1027: The Rise of the Design Engineer

Scott and Wes tackle your questions on the rise of the design engineer, why AI still lacks “taste” (and why it’s about more than just looks), and how to actually write tests in the age of AI-assisted coding. Plus: is AI a bubble about to burst, keeping coding agents efficient in massive codebases, introducing kids to AI, a Linux life update, and more! Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:18 The Rise of the Design Engineer Role 08:39 Why AI Has No Taste: It’s Not Just How It Looks 14:28 Brought to you by Sentry.io 14:52 Testing in the AI Era: Are We Using AI to Write Tests? 20:09 Is AI a Bubble? Will It Burst? The AI Bubble is Bursting on YouTube 24:35 Negative Public Sentiment Towards AI and Data Centers 30:16 Update on Scott Using Omarchy and Linux Is The Omarchy Hype Real? 38:14 Introducing AI to Kids: A Parent’s Perspective with Dr. Courtney 49:34 Getting Hired Without AI Experience: How to Catch Up 52:53 Keeping Coding Agents Efficient: Token Usage, Speed, and Accuracy Modem.dev Article Fallow Docs 57:10 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs Sick Picks Scott: Kitchen Sink Brush Wes: Magnet Fishing Shameless Plugs Scott: Phases Podcast, Phases Podcast on YouTube Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wes Bos?

  Welcome to Syntax. Today, we've got a Potluck episode. We're talking to you about the come up of the design engineers. This is a new thing you're hearing a lot about. And I, quite honestly, I think this is going to be a very important role in companies going forward. Talking about how to introduce your kids to AI, or if you even should, we've got special guests coming on, so stay tuned for that. Update on Scott using Omar G in Linux. Is he still doing it? Or has he switched back to macOS? Why AI has no taste? And we talk a little bit more about design in this episode, and it's not just about like how it looks. Design is not just like, oh, I chose red, because a lot of these apps look exactly the same,

• 0:40Wes Bos?

  but they're not the same in how they function. And finally, we're talking about keeping coding agents efficient. What, how should you tackle building your projects so that they are efficient and not just spewing out a whole bunch of extra files? I've got some really good tips from Scott on that one. If you've got a question you'd like us to answer, please go to syntax.fm, click on Potluck in the in the navigation and send us that. We will answer it on a future episode. What's up, Scott? You ready to get going?

• 1:09Scott Tolinski?

  Hell yeah, I'm ready to get going.

• 1:11Wes Bos?

  All right.

• 1:19Wes Bos?

  First question from Birthday Girl says, "I'm a designer and self-taught developer with a background in design. I see myself as a hybrid, equally good at both, and don't want to define myself primarily as one or the other. Recently, the role of design engineer has been on the rise, and they link to a Versal blog post that essentially says what a design engineer is. A design engineer at Versal blend aesthetic sensibility with technical skill. This allows us to deeply understand a problem, the design and build and ship a solution autonomously, right? Somebody who has the eye for design and the UX of design, as well as actually being able to

• 1:59Wes Bos?

  build the entire thing. So this, this term of design engineer is on the rise, which I think captures the dual expertise well. I have two questions. First, what are your thoughts on the future of design dev separations or convergence? And two, I feel like most engineers discount design and dev hybrid expertise if they come from a design background, but the vice versa is not true. A really talented engineer who got really good at designs seems to have credibility issues. Are people biased at design because it is not as a technical background? I find this a bit silly, given the developer community is very welcoming of self-taught developers? Or do I experience this more because I am a woman? Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

• 2:41Wes Bos?

  Super design savvy devs. Thanks for the pod. Okay, this is awesome, and I love this idea of a design engineer, because like many years ago, we had this question of like, should designers code? And everybody would fight about it. They say, no, no, no, I'm going to sit in Photoshop, and I'm going to design my things, and then I'm going to hand it off to somebody else to actually do the implementation of it. And then equally, you see, you heard like devs being super frustrated where like, I designed this thing, and then I handed it off, and they didn't do a very good job. And then, as the web got more complex, design became much more about how does it work?

• 3:23Wes Bos?

  How do you interact with it? How do these things work together, rather than simply just like, what does it look like? Right? Like, I think that's such a very small part of design. So I love this idea of a design engineer, which is somebody who very well understands how products work, how user interfaces work, how they, what happens when you click it? How, what happens when you have multiple items together? This stuff is so, we have a question coming up next that's similar to this. I won't say too much, but this stuff is so important, especially as everybody's just vibe coding their UIs right now, and they're just pooping out some dog crap, right? So I think that this design engineer is fantastic, and, and I think it's

• 4:06Wes Bos?

  going to be even more important in the, in the next coming, maybe probably six months, you know? Everybody and their mother can prompt out a half decent looking UI, but where excellent UIs really come to the surface is where somebody who spends time understanding how it all works together, and how it interacts, and what happens when you hover over top of it, and the little frustrations that come with using an application. I've got more to say that on the next question, but I think that this skill is going to be the new full stack developer, right? Because that was the other thing, right? I'll let you talk in a second, Scott, but like, that was the huge thing that everybody fought over as well as like, should you be a full stack

• 4:50Wes Bos?

  engineer, or should you be backend and frontend? That's no longer a question. In most cases, people are doing both in the web world.

• 4:59Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Wow. You know what? And I think, one, happy birthday, birthday girl. Two, if it is still your birthday, which I would assume it is, considering that's your name. I would say on the regard of are people biased against design because it's not seen as technical? I think that this has always been one of bias that I've noticed, and I would like to pose that it's out of jealousy. Developers look at somebody who's good at design and think they possibly could not be as good of an engineer as me, because, well, I'm not good at design, and I was, you know, that's a whole discipline you've had to learn. And I've spent that time

• 5:41Scott Tolinski?

  in the engineering side of things. So I've personally seen this to be the case. Some people just have much better design intuition, too. I've seen engineers that are fantastic designers, just because they have that really good design intuition. I would also say it is probably also because you're a woman. I, that is also a bias that we see in this industry. So you, you have a multiple factors here, and I think that's working against you. But I do think that this role in particular is such a huge role in the future now of the world that we exist in with AI and all these things.

• 6:24Scott Tolinski?

  And somebody who has design taste and design style is going to be able to create some really amazing stuff. So I think you're in a great position if you can read and write code as well as have a great design sense. To me, this is like, this is a role that I have tried to embody my entire career. This is the, this is the, yeah, the skill set that I wish that I had. I've always wanted to be a great designer, and I've never been able to crack that nut. I've always been a mediocre designer. Wes, you've always been a great designer, and that's one thing I've always been jealous of your abilities on, because it does, if you are a

• 7:09Scott Tolinski?

  great developer and a great designer, the world was yours.

• 7:12Wes Bos?

