Hi, and welcome to episode 187. Of the weekly Google cloud platform podcast. I am, John and I am here with my colleague mark hey, Mark how's it going hey. John how are ya I'm doing pretty good got stung by a bee for the first time I don't know what, happened, as. Soon as I walked outside it, was like you, never been stung by a bee let's, check that off the list right. On the ear you. Know I get the feeling that's probably not on most people's bucket lists but, maybe. That's a great thing you can now put it on there and then check it off and say look it, happened I may as well take credit for it right I, survived. The heatwave that just, passed in New York so it was pretty pretty, hot but luckily I do pretty good in the heat yeah it's brutal weather lately with the exception, of of course San, Francisco, which, is pretty, generally, 68, and sunny right, so, I'd feel very fortunate to live in San Francisco obviously, hopefully everyone does well with the weather out there but if not come to San Francisco i'ma. Have to come, out there and spend a couple weeks out there we're getting in some rematches, for our smash for this game too definitely. So. In this episode we're gonna sit down with our day from instruct, along, with Sandeep from Google about what instruct, does in the awesome arcade. Machines that came out at Nix those were really, really fun to play with yeah, we saw a huge crowd standing, around the developer zone and kind of playing around with well a bunch of old-school arcade, machines, so if you want to hear more about what, those machines were and what instruct does then definitely stay tuned for the main content and we're. Going to get into our question of the week which is I kind. Of want to get more familiar with Google cloud how, do I'd really navigate, the space for, material, and what. Kind of offerings, really will help me ramp, up really quickly oh there's, so many and I've heard this question a number of times you know recently so happy, to dive into and, share a few more details on that all. Right well first let's, move on to actually. Talking about our cool things of the week. So, the first thing that came to my mind was pretty interesting was there, was a project called white board that came out of area. 120 which is Google's experimental, lab and what. It is it's a structured. Identity, blind evaluation. Process, platform, for, interviewing. That allows managers, to reliably, trust, recommendations, and candidates. Get to work through, interviews, at their own pace without, the stress of going through high pressure theoretical, tests so none, of those questions like how many golf balls fit inside of a school, bus or things, like that design, ten uses, for a manhole, cover in the apocalypse. It. Was always stuff like that that got me and it was like this, is a really interesting interview. I'm. Not sure if I understand, what they're going for but. I'll, try my personal favorite is the egg dropping I love, that question Oh egg, dropping yeah so you get to drop an egg I think once or twice you have to figure out what's. The highest floor you can drop the egg without it breaking or something like that oh I, don't know that one but I'm sure there's no no, shortage, of all those kind of horizontal. Thinking. Questions, we're. Very very interesting, to look at for the interview process right, well away from that one of the things that came across my table quite a few times in the past week has been this Gartner, announcement, that Google Cloud is a leader in the infrastructure, as a Service Magic Quadrant space, now, for most people it, probably doesn't mean a lot to them because it's not gonna you know change, what you're doing or change what's out there on Google cloud but, I think it's a really cool you know recognition, that Google, is doing some very very fun, things in the infrastructure, as a service base but if you look at the blog post you can see some other customers, that are taking advantage of cool. Things that Google are doing and hopefully that's kind of some inspiration. For you to look at all these different services they're out there all these different tools and saying well hey what can I build with that I think that a lot of our developers who, are just getting, into the space when, you get recognized, kind of like this it helps them build almost, like a reputation, for us so I'm pretty, excited to actually be. Named a leader in that space yeah it's pretty awesome so, the next cool thing that come out is bike, Sharon's becoming, pretty, pretty big in a lot of major cities and, Google. Has actually, been, able to share. Real-time bike share information, you, Google Maps so. There are roughly around, 1600. Bike-share, systems and, almost, 18, million shared, bikes in urban cities so, since, the so mainstream now, imagine, being able to use.
