Mike Bifulco: Hello friends, and welcome back to APIs you won't hate.
My name is Mike Biko, one of your co-hosts of the podcast.
For once I am hanging out with two of my favorite people in the world.
I've got Phil Sturgeon and Alexander Karen on the line with me.
Alex, how are you,
Alexander Karan: yeah.
Good.
Mike Bifulco: I'm, fully convinced.
Phil: Yeah, same, same trouble here.
I was out flyering for a charity, Crowdfunder all
yesterday and in the morning
we started in the coffee shops and in the evening we gotta all the pubs.
So I was very hyperactive and then very hungover.
Mike Bifulco: I think of all the things I do, this is the
most challenging to schedule.
Just, just in case.
Someone listening is new to this experience.
I am on the east coast in the us.
Phil is usually somewhere in Western Europe.
And Alexandra is in Australia, which means we are basically spanning the globe which
is why we only catch up maybe once a year.
It is really, really nice to see you both.
I actually cannot think of the last time I've been on a call with
the two of you at the same time.
Phil: Yeah, I think the first time,
Yeah,
Alexander Karan: it's definitely the first time.
I mean,
I've spoken to Phil separately and Mike separately, but now together.
Mike Bifulco: Yeah.
Now that, now that you've seen us both in the same room, you can tell we're not the
same person too, which is kind of wild.
Phil: I mean, it's similar
Mike Bifulco: I'm, I'm interested in hearing what you've both been up to.
Alexander Karan: Okay.
So, Let's start what's keeping me busy outside of work because, so I, I've
been looking for a new hobby recently.
And 'cause you know, that's what you do when you're in your thirties.
Phil: class right?
Alexander Karan: yeah, that's it, right?
For, for, for middle age, get ready for middle age.
So I, I decided to get really into coffee.
And like now, I, you know, work at Big Tech and get paid a bit more.
Because I'm not working for a startup anymore, I decided to go like the
full whole hog and like, spend like a used small, a small used car amount
of money on like a proper barista coffee machine at home, a grinder,
like all this special equipment.
And then like, you know, and like I'm just making like really great espressos and
cappuccinos in the morning now and getting
like lo freshly roasted coffee.
And then there's like that little nagging voice in the back of my head that's
like, climate change is affecting the amount of area we could grow coffee.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
There's a time limit on this hobby.
Phil: Yeah.
Right.
Are you, are you going full fancy and getting the, getting the beans
that have been passed through a spider monkey or something?
Or, or what's your favorite choice of bean?
Alexander Karan: So I joined, so in per, so I'm in the west coast of Australia.
Just had to double check that for a second.
So it's actually quite small, but we actually have like a ridiculous
amount of like specialty roasters.
Like for some reason we have lots of specialty roasters, lots
of gin distilleries, lots of
breweries, like all these fans chocolatier
Phil: not much else to do out there.
Is there
Alexander Karan: just eat a drink.
That's it.
So, so yeah, I joined this coffee club and they like send you
freshly roasted coffee every four weeks from like different places.
Um, yeah, so I'm just experimenting at the most.
That's my, my personal life is I've been one of those like pretentious
people that's like, takes 10 minutes to make a coffee and like, you
know, cleaning the machine, it.
Phil: I think that we've gone on a similar journey, but mine is such
a, like a dumber, smaller version, which is I have finally decided that
I'm bored of instant coffee and I decided to treat myself to an arrow.
Press go, like the travel one.
But I've had it for like six months and I've never got it out of the box.
I've just still got like a massive jar of instant coffee because my
theory was like in the van, I can take it, bike back in, I can take,
you know, I can keep it in the van.
I've got a little ho and a little stove and stuff, so I can, I can boil water in
the van and then I can pull that over.
But the problem is trying to keep I can.
I don't get through enough van coffee that I can justify having like
buying a whole bag of ground stuff.
So myself, grinder
minutes in this random
Tecos park.
Alexander Karan: you do you, you do.
You do.
Because like you, like as I get into this hobby, you grind fresh.
That's how you get the best taste, right?
Like you,
Phil: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Alexander Karan: but
a fresh is
Phil: I got the.
I had to, like, I had a Kelly kettle, if you've heard of those, like the little
you put like little twigs in this.
It's kinda like a rocket stove.
You make a little fire and the, and the water is stored in the chamber around
the outside, so the fire boils the water.
And so I used to be like,
sat in a, a car park or wherever the hell I was sleeping last night,
A random lay by on the side of the remote, just like wherever.
And I'm there just making a fire with everyone going by.
Like, what is this psycho doing?
Um, so then the whole process of and grinding just felt like
a little bit too much on top.
By that point I was like, it's taken me 20 minutes.
I've got some boiling water.
I'm putting some bloody instant coffee in there.
But yeah, if you actually are a normal human being with like a house
and a space to put things, you can get pretty nice for your coffee.
Alexander Karan: Yeah, but I, I didn't used to be into coffee
until I moved into Australia.
Like when I moved here, that's when I really, 'cause they're
really into coffee here.
They're like really into literally just like really good food.
It is.
'cause all you do is chill out in the sunshine and like eat
and drink and have a good life.
Right?
Like that's kind of what Australia's all about.
Like, it's not really about doing anything else.
So yeah, that Australia got me into coffee.
And now working at Big Tech has given me the, the funds necessary to
really get into coffee.
Phil: Alright, I like that.
And so I like that you picked that as your hobby.
I, I've not really considered coffee as a hobby before, but
Alexander Karan: feel like I have to say that now with
the level of effort that I've
put in.
Right.
Like that's
why.
Phil: You si similar money could have got you like a kayak and all the gear
or like a pair of skis or something.
But if it's, if it's up in that ballpark then
Mike Bifulco: yeah.
Alexander, I'm so excited to hear that now that you're part of the club, I can show
you the secret handshake and all that.
my
Alexander Karan: You are.
You are one of those too.
