Episode 19: Carl Alexander ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/uNTQUh4_Y70/maxresdefault.jpg) [music] Carl Alexander talks fast and a lot of stuff he talks about touches on subjects that a lot of developers hope to never have to think about. I've seen him talks in the WordPress space and known him as the serverless guy, having founded Emir, a serverless DevOps platform that takes the headache out of managing your own AWS infrastructure. But Carl says this is actually his second act. In this episode, we get to meet the guy behind the full-size stand-up poster and book on object-oriented programming to talk about his early start in programming and robotics and how he accidentally fell into WordPress development and the challenges of building a business from the ground up while being bad at marketing. If you've never met Carl in person, buckle up. I think you're going to enjoy this one. Welcome to Community Code, Community End Code, the podcast where we talk to the human beings behind the commits. I'm here today with Carl Alexander, a long time uh WordPress developer, but really if you know Carl, if you've seen Carl talk, uh if you have done anything like that, uh you've probably associated him with uh the concept of serverless for WordPress. And uh we'll talk a little bit about that I think. Uh but Carl uh >> welcome and um >> yeah tell us about yourself. >> Oh my goodness. I mean yeah I think now I'm like the serverless guy but I was like I in the 2010s I was like the object-oriented guy basically. I wrote like this >> uh I was writing all these articles on how to do proper object-oriented programming with WordPress. I even wrote a book on it. Yeah. >> So, it's like it's like my second act, if you will, inside the inside the WordPress community. >> But, yeah. No, I I mean, my trajectory has been long. I I I think I started programming. I was like seven or eight years old or something. And then I around that time I also did my first robotics project. Uh so, I've been like involved in tech, you know, from a young age too. Like same thing with the serverless. When I give a talk on I give a talk on that I say like I've been assistant men for almost 30 years you know like I've been playing with servers since I'm in my teens you know so it's just like uh so yeah I've been around but yeah in the WordPress space that's like my second act right now is the stuff but I I yeah there's a lot of stuff I just get hyperfocused on a couple of topics like that's that's one of them. The other one we were talking just a bit pre-show. I've been trying to do pitches for work camps on uh like mental mental health stuff. Like not necessarily uh like depression, but just like how to, you know, like I've I recently I don't have an official diagnosis, but like I'm definitely autistic. I have ADHD. We were talking about that. I was talking I I basically always have a drink because I I learned early in my life that nobody would get upset at you uh if you were holding a drink or always drinking something instead of like playing with your hands even though I have like a fidget a Captain America fidget toy and that stuff. Um so I've been applying work camp with that as well. Um but haven't done a talk on that yet. But it's it's like it I talk a lot about it as well. um just like less um I'm less vocal about it and it's less techy, >> you know, like serverless kind of like sexy, you know, like they're like serverless are there servers with serverless and it's like uh and all that stuff. So I get more talks about that, but I'm really passionate about the second thing too. >> Yeah. Um let's let's start at the beginning. Uh you talked about uh you mentioned that you you got into programming and robotics really early like was computers and technology always just sort of around you and and how how did that sort of cultivate? >> Oh yeah. Um, my dad got a computer pretty early on that was by Phillips, >> if you believe, which for the longest time, I don't know how much people know about Phillips, but basically like I in my mind, Phillips was always like razors and like, but they're a huge they're a huge huge huge conglomerate and they, you know, ASML, which everybody knows now for the chips, spawns from Phillips. Uh, Nvidia spawns from Phillips. Uh it's just it's again I didn't know how much they detect but I still was like a Philips computer why isn't it like a Huert Packard like or like a you know um compact if you remember compact computer or stuff like that. >> So we had a we had a computer lab at my uh um elementary school. Um, sorry. Sometimes I learn I I think of the French words, but basically uh but yeah, in elementary school, so I did like the robotics project there and that was with they were Apple actually. They were Apple and then it became IBM, but it was with Apple. It was like Logo. Did you ever play Logo? Like use Logo, >> I think. So I It's >> It was like the little turtle. So it's >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> instructions and stuff. So like I basically built animations with the thing and then the animations would control like uh I had like a hydroplane one year. So we had like a a tub with water and it had propellers and one year was like a ferris wheel and all that stuff. So I would have the animation control the real thing. >> Did like a radio interview at some point about it. So >> I did that. Then I went to high school and in high school