  You're unstoppable when you can do everything, and when you can come and fix solutions where it's not just what it looks like. Like, take a look at the Versal blog post here. I'm sharing it. Is no individual expected to have all the skills that the team collectively is able to execute on ambitious designs, because we have design in Figma and code, write production code, debug browser performance, you know, that, that's a huge one, write shaders, write copy. That's a big one as well. It's like, can somebody just look at a website that you're building and say, that's not the right tagline. That's not the right copy. You don't have to go through this whole thing of like, oh, let's get the copywriter involved. Let's have a meeting. No,

• 7:54Wes Bos?

  you should just be able to like, look at it and say like, that's not the right thing to say. That just doesn't feel good. And like, I feel like we've, I've done that many times on the syntax team, where you're just like, no, that's, that, that comes off as weird, right?

• 8:08Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Wes Bos?

  3D experiences, Blender, edit videos, using CGI for camera effects, all of that type of stuff is just like, if you can do it all, or if you have a good taste in all of these things, you're unstoppable in creating things that will be able to capture people's attention and make an enjoyable product in this age of absolutely dog crap interfaces.

• 8:33Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, yeah, totally word. So Birthday Girl, I think you're in a great spot.

• 8:38Wes Bos?

  Yes.

• 8:38Scott Tolinski?

  So next question from Mike Swatek. Hey, guys. Not a question. Oh, Mike, what are you doing? Not a question, just a comment. I was thinking about it as I drove to work, listening to the Anthropic episode where you guys kept mentioning how AI tends to lack taste. And I don't know how else to put it. I would liken it to the 90s and 2000s subdivision boom where developers basically used a template. All houses looked the same. Everything looked cookie cutter and you couldn't tell homes apart. All of those houses lacked character and I think that's what's missing when it comes to designs or creating things. It's missing the character that makes it unique.

• 9:20Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, exactly. And this goes right with Birthday Girl's question where the people who have the design sense and they have the ability to see something and make it look special are the people who are on it.

• 9:37Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Scott Tolinski?

  Because we've always had this. Anybody who's been in the industry knows that back in, oh gosh, back in the early 2000s, what we had the basically unstyled websites. Links were blue, backgrounds were white or single color. Maybe you had repeating background GIF images or something like that. Then we had the Bootstrap era where everything looked like either Bootstrap or Foundation and you could see it from a mile away. And then now we have the AI slop era of the same thing where everything looks like you got unnecessary, all uppercase labels. You have all the design tells, right?

• 10:23Scott Tolinski?

  It's, this is nothing new. It's just a different version of the same thing.

• 10:27Wes Bos?

  And I think this is a really good example because it's, yes, they look like violently, people always say like violently Ontario. Like you've been to my neighborhood, right? All of the houses look exactly the same and they are all awful looking. And that's one, that's one part of it. They're not nice looking houses. But on the same regard is like, there's a lot of like weird things about it. Like my roof has like 800 peaks and valleys and it's all unnecessary. I've been in the attic. It could just be a square. It could just be a little hut, could be a triangle. But no, there is probably, I don't know, eight different peaks and points that are all unnecessary. And they just added that because it looked good.

• 11:12Wes Bos?

  And it was impressive to the people that wanted to buy these houses in the 2000s. And now like I, we have to get your, my neighbor got their roof replaced and it was like, like $50,000 or something insane like that because of how complex it is, right? And there's all of these like usability issues where like you, you drive into any garage on our street and you can hardly open your car door. Like, like, did nobody think that you would need to open car doors? By driving in these things, like there's all of these awful usability things about the houses. And I agree where it's just like, yes, that is technically a house and that is technically a nice, decent looking house. But when you really get into like the usability and the flow and how people live in a lot of these houses,

• 11:54Wes Bos?

  there's a lot of like weird oddities that the people are trying to now undo in how these things work. So my rant here is that it's not just what it looks like with this AI design. Yes, we get it. Like there's purple and there's like, there's gradients and stuff added to it. Like that's not the biggest point here. The biggest point is not what it looks like. It's how usable it actually is. Because if you take a look at like all of the apps, like if I open Threads, Twitter, Blue Sky and all of these other like short form blogging apps, sometimes I cannot even tell which one I'm in.

• 12:36Wes Bos?

  If I am on TikTok and on Instagram, I often do not know which app I am in. I have to like swipe up to actually see what icon it is because they look so much the same. But if I, if I am using Threads and I get so frustrated with it because the, the actual interface of it, if you go on Threads desktop, infuriating experience, even though it looks very similar to Twitter, there is so much more thought and care put into the design of Twitter than there is on the Threads desktop website. And that there is, is a perfect example of it's not what it looks like. It's how the, you interact with it, how you use it.

• 13:17Wes Bos?

  If somebody spent the time to say, hmm, when you click on this button where it says a notification, does that notification clear? Or all of these little tiny examples as to how the interface is to get where you want. And another example is, um, this is my rant hour of bad interfaces.

• 13:36Scott Tolinski?

  Yes.

• 13:38Wes Bos?

  The Apple screen time for parents, every single time I need to make a change in my screen time, I get so mad because it's just, it's an awful, like technically, yes, there is a list of settings and you can click on the different categories, you can click through to them, but the usability is absolutely awful. And that's a perfect example of like somebody actually wanting to use it.

• 14:02Scott Tolinski?

  Yes.

• 14:02Wes Bos?

  Brant over.

• 14:04Scott Tolinski?

  Brant over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, it is funny because it's a great analogy like you had mentioned, but the, the cardboard nature of some of the, the homes that are built in that era, McMansion kind of era of homes is very analogous to, you know, the way that AI stuff is, is churned out here. So.

• 14:27Wes Bos?

  Just add it on.

• 14:28Scott Tolinski?

  And if you want to see all of the errors in your application, you'll want to check out Sentry, at sentry.io/syntax. You don't want a production application out there that, well, you have no visibility into in case something is blowing up and you might not even know it. So head on over to sentry.io/syntax. Again, we've been using this tool for a long time and it totally rules. All right.

• 14:52Wes Bos?

  Next question from TLC says, I hear a lot of people talking about how LLMs have helped accelerate the speed of development, but testing is more important than ever. What I haven't heard is that people are, what are people actually using to write tests? Are people writing them by hand? Are we using Claude to generate the tests on the code we just wrote? What about more specific end-to-end and edge cases? It seems like it would be a huge token spend to explore and write, play, write tests for a complex site using an agent. So yes, a few things. First of all, your, your tests are more important than ever. As, as people are just prompting and adding features to absolutely everything,

• 15:34Wes Bos?

  you need to feel extremely confident. There's the amount of pull requests that are coming in, the amount of code changes that are coming in have skyrocketed. And you need to have confidence that adding these things is not going to break other parts of your website, right? Like I get all of these pull requests on some of my sites that, that don't have tests. And I'm just like, I don't know if you actually spent time doing this or if you just drive by prompt, pull request something and it's going to break something else. So the tests are more important than ever. I totally agree. So a few thoughts here. Unit tests first for, for complex logic is something that I will do quite a bit.

