In today's episode, I interview Kalid Azad, writer and teacher, and creator of BetterExplained.com. Today's episode is sponsored by Hired.com! If you are looking for a job as a developer or a designer and don't know where to start, head over to http://www.hired.com/developertea now! If you get a job through this special link, you'll receive a $2,000 bonus - that's twice the normal bonus provided by Hired. Thanks again to Hired for sponsoring the show!
Today's episode is sponsored by Hired.com! If you are looking for a job as a developer or a designer and don't know where to start, head over to Hired now! If you get a job through this special link, you'll receive a $2,000 bonus - that's twice the normal bonus provided by Hired. Thanks again to Hired for sponsoring the show!
Please take a moment and subscribe and review the show! Click here to review Developer Tea in iTunes.
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and in today's episode, I'm interviewing Khalid Azad. Khalid is one of the smartest people I think I've ever met. He has a brilliant mind and he can uncover the way things are structured, particularly Khalid teaches math through his website Better Explained. He's also written a book or two and we'll talk a little bit more about what Khalid does in the interview. Today's episode is sponsored by Hired. If you are looking for a job as a designer or a developer, I recommend you check out Hired. Hired has a special offer for Developer Tea listeners. Of course, we will outline exactly what that is, as well as more about what Hired does for you later on in today's episode. But first, I want to jump straight into the interview with Khalid Azad. Khalid, welcome to the show. Great. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. I'm excited to have you because I've actually learned a lot from you without ever meeting you. So I'm excited to talk to you specifically about learning today. We were just talking before the show about the frequency of posting episodes and you're saying you're getting into podcasting with a couple of your friends and you started to tell me a story and I wanted to capture it on the episode. So tell me about the story of the potter. Sure. So I was actually just really impressed. You had mentioned that this is your 200th and 12th episode, I think, in about a year. And I've been blogging for about 10 years and I think I have about 120 articles. So it's about one a month on average. And there's a story that reminds me of, I think it's actually from Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. It's kind of a book around creativity and so on. And he talks about a pottery instructor who basically has a class and he has two different sections. One of the sections at the end of the semester. They'll be graded on the number of pots they've made. So just the total weight of all the pots that they've made in their class, they'll be graded. So if you've made 100 pounds, you'll get an A. If you made 50 pounds, you get a B and so on. And then a different section, he basically graded them saying, OK, you want to make the best pot possible. So you'll have a final exam, which will be bringing in your best masterpiece. And I'll grade that individually. And so you have these two sets of students. One is just cranking them out. The other one is sort of trying to perfect that. And then you have to make the best pot possible. And then you have to make the best pot possible. And then you have to make the best pot possible. And at the end of the semester, the funny thing is the best pots came from the students that tried to make the most. So, you know, and it's just one of those things where the repetition and, you know, there's a lot of things that you can't figure out ahead of time. You just have to do it and then you get experience and you you iterate. And so that's actually a challenge for me is that I sometimes I find myself, you know, struggling to get something down perfectly when just a few attempts would probably figure out the right way to do it. Yeah, that actually reminds me of a story. That I heard on another podcast. It was Adam Savage was talking about crafting and he was teaching his kids about how to craft. And basically, he said, always prepare for the first one to be a throwaway. And I've never forgotten that, that the first thing that you do, most likely you're going to scrap it, especially with something with physical materials like, for example, pottery. But that can be applied to so many things. Never assume that the first piece of code. Or the first attempt at solving a math problem that you're going to get it right that first time, because most likely you're not going to get it right. Exactly. And it's, you know, it gets into some of the the meta things. It's not just and I'm sure you've seen this, too, for any kind of, you know, coding, I think, is a creative endeavor as well. There's, you know, there's not one right way to do something. And so you have all these external influences like, you know, perfectionism or fear of failure or maybe, oh, I could do this better. And I mean, and this is actually a very typical developer anecdote as well. Which is. Yeah. Yeah. Which is that, you know, six months, your code's going to look like crap anyway. Like you're going to find something wrong. So, you know, even even what I think is perfection in, I guess, you know, February 2016 in October 2016, it won't be perfection. So, you know, it's it's almost impossible anyway. But at the same time, knowing that, you know, I still feel that urge to kind of try to make it, you know, right the first time. And I have to fight that. Sure. And, you know, I think that old I don't know if it's an adage or not. But code for the person that you're going to be in six months from now. Right. There's all these different sayings of what your code should be. Is it good for you today or is it good for someone else in a year from now? There's there's another one that talks about coding for code for a psychotic programmer that's going to be maintaining your code in a year from now. That's right. Yeah, exactly. Someone gets angry very easily. And who has your address, I think, is another part. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I kind of forget that we're living in this world where you have version control. You can just always go back. There's no permanent change, really. And so I can almost imagine the pottery people being more scared, but we're lucky to have more flexibility there. Some of the best programmers I know, they are the most, I don't want to say reckless, but really that's the word that it feels like is correct because they'll spin up an entire new project just to test out one thing. Right. So like Jeffrey Way comes to mind when he builds something with Laravel or when he would build something in Rails back when he was teaching Rails and everything else, he would spin up an entire project, an entire test project just to show this one feature. And that feels wrong because it's like, well, now you have all those files, but with just one delete, they're all gone. Right. Like there's no reason for that to even matter. And so I actually did an episode about that. Talking about the expendability of digital space. We have so much space that we can play around with and we feel like we can't make a change without it making some kind of permanent impact, but it just doesn't have an impact. Go ahead and move on your ideas as quickly as possible with some upfront design. I guess there's a balance there, right? There is. And one thing I started to realize too is there is a balance. For myself, I'm so far on the side of trying to do it right the first time that it's kind of, you know, in an ideal world, you know, if you're off your course, so let's say you're flying to, you know, or you're driving to a new location and you're going the wrong way, you know, like the computer sort of optimized version is, okay, let's like course correct slowly. So at the end of like our trip, we'll just arrive at the right location. So you're sort of like trying to match this glide path. But for me, I'm. So far off. It's okay. If I like take a hard right and just start, you know, I start veering towards recklessness, so to speak. And let's say I end up on the reckless side. Okay. Then I can dial it back. But I feel what happens is, you know, I'm, let's say I'm being, yeah, I'm trying to be perfectionist about it. And then I'm like, okay, well, I need to be a little bit less perfectionist. So I'll be like 90% perfectionist. And that's, and maybe like in a month that'll somehow glide into the right thing. But it's kind of like, no, I'm way off course. You know, I have to do like a hard. Oh, I have to do like a hard. I have to allow myself to do a hard correction and not try to like do this completely optimized, like smooth glide into the, into the right middle path. It's like sort of, it's like bouncing off the guardrails, I guess, you know, left and right. So yeah. Again, it's, there's a lot of psychological elements. I mean, this is something in any creative, yeah, any creative endeavor, you have to fight yourself. Like the enemy isn't really the work or the, you know, your critics or whoever it might be. It's oftentimes it's just yourself. Yeah. And by the way, I've heard quite a few people. I've heard quite a few people mention Pressfield's book. So I guess it's time for me to bite the bullet and actually read the whole thing. But the, the, what is it? The War of Art? Is that right? The War of Art. Yep. And he's got a few follow-ups. One I'm reading now is called Do the Work, which I got basically based on the title, but it's, it talks, the general idea is that he has this concept of what he calls like resistance, like capital R resistance, and it's sort of the guilt, procrastination, fear, doubt, shame, you know, all with the negative emotions. I've heard it described as kind of the demons. The demons. Yeah. And, you know, you sort of, you have that part of you, which is questioning and it's okay. I mean, it's, it's good to be critical. And in fact, I think the only, well, not the only reason, but a large part of the reason that we get into things that we enjoy is because we can notice a difference. So if you have, you know, no sense of flavor, you don't really care to be a chef or not, but a chef, you know, maybe they can taste differences. So when they eat somewhere, they can really see. Oh, too much salt or wasn't, you know, flavored properly. And then that same distinction that comes into their own work. So now they're, you know, critiquing their own things and it's good. It's like that. Actually, there's that Ira Glass quote about like your taste exceeding your craft. I don't know if you've. Hmm. Interesting. Oh yeah. It's really, yeah. He talks about storytelling and how, you know, the reason he got into storytelling is because he could appreciate a good story. But when you're, when you're working on something, you have this problem where your taste exceeds your craft. So you, you know what it, what something good tastes like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't make it yourself. So then, so then you're frustrated. You're like, oh, it doesn't taste right, but I can't make the right thing. And