JD Flynn:

It's a bus test. If that person goes out, gets hit by a bus, will the project survive?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Let me be your hero. You're listening to the Everyday Heroes podcast, brought to you by hero Devs. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Heroes, a show where we sit down with the backbone of the open web. The unsung heroes of tech. That's right. I'm talking about the open source maintainers, contributors, and organizers of the world. My name's Hayden Balio. I'm here with my co host, Wendy Hurst.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Wendy, how you doing today?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

So, so good. I was rummaging through some things I used to clean out my office, looking for fun things. And then I remembered that I have kids, so I don't have to look for things. They're just around Today. The thing that I found is this cute little. This cute little baby narwhal.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Look at that cute little baby narwhal.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

And if you get it wet on the bottom, it glows.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Wow. Yeah.

‍

JD Flynn: 

Okay. All right.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

All right. I have to do NSFW for this podcast now. No, I joke. I joke. Okay, so serious question. Serious question. Because I actually don't know the answer to this, but narwhals, they are a mythical creature or because I just wouldn't pass put it past the ocean to say that there's a well with a horn on it somewhere. I just don't know.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Are they mythical or does the narwhal exist?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

The narwhal exists. It is a real thing. And the little thingy on the top is not a horn. It is a tusk. Though this toy does not really accurately represent what a narwhal looks like.

‍

JD Flynn:

That's more of a whaleicorn than a narwhal.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's a whaleicorn. But it was marketed as an our wall, and that's why it exists in my house.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I see. Okay, well, I will have to look them up. That will be my homework from this episode, is just look up an actual narwhal. Because I just wasn't, you know, I wasn't sure because, like, well, one thing I feel like I just never really dived into narwhal. Right? Like a narwhal, but, like, my son has these books that I'll read them at night, and it's like, you know, it's about a yeti and it's about a bigfoot and about a narwhal, and I'm like, does narwhal fit in with these other. There's a word that I'm blanking on that, like, has to do with like, Cryptid. Yes, a Cryptid. Right.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Coming in from the peanut gallery, which I guess I should just get out of host chat and actually introduce our actual guest today so everybody can know who's filling in the blanks for myself. Our guest today started out as a paramedic, saving lives, I can only assume. And after 10 years of that, he made the jump from the ambulance to the text editor. Since then, he has become a community pillar within the popular open source CMS Drupal. He's a massive proponent of mental health and open source. You can probably catch him streaming on Twitch three to five times a week. And when he's not doing that, you might even catch him playing the baritone saxophone. It's none other than JD Flynn.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

JD, thanks for being here with us.

‍

JD Flynn:

Thanks for having me.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Absolutely. JD, we like to start the episode out. You know, besides our little chats about Narwhal, we like to start out the podcast or video cast or show a little different here. We're going to start with a game right off the bat. Are you ready?

‍

JD Flynn:

I. Do I have a choice?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Nope, that's just the way.

‍

JD Flynn:

Okay, that's what I thought. I am ready. Let's do this.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Wendy, take it away.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

All right. The game we're going to play today is a game we made up called Fork, Star or Deprecate. In this game, I'm going to say anything from an open source tool or a programming language to a ridiculous concept in tech that we made up, and you decide whether you want to fork it, which is improve it, star it, leave it alone, or deprecate it, retire it entirely. Are you ready?

‍

JD Flynn:

Yes. Let's see how this goes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Here we go. Symphony Star PHP Fork Code reviews Fork Composer for dependency management Star Drupal Extend Modules.

‍

JD Flynn:

Extend modules.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That's a deprecate drag and drop UI fork. How about open source contributions?

‍

JD Flynn:

Start now. This is tough though, because you can improve on anything. On anything. So I don't think there's a single thing that I would truly just say leave alone.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Hmm.

‍

JD Flynn:

And that's more than the one word answer, but okay.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

How about PHP5?

‍

JD Flynn:

PHP5 deprecate?

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Uh huh. Okay. A framework called Module Magic 3000 start.

‍

JD Flynn:

Based on the name alone. I don't care what it does.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

See, we found one. We found one. I knew there'd be one in there. And last, a self destructing CMS feature feature for test environments.

‍

JD Flynn:

Probably fork. Just because I want to see how something like that would work.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I want to see the chaos.