• 16:14Wes Bos?

  So one example on my personal website, I needed to be able to take in a URL for any social network and parse out the ID of that URL. Fairly simple function where, I don't know, there's like 10 different kinds of social networks and there's probably 20 different types of links. You know, there's youtube.com, there's u2.be, there's twitter.com, there's x.com, there's, there's threads, there's Blue Sky. They all have six or seven different types of URLs that you can. So I basically, what I did is I took every possible example of every URL that I want and I wrote unit tests for it. So taking this, expect the platform to be Twitter and the ID to be ABC123.

• 16:58Wes Bos?

  And then having that, I was so much more confident being like, all right, AI, please write a function that will cover every single one. And you can kind of loop through it and make sure that it hits every single one of those use cases. So unit test's extremely important in that regard. And then the end-to-end integration tests are super important for these types of things because you want to make sure that you can still use it. I don't think the, the token spend is, is any bigger than writing the actual code. What do you think?

• 17:27Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, you know what, for me, it's like, part of the benefit of this type of thing is making your confirmations of things working more deterministic. I personally lean more on end-to-end tests than I do for even unit or integration tests. End-to-end tests in the web context is really firing this thing up in a browser and stepping through. Tools like Playwright are so good for this because you can, one, see it happen. In Cypress, and I'm sure Playwright has this too, Cypress had a mode where you could click through the thing and it's going

• 18:07Scott Tolinski?

  to write and record your tests. You could even put an agent browser on that to do that and have it write the test as you click through it. And then that becomes a deterministic thing where it's going to run through these things. One thing that I've always loved in a integration test, right, an end-to-end test setup is like just straight up an app tour where it's going on everything, clicking on everything, doing everything one by one. And then that way you can just see at a glance something break. Another thing too with this is that, what is it, visual testing? Visual testing is not something that I ever really liked to do because styles change and then your test fail and all this stuff. But sometimes

• 18:48Scott Tolinski?

  when working with CSS and agents and all these things, if you're working in big systems, having visual testing is a good way to make sure that nothing is breaking, really. So I really lean hard on end-to-end tests, especially in this, and moving those possible things out of the AI's discretion, right? Oh, fire up a Chrome MCP or fire up an agent browser and make sure this thing works. How about instead, write the Playwright test, click through it, and then you can run those tests.

• 19:21Wes Bos?

  And talk about token spend. Like Cursor Claw, they want to open a browser to test it, right? You see them doing that all the time. And that's way more expensive than just running a deterministic test. So that's, you're in good shape. You probably use less tokens if you have explicit ones. And also, like, one thing people hate about tests is that when they're flaky, you start to ignore them because like, ah, it's actually fine, but something broke, you know? And having an agent be able to decipher, is that just it being flaky? Is that like a non-issue that throw, can I modify it? Agents are fantastic at being able to look at something that was flaky and say, this is a big deal, something broke,

• 20:04Wes Bos?

  or no, that was, that's totally fine.

• 20:07Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, totally. Cool. Next question here from Shabazz. What are your thoughts about AI being a bubble? Do you think that the bubble will burst anytime in the near future? Is it even possible? Do you think people will go back to coding manually in that case? Or would it be difficult to go back to coding manually if we ever have to? I think, listen, I think, I think the information around AI being a bubble is very real. I think the, the house of cards there in terms of CPU or GPU ownership and things like that. I think all of that very much makes sense. Do I think that the bubble will pop and that

• 20:50Scott Tolinski?

  AI will go away? Absolutely not. I think, or I think we're kind of in a world where people will just be able to do whatever they want. And I don't, I think there's too much money involved here. I think the companies are just going to keep passing money around. AI is going to keep existing until either it becomes profitable or there's just going to be a couple of big players and that's it. Either way, the, what is that, that cat, cat going down the bag? The rabbit's not going back in the hat?

• 21:20Wes Bos?

  The genie is in the bottle.

• 21:21Scott Tolinski?

  Yes. The genie is not going back in the bottle. No. So are we ever going to go back to writing code by hand only? No, absolutely not. I don't see that ever happening. I cannot imagine a world where that exists. Folks, this is the reality. This is, this is it, man. This is what's going on. So like, I, I just don't, I don't see it. So to me, you know, I think the world that we live in is you gotta get good at working with this stuff if you want to continue to be effective. That's just where I'm at on this.

• 21:54Wes Bos?

  How we are building this stuff has fundamentally changed forever, and that is not going back. The bubble itself, like CJ and I had a video called "The AI Bubble Is Bursting," and that was about how expensive these things are getting, where every single company, six months ago, was like, whatever, sign up, spend as much as you want, go, go, go, we're changing. And then here we are, six, eight months later, a lot of these companies are going, oh, this is kind of getting expensive. We're not spending this much for employee because this is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And the bubble of Anthropic being able to charge every single

• 22:33Wes Bos?

  engineer $5,000 a month, I think is going away. And we're seeing that by people realizing, oh, some of these new open weight models are 10 times cheaper and 98% as good. So that's, that's where I'm going. So that, the bubble of like, how much money these companies have raised, and like, are they going to be able to get that back? I don't know. That's the kind of, the crazy part about it, is that like, what if we all just switch to the other models that are 10 times cheaper and just as good?

• 23:06Scott Tolinski?

  I think that the, the way you could think about this, Shabazz, is that when the dot com bubble burst, did the internet go away? Was like websites gone? No, you know, just like pets.com, or was it, whoever was it, was it pets.com? What are the, they were like the poster child of the whole, the dot com bubble burst. Well, either way, when the dot com bubble burst, it's not like websites or the internet or any of that stuff went away. It's just that some people got shut down. A lot of people did. And

• 23:36Wes Bos?

  And the things of like, people are going to be ordering dog food online, turned out to not be true. It was, it was just too hard. And I think a lot of the, the things that big AI companies are saying, where it's going to be replacing absolutely everything, and there's going to be no jobs for, for anybody anymore. I don't think that is true. And I think that that's the bubble that is, is going to be burst. And we're already seeing people like having a hard time believing anything that OpenAI, Anthropic are saying anymore because it's just like, are you saying that because you're trying to pump the stock value? Or are you saying that because you actually believe it?

• 24:11Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, totally.

• 24:13Wes Bos?

  They, they kind of lost me at the AI needs a therapist one. That was, that was my breaking point, where I was, I was like, you are so dumb. The open claw, being coming sentient, and AI models needing a therapist. We kind of, it kind of lost me there.