then eventually, you know, you just keep iterating and eventually your craft catches up to your taste. But I think that's, it's like this kind of paradox where because you're good at noticing or because you care to notice the difference, you know, it gives you that interest in the subject, but it also means that you might become self-critical or you might, you know, not be as loose or something as you'd want to be. Sure. Yeah. That's actually a much more eloquent way of putting. A quote that I heard when I was younger from a friend of mine, he said, you know, I don't know how to make cheese, but I certainly know when it's gone bad. Exactly. Exactly. And the neat thing though, is that that is kind of, you know, that's actually what got me into learning and kind of explaining is that, you know, I, I like, I think like most of us, you know, we like computers, I like math and things like that. But then it got to the point where, you know, at some point in math, most people hit a wall where it's like, okay, well. I understood up to here and now I don't get it past that point. And, you know, traditionally in school people, you know, we kind of cram and we get through it and we forget everything. And at some point I was just saying, no, like it doesn't like, that's not good enough. Like it's not like I wasn't some, it wasn't like a big realization, but it's more like, Hey, wait a minute. Like, it's not like if I went to a doctor and I got some medicine and it wasn't working, I would say, Hey, it's not working. I wouldn't like pretend like, you know, my, my problem was healed. Right. You'd be like, Oh no. Take on taking the medicine more often or something. Exactly. Yeah. Take it more often. Oh, you know, you're not trying to say, no, this medicine, I think the medicine's bad or it's not working for me. And, you know, and, but there's a little bit of an emperor's clothes. Actually, that's a good analogy because there's like a placebo, right? Maybe you think it's working or people pretend and everybody else around you, it's working and it's not working for you, but you, you, you think it's working. So, uh, I basically had something similar where, uh, there's, you know, a math class that I, I mean, in hindsight, I think I can admit now that professor wasn't really that good at teaching or at least wasn't that interested in, in kind of conveying a real, you know, understanding. And I felt like something was missing and I had this notion that, Hey, this isn't right. Like if I'm learning something, I really want to get it. Like it should click. It should be, you know, natural to me. It shouldn't be this memorized thing. It should really resonate with me. And so I started looking for a way to see that subject. Um, so this was like a, it was a calculus class on my first, uh, freshman year of college. And basically I kept studying and studying and eventually some analogies came out, which made it click for me. And so I was like, wait a minute, like, this is what it should feel like. Like, this is what like really like learning should be. And so, um, over time I just started trying to collect those little insights about things that I could and not everything. I couldn't find them for everything. Sometimes I just have to memorize and go on. But in the back of my head, I was thinking, well, okay, I had to, you know, this one, I had to sort of bite the bullet and go through, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. It's just maybe I need more time at some point to go back to it. So, you know, in fact, now actually I'm going back to like my college classes essentially and kind of mining them for intuitions. And I'm finding. You know, tons of things I missed the first time. And it's because I'm really trying to get to a level where I feel comfortable. You know, if somebody asks you what a circle is, you know, it intuitively, you know, you can say, oh, it's, yeah, it's, you know, it's a round shape. It's, I can draw it. It's like super symmetrical. You wouldn't probably say, oh, hold on a circle. Um, wait, wait, there wasn't, there's an equation that defines it. Um, okay. It's X, Y square. Like, I mean, yes, there is an equation, but if that's the first thing that you go to, it means it didn't really sink in. Right. Yeah. Like, and you don't know how it applies in the world around you. Exactly. And you can't recognize it and you don't have a comfort. It's sort of this very, like, it's kind of like somebody, I guess, looking up the documentation for how to do a for loop. It's like, okay, even if, like, even if you did look it up and got it in, there's something wrong. If it's not natural, like you shouldn't have to, you know, you shouldn't have to struggle to remember what it's like. I mean, yeah, maybe, you know, you can leave out a semicolon or something, but just the idea that, okay, yeah, there's, you know, an iteration and you're going through. Something very simple like that, like it should really stick in. And I feel like a lot of learning, we don't really allow ourselves to get to that level. We sort of move on or we don't even think that it's possible. And my belief is that pretty much anything can be understood to a deep level if we look hard enough. I love this because, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about all the different times that I've learned something and the types of, so you said the for each loop, for example, or a for loop rather, depending on what language you're using. The for loop, you know, the visual example of that is if I have a pile of things and I take each one and maybe I do something to it and I put it into another pile, or maybe