Yeah.
I found a
few with Atlassian.
Mike Bifulco: So I'm very similar to you.
I didn't actually drink coffee until.
A few years ago like just never, never bothered.
But somewhere around starting my first startup due to something,
my co-founder Sean said to me, I started drinking coffee.
'cause he told me that successful startup founders tend to be
early risers and that just like.
Burrowed into my brain, and I was, you know, up earlier and
earlier as a result of that.
However, it's gone very far from there.
And I've, I've come to understand that I really only enjoy
espresso for the most part.
So I make myself an espresso every morning.
And when Covid hit the US and I sensed that the world was shutting down, I
took my coffee budget for the year and I bought an espresso setup for home.
Phil: Nice.
You went prepper.
But for coffee,
Mike Bifulco: big time.
Phil: I've got 20 years of coffee in the basement.
No one's fucking getting anywhere near it.
Mike Bifulco: That's right.
I've got the spreadsheets to prove it, and I've been tracking
my expenses with it ever since.
And I'm, I'm happy to say that as of about the beginning of this year, it's,
it's now technically paid for itself.
You know, in the amount of money I've saved by not buying
coffee and coffee shops.
I haven't stopped doing that.
But I also, you know, I'm, I'm drinking additional coffee.
So yeah, we will have to spin up the espresso you won't
hate podcast next Alexander.
And we can, we can go ape on that.
Phil: For me, it's more of a capitalist thing, right?
So I'm traveling about all over the place and I'm going up and down in my van.
And I love, I love, just like, I've made a few coffees.
I got a little bioethanol stove that I made out of, like I cut a in
half and like converted that into, you can make into a little, um.
And so it's bioethanol, so it comes from plants.
Super efficient.
And yeah, I literally just made coffee on a, a bench, a service
station near Scotland, somewhere on the Board of Scotland.
And I was like right outside the Costa with people coming in and out
buying their plastic cups full of shi.
And I was just like,
big middle fingers up the costa.
I'm just made a, it was, it was still instant and it was a bit, but it was,
I'd rather have a coffee than give what is it, Pepsi that owned that.
So.
Alexander Karan: Costa's not that good.
Well, it's, it's four pounds now for a coffee at Costa.
Phil: It's something ludicrous.
I'm like, at this point I might as well be getting a pint.
I know it's eight 30 in the morning, but I'm just gonna buy a pint.
It's the same price.
Mike Bifulco: I had Wait.
That'll wake you up.
Alexander Karan: yeah.
That's more expensive than it is here.
Like that's with, with the exchange, you know?
That's crazy.
Wow.
Phil: Anyway you have a bike in the background and I'm excited
'cause you have been on a Me and Voyage.
You wanna tell me about that?
Mike Bifulco: man.
Yeah, it's been a whole journey.
I if, if you've listened to past episodes of this thing, you'll know that Phil and
I pro probably met originally because of our sort of overlap of tech stuff
and cycling, but, that's the thing.
Yeah.
And it's genuinely been about two years since I've been able to ride.
I've been dealing with a hip injury since 2018.
And two surgeries and a whole lot of MRIs later.
and a bunch of physical therapy and all those other things, I've
finally just started riding again.
And I, I am hesitant to say I'm back to fighting strength
'cause I'm definitely not.
But I'm like able to get out and tool
around a little bit and
Phil: Yeah,
That's good, man.
That's gotta feel real good.
Mike Bifulco: It feels really, really good.
Yeah.
It's, it's definitely been cool to see.
I yeah, it's, it sits behind me as a reminder while I'm on work calls
that I need to go do that more.
But yeah, it went from like actually not being able to finish one pedal
stroke in April to being able to get out and ride 10 or 15 miles
at a time now, which is, which is.
Just life changing for me, like
the mental health part of life balances out a lot from that.
You know, I was re relegated more or less just to walking around the neighborhood,
which is nice, you know, it's great.
It's just not the same, you know what I mean?
Phil: Yeah, it's
another one of those situations where like you can just casually make number go up.
Like you don't need to worry about like busting out cheeky
centuries straight away.
Like you'd have to do a hundred miles right now, like you can just
go and do, yeah, 10 and then 15, and then 20 or maybe smaller increments,
but you, you get to see number go up and that just is progress again.
So
that's really nice.
The difference between like zero miles and, and, and 10
is fucking infinite, isn't it?
So now you've just gotta edge it up a little bit.
Alexander Karan: Yeah, it's great riding a bike.
There's like, it's just, you know, because you can go so far, you can do so much,
you know, and I, I think also the best thing is when you've got a good bike,
you can also like, just like hardly ever use a car, like just bike everywhere.
It's great.
Phil: Mm.
Mike Bifulco: It is one of very few things I do that occupies all of my limbs
in a way where I'm definitely not like pulling out my phone to distract myself,
Phil: Handlebar Mount will fix that for you.
You can get it
right up there on the top.
you.
can be tweeting and.
Mike Bifulco: This is not something I'm looking to fix.
Yeah, it's really nice.
Like I, I throw my phone in my pocket and don't think about it
until I'm back home, which is also a massive feature too, you know?
Yeah, man, I've missed it.
I'm, I'm happy to see Phil, what, what's your life looking like as
far as that all goes these days?
Phil: Absolutely mental.
I currently am
not riding as much bikes as I would like.
I did a few nuts ones a month or two or three ago I did UK two
Zurich, which was a good laugh.
And yeah, that one was, Four 50 miles in four and a half
days to get to a conference.
So that was, that
was a good time.
Alexander Karan: That's, that's insane.
Phil: Yeah, it was a bit rough.
The, the, it, every single day I was dealing with headwinds, mostly uphill.
'cause I'm going to the Alps from the sea, right?
It was pretty much consistently up headwind and wet and some days were worse.
Before it was, it was pretty wild.
But oh, I lost my, I lost my rain jacket.