• 24:29Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is wild. Yeah. All right. Next one here from Anon. What are your thoughts on the negative public sentiment towards AI and data centers? Do you think it would affect vibe-coded products or products made with AI, even if they're somewhat decent? Yeah, man, data centers suck. You know, I think they're a necessary evil if AI is going to continue to exist. And I say necessary in terms of they are required for the AI to continue to expand. Data centers, quite possibly for the compute, they need to exist

• 25:10Scott Tolinski?

  in that sense. Do I like data centers popping up in different communities, causing hum, messing with water supply, you know, heat and energy usage and all that stuff? I hate that. And I, I'm like, I hate how, one, I hate how it's affecting communities, and one, I ultra hate how politicians are collecting money and then just throwing these in their communities and saying whatever, you know? I hate that. And I don't, I don't have anything educated to say beyond that. You know, it like kind of drives me nuts when I see like

• 25:48Scott Tolinski?

  people living in, you know, major cities being like, lol, let's throw some data. Like, I don't know if you see this, Wes, but I see this in Twitter where there's like people like pro data center, like, yes, let's huck data centers here and there, wherever. But like, it's not affecting you. So like, that, I don't know, it should, it should be up to the people of the communities they're being put in.

• 26:13Wes Bos?

  Yeah. I think it's kind of tricky. So they tried to, they tried to put one here in Hamilton on steel land. Like literally, like this, nobody wants to live there. It's awful. It's polluted. It's like an old steel mill that is just like unusable. And everybody said absolutely no way. And I think part of that is for legitimate reasons, where it's like, yeah, we don't want this thing having lights and humming all day long. Like you see it even, you drive in Ontario and you see the like cannabis greenhouses, they just glow. Like imagine, imagine living next to this glowing orb in the middle of the night. You can just see this just like

• 26:51Scott Tolinski?

  That smells like weed.

• 26:52Wes Bos?

  Yeah. That, that sucks. And I feel for those people that that has popped up in their neighborhood. But then like, in the same regard, like, you can see a lot of these people protesting against it and they, they don't really understand it. Like, part of it comes from an anti-AI sentiment, because they, they've been told by all these weeners that their jobs are going to, to go away and it's going to absolutely destroy the world, right? Like, stop being a weiner and start, stop talking like that. That's why these people don't like you. That's, that's certainly one of them. But then also, like, these people don't understand, like, I see like a TikTok where someone's like, no AI data centers,

• 27:33Wes Bos?

  AI is awful. And then they like put the AI captions on there, and then they put the AI green screen behind them. And like, they don't, they don't understand that. Like, for you to be able to use these, these apps and these features, we need these somewhere, you know? So for some regards, yes. And like, for like, good things like medicine and for you to be able to use social networking and enjoy your TikToks, you need those. So I think there's, there's a bit of a balance here. And it's kind of a hot, hot topic. And also, I don't even know, like, the water is, is one of them. I have this question and nobody can seem to answer it. Like, where's the water go? Doesn't it just come, doesn't it go back into the clouds and rain again? How does water work? How does rain work?

• 28:18Wes Bos?

  I would like to talk to somebody that's a bit more dialed on that and not so,

• 28:24Wes Bos?

  doesn't have like a, like a horse in that race.

• 28:28Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, well, I think that's tough because I think a lot of the people have horses in the race. Yeah, and, and one thing that, I think maybe I'm sensitive to this because specifically like Denver, man, we, we have a major drought this year. You know, I worry about the climate here. And Denver is worried about it, too. They put a moratorium in effect, so no, no more data centers for one year. And Colorado, in, in general, I think a lot of communities here are very anti the data centers, specifically because we have limited water here. Like, the water that we get comes from snowfall in the mountains and it melting. And if we have a bad snow year like we had last year, then there's like no water.

• 29:10Scott Tolinski?

  I can only water my grass on, what, two days, uh, two days a week? And it's dry and super 100 degrees here, so like, I mean, the water stuff is a sensitive conversation.

• 29:21Wes Bos?

  Like a liquid cooled PC, you put the, the water in or like the cooling, the coolant in, and like, it just like cycles forever, right? You're not just like, like putting toxic stuff in it and then just firing it into space, you know? Doesn't, and I, I'm, I may be like totally up to lunch. You guys can let me know in the, in the comments. But like, are not new data centers closed looped? Meaning that like you would fill them with like water and coolant? And then they would not, you're not just like constantly turning the tap on and refilling these things and, and cooling things off? I think that's a little different than like, like pumping them into crops, like pumping it out of the,

• 30:03Wes Bos?

  the ground and then like making like almonds or something like that.

• 30:07Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, I don't know the answer, folks. We are speaking ignorantly, so if, if there's any good resources on this stuff, yeah, leave them in the comments. I want to know all about this.

• 30:17Wes Bos?

  Next question from A A Aaron. Can we get an update on Scott using Linux? I sold my Mac almost a year ago and went all in on Linux. I have a Linux desktop and a laptop, Framework 13. I love Linux, but the thing I'm discovering, it feels like I need, need at least one stable machine in my life. I miss my MacBook and will probably buy one later on this year. I was wondering how Scott feels since the Omarchi episode.

• 30:42Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, well, you know what? I, I think my, uh, well, okay, I answered your question, Aaron. I have been using my MacBook Pro full time. Reason being is that the computer that I was using for my Linux is quite old. I think I bought it, I think I bought it pre-synthax, so it might be like from like 2016. I mean, that might be a 10 year old laptop.

• 31:03Wes Bos?

  Yeah, you have the way you have the Framework 13, right?

• 31:06Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, no, no, I don't have the Framework 13. I have the, uh, it's made by System 76.

• 31:13Wes Bos?

  Random, other random number. I think you bought that during the thing, but I bet, I bet it's eight years old if I were to remember when you bought it.

• 31:21Scott Tolinski?

  It's old for a laptop. For me, you know, I, I used to upgrade my laptop frequently, so this, this MacBook Pro is like the longest I've had any computer. And it is showing its age right now. But either way, so that computer was not even good to start with. It was like a cheap lemur that I, I got to, to have around. And so because of that, it's, it's not impossible. It's not possible for me to use as my full time machine. We're doing a lot of media. If I was doing less media recording, I think I'd be fairly happy working on that full time. The biggest issues I had with Omarchi in general was murky, Omarchi. I have no idea how to say it still today, was like the dual monitor support I thought sucked. And, and there were people in the comments being like, it's not that hard.

• 32:04Scott Tolinski?

  You gotta just open up this config and write these following config line. Like, brother, just let me plug it into a monitor and have me drag stuff around like that. Or, or key, easy keyboard shortcuts.

• 32:14Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Scott Tolinski?

