Don't you do comedy anymore?
Not really, no. I post some jokes on Twitter and every once in a while Instagram. Maybe I will come back to it at som point but for now I'm enjoying actually giving myself permission to say that no, I don't do comedy anymore.
Malmburger, do you ever miss making Fup i Farvandet? And do you and the Wichmachine ever consider making a bonus episode? - sincerely, Marcus
Yes, I do miss it sometimes. And I miss being part of "the comedy circuit." At the same time I feel we ended at a good time. While we were still on top but also not too late. We've briefly discussed making more episodes but only want to do so if we can do it like we used to: 3 people together in a room with bad audio and a bottle of Fanta Exotic.
Any chance you're open to mentoring a junior rails dev (and aspiring indie hacker) :P?
I could see myself do that if I feels there's a match 👍 Hit me up via e-mail with maybe any specific questions you have and we can figure something out.
Have you received the Herman Miller Aeron yet? How does it compare to the IKEA Markus?
Not yet! It won't be here before late May. Will update here when I get it and have used it for a while. Update: I've had it for a bit now. It's really good. Not sure it's that much better, given the enormous price difference but I don't regret it.
What do you think about the recent Basecamp ordeal?
Long time fan and follower of Basecamp, their apps, their books – the whole deal. When I first read the announcement blog post, I was confused. Felt like the wrong direction. So I read a ton of Twitter threads and blog posts. I only know the situation from what's been written publicly and what's been leaked in articles, but I was honestly a bit disappointed, as a fan, over both the stance and how it was all handled. Still am a fan, albeit a slightly more confused one.
Should designers code? And vice versa.
Sure, everyone ought to at least try it. It might stick, it might not. No sweat. One thing I can say is that I, as a coder who "can design", feel it's a superpower. Talking to designers becomes so much easier and suddenly you can make things completely on your own. I also feel, as a design who "can code" that the same is just as true from that direction. Same goes for doing "customer support" properly. "Marketing", all of it. If you're curious, you can learn the basics of almost anything. If you're humble and dare to put yourself out there, nothing's out of reach. An annoyingly fluffy statement but I believe it.
Have you given Elixir/Phoenix a swirl yet? Any thoughts?
I have! I wrote DR News' Facebook chatbot in it back in 2018 when those were all the rage. I like it a lot. I think it's superior to Ruby and Rails in many ways but also a bit more cumbersome in day-to-day use. That's why I've stuck with Rails for new projects; I can just move faster. Which is a good thing to optimise for when you're a single developer.
Learning Elixir and OTP is one of those processes where you start off being confident then your mind is completely blown and you look into the abyss and think "How can anyone get anything done then?" but then, slowly, you regain your sense of the world and can see everything, Elixir and in general, in a new light. I learned through this book and it was a great introduction.
If I was building something where ability to scale was critical or something heavy on WebSockets for example, I would 100% go with Elixir/Phoenix. It's a wonderful language and framework.
Mikkel, you managed to create a bunch of successful indie products. In some of your tweets, you mentioned that a couple of them "sell themself". At the same time you continue to work at elastic and not going "full-in" with your project. Can you maybe tell us why you're not doing the leap? You seem to be very well positioned to do that.
To be fair, the only project that's generating any "serious" revenue is 10er. The tweet you're referring to was a bit sarcastic, ha! But thank you none the less. I will go solo at some point -- but not quite yet. To be brutally honest: I like the money I make at Elastic. The job is nice too, my coworkers are wonderful and Elastic is an amazing company.
Is it easy for you to switch between your split ortho and a regular keyboard? And if, how long did it take you to get the muscle memory for both?