On with one hole with, with a day and a half to go.
And as I was like cycling through Alps and it was just pouring down with
rain, it was when Switzerland had that, these really bad floods where like
entire towns were getting washed away.
And I'm just cycling around in like my hoodie that was
just soaked through and just
shivering.
And I was like, well, if I get cold, I'll just pedal outta Problem solved.
And.
Alexander Karan: You did get ill from that.
Did you?
Phil: I'm generally ill of something, but that's just 'cause my life is madness.
I mean the, the main thing I've got going on right now is my charity
is buying 70 acres of land in bath, which is actually where I'm from.
One of the, the two accents I flip between is the Bristolian West Country
one and the rather posh bath accent that falls out now and then but I'm
from, I'm from Bath and it's really exciting to be working on buying
some land where I'm actually from.
People in Cornwall don't really like it when someone from
not Cornwall buys some land.
And people in Wales really don't like the English buying at Wales.
But now if anyone says, what the heck do you think you're doing buying this land?
I'll be like, I'm from here.
Shut up.
And we're doing a which is 50,000 pounds.
I've been banging the drum for six weeks, but we're now like,
so it gone over while I'm.
Mike Bifulco: Wow.
That's
incredible.
Phil.
Can, Can, you give a little more details on the charity?
Like how, how long have you been doing it?
What, what have you all done and how much, how many trees have you
planted and how much land have you now confiscated for, for the earth?
Phil: I confiscate for the Earth.
I am gonna Google my own charity one moment.
But so basically protect Earth has been going since the end of 2020.
So it's four years and we planted like 4,000 trees in our first year.
And then like.
We've got up to a hundred thousand trees after four years.
So there's a, a big, a big number go up.
and we are hoping to plant another a hundred thousand this year.
So the growth is exponential, but we've, we've basically outstripped
all of our existing funding partners.
Which is wild.
'cause we used to be in a position where
we had more.
Trying to for trees than we had places to put them, and now we're the other way.
So it's a bit wild.
But we, we started off by just planting.
There's, you know, a couple of farms nearby that, that had some corners
they weren't really using for food production, and they thought it would
be nice if it, if we welded that up.
And now we've gone to much bigger stuff where we're literally buying our own
land and still working with landowners and doing the sides of motorways
and hotel grounds and working with councils to plant mini forests and
parks and all these amazing things.
But really exciting when we get our own.
Degraded kind of sheep blasted hillside.
And even the, even the, the, the sheep farmer there said
this has been overgrazed.
Like when sheep farmers are saying this has been overgrazed, you know,
it's, it's having a rough one.
And we're reforesting that and
another 27 acres that we're leasing, which is a bit of an experiment in
like trying to find a huge amount of money just to buy the land.
And then start to do some work is a bit silly.
Well, not a bit silly.
We can protect it forever, but it's quite an expensive way to go about it.
But yeah, this experiment, leasing a small bit, doing all the work, sticking
a covenant on the land that says, Hey, whoever ends up with this in a few years
time, you've gotta protect this woodland.
And then we can shove off and work on something else somewhere else.
So our land is, is going.
Mike Bifulco: That is truly staggering.
I, I feel like I, I bump into people often who know you, Phil, but I also
bump into a lot of people who don't know you, and that is more challenging because
I have to then describe you to them.
Like, oh yeah, this, this guy who I, I ki I work with, I kind of work
with who I know I've never met.
I.
And he lives in a van.
He's smart, I promise.
You know, and it's like, I, I feel like if I had a headline that was just
continually updated where it's like the man has planted a hundred thousand
trees and, you know, re forested this many acres of land, like if you could
just give me that tweet length thing updated every week, it would help my
endeavors a great deal.
Alexander Karan: actually doing something about climate change.
Phil: Yeah.
Another thing or two about climate change.
Yeah.
I've been like currently getting in a fight with like the, the Dale Vince
who's got like a net worth of 107 million or billion, I don't even know.
Just this like really rich dude that runs a major energy company and he
is like, oh yeah, heat pumps are bad.
We don't need heat pumps.
We can just like.
Turn 70 of all of England into like hay and then collect that to make, and we can.
Then we've got all this
about heat pumps,
so.
Yeah, trying to educate
people about the climate crisis and do a bunch of tree planting because the trees
that I plant are somewhat pointless.
If emissions keep going up, I don't want to, you know, capture
some carbon from the increase of terrible things that are happening.
I want my trees to be sucking up, you know, atmospheric carbon
as line go down on how much we.
Alexander Karan: Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's, I think that's difficult anywhere, right?
Like, you know, in Australia, w we have like, our emissions per
capita is incredibly high, like
per person for such a small population.
But also like we export so much fossil fuels, you know, like, you know,
like, and WW Woodside, the company that.
I shouldn't name, but I'm going to anyway, like nwa, they just like,
they're like, no, gas is the future.
We need more gas.
And I'm like, but
you sell 95% of your gas offshore.
We don't, we don't need the gas.
Like,
Phil: Right.
yeah,
We're doing the same thing in the UK with the, the British
government the previous government.
It was, it was now, it's now being deemed that the previous government handed out
North Sea licenses illegally, like they were un unlawfully handed out because they
When they did their like emissions estimates, they forgot to take
into account the burning of the gas they were producing.
They're just like, nah, we stuck some solar panels on top of the drill.
So it's basically carbon neutral.
They're like, yeah, but what about when you burn it?
They're like, ah, don't worry about it.
Alexander Karan: We do that too.
Phil: the
instead of the new government, like immediately ripping up those licenses
and saying, nah they've it's been left to a charity conglomerate to
take the government to court to try and get those licenses revoked.
And at least the labor government said, okay, we choose not to
fight this in court ourselves, but they're leaving it to the gas fight.
Said.
Not only are we not gonna fight this, we're also gonna just like unilaterally
completely remove all of those licenses.
But they don't wanna do that.
So
that's something.
