[English] Devs On Tape x APEX Connect 2023 - Our Guest: Chris Saxon

00:00:00: [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:13: Welcome to another episode of Devs on Tape,

00:00:16: this time from Berlin from Apex Connect.

00:00:18: And yeah, first things first, hello and welcome, Caro.

00:00:22: Oh, hi, Kai.

00:00:24: Nice to have you here again.

00:00:26: Yes, and this will be our guest now.

00:00:29: the introduction. You might guess who it is, but let me just introduce our guest

00:00:33: as the last time. Our guest for today's podcast is a well-known

00:00:38: development database expert in the tech industry with more than a decade of

00:00:42: experience working with Oracle technologies. With his extensive

00:00:45: knowledge and experience, our guest is a valuable resource for anyone

00:00:50: working with Oracle databases. Please welcome Chris Saxon.

00:00:53: Hello, thanks. It's an interesting introduction there, right? I think

00:00:57: Actually, my career started, I don't know if you remember, well, Stephen Feuerstein

00:01:02: was the original PL/SQL expert and in 2010, so 13 years ago, he started this website called

00:01:08: the PL/SQL Challenge and at the time, every day, he published a new quiz on PL/SQL, you

00:01:14: know, here's some code, what result does it give, that kind of thing.

00:01:19: And I was a player and I was, you know, I'm kind of competitive so I took part and actually

00:01:25: I did pretty well.

00:01:26: They had like quarterly playoffs and I said,

00:01:29: I finished second or third in one of them,

00:01:31: which I was quite happy about.

00:01:33: But then I decided I didn't just want to play,

00:01:38: I wanted to actually create content.

00:01:40: So I pitched him the idea of we'd have a quiz

00:01:44: on database design, you know, creating tables,

00:01:46: indexes, that kind of thing.

00:01:48: And he said, yeah, go ahead, go do it.

00:01:51: And I was like, gotta do this now, right?

00:01:53: So I went ahead and created this weekly quiz.

00:01:57: So, you know, in my spare time before work,

00:01:59: I would come up with a new one and did that for,

00:02:02: you know, must be at least a year,

00:02:04: a bit more than a year, I think.

00:02:07: And then Stephen joined Oracle in that time

00:02:10: and he formed the developer advocate team

00:02:13: and he put a tweet out saying he was hiring.

00:02:15: And I saw the tweet and I was like,

00:02:17: I've got to try for this, right?

00:02:18: And so I applied and somehow made it through,

00:02:22: like I had a lot of interviews.

00:02:25: It was five, at least six, I think.

00:02:27: - Wow. - Yeah.

00:02:28: - Six interviews just for this one?

00:02:30: - Yep, yep. - Oh, okay.

00:02:31: - Well, 'cause it was, I had an interview

00:02:34: with Steven, obviously, and then there's like

00:02:36: the HR interview, and I actually had two of those

00:02:40: because originally it was advertised as a job in the US.

00:02:44: So I was interviewed by someone in California on HR,

00:02:49: but 'cause I'm based in the UK,

00:02:52: I have to be employed by the UK division, right?

00:02:55: You know, and so I had this basically the same interview

00:02:58: by someone in the UK and then who else?

00:03:03: I was, there was, I'm trying to think,

00:03:05: Herman and Keith and Chris Rice.

00:03:09: And then finally Tom Kite interviewed me as well.

00:03:12: And so that was at least seven.

00:03:14: I feel like I'm forgetting someone.

00:03:15: So there was a lot of interviews for that.

00:03:17: Somehow made it through and kind of got the job

00:03:21: working for Oracle, which is pretty impressive.

00:03:25: - So it was worth it, right?

00:03:26: - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:03:28: Well, I think it's, you know,

00:03:30: having established a relationship with Stephen

00:03:33: through the PL/SQL challenge,

00:03:35: which morphed into the Dev Jam,

00:03:37: he kind of knew me, and I think, you know,

00:03:40: that it didn't get me the job,

00:03:41: but it at least meant he looked at my CV

00:03:44: a bit more seriously, right?

00:03:45: You know, if I had just applied,

00:03:48: would I have made it?

00:03:49: I don't know, right?

00:03:50: if I'd not been involved in taking part with Stephen.

00:03:55: So I was involved in the community,

00:03:57: so I was never actually an ace.

00:03:59: Well, I did recently, so Alex Knighton and Patrick Burrell

00:04:04: recently published a book with modern database programming.

00:04:08: I forget the exact title,

00:04:10: but it's "How to Get the Best Out of SQL and PL/SQL

00:04:13: Using Modern Techniques."

00:04:15: And I did write the forward for that.

00:04:17: So there's like one or two pages.

00:04:19: This is exactly what we meant.

00:04:21: - Of course.

00:04:21: (laughing)

00:04:22: - So maybe we just rename this episode

00:04:25: to Do Not Trust Completely In Gen2BT.

00:04:28: (laughing)

00:04:30: Yeah, you need to be careful to what you're reading

00:04:35: in the internet and putting it into an intro for podcast.

00:04:42: But yes, at least we can, I think we're on the same page

00:04:45: we say that you are a very valuable resource for the community. And I think when I started

00:04:53: working with Apex and Oracle stuff, I was just watching your videos, right? Because

00:04:59: you, I think it felt like you made one video a day. It felt like that because you did so

00:05:03: many videos. How did you start with making those? I think they were pretty funny in the

00:05:08: beginning. Like you had so many interesting ideas. So how did you start with that?

00:05:13: Yeah, well I think going back to when I started this job working for Stephen,

00:05:18: part of what he wanted us to do was to kind of reach out to developers and just kind of create

00:05:24: interesting content and like you say, create things that not only teach people but also

00:05:30: something fun, something that then you're not just watching it because you have to, right? So

00:05:39: I was just trying different things and, you know, hopefully some of them worked and some of them

00:05:44: didn't. But I think that was kind of what we, the goal we set out to do. And it sounds like it's

00:05:51: worked to some degree at least, right? But yeah, he got, we got like film equipment, he got cameras,

00:05:59: and we got lights. And this was, you know, nearly 10 years ago now, so eight years ago. And this,

00:06:08: So before, you know, home working in Zoom and everyone got their home set up.