I kind of fell off for a bit. Uh, I did some basic and some 3D stuff, but a bit of web. I missed my my calling. Like I read all many all these people that got into web early and I was just like not really into it and and all that. And then college was like computer engineering. So it was >> more hardware. I did computer science. I did the more computer science option, but I didn't do that much programming. I I kind of fell off for a little bit. Um, and then I came back to it. Like my first job was in a law firm. Like I did like I did cismin stuff for a law firm and then I started building tools for them like um and that's actually a really important point is I love building tools. >> Um which is a bit like how the serverless and a lot of my projects have gone but I like building tools and I just realized that I like programming so I went back into it and that's been the journey. Well not quite. I did agency, then I was going to do MBA, then I realized I like programming more than being a business person. So, I went So, but I always joke because I applied to Harvard and Stanford and all those places because I had pretty high grades, but I didn't get in and I'm glad that I didn't basically. Uh, it would have been a very different life for me and I like programming too much to to get. So, anyways, it always drives me back. That's like the kind of [laughter] that's like kind of my journey. It's always like I try to get off like I I kind of get dragged out of programming in some way and my heart is really in it and just like I just kind of follow my heart a lot in my life and it just brings me back here. That's why >> I love the WordPress community. I started teaching programming even though like a lot of the stuff I was teaching was very high-end uh from the get-go. Like I was just, you know, I used to have these slides that were like, "You lost me at high. I'm Carl, you know, which was like the first slide and I was just, it was just there to be like ask questions, don't be intimidated." >> Yeah. >> I'm like, a lot of people are here are self-taught. Um, and don't have like a formal computer science background. And I'm just here to like explain things to you like how to do them, how to do them differently um in a way that makes sense because a lot of the problem with object-oriented programming in WordPress was just that people would try to implement things like classes and then they didn't really understand why classes exists. Yep. or had to use them and or like what they were supposed to do and they would make stuff and then they were like well this doesn't feel good and also it like I I don't feel like it helps and it it didn't because they weren't it and it wasn't their fault right like it was just like WordPress is largely um procedural so and trying to repackage this in a more object-oriented way requires a lot of highle level architectural thinking uh that is hard like it's like when you use a framework like Symfony or Laravel a lot of that thinking is done for you you have like all these primitives that you can use >> and you don't have that with WordPress so I was teaching you how to build these primitives >> that I still use today like uh like Emir my serverless platform like has a plugin and it's all object-oriented programming but it's using all stuff that's like from years ago like uh WP Rocket uses like I have code attributed to me in WP Rocket because it's just like it's a primitive like that is good and doesn't really need anything else. Like it's just it's been good for like almost a decade and it's still good because it solves the problem in a in an elegant and clean way and you just keep using it. >> So that that was a lot of Sorry, I like I'm like the master of going on tangents. >> I This is This is great. This is what we're about. I'm I'm happy to go on tangents. I will circle back. Uh >> okay. [laughter] >> I wanted to uh ask about um you said you were you when you went to to do computer engineering, you were thinking more hardware and not software. What was the where where did you see that going? Like did you or did you see that going? Is that just an interesting thing at the time or did you actually like have like when I graduate maybe I'll do this thing? I mean there was so I mean nobody ever it was such a different time like so for context I graduated computer engineering in 20 2006 so 20 years ago actually I'm going it's going to be my 20 year reunion this year um and back in 2006 you know like so much of what you can do today wasn't possible right like um if you wanted to work on computer chips for example like your options were largely just go work at Intel or like couple of like AMD or like you know but small like there's like >> you couldn't imagine today that you could just design a chip send it to China and and get that done right like it's just like same thing with the 3D printing and all that stuff like 3D printers were an entire department budget in 2006 um so I loved it but it was just like there's no you know I only know I'm sure there's more than one, but like out of like the circle of people I know. First of all, I I'm from Montreal. Uh I didn't study Montreal, which is very unusual, but uh but all my friends in Montreal basically that did engineering, they all work in the gaming industry because that's basically where you went because Montreal is kind of like the gaming industry mecca. Like almost every large studio has uh