But we've
gotta, we all need to sort our shit out a whole lot more.
And the answer
isn't vegan gas.
Mike Bifulco: We face an oddly similar thing in the US We're a, as we record
this, like 14 days away from the presidential election in the US and
which means I get to hear a lot of politicians, you know, chattering
about everything under the sun.
And the
weirdest thing is hearing the left-leaning politicians in West Virginia saying like,
we love the coal miners, we need the coal mining industry at Powers West Virginia.
But we
probably need to get you guys like.
A Cisco certification or something just in case coal mining goes away.
You know it's, it's weird to hear them with a foot in both both worlds for sure.
But that's what they have to do to sell boats, you know?
Alexander Karan: so strange.
So we actually did something here with native logging, which I don't know why
they don't extend to like the coal and oil and, and and all that more aggressively,
but like we were like, okay, we're gonna end native logging in these areas.
'cause we've got like incredible forests in Australia.
Like I cannot.
Describe to you what the forests are like.
Like they put England's forest to shame.
They're just Wow.
Right.
And like we, we, you know what?
Tens of millions of dollars, you know, into that community to help transition and
bring other places there to transition.
We gave them a time period to transition from the native logging,
you know, we set up forests that was specifically for logging.
Like, you know, I was like, why, why do we not do that in
like the, the coal gas industry?
Instead, we're like, nah, it's, it's part of the future.
Let's, let's do more.
You know, it's,
it's such a weird,
Phil: Well, the thing is the, a lot of the, a lot of the messaging takes a really
long time to break through and then gets like held onto for far too long, right?
So gas was a bridge solution.
We're past it.
Like you know, if, if, if in the nineties and in the two thousands people were
saying like, Hey, let's get rid of some gas and we can let's get rid of some
coal and we can replace it with some gas.
20, 30 years ago, that was absolutely the right thing to do.
Sure.
We've gone
way too hard for way too long and we forced it onto all these like, developing
countries that can't afford to pay for it.
So they're screwed and they can't afford to do an energy transition, and
we also refuse to lend them any money at a discount to help 'em do that.
But it kind of was a solution for a while in the same way that like biomass
for a while was considered using
waste chip from, from logging, and.
Shut down a coal plant and switch it over to to biomass.
And that was a great idea in like the eighties and the nineties and
two thousands, but they're still building more of that stuff now,
and so they can't get enough of it.
So they're starting to do dumber and dumber things to get ahold of it, and
they should just be getting rid of it.
And, and people were going,
well, all these experts back then said it was a good idea.
It was back then.
It's not then anymore.
Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it
takes a long time to
steer that ship.
Alexander Karan: It's so funny.
Yeah.
And we've got states in Australia, like south Australia, it's got
like the world's biggest battery connected to the electrical grid.
You know,
they produce so much renewable energy that their bills are so much
cheaper, you know, meanwhile, like the
east coast.
Where, where, where energy is also privatized, right?
It's not state run, but also just very heavy gas and coal base.
Like it's just the prices are through the roof as well, you
know, they're like, we need more.
Phil: I've, I've seen some really good things about Australia.
Have like entire entire states, provinces, what you calling them?
Alexander Karan: states.
So yeah, we're
well states and territories.
States and territories.
So
there's like,
Phil: Right.
Well, whichever, there's big chunks of Australia that are kind of, you know,
90% renewable and aiming to be a hundred percent and some of them up to 60%.
Like there's, there's areas doing really well and a lot of that
without hydro, which is good 'cause they were just flooding entire salt
marshes, which isn't very clever.
Alexander Karan: Yeah, we
we do some good stuff.
Phil: Doing really well, but then there's people saying like, oh, currently
we've only got 50% of our energy being powered by wind and that's why it's bad.
It's like, well, you haven't built very much and it's doing quite a lot.
If you some more it be doing more.
Sounds like you wanna build
some more mate.
Alexander Karan: that, that is it.
So I'll do one thing in Australia's I people that like
work at the energy companies.
There is so much land in
Australia, like just, just so much land and like, it's really hard to negotiate
like, with all those land owners and like get all the, you know, and then,
and then also like all the lawyers that sit in the middle just try to make money
off of like the negotiations as well.
And it's, it's real tough.
It's real
Phil: Yeah.
Half the
cost of any of those projects is just fees.
Yeah.
Alexander Karan: Yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's just so big.
Mike Bifulco: So this, this is maybe a good place to pivot some of the
next things I was interested in.
So, Alexandra, last time you and I actually talked on the podcast,
you were at Climate Clever doing
climate things.
Alexander Karan: Trying to
save the world.
So Climate clever got sold.
And I mean, look, I'm not gonna complain because, you know, I
ended up dating my co-founder.
We, you know, moved in together.
We had a baby, you know, life's great.
So,
Phil: Dating has changed.
It's complicated.
you gotta set up a company
together now.
Alexander Karan: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who needs dating apps when you could just date your boss?
Right?
Like
I I always, I always, I like to say she took advantage of me, but nobody
cares when I say that they just high five her for some reason I.
Mike Bifulco: I love that
man.
Australia's different.
Alexander Karan: yeah, it's the other way around.
So, you know, it was nice doing like community stuff and like having
like a really good impact, like watching schools save money on their
utility bills and reducing their emissions and using that money for
like their library budget and stuff.
And then we started working in businesses, so I was a little sad, like when.
'cause we had some laws delayed in Australia that really
affected climate, clever.
Like they kept pushing back the mandatory reporting and it just
had such a shockwave on us.
So the business ended up getting sold and I just kind of felt really
lost 'cause it was so weird, like actually coding and having purpose.
So I decided to do the middle life sensible thing and get a job in big tech.
So I got a job Atlassian, and the reason I took the job Atlassian.
Because like I figured they do the least evil, right?
Like, you know, out of
all the, out all the big tech companies like Jira and Confluence
aren't really trying to kill anyone.