Google Maps to find locations, exactly where, to find bikes when. They're available and, the. Bell curve that usually see when you see how busy a certain stations going to be with bikes so, it's pretty awesome to see that and I'm actually thinking about picking up bike, sharing and something driving around the city which, is kind of funny when people find out that I actually have a car in New York City yeah, that's that is not a very common thing there's nobody, drives us too much traffic right. Classic. Well the last cool thing I have for the week is that we have this cool little medium post that one of our customer engineers put out who, was able to show that you're able to take the cloud shell which is that environment, that gets spun up with your Google Cloud account that you can go into and do some semi persistent stuff well, you can go ahead and run Visual, Studio code in there which is an IDE that I think a lot of people have been talking. About the past year or two as a really, cool IDE. That has a lot of features into it well, you can just kind of run that directly, from your cloud shell environment, so you go in there you download code server and set it up and now you have a web IDE, that is Visual Studio code, so, this is a really really cool way to offload. The you know kind of the IDE and code, aspect, from your computer onto the, cloud so a lot of things to Christian he's for putting up this blog post that shows how easy it is that's. Awesome especially, with, some. Systems that don't allow you to install videos to your code I'm not sure if Chromebooks actually we're in Vizier's to your code but if you can't install visual studio code on a Chromebook you know whether you're using Linux, or not it'd be awesome just to do it in Google Cloud show so definitely, a great blog posts and thanks for the information, yeah very very cool to be portable and have that power wherever you go well, that was awesome great chatting with you now let's talk with Sandeep and our day and see what they have to talk to us about these arcade machines.
All Righty then thank you so much for joining us Sade and Sandeep, first, things first okay why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are and what you do sure. My, name is Johnny muffler I'm a CTO, and co-founder of, instruct, and instructors. A learning. Platform for, technology. Can, you go a little in depth as to exactly the. Type of things and struct teaches yeah definitely so, what we believe in struct is that learning is done best by doing so, especially in technologies things, change, so fast I need to keep up and the, quickest way to learn new technologies, actually just, play with it and that's exactly what structs, offers you so what we are able to do with instructs we are able to spin, up training environments, send boxes and, give people challenges, to solve using technology. And in that process we validate, that what they are doing is correct and, guide them in the right way in the right direction if, they're get stuck awesome, can you maybe give us a little example, of the type of courses, you might find on instruct, yeah, definitely we have a bunch of courses on communities, of course where you get a running. Kubernetes cluster and, we ask you to deploy, stuff to fix stuff to configure, stuff but, also we, have quite a lot of content on the Hashi Corp ecosystem. Console, terraform, or. Stuff like that awesome, and I will be trying, to take one of your kubernetes courses because I need to brush up very fast, cool. So, it's like a digital classroom right, people can kind of come in they can study a topic, and then they can you know put, their practice to the test by actually, running this stuff in an actual environment right yeah, definitely so what we do is we give people some some, flesh, carts with some information and then we drop you will write into some books you have to get your hands dirty eventually. Using the technology, and I like that term you used early you kind of said playing around with it the reason I think that's super accurate is because, at Google, cloud next 2019, if anybody was there first, of all it was awesome come back next year but, second of all there, were a bunch of arcade, cabinets, that, were also involved, in this process and Sandy, you were kind of involved in organizing, this tell, us a little bit more about what the arcade, cabinets, have to do with instruct, yeah, sure so funny enough I was in Hamburg Germany for. A conference, and I saw this arcade machine it's, kind of hanging out in the corner I was like what is that. Turns out the instructor folks were there too and they had one of these machines and said they had some some developer challenges, there and we. Just had so much time like a bunch of people who have crowded around this little arcade machine and, we try to outdo, each other to run a HTTP. Server with just code golfing, away like, the fastest way we could do it and like getting the highest scores and I was like this is so much fun we need one of these at GCP, next so, then got, in contact with, instruct, folks and we work together to actually bring. Some Google cloud games to, Google, cloud next on the instruct platform running, all these arcade machines that's, not a mouthful haha, you, tell me but basically. We take the instructor, platform and today, and team have put it on these arcade machines and gamified, it maybe those 80s or retro kind of theme and then, my team we took a bunch of games based on GCP, so odd functions, bigquery, all, these GCB technologies and then ported them to the instruct platform so then attendees could play them on the show floor which, was a lot of fun and I think that we saw a tremendous, amount of people at next kind of hanging around those arcade machines just like you said I want to get back to how they were set up next but I guess on, it the question is who, thought of the arcade machines how did that come about yeah yes so there was actually one of our developers that the subsoil, for brain wave where. We thought they need to do something different at conferences, you can quite, easily get a booth and get a stand and hangout and give people stickers, or something but, we thought let's do something different let's, bring in our KP into a conference and we got, start thinking so what do we need to do to get this working get this contraction, we, have a house, designer we, pitched the idea to him he basically said this is a great, idea I'm gonna build this machine for you it's a custom build so, I built the physical thing and you guys have to build the software, around that that's, exactly what we did and we brought it to a different conference basically.