‍

JD Flynn:

Imagining like Inspector Gadget. This note will self destruct in 10 seconds and then just GitHub actions blowing up.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, the future would be called like Ethan Hunt or something like that. Okay, wow, thanks for playing. You did great. You know what, there's no actual right answers or wrong answers. That's why we play that game. Gets us all a little bit loosened up. And to dive into who JD is, I mean, this podcast is about us diving into your journey, jd. So I think I want to go back to the moment where your life, in your life, you said, I want to leave kind of the emergency services behind, leave the ambulance behind and move into the tech world.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

When was that and what prompted that?

‍

JD Flynn:

So I've always been a tech geek. All my life, when things were available to me, I would get into programming. I made some very small, stupid little applications in QBasic and Basic. In the 80s and 90s, there was a magazine called 321-contact and a TV show on PBS if either of you remember it. Probably not, because I watched a lot of weird shows. But the magazine had programs in the back where you would copy line for line, like type it in line for line, an application, and try to build it. That was my intro to programming. Then stuff happened.

‍

JD Flynn:

I kind of fell into emergency services after, you know, a couple different failed jobs early on in my life. And I did it for quite a while, but it started getting to me. It started really dragging on me emotionally, physically. I would spend 24 to 72 hours at work in one shift, in one go. There'd be nights without sleeping, there would be nights with meeting people on the worst day of their lives. And at some point, just to compartmentalize it all, I felt myself losing empathy for people that I was supposed to be treating. And I kind of had to take a step back and say, you know what, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I should find something that I've been interested in.

‍

JD Flynn:

Maybe I should find something and switch to a completely different field where I know well, one, I'll be able to go home every night, and two, make a decent amount for what I do compared to almost a pittance for saving lives. So I ended up going back to a community college, getting a two year degree in computer information systems, getting my first job doing php. And before they hired me, they said, would you like to do Drupal? I said, what's that? And they said, well, it's what we do here, if you want a job. I said, yes, I would love to do it. And close to 11 years later, here I am, neck deep and drupal.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Neck deep in drupal. And the drupal drop. Nice. Let me pull on the strings. I think that matter the most. You've been a big proponent for mental health and big awareness person for mental illness, especially in the open source, through, like, I believe it's open source, the os. What is the acronym that I'm forgetting here? JD.

‍

JD Flynn:

Osmi. Osmi. Open Sourcing Mental Illness.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I would love to hear, like, did that kind of journey for you when you started feeling those feelings, did that happen when you were a paramedic and then, you know, or did it go deeper than that, or did it start later in life?

‍

JD Flynn:

It's been my entire life, but up until after I started going back to school and decided that, you know, maybe I should do something about it, I didn't put a name to it. A lot of emergency service workers, whichever side of it, police, firefighters, EMTs, whatever, are too proud to admit when there's something wrong. I mean, it's the same thing with the doctor. It's physician, heal thyself, or if I'm a doctor, I can't be sick. If I'm a paramedic, I can't be sick. There can't be something wrong with me. I help the people who need help. And there was one instance, one defining moment for me where I was in college and I went back to school in my very late 20s, early 30s.

‍

JD Flynn:

I'd driven up to campus because I had to take a couple classes in person. Most of it was online. Parked my car, put it in park, and I just sat and my heart started racing. It wasn't a finals day. It wasn't a test day. It wasn't, you know, I didn't have to give a big speech, nothing like that. It was just, I don't want to do this. I'm terrified.

‍

JD Flynn:

I can't walk in the door. The same reaction that somebody would have if they were getting chased by a bear. I was having that reaction to just going inside and after some heavy breathing, throwing my car into reverse and driving back home. I like, I need to do something about this. So I made doctor's appointments, started seeing a therapist. That was the part where I realized I needed to help myself. And then there was a PHP meetup in Chicago because I was trying to get, you know, network a little bit with the community, trying to get a job. And there was a PHP meetup.

‍

JD Flynn:

I went there and the speaker was Ed Finkler, who founded osmi, and he Gave a talk. And it really resonated with me because his journey, where he was five years before that is where I was at that point with trying to get treatment, trying to get better. And it just really, really hit me and I'm like, no, this I'm not alone. And that's part of the whole journey of OSMI is opening up the conversation and teaching people that they are not alone. So I talked to Ed after I got treatment started, finally got on my meds and started taking care of myself. I emailed Ed. I'm like, hey, you changed my life with your talk. I would like to do this kind of stuff in the Drupal community and talk to people, start giving presentations.