So I thought, you know, that's a good start.
Yeah.
Do I have to, why would this Jira ticket close?
I keep pressing down and I refresh and it's still in progress.
Right.
But you know, like they've got a good work life balance remote work, which is great.
So I gotta spend more time with my son.
And they had this like, interesting position open in finops, which,
you know renewable energy actually falls under, well not
renewable energy, but you know.
Phil: Yeah, the green
the green team doing carbon accounting and yeah.
Alexander Karan: yeah, so I, I, I joined finops and so like I work on
like improving code and architecture and infrastructure setups to you know,
make our cloud spend more efficient.
I also build tools to help teams across the company understand the
cloud spend and their cloud usage.
I'm
also working on some projects with our ESG team to help teams
understand the footprint of their services, which is pretty fun
too.
So I still get to have that little bit of like, sustainability.
So like, yeah.
And then like on the side, like I'm still teaching, so like I, I, I teach at
foundation called Sheet Codes, which is all about getting more women into tech.
So, you know, I'm still tea still teaching there.
That's my
like.
Good bit for the community that I still do.
You know, like that makes me feel all happy and warm inside.
But yeah, so like mostly most every day is just like build more tools to
help people understand costs, identify cost spikes, you know, A API wise,
like most, like our front end is mostly GraphQL, so like I deal with GraphQL
when I'm dealing with user facing stuff.
But like internally for our tools, there's a lot of rest APIs.
Um, and then like, you know, which is, which is good.
Like, 'cause it's all like the only downside I, I like, I really hope none
of my colleagues hear this 'cause I don't want them to hear me bagging on it.
But like, it's so much like Spring Boot and, and Java and Kotlin.
Now Kotlin, Kotlin and Java aren't, aren't that bad actually.
Really?
And I come from like, go and Node, so it's like a different, it was a
different world, but like there's so much of Spring Boot that I'm just like.
Ah, it, I want to love Spring Boot.
I really do.
'cause sometimes it does things That's great.
And other times I'm like, why are you making building an API so difficult.
Why, why is documenting it so difficult?
Like, you know, I, I wanna do, you know, design driven development, but you are
forcing me to do code driven development.
You know, like it's, there's just, there's aspects of it that make
Phil: I've had really
weird moments with that, like trying to get docs out of a spring,
API, 'cause we work out a bunch of that and it was like you had to
use an annotations based system.
There was nothing else.
And you had to like run the entire application in order to get that
open API out, there's no way
to just be like.
Generate, which all of the node, all of the go, all of the PHP
tools, they all have that even, you know, even the annotation ones,
you just run a little command and it loads up just enough and does a little
bit of static analysis and it grabs that and chucks it in a file for you.
But this is like,
you need to set up a database so you can see what endpoints of API
has and it absolutely fuck off.
Alexander Karan: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's so, it's so weird.
I'm like, why hasn't this been added?
Right?
Like, 'cause I'm, I'm used to like doing what you're saying, like, design
an API, I've got an open API spec that generates a lot of boilerplate for me.
And then like, I.
In some of the node and go frameworks, it then takes those like you know,
JSO schemas for your request bodies and speeds up passing as well.
Right?
Like, and I just, yeah.
Like, I, I miss that so much.
But yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty, it's a pretty cool job.
We get to do some fun stuff, like the scale issues that you just.
Don't have, unless you're a company Atlassian size.
Right?
Like, you know, one, one tiny compression change could like, you
know, ramp up CP usage in the millions.
Right?
Like it's,
it's, it's fun and, you know, I'm like using Tant Stack Query on the front for
dealing with the rest API, which is like a, a really nice, beautiful wave just.
Working with and like if you do the rest API really well, like you
can just easily filter on stuff.
Great search.
It's just, yeah, that's, so, that part's nice.
But yeah, I just, I miss being fully design driven because I feel like Spring
Boot like really resists that like it's,
it's more code driven, which is the only thing that makes me sad API
Phil: Which I think is a bit of a mindset of, of the average Java developer as well.
It's like, why would I wanna write some when I could write a shit load
of Java to do the same thing and.
Alexander Karan: Well, it's, it's, it's funny 'cause like
Kotlin has come along and Right.
Kotlin is like, it's a beautiful language, right?
Like it's you know, I've been writing Kotlin now for a year and a half.
Honestly, one of my top three languages fallen in
love with it, right?
And it's mindset is so different.
So.
You'd think that there would be a different mindset around that sort of
stuff, but because like people still use a lot of spring, I guess, which is
still really more Java based, right?
It's just, yeah, it's different.
Phil: For sure.
I mean, it's one of the things I've been writing a lot for Bump, bump sh,
the API, documentation providers and writing a lot for them, which is nice
to, you know, they're hiring me to work on some really interesting topics.
But we we just did a, a, a piece kind of really taking a whole bunch of steps
back and, and not getting stuck in the weeds on really nerdy, obscure, open a.
Why is an API contract a good thing?
And that was a fun one to write of, just like, this isn't extra work.
Oh, I did another blog post on a similar vein, which was the, we
don't have time to write API docs paradox where you basically end up.
Completely forgetting how your a p works.
And then a few months later end up, you just have to rebuild it because
that team has moved on and someone quit and all of the documentation was
in a random Slack channel full of now.
And yeah, literally end up building a whole API to replace it instead
of instead of just looking at the
docs to find out how it works at meaning.
And yeah, like doing, doing stuff like that.
I'm, I'm really hoping it feels like trying to explain to people
that tests are a good idea.
You know, it, it's like they're not more work.
It's, this is, this is something that you do once and it saves you
time immediately and forever in more ways than you can think about.
'cause you've got an API contract, you can use it for contract testing,
you can use it for SDK generation, you can use it for thousand things.
but
yeah, they don't wanna hear it.
Alexander Karan: I miss contract testing.
So much like, it's like it's, it's the best type of testing.