00:06:12: So I already had all the lights and stuff.

00:06:15: The 4K video, like a very good microphone and everything.

00:06:19: Are you on the radio station right now?

00:06:22: Sounding so nice.

00:06:23: Yeah. So did you did you have any like goals

00:06:28: or things that you need to record for videos a month or something like that?

00:06:33: Or was it completely free for you to see how many content things you can do?

00:06:38: Yeah, we never kind of... we didn't have official like KPI targets, right?

00:06:44: We didn't kind of set those like explicit goals.

00:06:47: I kind of had personal goals where it's like I'd try and create a blog post and a video

00:06:53: each month.

00:06:54: So, which I, you know, mostly stuck to and, you know, attend roughly one conference a

00:07:01: a month as well, which on the one hand doesn't sound a lot, but it quickly fills up your

00:07:07: time, right?

00:07:08: And I'm sure you appreciate trying to make the podcast.

00:07:11: It sounds like not much, but actually it quickly fills up to be a lot of time, right?

00:07:16: So if we just publish one episode in two weeks, it's pretty hard to meet the expectation to

00:07:24: have it online and at midnight at this time and have all the guests in place and topics

00:07:30: we can talk about.

00:07:31: I mean, we have like 35 episodes right now, I think.

00:07:35: And at some point, we don't know what we can talk about.

00:07:42: So just the two of us, because we already talked about presentation stuff, like community

00:07:47: stuff.

00:07:48: And yeah, so we are very depending on our guests.

00:07:50: So again, we are very happy that you said yes to us and joining us in the podcast episode

00:07:57: this time.

00:07:58: Okay, so you don't have any KPIs for the recording of YouTube videos.

00:08:04: It's still like that, right?

00:08:05: Yeah, it's still like that.

00:08:08: These days I'm getting a bit more involved in the actual product development side, right?

00:08:14: Being a bit more product manager-y and doing more kind of internal stuff.

00:08:18: So I still create videos, host the office hour session regularly, so every month.

00:08:26: like, you know, the idea is it's an online, we're all used to it now that we set this

00:08:31: up in 2018.

00:08:32: I can't remember, it was a couple of years before the pandemic.

00:08:36: So it was kind of, people weren't really used to it then, but I think now we're kind of

00:08:41: more used to being the virtual thing.

00:08:44: So every month I still creating or pretty much every month, I'm still creating a new

00:08:48: session explaining some feature of Oracle database.

00:08:53: can ask their questions about it, hopefully get some discussion as well.

00:08:57: And, um, I think particularly when a lot of people stuck at home, I think it was

00:09:02: useful to kind of have that link, um, to actually be in touch with people.

00:09:07: Right.

00:09:07: It was a tough time.

00:09:09: Yeah.

00:09:09: Yeah.

00:09:10: Uh, I actually, the office hours are also, um, uploaded to YouTube.

00:09:15: So you can rewatch them.

00:09:17: So everybody who doesn't know it now, you know, watch them because some videos

00:09:23: have very low view count so you should watch them. And about your YouTube, your

00:09:33: own YouTube channel, I've seen that you uploaded the last video I think two

00:09:38: years ago. It says, YouTube says it was two years ago. How did that happen Chris? I think because I

00:09:47: started doing, so YouTube have really got the thing they're shorts like the 60

00:09:51: second videos, which they're really pushing, but they kind of, so I've

00:09:55: actually done a bunch, at least 10 of those more, but they kind of categorize

00:09:59: those differently.

00:10:00: Right.

00:10:01: Okay.

00:10:01: So I have, I've created videos, but they're not videos.

00:10:05: They're shorts.

00:10:05: Right.

00:10:06: And so it's, I think that's part of YouTube trying to, you know, figure out

00:10:11: how they combat TikTok and stuff.

00:10:13: Right.

00:10:13: So they, they class them a bit differently.

00:10:16: So, um, I, you know, I, there was three, a release just, um, couple of months,

00:10:22: months, no, it must be last month just before Easter.

00:10:24: Right.

00:10:25: But they, uh, like I said, they're more short form and it's, you know,

00:10:29: something the idea is cover some one thing quickly, you know, give people

00:10:35: a brief introduction, understand the con or get the concept.

00:10:38: Um, whereas the longer videos, uh, you know, Explain a bit more fully.

00:10:43: Okay.

00:10:44: You know, it's got to try and have the meet people with the content they need.

00:10:49: Sometimes you just want the 60 seconds, you know, here's the overview.

00:10:53: What is it?

00:10:53: Other times you need like the five or 10 minutes.

00:10:56: This is a bit more detail.

00:10:58: I want to understand, um, how do I create an explained plan?

00:11:02: And here's the various ways.

00:11:03: And then some other times we need like the more deep dive, like

00:11:07: hour long presentation style, where we get really into the, um, real details.

00:11:13: Nitty gritty.

00:11:14: Yeah, this it works in this, but you wear that flag so that people have, you know, the

00:11:21: content they need at the time they need it, hopefully.

00:11:23: Right.

00:11:24: Yeah.

00:11:25: I've seen lately on LinkedIn, for example, you posted a lot of content and stuff.

00:11:31: So I thought maybe you would also put it in a new or current form on YouTube or so.

00:11:39: Or is it planned?

00:11:40: Yeah.

00:11:41: So, well, that's the thing.

00:11:43: I've been doing daily tips and actually it started with the Twitter account, SQL Daily.

00:11:50: So pretty much since I started when I joined Oracle, every day I post a new tip about SQL

00:11:58: and it's, again, it's something super basic.

00:12:02: If you're inserting blah, blah, blah, and it's, you know, it had to fit the tweet so

00:12:08: So it has to be quite specific.

00:12:11: So I've kept doing that.

00:12:13: And then with the changes that we've all seen with Twitter, I was like, well, I probably

00:12:17: need to diversify a bit and not rely on one platform just because who knows what's going

00:12:24: to happen there.