‍

JD Flynn:

Because you helped me out, I'd like to help other people. And Ed's like, dude, you could take my talk and run with it. You don't even have to change the name. So I grew a beard, I put on glasses, and I started calling myself Ed. That didn't take off too well. So instead I just went with my regular name. I wrote my own talk. I've had like five or six different iterations of that talk and started presenting it at various Drupal camps.

‍

JD Flynn:

I've talked at a couple Drupal cons, even some WordPress events.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Very cool. Yeah, this is the same talk that I've heard give, correct?

‍

JD Flynn:

No, I think you've heard my Twitch talk.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I have. You definitely touch on mental health and, you know, mental illness and what you went through when you started really diving into game development. But yeah, that being said, I'd like to follow that thread then. So you became a speaker, you started going to conferences. What did your career look like through this time? You said that first job you found it, they were like, can you do Drupal? And you're like, absolutely, I can. You know, I learned Drupal if I have to. What did your career look like through this time period? What was that company and where did you go after that? Like, what position did you have, you know, what was your title there, type of thing?

‍

JD Flynn:

My title there was web developer. I was under a senior developer. There were three or four of us and it was full stack. They had the understanding that I didn't know a lot of Drupal. I knew PHP. I was fresh out of college with a 2 year degree and I still have some of my books that I look back and laugh. The version of PHP that I was taught on is even older than what we support, so that's taking it back quite a ways. And Already it had come so far that I had to learn a bunch of new stuff, but because it was a full stack, I was also expected to learn all the JavaScript, expected to learn the styling.

‍

JD Flynn:

Kind of left on my own on a lot of different projects. And it was a very, very stuffy corporate environment. Like, I don't want to name companies, but it was a magazine publishing company, very niche, it wasn't a bad place, but it was very stuffy and I didn't feel like I can really grow there. Then I ended up going to a conference in Minneapolis, Twin City, Drupal Camp. Before that, I was just kind of meh, you know, okay, Drupal's all right, it's paying the bills. But when I was there, I met some people from the Chicago community, which is roughly where I'm from, and started talking to them and started attending the actual Drupal community events in Chicago, the monthly meetups, and helping organize Mid Camp in Chicago, and just fell in love with the community. That's the part that really drugged me in and kept me there. Come for the code, stay for the community is something that we say a lot.

‍

JD Flynn:

And from that point, just networking, talking with other people. One of my greatest experiences as a Drupal developer is the first time I got a patch or a line of code committed into Drupal Core. And that was a test for views, which looked for a line of text. And if you search the code base of Drupal, I think it's still in Drupal 10 and 11. If you search for view, may the force be with you, you will get a single line of text that I committed or that I submitted and was committed to Drupal Core. And just having a couple of core commits under my belt helped me kind of just launch into the next job, the job after the first one, the job that I really wanted. And from there it's just been a really great experience.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Now, was that next job, was that at Blast or Radius, or was that earlier than that?

‍

JD Flynn:

It was earlier than that. It was a company for travel websites.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Oh, very cool, Very cool. So did you have one of these careers where you stayed in a job for three or four or five years, or did you have one of these careers where you more bounced around a little bit?

‍

JD Flynn:

I bounced around, I would say a little bit, but actually quite a bit. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not with layoffs. With the company you just mentioned, I was brought in for a specific project, but I worked for three months without doing anything because that project never got off the ground. And I just was bored. I was extremely bored, and I didn't want to become stagnant, so I looked for something else. And then more recently, I had layoffs. I was unemployed for a lot of 20, 24. And now I'm here at Herodevs, and I'm just thrilled.

‍

JD Flynn:

I love working here, this place. I'm happy with the work that I'm doing. You know, obviously I'm wearing two logos on me right now, and that's not just because Hayden told me to give me $10. If I did it, I would have done it for five.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Damn it. I need to go in lower. No, I mean, I think it's really good thing to hear, though, JD. I mean, @ the end of the day, it's like everybody's, like, career journey is so different. I mean, I had a. On a previous episode, we talked about stints during, especially during COVID where, like, I think I was at a job for six weeks. I was at another job for like two and a half months. And, like, you know, it was just a weird.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

A weird scenario. So when you do find something that feels a little bit more like home and you like the people that are around you and the environment is supportive and inclusive and, yeah, it means a lot, but it's like nobody gets a pension anymore. Right. So I think people need to be less afraid of being able to, like, find the place where they feel they're at home. Right. So. Right. I think it's good to hear that bouncing around, like, it can be stressful.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Don't get me wrong. Like, the two years that I bounced around, especially when I made my shift from sales to marketing, that two years was incredibly stressful. It was like three or four different jobs in two years, which I just come off of, like a four year stint of stability and sales, and now I was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom all over the place, and so very scary. But, you know, you just keep your head down, you keep working, and you keep trying and making the most of the opportunities you're given. So I think it's good to hear from your experience that, like, hopping happened, whether voluntary or involuntarily, like, it still happened. But you've made your way here, and I think we're really happy to have you. So it's exciting, but so fast forward. You're doing a lot of talks now, and the talks that I've heard from you have been around.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Your Twitch talk. Right. I believe it's titled How Talking to.