It's, it's, it's, it's so good.
It's so good.
Phil: Right.
Well, it's the most important thing for an API 'cause an API like the,
the, the IPA interface, right?
You wanna make sure that your interface is actually doing what you said it would be.
Not just doing random, whatever it feels like, and not just
changing every now and then.
Like if you don't have contract testing, you don't have an API, you have some
random shit on an endpoint somewhere.
That's not helpful.
Alexander Karan: I, I'm gonna go to work tomorrow and say that guys,
Phil said this is just some random shit on an endpoint somewhere.
Phil: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, I've got this really cool thing.
It's gonna be for our business.
Call this url.
It does some random shit that's.
Mike Bifulco: So Phil, what have you been up to?
Phil: Oh heck.
Where have I been up to?
So, apart from all the charity stuff I got, I set up a splinter
faction at APIs API Days London.
That was really fun.
I was pestering Baptist for like a, a free ticket 'cause I'm broken.
I run a charity.
'cause I was actually gonna be in the area and had plans to meet some people
and he, he's busy running a massive conference and didn't get back to me.
And then the other organizer was like, oh shit, Phil's around.
We shoulda let him come.
But I was like, whatever, I don't care.
I'm just gonna set up a little pub meet around the corner.
And we got loads of people.
They were like 20, 30 people came by.
All the see.
There was, yeah, the, the, the bump team and Tom from Wok and Baba,
some of the Smart Bear people, Frank Gil Cummins, that was it.
And Eric Wild loads of really cool people.
All just Lorna Mitchell.
Loads of people just chatting away and having a nice one.
So that was really good.
I literally came in from the woods.
And had to UI chained together every single free charger that I knew in
all these like rural countryside pubs.
And I was like sleeping over in a car park on the slow triple charger so I could
get all the way to London and then just met them for a pint and shuffled off.
That was really funny.
Uh, and I liked that, but.
API stuff, like, I'm doing a lot of writing at the moment, which works
out really well for me because I, I just get, like, I've got a backlog
of, of content that needs in for bump and for do little ad hoc pieces.
Sometimes I like write an article and then see who would like it.
So the Tim Perry for h been doing a lot of bits for him here and
there and basically, yeah, it's just letting me write more content.
Then I would have time to do for just purely APIs you won't hate because we
have got a few paid subscribers and I love you guys, but we do with a few more.
But yeah, I, I've just really been enjoying writing more recently and I'm
kind of using some of these articles to kind of ramp myself back up into
building APIs you won't hate too.
Oops.
I did it again which is a working title, but I might go with a.
Mike Bifulco: It has been nice seeing you get, get back into writing.
So proliferally Phil I feel like one of the things that that happens is.
There's like a network effect of you launching things into the
internet where people start getting in touch about, like, ideas and
tangential problems that they have.
Phil: Sure.
I mean as well, like Alexander, it's a lot of it's thanks to you as well.
'cause your, your, your newsletters are amazing and they teach me things and it's
really nice to kind of, not, I'm not doing as much stuff but I still am interested
and I'm still trying to like, teach people about things and you seem to have your
finger on the pulse a little bit more.
So I quite often like read.
Read the newsletter and I'll be like, oh shit, I didn't know about that.
That's really cool.
That's a, where did find that?
Sure.
We put it on our,
do we have more articles yet?
Alexander Karan: The, the, the social pressure.
The
social pressure, yeah.
Mike Bifulco: That's a good way to be.
It's a forcing function we needed.
Phil: I got more to do about green tech in APIs as well, which I'll have to talk to
you about Alexander because yeah, there's,
I did that like introductory to green software in general for Eric, but I, I
made big promises that I haven't kept about talking about how API design
can impact carbon and, and a lot.
It's just.
Article from Fastly about design your APIs to be more, I'm pretty much redoing that,
but you know, with a polar bear on it.
But it, it is really about kind of, you can, you can make your API run incredibly.
Quickly and serve a lot of requests that shouldn't need to be made.
And that's still, you know, dumber than having a slightly less optimized
API that you don't call very often.
So literally just kind of set your caching up properly.
is is a really big thing.
And then of course all the usual database optimizations that everyone needs to make.
But there, there are things that we just don't think or talk about.
And especially with the, the rush towards like Jason API include all the things
and GraphQL like, let's fetch the whole bloody thing and one request, like,
let's fire these massive uncatchable resources around all over the place.
And you want one more bit of data, you just load it all again, screw it.
All of that
mindset of the last couple of years has been a problem.
Alexander Karan: But it's architecture skills, right?
Like this, this,
this, and this is also the thing that worries me with AI driven development
or whatever you call it as well, right?
Like writing an endpoint is easy.
You know, writing a a database is easy.
Building a webpage is easy, but like architecture, an API layer,
modeling your data in a good way.
That sort of like you, you only learn that from like experience and failures
and read and like proper reading and understanding of why other people
have built stuff a certain way.
Right?
Like,
and, and and that's hard.
Like it's easy to build an endpoint and whack it all in there.
It's, it's hard to think about your resources and like actually split
your API up correctly, put things on the correct roots, you know.
Metadata linking, like it's, it's tricky.
Like you need to actually sit and think and plan and that's
Phil: If anyone, if anyone would like to do that, I really enjoy those sessions.
So I've been doing a few contracting contracting consulting ad hoc
stuff here and there, you know, two hour API, deep dives we call them.
And yeah, I've had, I've had this conversation a hundred times where someone
is trying to plan their API, we had a university and we were saying like, right,
what, what does your API need to do?
And immediately they jumped straight into.
Hang on, let's not worry about what shape your data will take
or how you describe that data.
Let's back way up and like fundamentally, what was your
API doing and I managed to kind
of say like, let's go through, are you gonna have one API or multiple?
Like what do these do?
What is the style of API, not even graph, like fundamentally is this
a datadriven API, where you're essentially a generic database
a.