We Put it there and the. Traction was amazing, so everybody wants to see what this thing is about basically. Our target audience they, grew up in the 70s and the 80s right and everybody, knows, arcade, machines everybody, has played arcade, games and, everybody loves them so the, moment people see arcade, machine they're instantly, drawn to it but then you walk up to it and you see hey there's something different about this arcade cabinet, this, one has keyboards so what's going on, people approach it they blush it starts and they, see this different, kind, of content more serious games but still games people, just love that I definitely. Did I actually, had access to the showcase floor prior to next and the first thing I saw when I came down the escalator, was those arcade machines and I definitely walked up that's where I met a day for the first time and I, just hung around for maybe, two hours or so and just, let you know guys I am that game guy so you guys definitely caught my attention immediately as soon as I showed up but. My question is although. You've been enticing, a lot of people by creating, these arcade machines and you know drawing them in can. You tell us almost, like the motivation, as to why you, use the machines I know that we, wanted to entice people when we went to add a keyboard but, what, really draws, people to continue to keep playing the games once they get on the keyboard because it is a different type of game yeah, it is different okay but we do use gamification, elements like, a leaderboard like, different challenges like, a validation, step where you actually get, to see whether what you're doing is correct and all those elements that make people come back to the arcade games try, to beat their own high scores try, to top the leaderboards, so those are all elements that really draw people to these machines can, ii add to that at next one of the really cool things that happened it was people, came, back multiple times to try to like beat each other's scores and kept like I can get higher than you I can get higher than you and, so the leaderboards just kept going up and up and people were really excited about that that's, awesome so can. You tell us a little bit more about, why. You decided. To gamify. Things like learning by doing I guess would be like the best definition for it so the idea originated. In a, conference that we co-organized together with Harsha Corp so, they organized the first EU. Conference in Amsterdam and we work, organizing, and we thought let's do something different we need to get the tools of harsha corp into, the hands of their users so. We create a little bit of a competition platform, very similar to what you currently see on the arcade, machines or an instructor's comb what, we gave them sandbox, environments, with some challenges around terraform. Console, no matter vault and we asked them to solve, it purely, the focus was a competition platform, and it was such, a big success that people, even went back to the hotel because there was better Wi-Fi to actually, solve the challenges, but a lot of feedback that we also got this this is a great way to learn new technology, because a lot of people they may be touched one of these tools but not all for and we got people into contact with different, tools that they never knew about and they.
Learned A lot about it so, that feedback got, us thinking so, this is maybe very, good way to learn new technology, and make it into. A learning platform rather, than just a competition platform, so on one side you've got the arcade, machines now which it sounds like are pretty popular way right I mean any arcade, machine that doesn't require quarters, I think will get a pretty big audience. But. You've also combined. It with these online labs, in these different experiences. How, does the platform, where you actually set. Up those labs how is that actually built so we build on top of kubernetes we, use a load of goaling in our backends we use reax for the front-end and we use a lot, of terraform, to basically make the platform that happen that, in combination with some brush here and there maybe a little bit too much but. That's how the internet, works right hey. Bash is this the glue of the internet yeah definitely don't bash on math but I seriously, love bash if it weren't for bash I would be lost probably but, it's worth a little small team 430, with five people we tried to use as many managed, services as possible, so for, kubernetes we use gke for. Database we use cloud sequel for builds environments, we use cloud build for our certification, firebase, authentication, so, as many managed, services, as possible so we can focus on things that are important for us is how to spin up the sandbox is how to present, it to the users or stuff like that it's, not the first time that you know we've kind of seen a company try to teach all the technologies, and they found that the best way to teach it is also to run on those same technologies so, it's always super interesting, to hear about yeah, you know I mean what's the best way to teach kubernetes, is to get the manage communities environment, and then you run your infra on there - yeah definitely, I think if you want to start teaching you have to learn it first so you have to learn about this technology and, what you get a grip. On it then you can start teaching other people then you really, start to learn about this technology the, best way to learn in my opinion is to teach others because, you have to go into a much greater level of detail to, understand, what you're actually doing to. Be able to explain it to different people absolutely. So send, how did that translate into the. Work that you, kind, of led and some of the other developer, advocates here and developer, program engineer has worked on yeah, so the, challenge that we faced was how to make you, know traditionally. Quote unquote boring, enterprise, platform, you, know fun and exciting and so instruct, kind of helps, with that by having these like checks, as odd a calls them so every, step of the way that platform actually runs code on their side to, check that you actually completed, whatever task was, set, for you right so you can't just cheat your way through the games so that was really powerful being, able to like run, code to check what they did spinning, up their own sandbox to like have, them experiment, and have like a no guide, rails right so with that the things like our gke challenge, they could either you know used to kuberan a CLI, they could write it in a ya know file like choices, was there some how they solved these problems so, that gave us as a team a lot of flexibility, and designing them right we didn't have to be like kind of forced, into any sort of pattern like as long as it worked on the command line like we could use it on the instruct platform and I found that really powerful yeah.