00:12:25: So I started posting them on LinkedIn as well.

00:12:28: And yeah, people seem to like them, find them useful.

00:12:33: But they got these little kind of animated gifts,

00:12:37: so they're not videos as such.

00:12:40: And it's trying to figure out how do I combine these.

00:12:44: And if I create a longer presentation,

00:12:47: what can I chop up and pull out into individual parts

00:12:50: and do things like that.

00:12:52: So they all kind of feed together.

00:12:55: And basically, every Friday morning,

00:12:58: I sit down and go through, spend a couple of hours

00:13:01: putting these tips together and schedule them for the next week.

00:13:06: So that's my kind of routine there.

00:13:10: That would have been the next question.

00:13:13: Every day you wake up and just, I have to write a tip or just make 30 tips and then

00:13:19: schedule them for every day.

00:13:21: Yeah, well, that's the thing.

00:13:24: I realized quite quickly that doing it every single day is impractical, particularly traveling

00:13:30: and come somewhere like Berlin in an airport

00:13:33: and it's not always practical, you know,

00:13:35: to get it done every specific day.

00:13:38: So yeah, like I say, schedule time.

00:13:41: It's usually Friday morning

00:13:42: 'cause I think that's quite a good, you know,

00:13:44: end of the week, you can wrap stuff up.

00:13:46: And just schedule the week ahead.

00:13:50: If I know I'm gonna be traveling or got holiday,

00:13:52: I'll schedule a bit further in advance.

00:13:54: But yeah, it's always the thing, it's like,

00:13:57: I sit down, what have people asked me this week, what have I struggled with, what's,

00:14:02: you know, sometimes it's like scroll through the documentation, oh, I haven't talked about

00:14:07: that for a long time, maybe I should, you know, do something about that.

00:14:10: So how many tips did you already publish?

00:14:14: I mean, in total, it's over 2000.

00:14:17: Wow.

00:14:18: Okay, yeah.

00:14:19: And there's still tips left, right?

00:14:21: Yeah, there's still tips left.

00:14:23: I mean, you know, I might have reused some slightly.

00:14:27: I wouldn't say they were all necessarily completely new, but you know, it's particularly when

00:14:31: you just, you know, in the what, 240 characters, it's not like you can say a huge amount.

00:14:39: So it's, yeah, there's still stuff I haven't covered, you know, and as we've seen with

00:14:46: the new release of 23c coming out, there's going to be a whole bunch more tips.

00:14:51: There's always stuff, always new ways, not only new things, but also try and find new

00:14:57: ways of explaining it, right?

00:14:59: Because I think I try and make things, as I said, not just inform people, but inspire

00:15:07: and encourage them.

00:15:09: And so I'm always thinking, right, well, how can I explain the concept better?

00:15:13: How can I help it make sense to more people?

00:15:16: So I might have a picture one time and another time I'll have a slightly different picture

00:15:22: or some code.

00:15:24: So hopefully, different people will resonate with someone.

00:15:31: So if you keep posting the tips, you might combine them to a book and then our chat GPT

00:15:37: tour is correct again.

00:15:40: Yeah, maybe.

00:15:41: I've got the tips and I still blog reasonably regularly.

00:15:50: So certainly, there's certainly enough content to fill a book.

00:15:54: It's just combining it all and making sense of it.

00:15:58: So maybe one day, but you know.

00:16:00: I can put the number of the tip in front of that and refer to it when someone asks you.

00:16:05: So buy my book, tip 1433, it's the solution for your problem.

00:16:11: It's good, maybe that, yeah, I have to do.

00:16:15: So have fun with my idea.

00:16:17: Thanks, Kai.

00:16:18: So I have to put your name on the front.

00:16:20: Of course you have.

00:16:21: Of course you have.

00:16:22: Exactly.

00:16:23: So if I'm introducing myself, I can say I'm an author, right?

00:16:26: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:27: You're already an author.

00:16:29: No.

00:16:30: I would not call me for just one, a few pages.

00:16:35: Well, do you also do some stuff on Ask Tom?

00:16:40: Yes, yeah.

00:16:41: So, do you already use this, use my tip number two?

00:16:46: Here's the answer.

00:16:50: Quite often answering questions on Ask Tom is what gives me the ideas for the tip, but

00:16:55: it's right, it kind of works the other way around, I think, rather than referring to

00:16:58: the tip.

00:16:59: But again, it's like, I'm not sure, I must have answered over a thousand questions on

00:17:04: us, Tom now, I've lost count, but there are topics and themes which come up and every

00:17:12: now and again you're kind of like, well I've already answered that, just look at this answer

00:17:16: over there or I've written a blog post about that, look at that.

00:17:21: But it always surprises me that people do come up with new questions, right?

00:17:26: Stuff which is similar to something that exists but it's different enough that actually it's

00:17:33: "Okay, there is something worth answering here.

00:17:36: It's not well explained in other content that I've seen."

00:17:39: That kind of thing.

00:17:40: So it still surprises me that,

00:17:43: you know, having done this for however many years,

00:17:46: you still get those new things coming along.

00:17:49: - I mean, at least when we have a look

00:17:51: at the new version of the database, right?

00:17:53: So if you have so many new functionalities you can use,

00:17:56: I mean, there might not be that many,

00:17:59: I might not have that many questions about the Boolean data type.

00:18:03: But I can imagine that MLE and the other new features

00:18:09: might lead many people to ask new questions about that.

00:18:13: So, when we combine everything you are doing, right?

00:18:16: So you're posting on LinkedIn, on Twitter,

00:18:19: you are recording videos or shorts or something.

00:18:22: Is there still time left you use for customers?

00:18:26: I mean, is it in your daily schedule that on the main part of your day you're working

00:18:33: for customers or with customers and then some time of the day you are using for content

00:18:38: creation?

00:18:39: So it's kind of, I don't have specific time set aside for customers, it's more kind of

00:18:44: ad hoc.