And then it was, how many APIs do you need?
And they, they were trying to make an API that was basically one API that
could, that had like teachers, students, organizational stuff and some other bits.
And those were gonna be like, I guess four different endpoints.
And then like depending on whether you were a user or teacher, it would
show you some different embedded data.
And it was all this like really weird super variable stuff.
Like based on this context, I might see that permiss
make this four completely separate APIs that have different different scopes.
So you've got like a, a student, API that has my courses and my exams
and all of the stuff related to me.
And I can see some teacher information, but I can't see their
home address and their phone number.
You know, like you just make that be one thing for, for them.
And there were lots of like individual resources and sub
resources, and you could sign up for a course and all these little bits.
And just kind of separating it out like that and having a a a a teacher's
specific API for all the stuff that teachers would need in their, in their
scope.
And they had some similar but quite different resources, but they could
all be per perfectly cached because it's not like all weird and variable
based on the scope of the access token.
So
trying to get, trying to
go through stuff like that is really hard.
Yeah.
Alexander Karan: Well, people just, it's, it's, so for me, it's like people
are like, oh yeah, crud, that's, that's API, I'm like, no, no, that's like crud.
Iss not API, or, or it's like, okay, well we need this specific thing in our ui, so
we're gonna build this endpoint for it.
And I'm, I'm always like, but, but how do we reuse that?
Like, what's the
actual resource?
What, what, you know, it's, it's, it's all, it's, it's, right.
It's like people never take a step back and really think about it.
And when you
think about it, that's when the speed comes in.
That's when the caching comes in.
That's when the optimizations actually, you know what, the optimizations are easy.
Because they're obvious.
Because you've layered it well, right?
You've designed it well, know.
Mike Bifulco: I think it's a process a lot of people don't go through until
they've felt the pain too, right?
Like we,
we, I think in, in a weird way, a lot of developers spend a ton of time thinking
about their edge based architecture and serverless stuff that will truly
never be a problem for them with their, you know, even thousands of users.
You can get away with a, a small VPS but it is really easy to get yourself into.
I, I think the technical term is a data mess with your API and,
something that that deserves a whole lot more thought than people realize,
and the more upfront the better.
'cause it's a hell of a lot of trouble to unwind once you've already
built things on top of something that becomes problematic, you know?
Phil: Yeah, I think the.
The reason that it's hard for people is that an API is seen as a developer's job.
Just like you might have to go and write some functions or design a form.
It's kind of seen as like throw an engineer at it.
And what does an engineer do?
They wanna write code.
So that's, that's why API design first is so hard 'cause they
wanna write code, not yaml.
But you know, they're not used to stakeholder engagement.
Need to.
Get 10 potential users or beta users, or the front end team or whoever in
a room and talk about their needs.
And don't even try and translate those needs into, into Jason structures
immediately or endpoint straight away.
But you need to talk about like functionally in human words, what
actions are you trying to take?
And then once I've got a list of what actions that we're trying to
take, we can then start to kind of.
Do a, do a mind map diagram of, of how these concepts
might relate, and then we can
start to draw some boundaries around it, about which APIs are which, and then we
can start to talk about, okay, maybe we're gonna talk about the resources and actions
and endpoints that they might have.
But that's like, you know, day three of the planning process and not the
first thing you do, which I'm, I'm.
A hate says step one, write down list of things.
You wanna turn, turn,
Alexander Karan: Yeah.
yeah.
but it's, it's, it's the human problem.
It's the human problem, right?
Like it's, it's like, it's like the hard part about being an
engineer isn't writing code.
It's like talking to people and planning and navigating multiple
stakeholders and different people and bringing them together, right.
It's always the hard part.
It's, it's,
it's never the
code.
Phil: People are hard code's.
Easy.
I got AI to write for now.
Don't worry.
Just code.
Mike Bifulco: Alright, so one other thing I wanted to get to before we wrap
the, the record today is I feel like the internet has fractured itself in the
past couple years where it's harder to find people online and harder to find
the places to listen to people online.
I, I personally have given up on Twitter quite a while ago
and no longer use Twitter.
I've been, I've been using threads for about a year and
I've found it pretty satisfying.
It is of course another social network owned by another billionaire who is doing
his best to humanize himself and whatever,
Phil: Yeah, but he did promise to punch Elon Musk in the face, which I support.
Alexander Karan: and he is got a cool chain now as well.
Like what
chain and a fro, right.
Phil: He's got
bling.
Mike Bifulco: haircut.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm also, this week I feel like I've heard a lot about the tech community
kind of jumping over to Blue Sky.
Alexander Karan: Yeah, Kelsey Hightower jumped over.
Yeah.
So Kelsey Hightower jumped over and like the second he did, like,
I felt like everyone else, I mean, like, he has a lot of sway,
but like he's really big in the infrastructure space and he's, he
like, he's always really good at talking about things and being really
open and like, you know, really
focusing on fundamentals.
So the second he did it, I.
Half of half of everyone.
And I've been on there for a while and all of a sudden it was busy and, and
like I was, people were interacting with my own posts.
And I was like,
this is, I mean, 'cause I, I'm still on Twitter because like, I stay on there
because some tech people are still there and I need it for the newsletter, like,
like.
Mike Bifulco: That's fair.
Phil: Yeah.
Mike Bifulco: I still squat my account on Twitter, to be fair.
Mine is marked as private so that no one can like create a
new account under my name and do whatever garbage they're gonna do.
I just don't log in any longer.
So it sounds like Alexander, are, are you actor active on Blue Sky?
Is that primarily your, your spot on the internet now or you
Alexander Karan: Yeah, it's, it's me and that, that and my website and
I guess, I guess LinkedIn.
I've seen a bit of the tech community on LinkedIn, which is, is is super
weird 'cause like in between posts of people like being real estate
agents with Lamborghinis and houses.
You know how how to structure a database and like all this other
weird interaction, but yeah, most, mostly blue sky these days.
