working on that PFAS or forever chemicals. Right? And he. He's using python and fast API to make a dent in debt because that's directly harmful for health. And he has code that can help that field of research, which is giving back. And it's super cool and satisfying. So exhilarating even. That's also really cool to think about, too, that the technology offers us at this point the ability to have that impact, whereas we had that. There's evidence, obviously, throughout history that leads us to have that impact, but the way that technology is now is just so rapidly able to affect people in that way. And it's just cool to think about. Exactly. And also the reminder that we're standing on the shoulders of giants, because in our case, both you use Django for your solution, we use Django for our coding platform. But Django is a piece of art that's years of development and smart people giving us that framework. Same with fast API. And we can use that framework to make apps faster. Now we have chat GPT as well to help us write code faster. In that sense, we live in very fortunate times. Do this for starters, with less effort, relatively. Where before it would. Yeah. Yeah. Could you imagine doing this without any of the abstraction that we were like? It will be much harder. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Arduous. Yeah. I know plenty of people have done it. It's just me, only two years in. It's crazy to think about having to build it from just. I mean, where we came from, assembly language and, you know, see. Could take years. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, cool. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, we're coming to an end. You don't have too much time left, but last question, as we always ask. What are you reading or have read? Am I reading book you want to share? Yeah, no. So right now I'm actually not reading a book, but too busy coding, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much too busy coding. The. The main books that I got, you know, a great one. Great resource here. The. I don't know why. It's. Okay. Yeah, great resource. Tony Whaley. And I'm not. I'm not going to talk about those ones because, you know, those are. Those are survival kits. But for something that I think that is. Would be cool to actually talk about, considering it also impacts the way that I think and probably ultimately impacted my thought process to create the app ideas is there was a book that was essentially pivotal to my development called the discovery of being. And the discovery of being is. Hold on. Sorry. Trying to block a call. Yeah. The discovery of being is written by Rollo May. And Rola May was an existential psychologist who ultimately talked a lot about the role that we have in, you know, interacting with the world and how the world interacts with us, does stuff to us, but we ultimately have the responsibility to act back in a way that is consistent with either our values or where we want to go. Right. And he also touched a lot about the maladaptive stuff going on in society with, like, you know, psychic numbing is one thing that he called it, and ultimately that's engaging in things like alcoholism or drug abuse or other, like hedonism and things like that as a method of escape, escaping the psychic pain that you experience or the psychological pain that you experience. And I can't talk enough about the book. If you haven't read it, pick it up. It's life changing. It helps you understand that the world is just this thing that is just nothing but constant stimuli. And how you react to the stimuli is 100% on you. And so you even look at, like, Viktor Frankl going through the Holocaust and how he, you know, understood and, you know, internalized that horrific experience that he experienced and ultimately turned it into something that was positive for him. Search of meaning, right, yeah, the search of meaning. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Wonderful book. Exactly. And seeing it was one thing that was crazy because. Exactly. From going from discovery of being, I had this man, I had this great supervisor, Doctor May. He's no longer with us, but he was the precipice of me just running with existentialism. So after that we talked about. Exactly. Viktor Frankl. And if he can make the Holocaust into something that's empowering and positive for him, then I think that anybody understanding those kind of fundamentals can take anything in their life and change it from a horrific experience into an empowering and experience for themselves, for change. That's inspiring. Yeah. Thank you. I'm reading something on similar, how to think like a roman empire about stoics. So a lot about, you know, like, whatever happens, have control on how you react to it, you know. Yeah. So I'll link that below. That's. I must pick that up. That's gonna get more highly, highly recommended, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, no, definitely. If you haven't picked it up, pick it up, read it, put it down, just digest it, pick it up in pieces. It's great. It's. And it's also a nice. Yeah. Mindset topic to wrap this discussion up with, which is otherwise a lot about tech and Django. But at the end of the day, right, it's not only programming, but it's also like, nurturing the mind. Yeah. Oh, yeah. At the end of the day, when you close the screen, who are you? Yeah, still humans. Yeah, exactly. They don't have us attached up to the Matrix yet, so. Not yet. Not yet. James, this was fun. Thanks for hopping on and sharing your journey in PDM and what you achieved and where you're heading. Super proud of how you've done it in the last couple of months. Impressed and looking forward to seeing where this effort's going to lead to and also your piping journey. Thank you. Thank you. I can't say any. Enough. I'm very, very, extremely grateful. Beyond grateful, happy. I don't know the words for it. For you and Julian, the opportunities that you provided me, the, you know, just the knowledge that you passed on to me, the expertise that you all have. Because to be honest with you, 100%, without you, I wouldn't be where I'm at. So thank you very much. Thank you for everything. And I really appreciate everything. Thanks, man. That makes our day, if not week, but also want to say that you put in the hard effort and doing the. You showed up every day and did the work, you know? So with that mindset was a matter of time to succeed. Yeah. Oh, man. Thank you. That touches my heart there. Thank you. All right, man. Good to have you on today. Thanks. And, yeah, you have a great rest of your day. Yeah, you as well. Thank you for having me. I look forward to catching up soon. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte, France. That is Pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of Python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's Pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.