Jesse Pollak grew up in Washington, DC, attending a Quaker school through graduating in high school. He played competitive soccer, which was a huge part of his life. Eventually, he moved to SoCal to attend school at Berkley. He got the bug to start a company, and only lasted 2 years at school - before he ventured out on his own. Eventually, his company got acquired by Coinbase, which opened up a whole new world for him. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 month old boy. He doesn't drink caffeine, but daily, enjoys a decaf cappuccino.
In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.
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Last week I mentioned that I’m ready to try direnv again, but secretly, I still had some worries about the process. Thankfully, Trey has a tutorial to walk me past the troublesome parts.
direnv - an extension for your shell. It augments existing shells with a new feature that can load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory.
Switching from virtualenvwrapper to direnv, Starship, and uv
- Trey Hunner**
Trey has solved a bunch of the problems I had when I tried direnv before
Show the virtual environment name in the prompt
Place new virtual environments in local .venv instead of in .direnv/python3.12
Silence all of the “loading”, “unloading” statements every time you enter a directory
Have a script called
venv
to create an environment, activate it, create a
.envrc
file
I’m more used to a create script, so I’ll stick with that name and Trey’s contents
A
workon
script to be able to switch around to different projects.
This is a carry over from “virtualenvwrapper’, but seems cool. I’ll take it.
Adding
uv
to the mix for creating virtual environments.
Interestingly including --seed which, for one, installs pip in the new environment. (Some tools need it, even if you don’t)
Starship
Trey also has some setup for Starship. But I’ll get through the above first, then MAYBE try Starship again.
Some motivation
Trey’s setup is pretty simple. Maybe I was trying to get too fancy before
Starship config in toml files that can be loaded with direnv and be different for different projects. Neato
Also, Trey mentions his dotfiles repo. This is a cool idea that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.
Big Technology Podcast is five years old. Today, we share a quick update with 1) Gratitude for our listeners 2) A change in ad network and what our ads will sound like next 3) Our editorial philosophy 4) How you can help.
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Why do people list to this podcast? Sure, they're looking for technical explorations of new libraries and ideas. But often it's to hear the story behind them. If that speaks to you, then I have the perfect episode lined up. I have Barry Warsaw, Paul Everitt, Carol Willing, and Brett Cannon all back on the show to share stories from the history of Python. You'll hear about how import this came to be and how the first PyCon had around 30 attendees (two of whom are guests on this episode!). Sit back and enjoy the humorous stories from Python's past.
Episode overview:
Andrew Hall faces a unique challenge: building profitable telecommunications infrastructure across one of Africa's largest countries with one of its smallest populations. As managing director of Paratus Namibia, Hall oversees operations spanning vast distances where traditional business models struggle to pencil out.
Andile Masuku probes Hall on the realities of building networks where "you'll see three fibres running next to the road" instead of shared infrastructure, why COVID accelerated their consumer business, and how recent oil discoveries are reshaping Namibia's economic landscape.
Key insights:
- On geographic challenges: Namibia's vast distances and sparse population create unique infrastructure economics where covering remote areas requires careful return-on-investment calculations across extended payback periods.
- On competitive landscape: Operating alongside two state-owned enterprises creates complex market dynamics where regulatory considerations and different organisational mandates influence infrastructure deployment strategies.
- On infrastructure sharing: Despite logical benefits, competitive dynamics often result in duplicated infrastructure: "three towers standing next to each other" rather than collaborative deployment approaches.
- On consumer versus enterprise: Traditional enterprise focus (75% of business) provided stability, but consumer growth since 2016 now drives expansion, particularly accelerated during COVID-19 periods.
- On technology transitions: Moving from WiMAX limitations (4-10 Mbps) to fibre required strategic timing; balancing asset sweating against customer retention as bandwidth demands increased around 2018.
Notable moments:
1. Hall's description of infrastructure redundancy: "If you drive down the road, you'll see three fibres running next to the road. If you're driving from one town to the other, you'll see two or three towers standing next to each other"
2. The COVID-19 catalyst: Consumer business performed "very, very well" as people became "100% reliant, work-wise, education-wise, entertainment-wise on connectivity"
3. Recent oil discoveries creating positive economic outlook with increased foreign investment interest and improved business confidence
The development question:
Hall addresses the expectation that telecoms should "unlock growth economically for an entire nation" by emphasising education as the foundation. Paratus's corporate social responsibility focuses on educational sector connectivity because "for children to have access to the internet, it makes the world a lot smaller."
His perspective reflects broader African infrastructure challenges: balancing commercial sustainability with development impact, managing investor expectations whilst serving diverse stakeholder needs, and building institutional capacity in environments with limited technical specialisation.
"I think access to the internet plays a crucial role. And I think it starts at grass root level in the form of education... for children to have access to the internet, it makes the world a lot smaller."
Image credit: Paratus Namibia
David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH) is a legendary programmer, creator of Ruby on Rails, co-owner & CTO of 37signals that created Basecamp, HEY, & ONCE, and is a NYT-best-selling author (with Jason Fried) of 4 books: REWORK, REMOTE, Getting Real, and It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work. He is also a race car driver, including a class-winning performance at the 24 hour Le Mans race.
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep474-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:58) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(08:48) – Programming – early days
(26:13) – JavaScript
(36:32) – Google Chrome and DOJ
(44:19) – Ruby programming language
(51:30) – Beautiful code
(1:09:31) – Metaprogramming
(1:12:52) – Dynamic typing
(1:20:10) – Scaling
(1:33:03) – Future of programming
(1:50:34) – Future of AI
(1:56:29) – Vibe coding
(2:05:01) – Rails manifesto: Principles of a great programming language
(2:29:27) – Why managers are useless
(2:38:48) – Small teams
(2:44:55) – Jeff Bezos
(3:00:13) – Why meetings are toxic
(3:07:58) – Case against retirement
(3:15:15) – Hard work
(3:20:53) – Why we left the cloud
(3:24:04) – AWS
(3:33:22) – Owning your own servers
(3:39:35) – Elon Musk
(3:49:17) – Apple
(4:01:03) – Tim Sweeney
(4:12:37) – Fatherhood
(4:38:19) – Racing
(5:05:23) – Cars
(5:10:41) – Programming setup
(5:25:51) – Programming language for beginners
(5:39:09) – Open source
(5:48:01) – WordPress drama
(5:59:18) – Money and happiness
(6:08:11) – Hope
Box CEO Aaron Levie is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) OpenAi's Windsurf deal falls through 2) Is OpenAI okay? 3) What percentage of all AI spend goes to coding? 4) Google's AI code play 5) Grok 4 is out 6) Does Grok show the scaling laws are still in effect? 7) Would Box work with Grok? 8) NVIDIA hits $4 trillion 9) Are we in an AI bubble? 10) Should Tim Cook step down? 11) Could Apple merge with OpenAI?
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Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com
Koel Labs uses classic movies to help learners master pronunciation. You can join the waitlist for their closed beta launch now. Check out their open-source community project for Koel Labs on GitHub.
Gaurav Bhattacharya grew up in New Delhi, in a blue collar family. He lost his Dad early in his life. He took influence from his older brother and his love for programming, getting hooked on C/C++. He loves building things, including video games, of which he built his first one at the age of 12. In High School, he pursued a startup idea that led him to skip college, and eventually exit. Outside of tech, he lives in San Francisco and continues his love for gaming. He also enjoys watching live sports - the Dodgers, Lakers and Warriors.
At his prior startup, Gaurav and his team were working in the healthcare space. They became learners of go-to market strategies, how to do sales, and how to do marketing. They enjoyed it so much that they grew to want to start their next company in that space.