Mike Bifulco: Yeah.
Phil: Nice.
Mike Bifulco: you?
Phil: I'm kind of on all the things at the minute.
On Mastodon, I'm still on X just because I actually, oh, I went back to pay for it.
I had, I had, I was off for a month stopped paying for it for a month, but
then like, just black hold and the fact that I'm trying to do a crowdfunder.
You know what I mean?
Like the more people see the, my tweets, the more, the more money my charity gets.
So I'm, I'm kind of locked in for a while, but I refuse to put the
company, the, the charity credit card anywhere near that jerk.
I'm, I'm still on Twitter for now, ri writing out the I'm trying to be
king of the shit pile, but, I'm on Mastodon, on threads and on blue Sky.
They all have slightly different feelings, but I I like how much of
the climate community and now say community are getting over there.
Alexander Karan: I was gonna say, I think we need to put
APIs won't hate on Blue Sky.
I feel
like there's enough of tech
Twitter
over
Phil: do you want to do it?
I can't.
I have so many accounts.
God dammit.
I was so excited to like close down a few accounts on, on, on Twitter for
like the charity and for other places because we're like, screw this guy.
I'm not doing seven accounts on here anymore, but I can't handle anymore.
Alexander Karan: I'm, I'm happy to set it up.
Yeah, if you want.
Phil: I'll just put you on the spot on live on air.
But no, we should, we should do that.
That'd be good.
And Mastodon, I quite like it's still got this like really small
community feel where like people I don't really know, just like are super
friendly and supportive and get really excited about the charity stuff and
like volunteer and come help out.
And it's just like I'm meeting new people in the village
pub over there all the time.
But I threads is, is such a dumb one.
I felt like it got noticeably worth worse a month ago.
But I posted a video of the SpaceX Rocket re landing itself, getting caught,
and I put credit where credit's due.
Elon Musk did a really good job of taking credit for this, and no one read it.
No one read what I said.
They all went didn't have anything to do with Elon Musk.
Oh no, he didn't do it.
The engineers did.
And like 50 people, like 3000 likes, but 50 people just replied
being like, oh, I didn't read what
you said, and I'm angry, and I'm just like, this is not the
replacement for X that we need.
Is it
Mike Bifulco: Yeah, yeah.
It's been, it is been frustrating.
I'm, I am definitely still gonna be posting on threads.
I feel like I've found a small group of people there that I
really enjoy learning from.
I.
And I'm trying to find people on blue sky.
The, the process of starting an account with zero anythings is always like,
a little bit like, man, do I actually have the energy for this or not?
You know?
Alexander Karan: So
they've actually got this cool list feature like in Blue Sky.
They've got like this cool list feature where it's like database experts and
you can click the list and just press
Mike Bifulco: Yeah.
Alexander Karan: and it just
like,
Mike Bifulco: Yeah.
It's a thing called starter packs that I started seeing where I found
the Ruby on Rails starter Pack the other day and I started following it.
You click one button and you get all of the people there.
I need to find more of those and also find my way onto some of those so
that I I make some friends over there.
Alexander Karan: Yeah.
An API starter pack.
Mike Bifulco: Yeah,
Phil: that's a really good shout actually.
Yeah.
Alexander Karan: It is just, just Phil.
Phil: do you need?
What else do you need?
That's funny.
No, we should, that would be really good.
If we set up a blue sky, then I'll, I'll help make a, a list
of all the people what are cool.
And we can go and talk to our friends at women and APAs and get a bunch of them on
the list if they're interested, because that will help help people get started.
Um, yeah, that.
Mike Bifulco: There.
Phil: Well, I was gonna say there's the, the best thing to do as well
is to get the like follower bridges.
So blue sky just released a follower bridge where you can kind of sign
in with your X account and then also your blue, blue sky account and
it'll kind of transfer the followers.
So that really doesn't get you followers, but when people see someone they recognize
come in, they go, yay, and click back.
So that's, I like.
Mike Bifulco: That's a solid idea.
Phil: Right.
Well, the one thing I wanted to say is that we are taking a more concerted
effort to do regular newscast, hopefully a bit more regular podcast.
We're doing a lot more stuff and there's a bit of a chicken and egg
problem, which is I would like to dedicate more time to doing more stuff.
I would like to make more videos on whatever you ask us to do.
I would like to do a lot more content for the premium subscribers, but
we don't really have very many.
Take time away from the charity and which doesn't pay me and the client work
in order to do a, you know, four hours of recording a video for nine bucks.
So if a few more of you can sign up as a premium subscriber, I promise we'll
get you a lot more cool stuff and you'll support the content that we're already
giving out for free for everybody else.
So you should go to
APOs.
You won't hate, there is a smash that subscribe button
and, and you just click on.
Alexander Karan: and, and like, like Phil said, he'll do whatever you want, so.
Phil: API OnlyFans coming your way
for no one that wants that.
Mike Bifulco: That's hilarious.
Phil: disgusting.
Mike Bifulco: I.
Phil: End podcast.
Mike Bifulco: Well listen, both of you is fantastic, catching up
on that extremely strange note.
I will have a link in the show notes to our only fills where
you can find everything you want about APIs you won't hate.
I'll, I'll drop as many links as I can to everything we've chatted about
here and, and get this published soon.
And the three of us ought to do this more often.
I'll put
my hand in the air as saying, I'm gonna try and organize the next one of these
around the beginning of the, of next year.
so
hopefully we can catch up in early 2025 for a shout.
And if you're listening to this, please share the podcast with.
A friend.
If you know someone who's interested in APIs in our world,
we'd love to hear from them.
We'd love to meet you.
Chase us down on the socials.
You'll find links to the mess of places that we just talked
about in the show notes as well.
until next time, thanks so much for listening to APIs.
You won't hate Alexander.
Phil, thanks so much it.
See you.
Phil: That was a.