‍

JD Flynn:

Myself Made Me a Better Developer.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

How Talking to Myself has made me better developer. I love the talk.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's a great title.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. For anybody who doesn't, has never seen it, that's listening to this or watching this. We'll link it in the show notes to, like, go watch it. Because JD has made his talk into a complete game. He's gamified his talk, and it's very cool. So. But, like, I want to go before that now and step back into this world of, like, I think you mentioned that it was during your layoff, especially in 2024, you're like, I'm just going to start streaming. And I've heard this story before, but I.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I would love for you to repeat this story to everybody listening and kind of like, there was a point where you, you were hacked down. Right. And you had two avenues that you could go. Right. And so I want to start there. Like, layoff happened. JD, what happened in JD's life after that? After this last massive layoff that you were part of?

‍

JD Flynn:

Yeah. So to preface it, I started streaming. It's been close to two years now. I think in March of 2025, it'll be my second anniversary as an affiliate on Twitch, which the layers are streaming. When you get a certain number of followers and average view, you hit affiliate. Then if you ever get to that next level, you become partner, and that's when you know, you get a better revenue split. So my second affiliate anniversary is coming up in March, and I was streaming a couple times a week. I had grown a little bit of a community.

‍

JD Flynn:

At first. I had no idea how to start, so I almost did, like, PowerPoint presentations of here's Drupal and Here are some Things. But, you know, nobody really wanted to search for here's Drupal. So I started trying to learn things. And in that same talk, I said how I learned some C, typescript, node, all kinds of other stuff just from experimenting. Now fast forward a little bit to where, you know, the first layoff of 2023 happened. And that one, I got a reasonable severance and had a little breathing room. So I figured, you know what? I'll take some time and start streaming every day and see how that works out.

‍

JD Flynn:

And it was fun. I learned a lot through a bigger community and it gave me something to do rather than sit around on my thumbs and really just try to figure out where I was going. Because as we talked about, obviously I have mental health issues. I get treatment for it, but it's not hard to fall back into a very depressed state. So having something to Keep me occupied having something to direct creative energy to. That kept me from circling the drain down into one of those depressive states. Then I got hired at another job. I started streaming at night occasionally and then lost that job.

‍

JD Flynn:

And that one wasn't so generous with letting me go. So I went back to streaming every day again. I made very little money doing it, but it was nice to actually have some income, however small it was. My days were wake up, send out 10, 15 resumes to different places, anything that had the word Drupal or even PHP in the job description, and then stream for a couple hours, get something to eat, come back and stream for another few hours. And that was my seven day a week. Just to keep from, you know, going into a very dark place. And I don't want to, you know, put a. Or make it very hyperbolic, but it saved me from what could have happened and you know, ending up in, instead of sitting here talking with you, ending up in a hospital or worse.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, that's important. I think a lot of people need to hear that side of the story, right? There's a lot of people out there dealing with mental health problems, especially in the developer ecosystem. I mean, I think a lot is asked from everybody in every field now from their job. And oh yeah, I feel like there's also this false narrative of almost like a work life balance. It can be very hard to achieve that because you almost feel like you're going to fail at both of them when you try to achieve both of them. In my opinion, it's like you're trying to achieve this balance, but it's like you're not doing either one well. So I've tried to get to this point where it's more of like a work life integration where I just don't have as many expectations for what I absolutely have to get done, either in my personal life or work life. It's kind of like, let's make sure we keep the main thing.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

The main thing, when I'm working on work and when I'm, when I'm with my family, that's my thing. But you know, a lot of people deal with these mental problems. If you were talking to your younger self, jd, you know, what would you tell them at this moment to hopefully set the stage and help them? Or imagine talking to a group full of young developers that four of them in that room, you know, are going through the same thing. What would you say?