00:18:45: So if people want to reach out, you know, it does happen sometimes customers say, can

00:18:50: you talk, give us a new features presentation or can you talk to us about SQL tuning or

00:18:56: or something like that.

00:18:58: But that's kind of more an ad hoc.

00:19:00: And it's like, OK, I'll see what's in my calendar.

00:19:03: And can I fit it in my schedule?

00:19:05: So I think one of the things Ask Tom, really,

00:19:09: people asking questions there are almost always customers.

00:19:12: So I mean, they're using Oracle Database or Oracle products.

00:19:16: So I think that is customer interaction there.

00:19:19: I think it is always good to actually get

00:19:22: to talk to customers directly, because there's

00:19:26: It's always times it's like, "Well, what are you trying to do here?"

00:19:29: It's like, do you sit and actually chat with them?

00:19:31: You don't really understand, right?

00:19:34: But I think it's, you know, if people listening want to, you know, get in touch and want me

00:19:41: to talk through a problem or explain something with them, more than welcome to.

00:19:47: But yeah, it's not a scheduled part of my day.

00:19:51: And do you get a lot of emails from customers or users?

00:19:55: Well, again, because I try and funnel things through as Tom, right?

00:20:00: I mean, it's, as Connor was saying in his talk this morning, there's so many ways of

00:20:06: getting in touch with people.

00:20:08: It's like, if you've got like 10 different channels, it's hard to stay on top of that.

00:20:13: So yes, people do contact me by email and, you know, I'll try and be helpful.

00:20:20: If it's a detailed question, particularly if I think it's something that would help

00:20:27: others, I try and direct them to ask Tom.

00:20:30: That's why Tom set the site up originally.

00:20:33: It wasn't just to help if you've got a problem and help you specifically, but also other

00:20:40: people probably have a similar problem and help more generally.

00:20:45: So yes, it does happen, but it can be a bit chaotic

00:20:50: and it's like trying to stay on top of things,

00:20:52: but it's life, right?

00:20:55: (both laughing)

00:20:56: - Yeah, I always find, I found the website

00:21:00: when I'm searching for something I have problem with.

00:21:02: - Yeah, cool.

00:21:04: - Yeah, so you also do this whole DevJam,

00:21:08: you talked about. - Yes, yeah.

00:21:10: - And I was wondering,

00:21:11: because I've checked your profile there,

00:21:15: Many many quizzes you set up. It's like it shows

00:21:19: 633 okay. Yeah

00:21:23: Okay, and so many answers to like

00:21:28: 35,000 people

00:21:31: Took their quizzes. How does it feel?

00:21:33: How do you provide so many quizzes just quizzes? We have also other categories. Yeah, I think that's again

00:21:41: Well, I mean that goes back to like 10 years now, right? And I started doing well, you think one a week for 10 years

00:21:47: There's 500

00:21:49: Plus some extras every now and again

00:21:51: You know one or four specific topics there. So yeah, it's kind of

00:21:58: It's it's a bit crazy when how it accumulates over time, right? It's something you think

00:22:04: I'll just do one and each individual one maybe doesn't have that big an impact

00:22:09: But if you keep doing things and keep repeating and keep trying, like say the numbers add

00:22:15: up and it can be quite impressive in the end, right?

00:22:22: Many things.

00:22:23: So we also have workouts there and classes.

00:22:26: Could you provide, I don't know, actually in Germany, I think it's not very known, the

00:22:34: Dev Gym, even if we put also always put slides of it into our presentations, but could you

00:22:40: explain in short words what it is and what the different categories are?

00:22:45: Sure.

00:22:46: So, it started as the PL/SQL challenge and at the time it was purely about PL/SQL when

00:22:53: it started and has expanded since and it covers Oracle database generally.

00:22:57: And we've had other people bring in things about Java and Apex, but the core content

00:23:03: still around database and it's, we called it the Dev Gym because it's the idea, it's

00:23:09: like training, physical training, right?

00:23:11: You know, you go, you lift weights or you stretch and whatever to get stronger and the

00:23:16: idea here is like you practice your development skills through quizzes, right?

00:23:21: And it's a way to kind of just train and certainly I remember from when I was actually playing

00:23:26: regularly having, testing yourself and trying these things, you kind of build up more familiarity.

00:23:33: It helps build your skills and it's like,

00:23:35: oh, okay, that works this way

00:23:37: and I understand I should use exceptions

00:23:39: in that way kind of thing.

00:23:40: So that was kind of the concept and it started out,

00:23:44: it was just quizzes, multiple choice quizzes,

00:23:47: but we wanted to kind of package them up a bit better.

00:23:51: So the idea here was, again, with the gym concept,

00:23:55: you go to the gym for a workout.

00:23:57: You go, you might lift some weights

00:23:59: or you lift different weights for your arms and your legs

00:24:02: and then you might do some stretches or something

00:24:03: in time with the treadmill.

00:24:05: So the idea there was we have a workout which would be,

00:24:10: there would be quizzes at the core of it, right?

00:24:12: That's still the core thing,

00:24:13: but quite often we might attach other resources

00:24:16: like links to blog posts or videos

00:24:19: which relate to those quizzes.

00:24:21: So you say, I want to learn more about

00:24:24: handling exceptions in PL/SQL.

00:24:26: So you got a workout and there might be

00:24:28: a couple of blog posts, maybe a life SQL tutorial,

00:24:32: that kind of thing to walk you through it.

00:24:34: And then some quizzes to actually train and test yourself.

00:24:36: Did I understand what I just read?

00:24:38: Did I actually get it?

00:24:40: And so there's the workouts.

00:24:43: And then classes are kind of a bit more

00:24:46: of a structured series of workouts.

00:24:51: So we've got lots of workouts on some quite niche topics,

00:24:56: But our classes are, you know,

00:24:59: the core ones are still getting databases for developers,

00:25:02: getting started with SQL.

00:25:04: And the idea with those is it's a series of modules

00:25:09: where teaching you how to run SQL on Oracle database, right?

00:25:13: And each one of those,

00:25:14: there'll be a video or two explaining concepts

00:25:18: or say, you know, this is what a table is and so on.