studios here. >> Um so you basically just everybody went into that. But where I went in Kingston, uh most people also ended up as software developers basically um because there was just not a lot of jobs for for people that knew how to make computer chips or all that low-level stuff. Like I love compiler class, but it's there's no point in building a compiler, you know, uh except for fun, which you can do, but it was just that was like where the careers were. And for me, it was even because of the catch 22. I'd already been doing summer jobs for this law firm, >> right? >> And the director already knew me and he's like I was like backpacking and he was in Europe and I was he was just like, "Well, do you want to come work for us?" And I was like, "Sure." Like I I don't really know what else I'm going to do. >> Um so that seemed fine. like I you know I wasn't going to do tech support like I was going to be with the with the backend server people uh so I was going to be kind of level two support I would do some infra and all that stuff which was like interesting so I was like okay uh like but it was not clear what you could do you know like the only you know I have one one of my housemates was in computer science he's freaking brilliant he he basically started at Google that year he's still at like you know uh but outside of that like most people didn't really know where to go like computer you know software wasn't that big yet uh even on its own but it was just like okay well Montreal had a lot of video game studios so like the computer engineers went to the video game studios and I wasn't that interested in video games I did my computer >> I did computer graphics thinking I would like computer graphics and uh as as gifted and brilliant as I am. My only class that I almost failed was uh linear al algebra and basically computer graphics is all linear algebra. It's all like matrices and matrix transforms and all that stuff and that's the course I almost failed. So, so I was like and and I almost failed the computer graphics course. So, I was like there's just no way I'm going into video games. I mean, I still dream of making a video game, but you know, it was just not realistic at the time. So, >> there's enough things now. There's enough tools that you don't have to worry about the graphics part anymore. >> No, exactly. And I was just not involved in web like like I just didn't do any web. You didn't do web at school, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Like my exposure was Java and I did some C basically like some.net through like going to like clubs and stuff like that. But it was it was just very little. Like my summer job was like I did a summer job for the Canadian government and that was still Java like Tomcat servers with like it was didn't make web look fun at all right like no >> like so Mike so I really missed the boat on that uh looking back at everybody's like retrospect if you like read about like DHH and a lot of these people like they just got into the web really early and I just didn't get the right exposure for that uh so it just never kind of appealed to me till actually I got to WordPress. WordPress is how I got into web development. >> That's pretty a pretty fascinating >> introduction. Um yeah, no I I uh I rode the Geio Cities wave. Uh I was big on Geio Cities. I had a handful of of dumb little sites and then I started uh because I was uh involved in the San Francisco sort of goth community and that was all sort of like BBS's and uh IRC actually it's preIRC uh like message boards and and uh there was um there was a sfggoth.net net was sort of like the hub and I knew the the guy that ran it and I got a I was able to get a page on that and that was sort of like my first real non Geio Cities site. Um, >> yeah. >> And, uh, and back then it was like like if you wanted to do something, uh, functional, um, it was like, well, here's here's a Pearl script or here's like like a CGI bin or something that you can drop into your, uh, that you can drop into your site and and it will maybe do something uh, useful, which was not not very fun um, at all. And I also uh and I never yeah that was not a thing that I uh could see myself writing even though I I did take like a couple programming classes in college but like yeah I was mostly mostly self-taught and that actually segus into uh you've taught and you've wrote a book. Um tell me about how that sort of started and came come came to be. >> Oh my goodness. Uh okay well we'll have to drill a bit back. So, so I started doing web development. I got hired as the first basically like this agency was like being hired to like make a website for I was trying to hire I was trying to apply for a net position and then uh funny enough like everybody thinks I'm like great at programming but I could not pass a a programming interview to save my life basically. Like I was just like you know like I would kill the soft skill stuff. We talk everything's great. They're just like I even applied to Ubisoft that way. It was like they're like, "Cool. We just need to make you pass like a quick exam and then you we'll probably be good to go." And I was like, "Oh no, I'll never hear from you again." Basically. Uh and [clears throat] um so I applied for this net position and they were like, "Uh, you're kind of weak, but you know, we have do you know [clears throat] anything about WordPress or something like that?" I was