‍

JD Flynn:

One thing that I come back to is it's okay to not be okay. It's Said a lot in osmi. Open sourcing, mental illness. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to not pretend that everything's fine. It's okay to take time for yourself. One of my favorite phrases is put on your own oxygen mask first, take care of yourself. If you expend all your energy taking care of people around you or taking care of tasks around you, but never take any time to care for yourself, then you're going to burn out, you're going to hit hard.

‍

JD Flynn:

And that's how it works for me. I don't know how other people's brains works. Brains works. Brains work. No, brains work sounds more fun. So. But anytime I give a mental health talk, I preface at the very beginning. You know, not a doctor, I'm not giving medical advice, I'm not qualified for that.

‍

JD Flynn:

But personal advice from me to younger developers is it's okay to not be okay, it's okay to ask for help and it's okay to not know everything. Because I see a lot of people who they're trying to learn every single language out there, they're trying to learn every JavaScript framework that there is. And in the time since we started this recording, there's probably been about 17 new ones come out. And of those, 15 have already been deprecated. So you don't need to learn every new hotness that comes out. Just find something that you enjoy, stick with it and don't overextend yourself.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, well, let's all take a step back. This was good. Now I'm going to go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about all of our employer HeroDevs. Everyday Heroes is brought to you by HeroDevs. HeroDevs offers secure drop in replacements for your end of life open source software through our never ending support product line. You get to stay compliant with the likes of SOC2 and HIPAA and Fedramp and all the other acronyms and regulatory bodies you can think of. All while also getting real vulnerability remediation. You don't have to choose between a new feature and security.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

And with over 800 clients, you can be confident that your unsupported open source is in good hands. So if you need us, we're here. And if you don't, well, that probably means you've migrated to the newest version. So huzzah. Either way, visit Herodevs.com to learn more. Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

‍

JD Flynn:

Peace.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Okay, J.D. so it's time for our next game of the show called Not My Job. Wendy, tell em how to play.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

All right, in this game, we're gonna ask you three questions which have absolutely nothing to do with your job as a software engineer or anything else we've talked about and everything to do with what you know about the evolution of dance styles.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Ooh, this is gonna be a good one.

‍

JD Flynn:

Okay, I think I've seen this YouTube video.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Are you ready?

‍

JD Flynn:

No. But let's do it anyway.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay. Number one. The Charleston dance became popular during which decade? A, the 1910s, B, 1920s, C, 1930s.

‍

JD Flynn:

The 20s, yes.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Okay, question number two. Which dance style originated in the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s? A breakdancing. B, salsa. C, swing.

‍

JD Flynn:

Breakdancing.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That is correct.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I have to say that putting B salsa was kind of like. Okay, it was a 50, 50 ye.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

I just want y'all to know that salsa is a type of dance.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Well, I know it is.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

It's a type of dance. It's a Latin dance. It's not just a food.

‍

JD Flynn:

I didn't imagine a lot of people from the Bronx in the 70s saying, hey, why don't we just do this?

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I would imagine that the salsa originated somewhere in Latin America or in Spain or somewhere that's actually Latin as opposed to the Bronx. But you know what? I could be surprised with the actual origination of salsa dancing. Yes, you're right. Okay, sorry. Third question.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Question number three. What was the first widely popular dance move inspired by a cartoon character? A, the mashed potato, B, the robot. C, the moonwalk.

‍

JD Flynn:

I'm gonna guess robot.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

Robot is the correct answer. You got all three correct.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Congratulations, jd.

‍

JD Flynn:

But you put that one answer in each one. That is just way out there. And 95% chance, you know, Michael Jackson did moonwalk.

‍

Wendy Hurst:

That's true. I don't know. What? You don't know.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Just another good test taker, Wendy. That's what it seems like. All right, all right. Okay, okay. So. Okay. Thanks for playing our game.

‍

JD Flynn:

Yeah, it's fun.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

I want to shift gears. I want to talk about JD's hobbies. You have quite a few, and so I'm very excited. So tell me a little bit more about your life as the baritone saxophonist.

‍

JD Flynn:

Oh, wow. So, in middle school, I played saxophone. I started off with saxophone alto, and then I eventually moved to Barry sax. And I was one of those kids who always wanted to do challenge, so I moved on to absolutely everything. So I can still play all brass instruments, play the saxophone, play a few woodwinds other than sax. And after high school, I didn't play for a while, and I needed I wanted to creative outlet. So there is a local music shop that does adult rent to own instruments because you know, any instrument is going to be not cheap. So I found that they had that and I rented of all things, a French horn and reached out to a couple people who I knew or who were friends of friends and found that there was a community band at Valparaiso University where it's basically you show up, you play all skill levels, all ages.