00:25:22: And then the life SQL tutorial,

00:25:24: so you can actually try it out.

00:25:26: 'Cause I think quizzes are great for kind of

00:25:28: helping you know what a feature is,

00:25:31: but I think a lot of us actually need to type it

00:25:34: and try it and do something.

00:25:36: So LifeSQL is like just a browser-based

00:25:39: interactive environment.

00:25:41: So you've got the tutorial, you can walk through that,

00:25:43: you can run some examples, write some code, try them out.

00:25:46: And then yeah, some questions at the end,

00:25:49: you're like, again, did you understand it?

00:25:52: So we've got, we're a bit more kind of structured about those, so there's fewer of those because

00:25:59: there's more effort we want to kind of, like I said, guide people through the process a

00:26:03: bit more.

00:26:04: But it's all completely free, you know, you just need your Oracle free, Oracle single

00:26:09: sign-on accounts.

00:26:10: You can sign up, go, try them out.

00:26:13: You can take individual quizzes if you want.

00:26:15: You can take a whole class.

00:26:17: You can take a workout.

00:26:20: got a huge library, I mean there's several thousand quizzes on the site now. So if you

00:26:26: want to know something about SQL, PL/SQL, Oracle database and some stuff about some

00:26:30: of the other related technologies, there's a good chance there's a quiz to work out or

00:26:36: a course to help you understand and work through that.

00:26:39: So how long does it take to write like the first quiz I think, databases for developers

00:26:46: week one, quiz one. How long does it take to write one of those quizzes compared to

00:26:50: a blog post, for example?

00:26:52: It's again, it's one of those, my process is quite kind of iterative. I'll kind of come

00:26:58: up with an idea and I think, okay, we're going to, I'm going to write a quiz on creating

00:27:01: a table, right? How can I make that interesting? So a couple of things that need to decide,

00:27:08: what is the topic and what's the difficulty, right? So for, you mentioned databases for

00:27:14: developers. So those are introductory, you know, it's for beginners, right? So the quizzes

00:27:21: can't be super complicated. So I'll create it and I think, here's some examples of creating

00:27:25: a table which will actually run, which will work. And then I have to look at them and

00:27:30: I think, well, is this too hard? Is it too difficult? And we have a process so we can

00:27:39: actually you can get the code from the choices and copy paste them to run them and see whether

00:27:45: they worked and it's some of them if it's something I know and I'm really familiar with

00:27:50: I can write them fairly quickly like you know half an hour but I think as well there's something

00:27:56: about explaining stuff generally you understand it better and quite it's amazing the number

00:28:01: of times I think I know how this works I'll write some quizzes come up with two or three

00:28:06: some choices and then I run one of the choices and it doesn't work how I expected it to work.

00:28:11: And it's like, oh, okay, I didn't misunderstood something somewhere.

00:28:16: And that's quite often where the time comes in is like, okay, is that,

00:28:21: what have I misunderstood there?

00:28:26: And how can I make that part of the question or help other people learn from what I've learned, right?

00:28:32: So I mean, the fastest is probably like half an hour or so,

00:28:36: but it can take, particularly like say,

00:28:39: if I find something I didn't expect,

00:28:41: it can take a couple of hours or longer,

00:28:42: but it's usually quicker than a blog post,

00:28:45: but yeah, it depends, right?

00:28:47: - Have you already set up some quizzes or classes

00:28:51: about the new features of 23c?

00:28:54: - We haven't done yet, but certainly we will be doing.

00:28:57: There's a lot of cool new SQL features,

00:29:00: and there's a lot of little features in SQL

00:29:05: which things like select statements without from,

00:29:08: you don't need to do from jewel anymore.

00:29:10: And it's nice, but it's pretty small.

00:29:14: You can't make a presentation around that, right?

00:29:17: But it's good content for a quiz,

00:29:20: which of these statements will work?

00:29:21: And you're like, oh, you don't need from jewel anymore.

00:29:24: So certainly that will be coming.

00:29:26: I don't know exactly when that will be out,

00:29:29: but we will be bringing that sometime soon.

00:29:31: Yes.

00:29:31: Mm-hmm.

00:29:32: Yeah.

00:29:32: Cool.

00:29:33: Yeah, I've also seen in your statistics--

00:29:35: Oh.

00:29:36: OK.

00:29:36: I almost-- yeah, go on.

00:29:38: What happened, Chris?

00:29:39: [LAUGHTER]

00:29:40: That a class for the Database for Developers foundations

00:29:45: was already took by 65,000 people.

00:29:51: So it's really impressive.

00:29:53: Yeah.

00:29:53: And did you also get some feedback then?

00:29:57: Do people write you about this?

00:29:59: Yeah, so we get, we have some feedback built into the site so people can submit their comments

00:30:05: and some people, some people do reach out directly and send things as well.

00:30:10: So I mean, I noticed that milestone ticked over recently as well.

00:30:16: I was like, wow, that's quite, quite impressive because it's, we still get over 200 people

00:30:21: a week sign up for that course, right?

00:30:24: It's like, and I mean, I'll mention it in podcasts or something like this,

00:30:28: but I don't spend like a lot of effort marketing it. Right.

00:30:32: So it's still, it's like, wow.

00:30:34: And it just shows if you create something kind of goods and people,

00:30:38: it can still exist and be there for a long time. But yeah, it's, um,

00:30:43: I've had a lot of good comments. Um, I think as well,

00:30:46: we kind of give like a digital certificate as well.

00:30:49: You get when you complete the course and every now and again, um,

00:30:53: this will get picked up by the sites which kind of list free courses that give you a certificate, right?

00:30:59: And every now and again we'll get a big bunch of new people come along and then my LinkedIn will go mad.

00:31:05: People like, "I've completed this course by Chris Saxon" and they just keep getting mentioned.

00:31:09: And it's like, "Okay!" I'm like, "Right, yeah."

00:31:12: I mean, particularly I think it was last January, I think, we had, I don't know, 2,000 people in a week sign up or something.