I put it back into the same pile, you know, that is a visualization that can say, okay, this is what you're doing with things in memory when you do a for loop. And I was kind of trying to remember the last time that somebody taught me that way. And really it was when I was a very small kid. Yes. Yes. And you learn through, you know, for example, on Sesame Street, you have a picture of three ducks and that's the number three. And you learn the number three by seeing those three ducks. And now you remember it, right? There's some kind of visual way of seeing, okay, this is what that thing is. Exactly. And what's funny is that we teach children what I consider the proper way. As adults, there are more technical and kind of symbolic ways of teaching children. There are more technical ways to teach things, but we think that somehow replaces instead of complements the visual. So, you know, we sort of say, oh, well, because, and, you know, and again, I'm a big fan of analogies. So it's funny, like, you know, public literacy, you know, people being able to read and write is, I don't know, a few hundred years old. You know, if you go back 500 years, you know, maybe the king might've been literate because he was tutored, but probably not. He probably had scribes and so on. So, but yet knowledge has been passed down, right? Like people build the pyramids, people did all sorts of things for, you know, thousands of years and knowledge is passed down and yet we didn't have writing. And so how is that done? And if you look back, you know, fables, stories, analogies, metaphors, pictograms, visuals, people were able to find ways that our human brain could understand and convey information. And then eventually, you know, we've had language and so on. And so I kind of see it as a spectrum where if you're just introducing something the first time, get an analogy, get a diagram, get an example, have somebody really experience it. And then once they kind of get the gist of what you're doing, then you can sharpen it up. You can introduce kind of like a written description and then maybe even a technical description. And so like music is a good example. You know, people, we've done music for thousands of years, but, you know, written music notation, I don't know, is probably a few hundred years old. And the idea is that, okay, you know, you can hum things, you can do re mi, you can just say it. And then eventually you can kind of codify it into like the scales. And then you might have music theory and then you have these, you know, half notes and quarter notes and you sort of refine it. And the problem is, you know, if you're going to teach music to somebody and you want them to care about it, like don't start them with half notes and scales and don't put them in front of a piano and make them play, you know, scales and things like that. Say, hey, here's a song. Let's just kind of clap to it. Okay, let's get the rhythm. Let's, you know, tap it out. Just here's one part. Here's one chord. Just play that whenever you want. And then here's the second chord and the third. Oh, by the way, do you see how they're connected? Like this is a major. It sounds happy. This is a minor. It sounds sad. Oh, what's the difference? Oh, there's like a half step. You basically can introduce a. Terminology into the into the kind of example that you already have. And so for me, that's kind of what math, I think, needs to be. If you want to be memorable is that you sort of give somebody a scenario, you give them an analogy, and then they kind of come up with their own understanding. And then you explain how their understanding can be converted into the kind of formal one. So like these concepts that they know about, well, here's the actual formal name. Like this is a G. This is a C or something. So anyway, that's sort of my long winded. Description. Today's episode is sponsored by hired. Hired is no stranger to developer T. If you are looking for a job, I recommend you check out hired because they take out a lot of that middleman process that you are otherwise going to be responsible for. And on top of that, they actually pay you for using their service. It's totally free and you get a bonus if you end up getting a job through hired. Now, I'm hired. The software engineers. And designers can get five or more interview requests in a given week. Each offer that you receive will end up having salary and equity up front and they have full time in contract opportunities. This isn't just for people who are looking to go 100% in. It's also for people who want to do a short stint, for example. Now, on top of the fact that hired is kind of bringing these jobs to you rather than you having to go and seek out every single company that you want to talk to. They also don't require. They don't require that you talk to the company before the interview. You can actually accept or reject an interview request without ever even talking to the company. Now, speaking of companies hired works with over 3000 companies ranging in size from pretty small startups to large publicly traded companies. And it's totally free for you. These companies are in 13 major tech hubs in North America and in Europe. So it's all over the place. And again, if you. Get a job through hired. Normally, normally they give you a $1,000. Thank you bonus, which would already be enough. But if you use the special link, which you can find in the show notes at spec. Dot FM, that special link is hired.com slash developer T. If you use that link, that that bonus that is normally $1,000 is doubled to $2,000. This is a great deal for developer T listeners. So if you're