‍

JD Flynn:

Anybody who wants to be a part of it can be a part of it. And I started playing French horn there and then I realized, you know what I really missed playing the saxophone. And there was nobody playing the bari sax at that time in the next band up, which is a professional level wind ensemble called Windiana. And I went, rented the bari sax, started playing and I just fell back in love with being a musician. And it's been so much fun doing it. I play in a municipal band during the summer, I play in Windiana during the fall and winter and year round I'm making music.

‍

Hayden Baillio:

Can I just say that all wind instrument ensembles always have the most punny and cleverest names. Wendy, Anna, you gotta love it. And I feel like I've heard like four or five more in my life where like they incorporate wind or something like that into the name somehow. You gotta love it. My follow up question is like, do you think there's a. I've heard people say yes, and I think the science may have improved this a little bit, but do you think there's a strong association between like music and coding, programming or thinking with that part of the brain? Do you think it's more of just like an offset of being able to use the different parts of your brain?

‍

JD Flynn:

I definitely think there's some correlation because if you think about it, music itself is like reading code and you're looking at marks on a page and converting them in your brain to movement and figuring out what they actually mean and what to do with them. So you're reading code as you go through and if you compose music, same thing, you need to know what happens where, how long the notes should be. Just to put into developer terms, a for loop would be a repeat section, repeat five times and then until, you know, second ending or third ending, fourth ending. So you could put that in there. Different sections. You can consider. Think of John Philip Sousa mark. There are different sections.

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JD Flynn:

There's a primary melody, counter melody, then you get to the second part of it, then the trio, which is a whole different change. Think of those as functions or methods. Of different parts coming together and understanding how the different units work together. So yeah, I think that there's a huge correlation of all that working. And I believe you're just going to have to trust me because I don't have a link. But scientists somewhere at some point said that. I read on the Internet that when you play music, it lights up a whole part of your brain that helps build creativity and critical thinking. Yeah, I think Abraham Lincoln may have said that.

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Hayden Baillio:

Probably Jesus maybe too. I mean, that's the single biggest reason why I took my son and put him into violin at an early age. It's just like, you know, even if he doesn't stay with violin, it's just having a musical instrument I feel like at an early age can help. I didn't do music at an early age. I kind of dropped into it and had fun with it in middle school and a little bit in high school. But yeah, I think it's hugely beneficial for, especially for brain development when they're, when they're younger. So. Wow, that's cool.

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Hayden Baillio:

That's cool. Wendy, you got anything, any pressing questions you've been wanting to ask JD this whole time?

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Wendy Hurst:

I don't know about questions. I do feel like I relate in the music area for self care is almost like a way to think about it, right?

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JD Flynn:

Yeah, it's a creative outlet of something. And I have ADHD. It was undiagnosed until I was 30 something. So I think that playing music, being in band in middle school and high school really saved me from a lot of trouble because I had something to direct that extra energy at. And my ADHD was, oh, I want to play trombone this week. Okay, I'm tired of this. I want to play tuba this week. Okay, how about I learn French horn this week? And so having that ability to switch around and learn new things kept me from, oh, I want to go rob a store this week.

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JD Flynn:

Oh, let's see what I can get.

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Wendy Hurst:

Now. If it's robbing an instrument store, you.

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Hayden Baillio:

Heard it, you heard it here first, kids. You heard it here, you heard it here first. Learn a new instrument, don't rob it. If you learn a new instrument, you won't rob stores. Yes, it's a very good replacement advice is to just get better at instruments. Yeah, my co host here, Wendy, is absolutely a brilliant musician as well. Very creative person in general. For our last QBR for the team, she played the accordion and she plays multiple instruments.

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Hayden Baillio:

How many instruments do you play, Wendy? JD's just told us that he basically plays the Orchestra of the whole thing. I know you play a lot, though. What do you play?

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Wendy Hurst:

I do in school, you know, middle school, high school. I played the clarinet. So I'm pretty familiar with sitting next to saxophone players. I guess later in life, I taught myself the ukulele, the piano, and the accordion. The accordion is an instrument I picked up during COVID for mental health reasons. Like, I got laid off from my job in early in Covid 2020, at the very beginning of April, right after a couple weeks of the shutdown, and the company that I worked for, they laid me off. And I decided to be like a stay at home mom for a while. I had never been a full time stay at home mom for the whole time that I had kids.