  But could I use Linux full time? I think I could. I think I could if it wasn't for my media stuff. If I'm just a developer, I think I would be very happy on that. As far as what am I using Linux for today? I have a Steam machine, the video game system that I'm running Linux on and doing some non gamey stuff on it. But two, I am going to be building

• 32:42Scott Tolinski?

  a cyber deck, which is fully Linux and will be existing in a little handheld Linux computer. And that will actually be my beefiest Linux computer, even though it is going to be a handheld cyber deck. So folks, uh, keep your eyes out for that project because I'm going to be throwing Linux on that bad boy. And I'm going to be doing some cool stuff with it, so I can't wait to show it off, actually.

• 33:05Wes Bos?

  I would love to do it, but there's just the media stuff, you know? Like, I need Photoshop and I need a DaVinci. I know DaVinci Resolve runs on like one version of Linux and you can like kind of get it running. I like looked into it at one point. I'm like, can I really get, uh, Linux, can I really get DaVinci Resolve running on Linux? And like all the reviews are like, it works pretty good. Like, I don't want pretty good. I don't want like, oh, you have to do X, Y, or Z. No, thanks. And then also like a lot of the like, same with like Windows people. They're like, what's the equivalent of X, Y, or Z on Windows? And there's always some like half baked, watered down version of something.

• 33:46Wes Bos?

  Like, I'm not using, I don't know, what's the like Photoshop alternative that everybody always uses? Like some crappy sketchy version?

• 33:56Scott Tolinski?

  The, the one on Linux, yeah, I don't, I don't know. But like, yeah, for, I haven't used Photoshop in so long, so I understand that.

• 34:03Wes Bos?

  GIMP, that's the one. I'm not using GIMP.

• 34:06Scott Tolinski?

  No, I'm not using GIMP. And I, you can't, you can miss me on GIMP entirely. And like, people talk about like Audacity being good enough. And then it's like, I use Audacity to record Courtney's podcast. And man, Audacity sucks. And I'm not saying that's the only audio thing, but Audacity straight up sucks. It, it like, there, there's so many annoyances with it in general.

• 34:30Wes Bos?

  Does it still look like it's built in Java and Windows XP? Or did they finally fit that thing? Yes?

• 34:34Scott Tolinski?

  No, they, they, I would say it looks a hair better. At least unless they're coming out with something new that looks crazy. I mean, even the logo, the logo should tell you what it looks like. Enough, it looks the exact same. They've made it look a hair decent, but no, like, that's such a thing for me. That's like, the design of the application has to be nice still. I'm, I'm just sorry, I, I need that. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not hardcore enough.

• 35:03Wes Bos?

  Audacity 4 looks a little better than I remember it. I'm just looking at it right now, but.

• 35:11Scott Tolinski?

  Audacity 4, beta 2.

• 35:13Wes Bos?

  Don't have time for that type of stuff. I would absolutely love it because there's so much in macOS that I, I absolutely hate. But I just don't have time to fuss with that type of thing. And also I'd just love a computer that you can upgrade. You know, I'm looking at these framework laptops, like Framework Pro, where you can like put more RAM in it if you want, or you can, you can choose which ports you want. Like, one of my biggest qualms with my MacBook Pro is there's, I'm, I'm almost over this, but there's no USB A on it and there hasn't been forever. So you have to carry the dongle around because so much of my stuff is still USB A. And I'm almost to a point now where everything I own is, is just straight up USB C.

• 35:57Wes Bos?

  But still every now and then you, you run into something weird and you're like, oh, now I gotta find the dongle and, and put it in.

• 36:04Scott Tolinski?

  I don't, I don't use anything USB A. That port is not something that, that's not something I think about, but like, no, nothing. Not a single thing. Oh, maybe not a single thing. I don't know, but unless I'm at my desk, and if I'm at my desk, I do have like the big unit, which I need anyways to connect all my stuff because I've got too much stuff to connect anyway. So like, yeah, I don't know. I'm using, I, I, I personally, I think I could, I don't know. And I, I'm happy. I think my next computer is even going to be a MacBook Air and then get a Mac Studio and have that be chilling here.

• 36:39Wes Bos?

  That's, we had a couple of other questions of like, like, what are you waiting out for? For like the local, the local AI thing? And it's just like some beefy ass Mac Studio that, that you can buy and slap in. I, I like, it's, it's too early. People, you can't really do it on hardware unless you have many, many thousands of dollars to run. But maybe new chips in the next, I don't know, couple of years. It's going to be a few years before this type of thing. And I'm sitting here on my M1 MacBook Pro, it's starting to get a little bit slow as well. And I'm kind of like, I don't want to upgrade yet, but.

• 37:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, I know. It is, it is like, my fans are running all the time on this thing. And I, I, I'm thinking like taking out a, another mortgage to get a Mac Studio with a 1.5 terabytes of RAM, whenever that drops. That's actually a joke. I'm not, not considering that, folks, but.

• 37:35Wes Bos?

  You know what? One thing I did is the Mac Pro, when they moved to the 16 inch from the 15 inch, it's just you can't bring it on a plane anymore. The 15 inch would just fit underneath the little notch. And like, I cannot code on a lap, on a plane anymore with the 16 inch. And I am getting the 14 next time I get a laptop.

• 37:55Scott Tolinski?

  I think this is the power of being short and, and kind of slight here is that I can, I can do my stuff on the laptop on the plane. I'm a little guy. I can crunch up in a little ball and use my laptop. I can get, you know, I can get in here and just.

• 38:09Wes Bos?

  Oh, my gosh. Short king. He's just a little guy.

• 38:15Wes Bos?

  Are we ready for this next one here?

• 38:17Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, Court, we are ready for you.

• 38:20Wes Bos?

  Next question we have a special guest for because Scott and I don't know anything about kids or parenting or whatever. So Syntax Faces Dad says, how are you teaching and exposing your kids to AI? Are they asking to have AI chat bot friends? Or are they starting to ask Claude instead of Google? How has this latest round of tech shown up in family life? And what are you hearing from parents in your circle? So we thought, let's bring in the expert. Dr. Courtney Tolinski knows a ton about children. So you want, give us, people have probably heard you before, but give us a quick rundown of your credentials and, and what you do before you answer this.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, hi, so I'm Court, Dr. Courtney. I'm a licensed clinical and school psychologist. And I've been working with kids and families and schools, private practice, et cetera, for over 15 years. And now actually Scott and I have, well, we've started a podcast about child development. So it's called phases.fm. And now I get to talk even more about all these things and it's been great.

• 39:26Wes Bos?