like, "No, but I'll learn anything." Like that's what I was telling. And so so that got me involved in in WordPress and then I did my first work camp. Uh and then I started organizing them and doing meetups. So that's like kind of how I got into it. But I was really already really into Symphony um at the time. You know, it was still Symphony 1, but Symphony 2 was coming out, which is wild. Like Symphony 2 must be 15 years old, actually. Like something crazy. Um and uh but it it came out. They had all this component system. I loved it. And I could just see architecturally like how this could fit. So I was just like, and then I would talk to people and they're like, "Oh, you can't do object you you like." You probably remember those like, you know, an advanced word advanced WordPress group. Ah, you can't do object-oriented programming with WordPress. Ah, you can't do this. And I was just like, nah, you can. It's just it's hard. Like it's just it's it's legitimately hard because you don't have the primitives. You don't have the components like Symphfony built and stuff like that. So you have to think really harder about how to do stuff. Um and so I just started doing that like I just started teaching that and then at the same time I quit my my my job uh after two years uh and not getting the MBA and I just realized I wanted to be on my own and start my own business. This is going to tie to the serverless stuff because I'm still on that journey. But basically, I started the journey to just start my own business. And I was like, okay, how am I going to do this? And then I was just like, I guess I wanted to do So, my first thing was to do uh I I really like another special interest of mine is like um fitness science and stuff. So, I wanted to do like a a health app. I actually had health. It was called health, but the old English way of spelling it. It's like H L H E L T H E I think. Um and then that kind of bombed like I couldn't get any traction on that because I'm a noob basically and I suck at marketing but but I was just like then I was like I wanted to build Sentry was new then like everybody knows Sentry then but I wanted to build Sentry for WordPress. Uh so I I rebranded it to health and then I was like okay I'm going to there's still blogs on that in my on my on my blog. So, I was like, I'm gonna start blogging about WordPress tech stuff and hopefully that'll take off, but it it never really did for for very obvious reasons. Even Century in and the WordPress space is now even after all this time, it's not that big. Um, but because every back then people were like, is that like new relic for I'm like it's not quite, you know, like it's hard to explain to people like error reporting and all that stuff like >> um but that was like the catalyst. Like the catalyst was like always like I want to be self-sufficient on my own because all I want to do is write code and feel financially safe writing code. that's like that's like my northstar basically like right for my entire career is like I just want to write code and feel safe uh doing it and so I started writing all that and then I just decided why not write a book you know I had this book and signup sheet because I was trying all the hacks like the the the growth hacks and I was just I had the and then at some point if I got enough people signed up for the book I'd start writing it and I I did and I published it and it shockingly well. Like I think the lifetime sales of it is like $32,000 like >> for a yeah >> for a niche >> right >> book on how to do object it's not even how to do object-oriented programming in WordPress. like it's just object-oriented programming like the concept taught with like WordPress as examples like as opposed to the like you know class vehicle car extends vehicle and all this stuff that's like really kind of like not useful like I would use a lot of like WordPress stuff to do to to do the examples. Uh >> but it's to me it's still wild to this day that it like did that well. >> Yeah. No, for context, like I I did um uh for a number of years I was uh making online tutorials for Pluralsight. Uh Pluralsight does has a library of of video courses that you can take. And a lot of the people they refer to their uh the people that do their uh courses as authors and a lot of them actually are also like written authors. And so I've had conversations with uh some of the other Pluralsight authors about who have written books and they're like, "Yeah, the money like it's really just marketing. Like I don't make anything off of this book. Even though my name is on a book and it's like maybe the Amazon bestseller in its category of like some niche like uh specific computer technical thing, but they're not making a ton of money on it. And especially because it goes through like O'Reilly or something. So like they're taking their cut, but like they what it's basically just name recognition. Like they can say I have a book and then also you can take this class with me here. And they were actually they were saying that they were making a lot more in royalties from Pearlite stuff uh than they were from their book and that's why they kept doing it is because they because that's that's where more money was coming in and they had a really good sort of revenue sharing model. [snorts] >> Yeah, I self-published because there was all this self-publishing at the time like Nathan Barry I was using kit uh Nathan Barry Adam