It's Not just commands Leidner stuff that you can do we also have an option to run you eyes maybe, not as effectively. Of new york' machines but our normal platform, does run you eyes as well as allows us to to expose basically, any web app or, even desktop, sessions to users which makes you really powerful, so we actually used instructs, ability to run arbitrary apps and connect them to their back-end to. Run a full RPG, in the, instruct, arcade machine so it, was almost like there was actual, video game running. In the arcade, machines that taught you about coding, is inception. In many levels first. We're teaching people about the environment, running on that actual environment now, we're basically just modeling being real life. This. Is kind of a funny question maybe. Aa day will, answer this so, if I were richer arcade, machine and I just do up up down down left right left right BA what. Would happen, unfortunately. I. Remember. Back I think it was eight or nine years ago my previous company we. Did have that code on our website it would start showing, my little pony figures, on the website oh I remember that javascript, library it was a fun one to add yeah, we've. Talked about the, the platform and how its built in all the technologies, around it but I'm curious what other technologies, do you actually support in these sand boxes so we support quite a wide range of technology, so in the basis we can run containers, and virtual machines but, we also have the ability to start a complete, new Google, cloud project or an AWS, account and we're also looking at adding different cloud vendors as well and we can mix and match all these different, technologies, so. That gives you a lot of freedom a lot of flexibility, to create arbitrarily, complex environments, to basically create, an environment to teach your users whatever, you need and I'm. Curious when. You're actually working in technologies, in the sandbox is how do you actually create these sand boxes and what kind of challenges do you actually have when you're creating them so the definition. Of the sandbox is is just a simple yellow file that we defined so there you can specify your containers, or your virtual machines or whatnot and you can use standard images, from the docker hub for instance or from Google Cloud compute images and then we have a, set of scripts that we can run on these containers. Or virtual machines those are simple bash scripts and they get executed on that infrastructure, in that sandbox that you defined so. You can basically do, arbitrary. Complex setups, or simulations. Or whatever you need to do maybe a breaker cluster and ask people to fix it that's all possible was, there anything that you tried to set up either than the kind of the more traditional. Classroom. Approach or maybe through the arcade. Machines that just didn't quite land right the first thing that we always have to do is the more enterprises, so far because it tends to be slow to start and difficult, to configure, automatically, but I don't think there's anything that we encountered, that we could not do eventually. You, know with a lot of hacking a lot of testing, and trial and error we usually get stuff, running that and more bash right. Yeah. So what's next for the arcade machines I mean they're, already obviously, a pretty big hit but, where are they gonna go next go for con next week which I don't know when this podcast is coming out okay if you're listening to this before, then make, sure you go if you're listening after make, sure to check out the website and if you're listening while, it's going on just, fly right out there.