  That's awesome. So what do you think about AI and kids? Is it a good idea to expose them to it?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so this one's tricky and I think it depends on, you know, the child's, it depends on so many factors, right? But obviously, the child's age, their maturity level, you know, and where they are developmentally. So this person did not leave this child's age, but let's, we'll start at like, I guess, high school. We can start there. So high schoolers were imagining or using AI more in schools. And I know at least for our kids, they have Chromebooks and so Gemini is just kind of built into their search engine. And so it's just already there. You know, I don't know how much the teachers are really monitoring

• 40:16Speaker 02

  that, but I do think it's important at home to have these conversations with your kids. So if it's a high schooler, they might be diving more into like, the chatbot friends, and using it to supplement their actual answers or responses for, you know, what they should be doing independently. So I think it's really important to teach kids to be critical thinkers. And it's something that we've been talking about here with our kids who are only, you know, seven and nine. But I think it's even more important at that high school age to really have that conversation and to let kids, you know, understand and know that just because it's a computer, you know, it doesn't mean that

• 40:59Speaker 02

  it's going to be accurate. Like, we do tend to think of computers as being like, you know, accurate and error proof. But, you know, we know that AI is not, right? It hallucinates, it is not always correct. And the more you have conversations with it, the more it starts to make mistakes.

• 41:18Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  So, you know, having that understanding really built into your kids of it can make mistakes and it is not error proof is really important. And again, to be critical thinkers. So to be able to like, think about, is this answer correct? Is this, you know, aligned with what I know?

• 41:39Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Do I need to like, double check this? Or, you know, go elsewhere for information?

• 41:45Wes Bos?

  I was showing my kids the other day how AI is highly agreeable. And I showed it by just doing two separate prompts of like, things that you thought. And, and it agreed with you in both cases. Because often, we'll, we'll use it to like, not like resolve a fight, but like, someone, someone says one thing and the other person says, says another thing. And they'll be like, hey, Gorgle, is it true that X, Y, or Z? And it's really funny. I showed them how you just phrase it in a certain way. And then it will come back to you with an agreeable answer to you. And they're like, oh, wow, like, you can, it's not the definitive answer. And I think, I feel like I've taught my kids have, have a high level of skepticism towards a lot of the stuff. Maybe even too much. They think

• 42:30Wes Bos?

  like, the news, they think the news is AI because it's so well produced, or anything with like, a, like a blurred background, they think is AI.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. So maybe not, I mean, a healthy dose of skepticism, right? But I like the word critical thinking because it, you know, you can, it's an important life skill for all adults to be critical thinkers of anything anyone is telling you. But, but I like that you're doing that with your kids. I think that's great.

• 42:59Wes Bos?

  Another thing is, we, we have it in our car now. We have Grok in our car. And it's funny, because when we're in the car, we're often talking about things and questions will come up. And I really like having it because you can find the, we have a button that literally, you can get an answer to anything. And sometimes I'll, I'll pause and be like, well, let's talk about it. What do you think? You know, like, like that, there's that critical thinking of like, don't press the button to answer absolutely everything immediately. It's nice that we have it, but let's talk about what it, have critical thinking, think about what the answer might be. What are your thoughts? And then we can ask Grok what it thinks and we can kind of build off of there.

• 43:40Scott Tolinski?

  We were just talking on our episode about boredom, Wes?

• 43:44Wes Bos?

  Yes.

• 43:44Scott Tolinski?

  About like, how it's good for kids to be bored. And how even with on-demand TV, it's so easy to get everything instant. And I think that like, really aligns a lot with that. Like, sometimes you need to suffer through discussion, or use your brain and figure things out. And if you're just getting everything instant, instant, instant, instant, like, what's that teaching? It's not, it's like, not, it's not teaching critical life skills, but it's like ignoring that entirely.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and I think that's so tricky, too, because like, just the process, I mean, if you go back to high school or college, the process of writing, I mean, it takes forever. And there's so many like, drafts and versions that you have to do. There's so much effort. And it's just so easy to like, put it into, you know, AI and have it do it for you. But then you're missing all of those foundational skills, you know, that you need to be a good writer or a good thinker. You know, so I, I think it's a tricky balance, because I can understand that temptation for kids to want to just put it in there and just get the answer.

• 44:51Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  You know?

• 44:52Wes Bos?

  Instantness. I was even thinking, this is not AI related, but I was thinking about the, are you guys into like, Neatos and all the squishies right now? Your kids are into those?

• 45:00Speaker 02

  We don't have any, but yeah, I know, it's, it's a big toy right now.

• 45:04Wes Bos?

  Yeah, everybody loves getting these squishies and they're, they're really hard to find. And there's all different kinds and kids want them.

• 45:11Scott Tolinski?

  Is this the new Lebooboo?

• 45:12Wes Bos?

  It, it's, it's even crazier than that. It's, it's absolutely nuts how these kids want these, the latest squishy. That is, you know, they, they see a video about it, their friends are getting it. And I remember that as a kid of like, wanting the latest thing. But like, now we have the internet where you can just press a button and it will come the next day at your doorstep. And like, I was thinking about like, being okay with not having something. Like, it was, was a very good lesson for me growing up. Where like, I didn't, I didn't have all the stuff that my friends had. And simply because you could not find it. I remember I wanted a visor so bad. You know, and so

• 45:55Wes Bos?

  stupid, but like, I wanted a visor for like, a year. And then finally, we found one at like, a discount store. And I was so happy about it. But like, that, like, just hold out, we'll find it somewhere is like, I feel like such a good life skill.

• 46:09Scott Tolinski?

  I also wanted a visor. And I ended up getting, I got to skate at the Warped Tour. I got to skate, like, be like, skating at the Warped Tour. And I got like, a visor and a t-shirt from it. So I was like, I got my visor, I can put my bleach tips through the top, you know, spike them up real good.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 46:31Wes Bos?

  One other, one other thing I'll add here is that I, we specifically don't let our kids have the AI image transformation. Because like, a couple of times, we've done it where you take a photo and then you try to make a silly thing. Or like, what would it look like if I have this haircut? But I think that that could be very damaging to children. Where, what would I look like if I was prettier? Or what would I look like if I had a different color hair? And then all of a sudden, you just don't start to not like yourself. Because the photo that the AI comes up with is, looks so much better.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point, too. And, you know, I was talking about high school earlier, but like, going to like, elementary school or middle school where we are now, we monitor our kids when they're, and they hardly, yeah, computing in general. But if they're using AI, we're using it with them. And we don't let them have a lot of exposure to it. But I made like, a really cool project with my son. It was like, an affirmation poster. And I had him like, type in, you know, the things that he wanted it to say, the things that he's good at and his strengths. And we made it in his likeness. It was really neat. But, you know, I did that with him and we talked about the process. So I think introducing kids to AI is important, because obviously, we know it's not going

• 47:48Speaker 02

  away. But you have to do it in a way where you're like, guiding their usage and monitoring it. And obviously, with chatbot friends, you know, things like that, having them understand that it is, you know, a predictive model. It does not care about you. It does not have feelings for you like a human being would. And, you know, having those, that distinction in those conversations, I think is so important. But doing that exposure in a way that is, you know, supported and guided by you.