had like refactoring to collections that was like an awesome book. Um, like I just went to self-publishing or I've made more money than a lot of people I know that have published on Amazon and stuff like like not like a bit like you know three four times more you know. >> Um, >> and yeah, it's I mean it was all marketing for it like it was just like content marketing all this stuff that doesn't work as well anymore. Uh, but it was just like it was just, you know, marketing works when you have a place. And this I owe to like Matt Cromwell basically like like Matt Cromwell was like uh the admin of like advanced WordPress group in and >> he found my stuff and he started sharing it and then he was like, "No, you can p you can you can promote yourself here. you can he used to have a wizard for like whether you should post or not and there was an actual answer that was like if you're Carl Alexander it's okay basically like there was like that's how like he was a real ally uh at that time and I think that's one of my struggles now around marketing um is those spaces don't really exist >> like I mean but you know people say X you know is is good for for that stuff but like I've been going back a bit and I just there's so much noise. Um it it it's it doesn't feel very good uh to me. Uh I know some people have a lot of success on it, but it's just like it doesn't feel like like I really liked like feeling like I was part of like that's why I try to do a Discord. I've been talking to a lot of other companies like try to do a Discord like build your community on Discord. >> Yeah. Yeah. so that you have a place, you know, that people can come chat. Like that's always been my hope for like Emir is to just have an active discord where people can come chat and talk not just about serverless stuff. They can talk about programming stuff for like anything they find cool um and just build that out somehow. But but that's missing nowadays. Like I >> because to me there was like um Amy Hoy is her name. She she used to have like I forget what the course was, but basically like she would talk about like sales safari. You have to find where your people hang out. >> And I just don't know where my people hang out anymore. like because because most of us don't really want to hang out on the social networks anymore. Kind of like post status Slack and a couple of >> things, but it's just like it doesn't have like the same stuff that back in the day, >> you know, I could go on Reddit or I mean Reddit's still goodish, but I just don't go on the WordPress. I I don't I'll be honest. I don't go on the on much on the on Reddits, but I think they're still good, but it's just there's no more advanced WordPress group. I don't want to be on Facebook anyways. So it's just >> so it's difficult you know but at the time it was great like I you know it it allowed me to achieve something significant but it was like what to transition once that ended that's kind of like the year the book came out is kind of like when I transitioned to the serverless stuff it the timing was just coincidental but it was just like I was ready for the next thing. Um and that ended up being the next thing you know >> and then COVID happened which also like threw a lot of wrenches and everything. So it was just >> might have been a different trajectory if it was not for co but you know that's also a part of the issue too is hard to do marketing when a lot of it was me going to conferences talking to people and >> that's still a lot of like my best networking my best growth comes from that like and sharing like I still publish a lot um >> I mean for the readers like for the listeners like emir my business like I've been writing a report every two weeks to four between two and four weeks for five years. Like I've I've written 94 or 95 of them basically like it's going to be the fivey year anniversary in February basically. So, I've been sharing in public my struggles, my this, my that, like very honestly, like I had an interview, it's not out yet, with Niden from like WP Build. >> And he's like, you know, like you and and Katie Key are like very down to earth, but you're like so much rougher. Like I was just like like cuz it's hard. People shouldn't know it's it's hard. Like I I don't want people to be like, "Oh, like you were kind of a overnight success or stuff." I'm like, there's no overnight. Like, I've been working on this since 2019 and I, you know, and it's still not, you know, it's still >> it's still hard, you know, and I think people should should know that and >> and be cleareyed about it. I think that's always been really important to me like like same thing when I I did a pressomics conference too on on stuff that was like that and it was just like talking about success and what success means to people and I think you have to be like honest you know and >> because otherwise like people just see what you decide to show them and I can't show 100% and that's not the point but the point is like if you don't show the real difficult stuff, you know, people just think it's easy, you know, and it's it's really not, you know, like >> it's really not easy to >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's so much there's so much surface the social media tends to highlight the the good stuff and creates this sort of like almost fake version of of everyone which is I think it's it's a reason why I don't uh spend as much time