It definitely wasn't easy in the beginning but now it's fine. It feels like the two "muscle memories" are stored separately. My brain and my fingers just use the one relevant for the current keyboard and the two systems don't interfere. Learning to use the ErgoDox actually fixed my typing on regular keyboards. My pinkies for example would never touch any alphanumeric keys before I switched. Now they have many more responsibilities than just holding shift and staying out of the way. The few times I've been away from the Ergo/Moonlander and been exclusively using the built-in keyboard for a week or more because holidays or whatever, there's a short run-in period of 15-30 mins where the layout feels slightly foreign. It's not broken, it's just like the very first time on your skis in a new season. Take two turns and you're back where you left off.
What's your education?
I completed high school (almen gymnasium 🇩🇰) in 2005. After taking a break, working some, spending half a year on a højskole playing jazz drums, I started Information Studies at the university in Århus in 2007. After 1.5-2 years I dropped out to be on TV doing my new(est) hobby, stand-up comedy, thinking I'd come back and finish the bachelor's degree. I never did. Got my first full-time job programming in 2013.\n\nWhen I was 12 (1998) my father brought home a pamphlet sized book about making websites with HTML. I wanted to make one because my 10-year-older cousin had showed me his and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I spent the whole weekend making a website about... nothing? and I had the best time doing it. Found a few friends with the same interest in this weird medium. We'd keep redoing our own websites every month or few weeks even, always trying to one-up or just impress each other. At some point people started paying me money to make their websites.\n\nThat's 23 years ago now and I just now realized that's still mostly what I do. I just have more friends to show it to these days and the possibilities have expanded immensely.
Which Mac app do you wish existed?
I use Quicksilver and have not been able to get used to any of the alternatives. So I wish that a more healthy and maintained version of Quicksilver existed. I have actually begun making one myself but it's a humongous task so don't expect anything. It'll be my magnum opus.
What's your opinion on TailwindCSS being used in production?
I think Tailwind is wonderful in production! What I think you might be concerned about is the size of the CSS file? Tailwind has purgecss built in which will remove all unused classes in production. (The new JIT mode does this too but the other way around as it only adds the classes you’re using instead.) As long as you make sure to include this step somewhere in your deployment process I can’t see why there would be any problem with using Tailwind, in production nor otherwise.
What code languages do you know? And what is your preferred?
It's hard to count. Both because I've tried many but also because it's hard to define at what point you know a language. I love Ruby and it's the one I have the most experience with. JavaScript is fun too. Swift is nice. When you know a few syntaxes, you can learn new ones fairly quickly. What takes time is getting experience and there's no other way to get that than to write a whole lot of code. So I suggest to just pick one and get going. Preferably on a "real" project, whatever that means. But having an end goal is definitely an effective driving factor.
What layout/configuration are you using on your ZSA Moonlander?
This one. Almost the same as the one I used on my Ergodox. There's a whole bunch of keys that I almost never touch. I would gladly trade these keys for a slightly smaller footprint.
Which switches are you using in that nice rainbow Moonlander keyboard?
According to my friend from whom I bought them: "Lilacs lubed with Krytox 205g0 and 105 on spring. Filmed with 0.15mm TX switch films v2." I know what some of those things mean. These are linear and I've mostly used tactiles before. Takes a little getting used to but liking it.
What’s your favorite services and/or apps at the moment ? (E-mail, cloud storage, code editor, etc.)
Too many to mention, I'll have to write one of those /uses pages (I did!). I'm really enjoying HEY's take on e-mail and Safari is an amazing browser. Best of them all.
How did you do the portrait?
I took a photo of myself with my iPhone’s selfie cam then ran it through the Prisma iPhone app with some filter. Finally I changed the colors a bit in Acorn to my likes.
What is an NFT?
It's a very expensive and cumbersome way to show your friends that you have an exquisite taste in computer graphics.
Any particular reason you didn't add a IP block or something to likes?
You mean like some kind of throttling mechanism to disallow multiple likes per person? I honestly just couldn’t be bothered. If someone wants to vandalize it a number on the internet goes up. I can live with that.
Why aren't there any questions yet?
Thank you for that question, Mikkel. I guess nobody's asked me anything yet. Let's hope they do soon!