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Wendy Hurst:

So I decided to give it a try. And I could do that. But I quickly realized that full time stay at home mom life was just not for me. Like, I need technical problems to solve. I need spreadsheets to make. Like, that's how my brain operates. So I was like, well, I should pick up an instrument. What should I do? And I remembered watching, like, Mary Poppins when I was a kid.

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Wendy Hurst:

I loved musicals. I would watch Mary Poppins, and Burt, the guy that plays all the instruments comes out, he's got, like, a bass drum, and he's got his accordion, and he's got bells on his knees. And I was like, I want to be him when I grow up. And I was like, I think it's time. It's time. It's time to be Bert. So there's not a lot of places to rent an accordion, at least not where I live in Utah. So if you want to play the accordion, you have to buy it.

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Wendy Hurst:

You have to buy it. You got to commit.

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JD Flynn:

Wow.

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Wendy Hurst:

So I just saved all my money and I bought an accordion. I'd never touched an accordion before. I watched, like, YouTube videos, and that's where I learned how to play the accordion. And it became one of my favorite things to play because it's like a little band by itself. It's very portable, and it's unusual. At least where I live, it's unusual. So whenever I pull it out, it's almost like a. I don't know, like a private show for people.

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Hayden Baillio:

No, it's unusual.

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JD Flynn:

It's not just where you live. It's unusual everywhere.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, it's unusual everywhere.

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Wendy Hurst:

Okay, well, now we know that you.

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JD Flynn:

Followed that line instead of doing the chimney sweep.

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Wendy Hurst:

That's right. It could either way. It could have gone either way.

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JD Flynn:

Very close.

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Wendy Hurst:

I'm sure the Accordion turned out to be really fun. I really like playing it, and it's been fun to. I present a lot, or at least I used to when I was a project manager for a long time. And when I was presenting, like, there's only so many times you could present a budget update or something monotonous before you're just like, this is not fun and life's really short, so why not make it fun? So there have been times when I've spiced up some presentations where I just play the accordion in the background and present the information and suddenly everything becomes way more interesting. So anyway, jd, at your next talk or whatever that you give, you should totally just play the saxophone for a minute.

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JD Flynn:

It's a very, very big saxophone, so it's hard to travel with.

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Wendy Hurst:

True.

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JD Flynn:

But that's why I did the video game for a presentation for the talk from last year is PowerPoint presentations, no matter what the subject is, PowerPoints can be boring. So my whole thing was that I wanted to do something interesting. I didn't care if anybody really listened to what I said, but I wanted them to think it was a really cool way of saying it so they didn't get bored. They. I won't be playing accordion, probably not even saxophone for a presentation. But yeah, I completely get that. Trying to spice things up. It's funny that you said you played.

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Hayden Baillio:

Clarinet, if I can be honest. You just described B2B marketing. It is literally taking something that's not that exciting and trying to put it in a way that makes people not forget it. You know, it's like, that is literally so, you know, you're just becoming a little master marketer over there. And the truth is, is that you're. I've personally seen your talk twice now at various conferences, and I. I can say that it is very cool. It's very fun, and everybody has the same reaction.

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Hayden Baillio:

They all remember. They all remember it, and they all think it's very novel. I mean, when you can introduce someone, something novel to somebody and you know that they've been doing something a certain way for a long time, you introduce a novel way to do it that just is like, wow, this is also seamless and really cool. Yeah, it's a big impact. So I think it's really cool.

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Wendy Hurst:

To be fair, I do think it'd be hard to talk while playing the saxophone versus I can talk while I'm playing the accordion. That is a little bit of a bear barrier.

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Hayden Baillio:

To be fair, though, if you're like Saxman, though, you don't need to talk. You don't need to talk if you're sex man. Yeah.

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Wendy Hurst:

Okay.

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JD Flynn:

To have the slides go back and forth and, you know, one slide says words, and.

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Wendy Hurst:

That would be cool.

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JD Flynn:

And then a sad fact.

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Hayden Baillio:

I love the sax talk. I love the music talk. I've loved talking to you about your journey, mental health, especially in the open source and programming and development world in general. I think everybody can get a lot of benefit from that. I'd like to finish out our little session with our last game. We got three total games.

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Wendy Hurst:

All right.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yay.