00:31:22: And that week it was just like, "Thanks, Chris Saxon."

00:31:25: But it was just like constant, you know, "Bing, bing."

00:31:29: All right.

00:31:30: So it was cool, right?

00:31:32: In preparation of my last talk about performance tuning for database developers,

00:31:39: I also took your class about performance and databases for developers.

00:31:47: And I've seen that only 10,000 students took that course.

00:31:51: So when you hear it, you know what I mean.

00:31:55: You should take the course.

00:31:56: It was pretty good and the videos were really, really nice and funny and easily explained.

00:32:04: When Carol started to mention your statistics, I was thinking that she's referring your own

00:32:10: classes you took.

00:32:12: So when I have a look at your classes taken, I see that you have only 74% correct points

00:32:20: on your own.

00:32:21: Is that right?

00:32:22: That's the way I am referring to what happened, Chris.

00:32:30: Well, I think part of it is obviously I like to, after publishing the course, actually

00:32:37: take it myself to just validate the content.

00:32:41: And sometimes I want to partly sometimes I just whiz through and just kind of click in

00:32:48: without paying attention but also I want to test what people get for different scores

00:32:53: because we actually give slightly different certificates out depending on what percentage

00:32:58: correct you get, right?

00:33:00: I forget exactly but you know we've got if you just complete it below 80 whatever percent

00:33:07: It just says you well done you finished and as you get higher and higher percentages correctness is like certificate of excellence for this

00:33:14: So I needed to check things like that work properly as well. So but I know my own content

00:33:20: Didn't didn't want to make you

00:33:25: This was the last bad question

00:33:27: There are another statistics about workouts taken

00:33:33: Just kidding. So you're creating so much content and I think it's pretty worth it to have a look at the Dev Gym.

00:33:39: It's an Apex application by the way. So listeners should have a look into this application and you can find it on devgym.oracle.com, I think.

00:33:49: It's the shortest version. I don't know if there's another shortcut of the URL or something.

00:33:53: No, it's just, you know, like I say, devgm.oracle.com and it's freely available.

00:33:59: available. I think one thing I haven't mentioned is like when I talked about

00:34:04: how I the process for joining Oracle and I created quizzes for that, we still get

00:34:11: people from the community creating content right. Kim Burke Hanson the ACE

00:34:16: director, he's actually an author, he's a real author like me, right. He's been

00:34:21: creating sequel quizzes for for years and we also had a new guy Anthony Harper

00:34:27: to join the author team recently.

00:34:30: He's created a bunch of content.

00:34:32: So, you know, there's two aspects.

00:34:35: If you just wanna learn, train, take part.

00:34:37: But if you, I've learned far more writing quizzes

00:34:42: than I ever did taking them.

00:34:43: So it's a way to help you learn as well.

00:34:47: And if people want to submit quizzes

00:34:49: to be part of the platform, we're more than welcome.

00:34:52: And, you know, things like the ACE program

00:34:54: recognize these contributions. So if people want to get involved, then please do.

00:35:01: The idea is it is a community platform and we want to help not just people understand stuff,

00:35:09: but build a bit of a community and hopefully get people involved and using and understanding

00:35:15: these technologies as well. So you can even go into the or reach the leaderboards if you're

00:35:22: are pretty good I think. I had a quick quick look into that and it's pretty

00:35:28: interesting that you see colleagues of yourself. I'm having to reach out to my

00:35:32: colleagues and why he's so good in that. It's pretty fine so if you go to the

00:35:39: leaderboard on the website you can see weekly database rankings, logic rankings,

00:35:43: past tournament rankings, then you have like a prestige to get this trophy here

00:35:49: first place in championship and so on. I think this is something nice too. So pretty nice to

00:35:54: our listeners. Have a look at the Dev Gym. Pretty good content for free. Everything for free. And

00:36:00: yeah, a good place to go. Yeah, also the live SQL feature for side of Oracle is also pretty

00:36:08: nice. If you want to show something, you can save scripts there. You can reuse them. You can

00:36:17: also install some predefined scripts etc. So it's pretty cool if you want to quickly show

00:36:24: something to somebody or just to set up something to test it quickly. Yeah exactly. I think it's

00:36:31: worth mentioning on that because one of the things that we always say on Ask Tom is like

00:36:35: if you're trying to do something give us a test case. Actually you know show us the actual code

00:36:40: you're running so we can test and validate and see what's going on.

00:36:46: And if you, because you can create share scripts, save and share scripts on LiveSQL, we will

00:36:51: prioritize people.

00:36:52: If you've got a LiveSQL script that shows your problem, you can paste a link in AskTom

00:36:58: to it and we'll prioritize things.

00:37:00: Because it's, I mean, partly it makes our lives easier, right?

00:37:04: Because we can just download the script, run it and go, "Okay, I see what you're trying

00:37:08: to do here and make it, validate it. So, you know, it just helps us, the more you can do,

00:37:18: we can then help more people, right? If we're spending less time, right? Oh, I've got to

00:37:22: create a table and so on. So it's not only is it somewhere you can just try something,

00:37:27: but if you are wanting to submit something to Ask Tom or any forum, really, you know,

00:37:31: you can save it, share the link, and then other people, it just makes it easier for

00:37:36: people to help you.

00:37:38: So now you know you have to provide a live as well to be prioritized.

00:37:46: Yeah, exactly.

00:37:48: Cool.

00:37:49: Um, I think it's time to go to the categories.

00:37:52: So we didn't we didn't tell you that before.

00:37:55: We have like three different categories.

00:37:58: We are asking every of our guests in the end of the podcast, and we have three different

00:38:03: categories in there.

00:38:05: like the first one is hypothetically.

00:38:07: OK, the second one is in private.

00:38:09: So they don't know bad or worse.

00:38:12: So and consumption is the third category.

00:38:15: Yeah. So we have like two or three questions per category.

00:38:20: And then the listeners can compare between different people how they answer that.

00:38:24: So let's start with the hypothetically questions.