looking for a job, head over to hired.com slash developer T. Thanks again to hired for sponsoring developer T. Our brains actually are wired to constantly be computing what we should care about, right? Like, why, why do I care? And if you can teach from the approach of first, why you should care about something. Well, you have to be able to connect with the that kind of fundamental understanding system. Not the not the academic system or the vocabulary system. If that's the correct word. There's a little bit of irony there. But with that system that says, oh, OK, I actually care. So I wanted to learn guitar when I was younger because I saw that and it looked cool and I wanted to be cool. And so that's how I started learning guitar. Somebody didn't walk up to me and say, you know, here's here's a guitar and here's all the pieces and parts of it. Now, do you want to continue with your, you know, mental pursuit of this thing? No. Because me saying people with guitars that that had people around them that really enjoyed listening to the music. Exactly. And that's the thing that's a little bit disingenuous, I think, for some of the teaching that we do is that I think of math or any education. But I focus on math or I tend to just because it's it's so or not misunderstood, but probably disliked that for me, it's like a challenge and I want to help people with it. Yeah. There's like this big kind of underlying issue. That we don't confront, which is that most students are basically forced or pretty much every student is forced to do math. So there's not really an incentive really for the teacher or anyone to make it that approachable. Like it can be approachable. It can be not approachable. Doesn't matter. There's a test. You got to pass it. Do you want to go to school? OK. You know, it's basically we're holding. We have this gate and we're making people, you know, climb over it or go through these obstacles. And yeah, we can make it a little bit more pleasant or not. But at the end of the day, we kind of know that there's a stick. There's a giant stick. And that's why we're doing it. And I realize, OK, we can't we can't live in that world. If we want to be genuinely helping people, I try to take it more from the approach of, OK, I'm a comedian. Let's say people come to me because they want to be entertained. Like they're not forced to listen to me. It's not like, you know, North Korea or something where you're like put in a stadium. You have to listen to me. Right. I'm able to I'm just sharing thoughts. And if you like it, you'll come back. If you don't like it. OK, that's good feedback for me because, you know, it wasn't resonating with you. So I feel like a lot of education initiatives. They remind me a little bit of actually speaking of music. It reminds me of like parents who want, you know, they say, oh, you know, it would be great if little Johnny played piano. So we're going to have little Johnny practice piano every day. Now, the parent isn't doing the piano. The parent isn't like, oh, I'm going to practice, too. No, it's like, oh, it'll be great for little Johnny to play the piano or little Johnny to eat his vegetables. But the parent isn't doing the same thing. And so for me, it's like, oh, I see like a lot of education initiatives where it's like, oh, yeah, this is great for the kids. You know, we'll make the kids. Do these things. And my thing is, OK, like you, the adult, are you like the adults who are in charge of that initiative? Are they themselves for fun going through the math? Are they just like, oh, you know, on a weekend? Hey, I want to learn about X, Y, Z. Oh, no, I don't do that. So my thing is like if I myself wouldn't be interested, if I myself wouldn't just casually pick up an article and just skim through it, or if it's not written a way that I would want to just for fun read, I'm not being honest with myself. So it's sort of I need to like eat my own. I mean, dog food, I guess. Yeah. It's like I can't like there's sort of this implicit like it's kind of like the bigger issues that most people are forced to do math. And so pretty much anything you put in front of them, they have to do. And it's really what like it's kind of a push versus pull. Like what can I get that people pull and people are for fun finding. And so like for my articles and things, sometimes they'll show up on Reddit and people will talk about them or somebody might say, hey, I just found this cool thing. And for me, that's that's perfect because I want somebody who isn't. Forced to do math, who just was curious and they just wanted to poke around and they're just kind of, you know, they're not necessarily trying to pass a class like that happens. But even passing a class, I feel like, you know, if somebody has to pass a class, they need to know the quadratic equation. They Google it. They'll click the first link and they'll read it because they have it. They have a test. But if somebody is just casually browsing and, you know, they just want to know, oh, how do we think about this kind of concept in a more intuitive way? To me, that's a more it's a less pressured environment. And it's a chance to really see. If the material is clicking and more valuable, I think. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, the best thing is when somebody reads it and they say, well, I want more. Like, I just read that, you know, there's some I think it's a newspaper strategy. But basically, the point of the headline is to get you to read the first sentence in an essay and the point of the first sentence to get you the second sentence and the second. So basically, you know, like you just have to keep people moving. You have to get them interested. And so actually a good example is something like calculus. Like if you look at a traditional calculus curriculum, you know, it's 12 weeks. The concepts are introduced, you know, over dozens and dozens of lectures. The like integrals are probably one of the most important concepts in calculus. And those are taught at the very end of the 12 weeks. So probably week 11, usually in a calculus class. So you've been basically plotting along like, you know, 10 hours a week for 11 weeks. And then in week 11, you get to integrals. And most people suffer through that because they have to take the class. But in my like I have a little calculus intro and basically it starts off with an integral. And it's basically it's a little bit hard to describe in a podcast. But there's a cool thing you can do where you if you want to know the area of a circle, it's kind of a circle is like a blob and it's really hard to measure. Right. It's not like a square where you can just kind of line it up and measure it. It circles like this kind of really curving shape. But what you can do is you can sort of slice up the circle into a bunch of rings. So you can imagine sort of cutting the circle into like rings. You have like a center ring and a kind of a middle ring and an outside ring. And you cut it into a bunch of rings and you can actually unroll those rings. So it's kind of a weird thing. Ah, interesting. Yeah, it's kind of like onion rings. It's sort of like nested onion rings almost. So you have like a circle nested onion rings. Then you sort of you kind of snip them and unroll them. So you've turned the rings into lines. And that shape actually makes a triangle. It's really neat. So it's like you basically like you have a circle. And actually maybe this can go on the show notes. I have a little diagram. But you have a circle and you cut it into rings and then you unroll the rings. And then it makes a triangle. And a triangle is easy to measure. It's like one half base times height. So it's like a nice little thing. And you can actually get pi r squared, which is the area of a circle. But you can actually find it by turning the circle into a triangle. It's like, whoa, that's it's really neat. And actually in Archimedes did that like 2000 years ago. And that was kind of like the beginning of calculus. And yet like most classes, we teach that in like a week. Way later. Yeah, later. And the thing is, because the class knows they don't care. Like they can show that later. But you're stuck for the whole 11 weeks. And for me. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. We can't like this isn't like a, you know, kind of a formal thing that I can just take people through. I want somebody to be interested in day one. So now it's like, well, you know, I tried to circle into a triangle. How about a sphere? Or how about it? So like, can I can I move other shapes around? It's really kind of neat. And so you can have a lot of creativity and you can sort of, you know, you do trial and error. And so to me, that's way more kind of engaging. And it's again, it's kind of that comedian. Like, you know, I've got to catch somebody as they're walking by. You know. In a minute. I don't have like a semester to try to make it interesting. Yeah. You got to do kind of the joke set up. And then the punchline is is the rest of the semester. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny. So like I try to look at other art forms. So this is what's interesting between art and I guess science or technology is that art is optional in a good way. So, you know, we always say like, oh, you know, we focus on the sciences are important. But, you know, arts. Well, do we need them? Do we not need them? But here's the thing. People do arts like people will draw for fun. People will paint. People will create. They will sculpt. They will write. So to an alien, that looks like work. Right. If an alien came to Earth, it's like, oh, this person is sitting down and putting marks on paper for hours, for hours and hours to put in. They're throwing away the paper and they're doing it again. It looks like such tedium. But the person who's drawing is having a great time. Like, oh, I'm getting closer to what I want. And they're practicing. The funny thing is that art has that human kind of compulsion element. Like you can actually get somebody. They care to do something that would otherwise look like work. And so to me, it's like, OK, even if we're teaching a science or teaching math, why not use the techniques that art is already like art is already really kind of sexy and engaging. So like, you know, if the problem with science is that it's not sticky enough for people, well, art has already solved that problem. Like people will pay money for art. People will do like very few people will sort of willingly, you know, not willingly, but it's harder to get people to pay money for like a science museum, you know, if they're not sure. But people will like, you know. Like a piece of art. They want to get it. There's a feeling. There's an emotion there. And so I kind of see it as a compliment. It's sort of like a very good technique to get people interested in something. And so I want to apply that to science instead of having it be this kind of opposition, which sometimes is positioned as. And I think, you know, I really think that's partially a problem with our language and maybe also a problem with with the institutional education, the way it's structured, because we create walls between art and math or between art and science. And we say, OK, you know, art is this area