as I used to on on social media. >> Yeah. I mean it's been good. Like there's a there's a you know it's hard like I've talked about it like not like written or anything but I've talked a bit about it like informally. It's just like it sucks that like the right thing to do for marketing hurts you so much. >> Yeah. >> And I don't know how to deal with that basically. I kind of I'm still avoiding it. But it's it's one of the challenges that I find with the whole thing is that I know like you don't need to convince me that if I was really active on LinkedIn or >> on on X or Blue Sky or choose your you know >> that it would probably be good for the business, but what is the cost that I'm willing to bear on this? And it's it's hard, you know, like it's, you know, I' I've I talk a lot about what are you willing like, you know, I really want like if if it's not clear, I've been doing this for 15 years on my own trying to build a business that is for me and I still haven't quite s I feel like I'm the closest I've I've ever been, but I still have not succeeded. But, you know, I'm willing to take the loss, you know, like what is the cost that you're willing to bear to get that success? And that was kind of like the procomics thing was just like what is what is the cost you're willing to bear? >> Are you willing to take all this, you know, crap that you have to see and deal with on social media to be successful? Obviously, you know, some people manage better than others, but I just find that it triggers my ADHD. Uh like I scroll. I just it's distracting, you know. Um it you just see a lot of stuff you'd rather not see. It's >> it's very hard, right? Like it's, >> you know, and it's not because I don't like the people there or there's not good people that I would love to interact with, but it it the the blast radius of the whole thing is huge. >> Yeah. Um, so it it's it's difficult for me. Um, so I write a lot and I publish a lot. That's why I like newsletters and stuff because it's you get to choose you get to opt in >> to to seeing it. >> And you know like the reports aren't that popular. Like I started with 250 people. I think I'm run around 200. People are falling off. But again, part of it is just I'm running it for me. >> Yeah. And part of the reason too like you should do a lot if you do a lot of stuff for you maybe you'll be successful maybe you won't but at least you know I think you'll never look at yourself in the mirror and be like oh like I didn't I wasn't true to myself which is like really critical for me. So it's just like but that's that's a very hard tension right now is how to do that. Um >> because I find the cost is high. >> Yeah for sure. Let's let's talk about let's talk about air. Uh it's we've been dancing around it long enough. Um for anyone for anyone who doesn't know and hasn't gone to one of your talks, >> like explain what serverless is for somebody who doesn't know anything about serverless. >> Yeah. Um >> like what does it mean? >> I mean what is a serverless? >> Exactly. [laughter] I mean I I could get into the technical weeds. I think I don't think what's I don't think this is like what's changed a lot this year is I've just kind of refined a lot. I'm thinking a lot. I'm branching out into all of PHP. That's my plan and I've just been trying to get to the root. I used to be again autistic super technical you love the technical aspect like but really what are you what is the point of serverless? Like first yes there are servers with serverless. That is not the point. The point of server I'll just tackle this right away because I think it's important. But the point with serverless is that we all know about servers. We know they exist and stuff like that, but it's about your sphere of concern, right? Like how much do you want to care about servers, >> right? >> Do you want to like do you want to be able to SSH into it and do all this stuff? Do you want to like have to just do all this manual work? Do you want to know what how much RAM you need to how many CPUs you need? Do you want to know about all these things? Do you want to care about all these things? And the answer is like increasingly this is what's changed this year is the answer is no. >> Basically, >> the answer is increasingly no. And it's increasingly no. uh across the entire spectrum of people, not just like uh like the non-technical people who obviously like have no >> wanted to care about it. >> They never wanted to care about it. Exactly. They never wanted to care about it in the first place. Uh they don't know what it means when they get to the like, you know, pricing page and they look, okay, I have these CPUs here and this and worker PHP workers like what does this all mean? or like in the case of Pantheon like how many app servers do I get and like all this stuff like >> they don't want it but now like in my my new talk that like the re reworked talk that I do like I I talk about the versel experience and I gave that talk at cloudfest and there was like these young developers in the back and they were nodding so hard that their their head would fall off basically because it's the same thing with developers like developers nowadays don't they don't want to know about this stuff. They just want to deploy code like you know like what I use in my talk is like you know deploy scale and sleep that's it like when you deploy in Verscell the only time you have to worry with the with