00:38:28: The first one, what would you like to invent or create in the technology sector?

00:38:33: What would I like to invent or create in the technology center?

00:38:36: I think it's, I'm not sure, I think technology is quite pervasive, you know, it's all around us and we don't kind of see it.

00:38:44: And I think I'm maybe not so much interested in actually creating technology specifically.

00:38:50: I mean, I like technology, I mean, I've always been into software development, but at the same time, I think it always has to have a purpose, right?

00:38:58: and more what can we use it for, but also talking about things like inspiring people.

00:39:06: So one of the things, something we are actually creating on the Dev Gym and we've run a little

00:39:14: beta for is probably most people are familiar with Wordle today, like the sequel, guess the word,

00:39:21: we're trying to come up with a sequel Wordle, right, guess the sequel statement. So that's

00:39:26: That's something we're actually working on.

00:39:28: Is it hypothetical?

00:39:29: Hopefully it's something that will be there.

00:39:31: And again, something a bit fun.

00:39:33: And that will be something like Wordle.

00:39:35: Each day there will be a new thing to guess

00:39:37: and pick the things that you want there.

00:39:40: So it's not so much technology itself.

00:39:44: It's like, how can I either do something

00:39:47: or how can it just be useful or interesting or fun?

00:39:51: So I think the SQL Wordle is the thing that we're--

00:39:54: Hopefully it won't be hypothetical.

00:39:56: Maybe by the time this actually is broadcast,

00:39:59: we might be live for this.

00:40:00: We'll see, right?

00:40:01: - We'll see.

00:40:02: - Yeah, I have another question

00:40:05: of the category hypothetical.

00:40:07: - We should change that.

00:40:11: It's too hard.

00:40:12: - It's pretty hard for a German speaker.

00:40:15: If you could undo one technological trend in recent years,

00:40:20: what would it be?

00:40:21: - Oh, undo one recent.

00:40:22: I mean, I think the blockchain is probably something where I think it's, I mean, I think

00:40:29: it's finally reached the point where people realize that it was kind of overhyped and

00:40:34: things like that.

00:40:35: I think personally, I think cryptocurrencies, I don't see the value in them.

00:40:40: And I think I know a lot of people kind of, it was, it's going to be the future and it

00:40:44: was going to change everything.

00:40:46: And for a whole bunch of reasons that hasn't happened.

00:40:50: Right.

00:40:51: So that's probably one thing I think a lot of people put a lot of time and energy into that.

00:40:57: And it's kind of distracted from solving, you know, other problems.

00:41:02: So yeah, if that was something I could undo, it would probably be that.

00:41:05: Yeah, next category in private.

00:41:07: Yeah, okay.

00:41:08: Are you satisfied with your work-life balance?

00:41:13: So if you're doing content creation, working with different people at Oracle.

00:41:17: So I think you're working very, very many, or many hours, right?

00:41:21: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's been quite good about this job is I've been,

00:41:26: I've had the flexibility to kind of set my own hours. And I think I've got a couple of,

00:41:32: well, they're not quite so young now, but my kids are like 10 and 7. When I started this,

00:41:37: I started this job just before my youngest was born, right? And there was something about,

00:41:44: "Okay, I need to finish at about six, maybe seven o'clock at night so that I can put them

00:41:50: to bed and say goodnight," and things like that.

00:41:53: So I've been pretty good about kind of saying, "Okay, I finish at this time," and sticking

00:42:01: to that as much as possible.

00:42:03: It's not always practical because working with people in the US, sometimes I have meetings

00:42:09: later in the evening, but in general, they're pretty good about respecting that.

00:42:14: So I think however much time you set yourself,

00:42:19: there's always more to do, right?

00:42:20: You never get to the end of the day

00:42:21: and think I've done everything,

00:42:23: that's it, I've finished, right?

00:42:24: So I think it's important to kind of set a limit

00:42:27: for yourself and say I will finish at time X,

00:42:30: whatever you decide that is,

00:42:32: and just make everything fit that time, right?

00:42:34: And like I say, the forcing feature

00:42:39: of having to put my kids to bed

00:42:41: was really helpful for that

00:42:42: because that was an hour where you kind of step away

00:42:47: from the computer completely to have dinner,

00:42:51: read them some stories and things like that.

00:42:53: Now they're older, it doesn't require

00:42:58: quite so much hands-on effort as it did when they were tiny,

00:43:02: but it still gives you that break.

00:43:05: And then after that, it's kind of late in the evening,

00:43:07: you're like, do I really want to start working again now?

00:43:10: So I think I'm glad I'm in a job or a position where the company respects that and are able

00:43:19: to kind of say, okay, you know, these are the hours that you're going to work.

00:43:22: And you know, as long as we're flexible when we need to be, then we can work within that.

00:43:29: But I think it's useful just to kind of say, like I say, I could work till midnight every

00:43:33: night and would I get more done?

00:43:37: Probably a little bit, probably not that much more.

00:43:39: And certainly after a certain point, even if you get more done, I'm sure the quality

00:43:44: starts going down as well.

00:43:46: Right.

00:43:47: Yeah.

00:43:48: So, but but all in all, you think it's working pretty fine right now.

00:43:52: So yeah, it seems to be it's kind of working pretty fine.

00:43:57: I think it's still the open question of like how much traveling that's happening.

00:44:04: Because prior to the pandemic, I was I went to about 10 conferences a year.

00:44:09: So I'd be away from home maybe a week a month on average.

00:44:14: And I certainly wouldn't want to be away more than that.

00:44:19: Recently, this is only the second time this year

00:44:23: I've been out at an event.

00:44:26: It's still deciding what the right balance is there.

00:44:29: So it's something we'll figure out

00:44:31: and evolve as time goes on.

00:44:33: But overall, yeah, I'm pretty happy.

00:44:36: I have also a question from a private staff.

00:44:40: Yeah, yeah.

00:44:41: Would you show us your screen time on the iPhone without lashing?

00:44:45: Oh, yeah.

00:44:46: I think I'm pretty good at it.

00:44:50: I mean, we can get it if you want.