where you can be totally expressive and, you know, you practice and the outcome is beautiful or the outcome is engaging on an emotional level. But math is used for accounting. Right. And that's it. Like it's only used as utility. I think that's a problem that has been introduced by a cage that we've created with language. We don't think about math in the same light as art because it's it's sequestered. Often to its own, you know, kind of cold corner, whereas art is in this mysterious warm corner where we can do it in our off time as as recreation. And any good mathematician knows that math is also or maths, if I'm going to be proper here, are also recreational at times. Exactly. And I think there's sort of a probably two two aspects, which is, yeah, is something, you know, art. Or math or art or science. But there's also is it formal or informal? And I think what happens is people assume that science has to be formal and they assume that art is informal. But I mean, you can you can kill someone's interest in art by going to crazy like color theory or like insane art history where, you know, you have to memorize the dates of all the paintings and things like it is possible to formalize art or music theory where it's, you know, all these different scales and keys and conversions. And, you know, you can put rigor. Into anything. But it just seems that maybe culturally we assume that science is only rigor and art is more free when, you know, the rigor can be anywhere. And I find in general rigor to be stifling if it's not or a better way to put it is rigor is kind of like a skeleton, which is it gives you form and structure. But in the beginning, it can be really kind of constricting. So I'd rather be kind of like an amoeba, you know, skeleton. Yeah. Kind of floating around, just just trying to get a feel for things. And then, hey, OK, you know, you're sort of flopping all over the place. Maybe if we put a little bit of structure, you know, it'll help kind of firm things up and maybe communicate. And I think, unfortunately, yeah, science and math and things get put in this bucket where they are assumed to be only rigorous. And I mean, a lot of things start as explorations, right? Like counting or I mean, that might be a little bit too literal, but patterns and geometry. It's just people drawing, you know, drawing lines in the sand saying, oh, these triangles are kind of similar. Oh, that's kind of neat. Or like this shape is sort of like that other one. Or maybe, you know, there's connections here. And then you eventually put in the rules to them. And I feel like people kind of over focus on the rules. Actually, it's funny. So, again, I keep going back to analogies. But that's actually kind of a meta skill, I suppose, is that I have found for myself what makes me interested in the subject. And so I realize, hey, like if I want to learn something and I, you know, I don't I'm not interested in everything. But the things. That I am interested in, if I want to maintain my interest, I try to find an analogy and then explore the analogy really deeply. And that gives me a lot of motivation. It's like, oh, you know, maybe it's like this other thing. And I try to connect it. And for me, that's sort of my it's kind of like knowing what what makes you interested in something. And I sort of use that to to learn more math. So for me, if there's a math subject I care about, I'll try to find a few analogies. Then I'll explore them. And that gives me the kind of the kick to go learn about the rules and see how they apply to the analogies. But a good example, too, is like. Soccer, like for fun, I was looking at the actual fifth, the official FIFA rules. It's like a hundred page manual. Like, wow. Yeah. It's like to play a soccer game, you know, on paper, there's a hundred pages of rules about, you know, how the rough behaves and the throw ins and the kicks and the timeouts and everything. But, you know, of course, you just throw a ball to some kids in the play and they'll figure it out. And so, you know, we don't have to make it that rigorous. But I think somehow, again, we've just maybe we've kind of stereotyped math and science to be requiring this kind of rigor when it doesn't have to. Thank you so much for listening to the first part of my interview with Khaled Azad. Once again, I was so enlightened by Khaled and the work that he does is incredible. It's helping people learn concepts that they never really understood initially, and it's teaching people how to learn. So just a perfect guest for this show. Thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea. If you're enjoying Developer Tea, make sure you subscribe. That is actually going to help you not miss out on the second part of the interview with Khaled as well. Thanks again to today's sponsor, Hired. If you are looking for a job as a designer or a developer and you want a $2,000 bonus when you accept your job, you should check out Hired. Hired.com slash Developer Tea. Once again, this is 100% free for you. And there's no good reason not to try it out if you are on the job hunt. So go and check it out. Hired.com slash Developer Tea. Of course, that link will be in the show notes at spec.fm. The show notes will include all of the links from today's episode, and you can find other episodes of Developer Tea at spec.fm. Not to mention, there are other shows on spec.fm that you should go and check out. You will be incredibly interested in this stuff if you enjoy Developer Tea. So go and check out the other shows on spec.fm. Thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea. And until next time, enjoy your tea. See you soon.