anything is if AWS is going down basically right and even Versel is doing a better job at at handling that but it's still like you know you have your live you have your your obviously issues but nobody's going to be super upset at you if AWS goes goes down and you go down at the same time because the entire internet's on fire anyway, >> right? >> Probably you might not even be able to message in Slack like the whole thing like it's just like so >> if that's your only time that you might have a downtime that is very appealing. This is a much better appealing thing than being like, >> "Oh, I went I was on the front page of Reddit and then my site blew up. I don't know what what's happening." Like it was my lightning in a bottle moment and the whole thing. >> Yeah. So, so serverless addresses that problem basically and that's like that's me giving you the high level. uh if you like if you want I could we could talk about the more technical reasons but at the high level that's the idea of serverless and that's like what's changed a lot this year in ways that I that have shocked me is just that how fast the transitions happen but it's just like >> you know just people just don't want to have to deal with that stuff anymore um like I never like I started working on it because I didn't want to deal with it. And I used to joke in my my early iterations of the talk, I should be like the last person to promote this stuff because I know servers. I've been assisted men for like at the time 20 years or something, you know, like like I know this stuff inside out, but I I don't want to be on pager duty, you know, like I have coming up in Montreal and I rebranded the title, but it's like how to it's basically that it's like how to not be on pager duty. Like I don't want to be on pager duty since I've I've switched to this stuff. like I've never had to worry about anything, you know, and to me that is very very very you know it's it's priceless in a way that you can't cost it >> you know like it's I talk about that too like you have to be intellectually honest about this stuff like yes you could go and fix the thing and if you're comfortable with servers but even if you're not like it's just like okay you're paying $5 for a digital ocean droplet but you know how much is Is it worth it to like deal with like oh the SSL certificate broke at some point or like I have to migrate like you know your Linux version's out of date or this or that you know and >> I had to go down a rabbit hole on my digital ocean droplet which my site's still on uh because I installed a plugin that required PHP 8 something right and my server was still on 7.4 uh because I never touch it. Uh, and so then I had to like do all those things. Like there's all those things that I don't want to think about. Like go into the server, SSH into the server, do a do an upgrade on the operating system. Then that broke a whole bunch of other [ \_\_ ] on my website. And like there's a whole like rabbit hole involved in things that and at the end of it I was like, you know, >> had I already had in like migrated this site to Pantheon or something else, >> I wouldn't have to worry about any of this. I could just like click a button and then it would have the new version and it would be done. >> Yeah. So hosting solves some of these problems, but it doesn't solve the ho the scaling one, which is like >> the scaling one is still a very big problem for and again I'm I I've executives like not just developers and stuff like that like that one is a huge problem still you know like um you know there was like early on with like there was like there they don't exist anymore but I was just like there was There was a customer that was on on Pantheon and Matt Cheney was like, "Get them off of me." Like I was just like because they were just this crazy Woo Commerce site and it was just like they were already on the biggest custom thing that that you could do. And you hear these stories all the time, right? Like my favorite one from Word Camp Canada is like uh this guy who sells I I [ \_\_ ] you not $100,000 a month of worms. >> I think I remember the story. Yeah. And and it's like and he's just a farmer. Like he's just he's just like I like he just wants to sell his work. He doesn't understand >> why and he shouldn't, you know. But that's why kind of Shopify and and Wix and Squarespace kind of win in that respect because >> right because they they absorb all of that scaling issue. >> Yeah. I mean, so when I was at Clubfest, I talked with some some executives and they call it like the sassification of hosting, which is like kind of a weird term to use because most people think of SAS as like the pay per month thing, but what they mean is like when you pay for a SAS, you never worry if the SAS is going to go down or not, right? Like you pay and then the it just absorbs the the traffic, right? Yeah. >> And that's it, right? like if you go if you make it on the front page of Reddit like you know the platform's going to handle it and and the whole thing right so that they meant it more in that scenario right uh but that's that's kind of like where the customer expectations are are going right like they just don't want so that's why like the serverless stuff is just like a technological solution to offering that peace of mind that people want and you you bring up good points too which is like one of the things that I'm focusing on versus a lot of