Mark. Not all of us have private, jets you know yeah we're working on that right but we also got well Booker T we have the seven arcade machines at Google in the States right but there's going to be more arcade. Machines in Europe and then in Asia as well so maybe you can tell a little bit more about that Sandeep yeah. So we're trying to get our kid machines and many of the cloud summits around the world if you're in one of those cities in you're planning, on attending a Google cloud summit keep your eye out for an. Arcade machine other, open source conferences, and, stuff that we sponsor we're trying to get these in, the hands of as many people as possible so, yeah keep your eye out no, matter where you are in the world and I assume the next iteration, is going to involve VR right I. Mean. As a kid, playing arcade, machines I know that, stepping, into that world would be super cool you know I mean there's nothing quite like blasting, aliens but from like a first-person perspective. So. Now we just need to be able, to spin up kubernetes clusters, from a first-person perspective, it. Puts a whole new dimension to wake up all right. Very. Very cool well thank you all so much for coming, in and telling us a little bit about it we're almost out of time here is there, anything you want to call out or talk a bit more about before we wrap up so, we do have an open platform anyone. Can start playing for free start, learning for free at instructive comb we, even have an option to create content yourself so just reach out to us at hello, at instructors, comb we'll get you started creating some cool content, awesome. Well ah dai thanks so much for talking about all the cool things instruc does and Sandeep I mean great, job on leading that effort I, think a lot of people got some really really cool hands-on, experience, at Google cloud next and hopefully, people who can make it out to gopher con and other conferences, worldwide will be able to kind of get their hands on these arcade machines very. Cool thank you definitely. Alright mark so our question of the week is. I, want. To be more for me we'll go cloud how do i navigate the space for the material so what do you got for us so there's a lot of space here and I think that there's been quite a few people who I've heard you know they see this different information on Twitter on social posts and I'm sure it's a little confusing, so let me give you a quick rundown I would, say the number one thing right now is that there's a certification challenge. Going on and this, certification challenge, is basically you. Committing, to saying I'm gonna teach myself this stuff in three months and then, if I get certified within those three months either with the cloud architecture, or the data engineer, certification, you get $100 for Google merch that's, pretty cool not to mention the certifications, come with some swag of their own and like a backpack or a hoodie so, you kind of have that power but, you're probably in it for more than just the swag you're, hopefully also wanting to learn about the cloud so, there's, a mix of different environments. In quick. Labs in Coursera, quick, labs are a great place to start they'll organize things in quests, and these are all interactive, labs that you spin up you can work with directly they create a sandbox environment for you and then when the lab is done you shut it down so, these are very hands-on, very simple. Ways to actually. Get through, some of these skills and practice, what they look like on the, Coursera side they're, a little bit more organized, in terms of there's, videos, there's text. Content, and then there's some hands-on labs as well but, that has a lot longer breadth, of kind of detail you go into so, with, the Google cloud certification. Challenge each path has a list, of recommended quick, labs and Coursera.
Courses That, you can go through feel, comfortable, set up a schedule for a three-month process where you're taking these things your training and of course you're practicing, and then at the end you take that certification and if it all passes you get that hundred dollars just bet so to kind of summarize for, getting started I'd recommend, taking the certification, challenge, looking, at the quick labs and Coursera, recommended, courses and labs respectively, and then, figuring. Out how can I make the time for this over the next three months to win that cool merch that's, really, awesome I am, spending my time I'm taking it slowly doing my certification, but, it's kind of good to actually, give. Our, developers. Who wants to get certified some incentive. Trust me when I tell you that some of the merch that people that people get when they pass these certifications, I really awesome like those blue puffer. Jackets that they were walking around with necks were pretty, pretty. Awesome yeah, it was it was super cool to see and I think people were excited to see all the different available things I think it next they were even giving out like little medals that you could hang around, your neck if you yeah and certified there right if it were up to me what, I would get is just continuing. To buy multiple. Android figurines I love collecting those things oh there's so many out there now you know we need is we need a cloud figurine, I think we have one actually I'll send a picture but, I would. Really like a new right well take this up to marketing and for anyone who's listening to this podcast just, give, me some time. Oh. They, should do a contest like design your own oh you need to start with deciding the first one then we can get them to design their own right right. So. Uh mark. Where are you gonna be where, are you traveling, to knit oh yeah I've got a fun little few, days in the East Coast so I'm gonna fly across and hopefully the heat wave breaks by then we'll, have to see and then I'll be flying out to Austin. Where I think it is perpetually, pretty warm to, talk to some customers there and hopefully. Get a fun, podcast, or video recording, out of it how about yourself I will be speaking at PAX dev in August which is pretty, awesome and I get. To attend PAX West as well so I'll, be there in Seattle end of August. Going into September, very very cool what's your talk on at PAX dev my talk is on.
Universal, Communication, and its benefits and games give us a sneak preview a lot of people quit games based, on the. Fact that sometimes there's a language barrier especially. People who are in, countries. That are not their own and they're trying to play games so instead of waiting, multiple. Hours for their, servers, to be live or you. Know just not talking creating, some type of universal, communication, where they can communicate with their team and speak. Comfortably in their own language would, be kind of awesome so I'm gonna explore that space and show, how it may benefit, games especially. When, you have, multi, regional games super, cool so remember people if you're going to be a pax dev check, out that talk and I'm sure there's going to be lots of other talks as well probably, tons of great content there should be fun awesome so. Thank you all for listening and we hope to all see you next week have fun mark we'll see ya. Turning. Up the volume, turning. Up the volume what, you're saying is Sandeep you're pumping up those jams.
2019-08-19