• 48:18Scott Tolinski?

  You know, what we should do, Wes, is we should get CJ to do his video that he did about building an LLM from scratch, teaching LLMs and how they work. We should get him to redo that in like, a blippy costume.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Hi, guys!

• 48:31Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Do you want to hear about tokens?

• 48:39Wes Bos?

  Yes, we'll put them on that.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  I think our son would watch that show.

• 48:41Wes Bos?

  I know.

• 48:43Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, do it in like, a Mark Rober's style. Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:47Wes Bos?

  Oh, yeah, that would be great. I like that a lot.

• 48:50Scott Tolinski?

  Cool.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:51Wes Bos?

  Cool. Well, thank you so much, Courtney, for your time. I appreciate it. Check out faces.fm if you want to learn a little bit more about how to raise your kids.

• 49:02Wes Bos?

  A lot more to that, though. It's awesome.

• 49:06Wes Bos?

  I'm just reading the Faze's website right now. Dr. Courtney Delinsky, PhD, LP, NCSP, Licensed Clinical and School Psychologist, and her husband Scott.

• 49:20Scott Tolinski?

  Yes.

• 49:21Wes Bos?

  Just Scott.

• 49:22Scott Tolinski?

  Just me, that's me.

• 49:23Wes Bos?

  Just Scott.

• 49:26Wes Bos?

  That's hilarious.

• 49:28Scott Tolinski?

  I don't have any titles. I, nothing fancy. Yes. Yes, full stack. Yes, exactly.

• 49:34Wes Bos?

  All right. Next question we have here from Geezy. As someone who has spent much time learning to program the skills without AI, I was recently turned away for not having much experience using AI to build things. What would you recommend for someone who doesn't really work with AI to you using it as a development tool effectively? This is crazy that we're starting to hear these things, whereas like it used to be, can you code without the help of AI? And now people are being turned away because they don't know how to use these tools effectively and they wouldn't make for a good employee. And I think like, as much as we joke about just typing in the box what you want and it

• 50:16Wes Bos?

  comes out the other end, there certainly is a huge skill to be able to use these effectively, be able to choose. One weird skill right now is that you have to like, you have to know how expensive these things are. Like, we were talking yesterday how like, some people are spending thousands of dollars a day and we're like, how can that even be possible? And one of the ways is that people just continue chats in the morning. And if the chat is not cached, then let's say you had $150 chat yesterday and you say, all right, let's keep going today. That's another $150 tokens one, because it's no longer cached, it's no longer hot, and it has to send that whole back history. And then you've racked it up.

• 50:58Wes Bos?

  So like, you have to know about these types of things in terms of how much they cost and as well as like, how do you steer them? How do you write plans? How do you tackle them? What skills are you using? All of that type of stuff. And how do you figure this stuff out? I think you just got to start using it. You got to say, given that, what I know about being a good programmer, how can I wield this tool in such a way where it will output high-quality code and software for what it is that I want? So you just have to like, really get in, listen to us. We've got lots of tips on this podcast as well.

• 51:32Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, yes. And honestly, I think like, that is such, like, the other, like, we talked about in the, is the genie going back into the shoe? It's gonna become, it's not going to become, it's become a part of this job. Just as like, at one point, you were like, all right, test-driven development, that's like a part of this job, you need to understand. Whether or not you're doing it, you should probably understand how to be effective with it. Or even for full-stack engineers, when JavaScript frameworks came into play, it's like, all right, now you got to learn how to do UI and JavaScript stuff. You know, I mean, there's always going to be these shifts. And this is just another one of those shifts.

• 52:14Scott Tolinski?

  You have to understand how to be effective with it, or you will get turned away from jobs. And there's going to be exceptions to that. It's not every job. But I think more and more, you're going to see that.

• 52:25Wes Bos?

  Yeah, yeah. Your basic, like, run-of-the-mill, your common job is going to want to see that you are good with these tools, no differently than how they wanted to see you're good with your text editor setup, your GitHub integrations, all of that type of stuff. Just, I know a lot of people have been ignoring it for so long, because they thought it was bad or whatever, but you're not that genie. Unfortunately, it's not going back in the bottle, like Scott says.

• 52:54Scott Tolinski?

  All right, last question here, in this like, all AI episode, from Keyboard Tapper. How do you keep coding agents, Claude code, cursor, you name it, efficient? Token usage, speed hallucinations, and accurate in big codebases? Do you cap agents.md size? What I try to do is I try to keep code files small, small React components. If there's a linting rule, rather catch it with the linter than writing it down inside of Claude.md. Store the why of technical choices in separate ADRs and link to them. Be mindful of compacting conversations. Curious on what you guys do. Thanks for the show, it's awesome. Let me tell you, I do a lot of this, exactly like you do. I try to make things deterministic.

• 53:38Scott Tolinski?

  We talked earlier in the show, getting that, the correct testing. Take the agent out of just testing stuff to writing tests and having those tests execute and end to end setup. But I use tools like Fallow to make sure that code duplication is taken care of and things like that. There was a really good blog post from Ben Vinegar on the modem site, modem.dev, I'll link to it, talking about writing code that's effective and efficient for agents, because you're creating functions that have unique descriptive names rather than generic names and making your code more findable, reducing token spend in that way. I do use the ADR approach, because I have found it to be good.

• 54:21Scott Tolinski?

  So ADR is like a decision document that documents why you make decisions, that the AI can reference when it, only when it needs to, instead of just throwing all that stuff into an agents.md. Again, take anything that can be deterministic out of your agents.md, put it into hard things. Claude code and open code, these things have the idea of like hooks. And if you can build in hooks to catch the AI in a deterministic way, it's trying to do something, you stop it and then step in there, that's great too. Again, any of these tools that can be caught by linters, what do they, what is Fallow considered?

• 55:02Scott Tolinski?

  Fallow is static code analysis, anything that can be caught in those ways, I do so. Small code files, man, AI loves to make a big ass file. It loves to make a big ass file. So making a deterministic way to say, hey, I think this file's getting a little big, definitely always something good to have.

• 55:20Wes Bos?

  I think that those are great. We've done several episodes in the past on like, tips for this type of stuff. But Scott nailed it there, is make it as deterministic as possible. Don't absolutely throw so much in your agents.md. In many cases, those are going to cause slower responses and way more code generation, right? Like, I, when the skills first came out, I slapped so many different skills in here and had all these different like, super user or whatever. I ripped them all out. You don't need them. I certainly still have a handful of skills and rules per project. But a lot of this stuff, you don't necessarily need.

• 56:05Wes Bos?