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JD Flynn:

Not yay that it's last. Just yay, game.

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Hayden Baillio:

It's called Lightning. Fill in the blank, Wendy. How does he play?

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Wendy Hurst:

All right, well, in this game, you have 60 seconds to answer as many questions as you can. The more questions you answer, the more bragging rights you get to take home with you. Okay, are you ready?

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JD Flynn:

Yes.

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Wendy Hurst:

All right, Hayden, do you have our timer?

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Hayden Baillio:

I do have the timer. In 3, 2, 1, go.

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Wendy Hurst:

The free and open source Office suite often compared to Microsoft Office is called.

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JD Flynn:

Blink, LibreOffice or Open Office, depending on which branch.

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Wendy Hurst:

That's correct. The open source programming language developed by Google that is popular for system level applications is called Blank, Swift, Incorrect Go, or Golang.

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JD Flynn:

Oh, Golang.

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Wendy Hurst:

The open source project management and issue tracking tool created by Atlassian is called Blink Jira. Correct. A central repository where developers submit their code contributions is commonly referred to as an Blink.

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JD Flynn:

Git. Git repository.

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Wendy Hurst:

Possibly. This one says upstream. So incorrect. The term for using adding new fear. The term used for adding new features or fixing bugs in open source software is Blink Contribution. Good guess. This one says development. When open source projects encourage transparency, they publish their development roadmaps and plans in the blink.

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Wendy Hurst:

This is a strange question.

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JD Flynn:

That is a strange question.

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Wendy Hurst:

I didn't flush. I didn't go through these before.

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JD Flynn:

Okay, vent your questions.

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Wendy Hurst:

We'll give you extra time. We'll give you extra time. Gonna give. Give him. Give him an extra, like 20 seconds.

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Hayden Baillio:

I did already give y'all an extra 20 seconds to get to because I.

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Wendy Hurst:

Stumbled over my words. That's my bad. And I should have read these questions first because that didn't make sense.

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Hayden Baillio:

Also, I. I will absolutely give you contribution over development. Yeah. Now I don't know how many you got. Right versus wrong.

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JD Flynn:

Got them. All right.

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Hayden Baillio:

Good job.

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Wendy Hurst:

You did it.

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Hayden Baillio:

Good job, J.D.

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JD Flynn:

It'S all up to interpretation. And I interpret that I was correct.

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Hayden Baillio:

Perfect. There you go.

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Wendy Hurst:

We will give it to you. You could tell people and we won't. We won't tell. It doesn't matter.

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Hayden Baillio:

Nobody will actually know until this episode comes out. So big last question from me to you then JD is if you had the ability to issue a one word comment or commit to every maintainer, contributor of open source out there that would say one word, what would that word be?

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JD Flynn:

Contingency.

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Hayden Baillio:

Okay.

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Wendy Hurst:

Why?

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Hayden Baillio:

Care to elaborate?

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JD Flynn:

Because there are so many open source projects that are either controlled or maintained by single people and if that single person decides they don't want to do it anymore, then it's done. There should always be a contingency available, whether it's having somebody shadow that maintainer or contribute to it, or having somebody fork off of it so that the person can keep their hands on their precious while the project still lives on under another name, having some plan for offboarding whoever is holding the rain. Because even if they don't want to give it up, it's a bus test. If that person goes out, gets hit by a bus, will the project survive?

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah, I like that. Okay, the bus tests. Contingency. I like it. And jd, where can people who are listening or watching this, where can they come and follow you and follow your journey and see what you're up to?

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JD Flynn:

Well, put an application in @herodevs and if that doesn't work out, I stream three to five nights a week on Twitch, Twitch TV. JD does dev. All one word, no punctuation. And that's where I'm active the most. I'm also the only social media I use now is BlueSky because I am cool like that. And it's JD does dev BlueSky or BSky Social.

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Hayden Baillio:

Yeah. And we'll put these in the show notes and in the description so people can follow you. But jd, thank you for coming on, sharing your insights, sharing your journey, sharing your tips and laughing with us. I really appreciate you coming on man.

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JD Flynn:

Thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun.

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Wendy Hurst:

Glad you're here.

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Hayden Baillio:

And heroes, thank you for watching. Please share this video with somebody who maybe you think is going through something. I don't know, maybe this will help. If not, hopefully we catch you in the next episode. Keep being the heroes of your tech world. We'll see you next time. Peace.

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JD Flynn:

Bye.