the like there's breath and there's Laravel Vapor although like that product is kind of dying like Taylor's really focused on Laravel cloud but I I support PHP 7.2 to to well I'm I'm going to start working on 8.5 right now but it's I I don't do 8.5 yet but basically and it's funny because I did a lunch and learn with AWS and somebody asked me if I could support 5.6 six, you know, like but there's something about also having this kind of like safe environment where you can just run an old piece of code indefinitely basically. >> Um, and that's again that's the kind of promise for like the the techie people is again deploy scale sleep like you just you it's deployed if it works when you deployed it it will keep working indefinitely you know like that's kind of like the promise of the the whole technology is to do that. Obviously, there's like challenges to to the whole thing, but because nothing's free, like everything has trade-offs, but it but that's kind of like the idea. It's like, oh, like or if you need to upgrade, well, it's like simple like any hosting company. Okay, I need to bump it up. But I think what's getting more challenges if you want to maintain an old codebase and keep it safe, you know, there's like the security aspect of the platform too, which is like a lot more secure than something you would have with like traditional like server hosting. So if you wanted to keep >> a 7.2 site or a 5.6 site up like there's a lot of security issues that you have to mitigate this makes it a lot easier to do to like take out a whole category of them as well. So it's just it's just that's the idea of serverless like at the high level like what the product does is just like it lets you connect it's kind of like spin up WP you connect your AWS account like I'll manage it you can deploy to it now basically I have an agreement with uh Builtfast which is like like a partnership with them which is like they uh they're going to build hosting around this um so because I never wanted to do hosting Um, so per se. So it was just like, so it was great that I found business partners that wanted to bring that and like resell it to other hosting companies. Like we have a bunch of people that are like companies that are waiting to to get their hands on it. Um, and but that's like the idea is that safety, that like peace of mind and that scalability because people are just not down. They don't want to show up on a pricing page and hear about RAM, PHP workers, CPUs, and stuff like that. They just want to know. And even like the WooCommerce stuff is not even useful. Like, sorry, I'm going a little rant, but it's just a lot of a lot of these pricing pages, they're like, "Okay, we can handle like one, you know, let's say x amount of checkouts per hour or something like that, >> but >> like what if those checkouts are in the next five minutes?" >> Yeah. >> Right. like you're not there's no safe like it's just it's very opaque you know and and people are just like not down with that. That's why like people are just okay well why am I dealing with this I'll just go pay Shopify and then I'll handle all the traffic you know that I can you know I won't have to worry about it. So like offer like it's a real threat because it's you know there's other vectors as well like um lovable and like just being able to build a site and deploy it and just like cool it just stays there and it's like it'll scale it'll handle all of that like how to have this kind of experience. So there's a lot of like attacks on different vectors around it, but like the at the end of the day, people just don't want to. We're at a point now, I think a critical point where like the idea of a server is just not something people want to read about in a pricing page at all. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like unless you're like an enterprise client or something like that, but like for like you know for for most of what WordPress sells like it's just like it's not something people they're not the people that want to hear about that. Like they just want to there they want a site and they want to pay X amount of month for their site and understand like where the costs are going to come from and know that it'll stay up if something crazy happens and they go viral or or all that stuff. >> Yeah. Yeah. for sure. Um well, thank you so much, uh Carl, for being on. Uh we could talk forever, uh and we actually have. >> Yeah. >> Um I was uh happy to to finally get a chance to hang out in in Canada um this last year. Um but for everyone else who's who's coming across this uh either audio or video, um where can they find you online and where can they learn more about Amir or or what you're doing or where you might be speaking? Yeah, I mean um I am mostly active on LinkedIn a bit, but carlexander.ca is where I write I mostly write my year in review. My current ones in progress right now. Um and then emirapp.com is the website for that. And then if you there's like slashreports uh slashpublic like I have a public dashboard and stuff to see where how the business is going and all of that. >> That's awesome. Yeah, I really love the the transparency of that too. >> Yeah, I try, you know. [laughter] Well, thanks a lot for having me on, Chris. >> Yeah, thank you again. Uh and for everyone uh on the internet, we'll see you uh we'll see you next time. >> [music], Episode 19: Carl Alexander, YouTube, 01kh9rb0ghh85njyasapsb68fj.