  And it's just making things messier than normal.

• 56:08Scott Tolinski?

  I have skills for like, like, here's how to use the Svelte agent tools or whatever. Okay, here's how to use Dex, which is our thing, so that way it doesn't have to do Dex help. Dex is a task list thing that I use. So it doesn't, like, if you don't have a skill for that, it's always going to be like, let me go to Dex hyphen hyphen help and see how to use it. So I'll use skills for things like that. But again, like you said, Wes, yeah, I'm looking at a agents.md file I have right now, that's way too long, that I need to knock out here.

• 56:42Wes Bos?

  I also like, what people love to do is they, they love to say like, analyze my codebase and then create a agents.md based off of that. And then it just duplicates absolutely everything. And a good coding model is able to infer a lot of that stuff without you having to write it down explicitly. So it's, in many cases, not necessary.

• 57:08Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, that's all I have here. Wes, do you have anything else for us? Do you want to get the sick picks? And, yeah.

• 57:14Wes Bos?

  I do. I have the sickest pick for you. We just spent some time up at our cottage. And one thing that I built, I don't know, probably eight years ago at our cottage, was a floating dock. It's like 12 by 12 raft, has those like, blue barrels underneath, so it floats and it's super fun. And it's connected to the ground with two huge, huge chains. And then there's cinder blocks at the bottom. And over the winter, one of the chains snapped and fell to the ground 15 feet underwater. And I was like, oh no, like, first of all, that chain is really expensive. I don't want to have to buy a new chain, a couple hundred bucks. But also, 13 feet is too, too deep for me to dive.

• 57:59Wes Bos?

  I'm not that good of a diver and nobody I know can dive that deep to be able to find it. And we also didn't know where it had fallen, right?

• 58:07Scott Tolinski?

  Mucky or, or, you know, you never know what's.

• 58:10Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it's just, it's sandy, it's not mucky, but it's sandy enough that you can't see through it. So what we ended up doing is we bought something that I've wanted forever, and that is a magnet fishing set. I don't know if you've ever been on YouTube and watched like magnet fishing, where they throw a magnet in the lake and they come out and there's like iPhones and gold on the, on the bottom. I've wanted one of those forever, so I think it would be so fun. And we bought one, because it was cheaper than buying a new chain. And we just dragged it around, took a couple hours, we dragged it around the lake, and then all of a sudden, we found the chain and we were able to pull it up most of the way and then dive down and grab it with our hands and tie a line to it. But I, that was so fun.

• 58:55Wes Bos?

  And then we went to a couple of bridges and threw it over the bridge, trying to find stuff. But I'm gonna, I think we're gonna have the rest of the summer doing a whole bunch of magnet fishing. So I highly recommend, it's kind of scary. How, how powerful, 1,400 pound magnet. I got it stuck to the bridge and I almost could not take it off with all of my might.

• 59:13Scott Tolinski?

  I was gonna say, yeah, that sounds crazy.

• 59:16Wes Bos?

  Yeah, you gotta be careful you don't pinch your fingers, but it's fun.

• 59:19Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, that's the type of thing I would do. That is exactly the type of thing that I would do. Yeah.

• 59:28Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Scott Tolinski?

  Okay, sick. Yeah, I love this. That sounds like a lot of fun, man. Being outside, doing outside stuff, love that. I'm gonna pick something about inside but not computers. I hate kitchen brushes. We, I don't know, a lot of them don't work very well. But I got a kitchen brush that I actually really like, a cleaning brush for the dishes, that I actually really like. I like enough to talk about as a sick pick. I like this one, because not only does it work well, it's $10, it's just a kitchen sink, but it has like, this. Notch on the side of it, allowing you to hang it over the side of the sink. So when you're drying, you're not just setting it on the counter, get the counter on what? You hang it on the side of the sink.

• 1:00:13Scott Tolinski?

  And it's just a stupid little feature, but it's a delight to use. And also, I don't know what is it about this kitchen brush? It's not particularly like brittle. But I found it's really good at getting stuff off the pans. I have, I have some.

• 1:00:31Wes Bos?

  It's got the little scraper head on it, too.

• 1:00:34Scott Tolinski?

  It's got this scraper head. We have these stainless pans that are like really hard to clean sometimes.

• 1:00:39Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Scott Tolinski?

  And it's been super effective on them. So I guess I'm sick picking a $10 kitchen, uh, kitchen scrubber. But my gosh, it's made my life a little bit better. So I'm putting it in front of y'all.

• 1:00:50Wes Bos?

  Make me want to, we use the Ikea dish brush. Cause like they're also pretty aggressive and they're like two bucks a piece. But it doesn't hang over the side. Now I wanna, oh, you know, ours has like a little suction cup. You can put it on the side of the sink, but like then it's in the way of the entire sink. What this one does is it just hangs on the end. I want to 3D print something for mine now that will do this.

• 1:01:16Scott Tolinski?

  Do it, get a little clip and yeah, clip and print. I know ours like ours was needing a, a new one. So it was a perfect time to see what kind of advanced technology exists out there.

• 1:01:29Wes Bos?

  Dish brush, love it. I, we, we've talked about cleaning stuff way too often on this podcast. We got the scrub daddies because of you and I love a scrub daddy.

• 1:01:38Scott Tolinski?

  Scrub daddy it up. Uh, I'm going to shamelessly plug really quick. Courtney's podcast, phases.fm, that's P H A S E S, like phases of life, phases.fm. We're also on YouTube and man, she's like, she went from not doing any of this type of stuff to putting out shorts every single day. And she's doing a great job at it. She's doing an awesome job. So check it out on YouTube as well. I've been like really, really impressed with her efforts there. So we got her, we got her one of those little DJI mics and everything like that. It's pretty dope. Yeah.

• 1:02:16Wes Bos?

  I need to try one of those. My wife has the Hollyland, Hollylark, whatever. We got it off of producer Randy's recommendation and it's really cool. But I, I kind of, I want one for the shorts and I want to hold it like I, you know, it drives people nuts because you're not supposed to hold them, but I, I get it.

• 1:02:35Scott Tolinski?

  I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get why people do that.

• 1:02:38Wes Bos?

  It's because it's, it's a visual thing. It's something to look at and people clip them onto funny things like a dish brush. You should try it. Clip it onto your dish brush and, and record a short. I guarantee it will do well.

• 1:02:49Scott Tolinski?

  I've been watching you, uh, Warhammer YouTube, Warhammer painting year. And I've noticed the guys clipping it onto a paintbrush and stuff. And now that you say that, it's like, oh, I get it. Okay.

• 1:02:58Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Drives audio people nuts because it's not how you're supposed to use it, but nobody cares. That's it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Send us your potluck questions, syntax.fm.

• 1:03:09Scott Tolinski?

  Peace.