00:44:53: I think one of the other thing I do is like whenever I get a new device, I like just disable

00:44:59: all notifications because like, you know, all every app wants to give you a notification

00:45:04: and I just disable them because then, you know, it's like the phone trying to get your

00:45:08: attention and it's like, you know, it's like, no, I want to focus on it.

00:45:12: I want to do other stuff.

00:45:14: And I actually, when I'm working, certainly I find I do my best work in the morning usually.

00:45:22: So I actually leave the phone in another room because then it just minimizes distractions.

00:45:28: So I wouldn't say that I, you know, I spend no time, you know, I can like, like my daily

00:45:33: I play Wordlefix and I play words with friends as well.

00:45:38: So I play against my dad and so, you know, maybe spend a bit more time on those than

00:45:43: perhaps I should.

00:45:44: But still, you know, I don't think I'd spend - hopefully fairly healthy relationship, right?

00:45:51: So okay for our listeners, Chris is not blushing at all.

00:45:54: So he's telling the truth and he's very okay with that.

00:45:59: All right, next category, consumption.

00:46:02: So I mean, this was already in the answer from the question before, but how do you deal

00:46:08: with the growing flood of information via various channels, like news information from

00:46:15: every like TV, radio, mails and whatever?

00:46:20: How do you deal with those many things?

00:46:23: So turning off notifications is the first thing.

00:46:25: Yes.

00:46:26: Yeah.

00:46:27: I think that's the big thing is turning off notifications.

00:46:29: I think because like I say, because I schedule that time in the morning to do real work,

00:46:34: right, then I allow myself time after I've had lunch to kind of like check up on news,

00:46:40: read blogs and do kind of like catching up on things.

00:46:45: You know, and my alarm in the morning is the radio, so that plays, it comes on just before

00:46:53: the news, so I get some like the daily news through that.

00:46:57: But it's always trying to figure out, I think people are always like, "Why aren't you on

00:47:03: Channel X?"

00:47:04: Or, you know, it's like Macedon was a new thing.

00:47:06: It's like, "Why?

00:47:07: You should sign up for that."

00:47:09: It's like, well, you know, who's there?

00:47:11: And maybe if the community as a whole starts moving there and a lot of people in the community

00:47:16: are there, then maybe I'll move over.

00:47:19: From what I've heard, my sense is not enough people have moved to make it worthwhile.

00:47:25: But it's, you know, trying to just focus and kind of say, okay, I'll pay attention to Twitter,

00:47:31: LinkedIn, my YouTube channel, and maybe a couple of other things and email, right?

00:47:36: And then just try and ignore the other stuff as much as possible.

00:47:40: It doesn't always work, but you know, do what you can, right?

00:47:45: Okay, so the last question today is another question from the consumption category.

00:47:53: How do you consume news and new knowledge?

00:47:55: You talked about Twitter and LinkedIn, etc.

00:47:58: But what do you use to get some new knowledge?

00:48:02: That's a good question about how do I get new knowledge.

00:48:05: I think one of the things about those daily tips that I was talking about, I try and schedule

00:48:13: one or two tips each week where I've just kind of created some example code myself.

00:48:19: But I also try and share something other people have done.

00:48:23: So I kind of look at blogs and see what people have published and I think, "Okay, that's

00:48:29: interesting.

00:48:30: That's a good example of, you know, SQL functions or whatever.

00:48:34: I'll share that."

00:48:35: So part of what takes the time of coming up with those tips is seeing what other content

00:48:40: people have created and like who's done it and researching a bit about them as well.

00:48:46: that time in the morning it's not just creating content itself, it's also seeing what's there,

00:48:51: reading things like Hacker News or the other aggregators like the ACE program.

00:48:59: So blogs.oracle.com/ace, that blog, they've been pretty good.

00:49:06: Each week or every couple of weeks they produce a summary of all the blog posts or content

00:49:11: that aces have produced, so I'll skim through that and see what's new, what looks interesting.

00:49:17: So again, it's kind of setting some time aside there.

00:49:21: And you know, it's also just being aware, you know, occasionally you're scrolling through

00:49:25: Twitter, you'll notice things come up.

00:49:28: And certainly, if you notice two or three people starting to talk about something, it's

00:49:32: like, okay, maybe this is interesting, maybe we need to look in that a bit more detail.

00:49:37: So it's, yeah, partly just setting aside that time

00:49:42: and seeing what people are writing.

00:49:45: And I think it's important to recognize

00:49:47: what the community have done.

00:49:48: We talked, you mentioned about being involved

00:49:51: in the ACE program as an employee.

00:49:55: I think, I wanna help share what people have done.

00:49:58: Even if I somehow was magically able to work all day,

00:50:04: every day without stopping,

00:50:05: there's a limit to how much anyone can individually do.

00:50:10: And it's more about, you know,

00:50:12: okay, someone's produced a really nice detailed blog post

00:50:15: on, you know, using JavaScript in the database

00:50:18: when that comes out.

00:50:19: And so I'll, you know, skim through,

00:50:23: try and find the one or two key pieces of information

00:50:28: about it, write the tip, share the link

00:50:32: and tag the author about it,

00:50:34: kind of, you know, just give them credit and recognize that, you know, there's a lot of

00:50:38: people, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this will be creating content and it's

00:50:45: good to have that recognition and validation, right?

00:50:47: And so I just want to share the love, right?

00:50:52: Right, so just to wrap things up, the overview of the content ACES are producing, this website,

00:51:02: some tape is occasionally on there too. I think there's multilingual stuff like

00:51:07: even German episodes are in there and yeah our listeners should have a look on

00:51:12: that. You don't need to have an access or a special access to that or to be an ace

00:51:18: to watch those information. It's a combined thing from experts and I think

00:51:22: it's worth a view. All right, thank you everyone. Thank you, Carol, thank you, Chris.

00:51:27: Thank you.

00:51:28: And yeah, have a nice day and the rest of the conference.

00:51:32: Thank you.

00:51:33: Bye.

00:51:34: Bye.

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