Category: What I’m Up To

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Artificial Intelligence Career What I’m Up To

Claude does impression of me, comes up with new acronym: STARBS

Ben Affleck’s interview scene from “Good Will Hunting”.

I’m working on some new videos for the Global Nerdy YouTube channel, and one of them is on answering questions in the dreaded “behavioral interview.” That’s the interview where you’re asked questions like “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a conflict on your team. How did you handle it?”

To help come up with ideas for the video about behavioral interviews, I posed some questions to LLMs. As I like to say, no matter how creative or clever you are, it is by definition impossible to make a list of ideas that you’d never come up with yourself.

So I posed this question to Claude, which for some reason, seems to know stuff about me:

How would you describe a behavioral interview, if you had to describe it in the style of Joey deVilla?

And wow, was the response snark-tastic:

Here’s the text of the response:

Joey deVilla’s Guide to Behavioral Interviews

Imagine me adjusting my accordion straps and coffee mug before dropping this knowledge bomb…

So you wanna know about behavioral interviews? Those corporate rituals where they ask you to “Tell me about a time when…” instead of just asking if you can do the damn job?

Behavioral interviews are the tech industry’s version of “Show, don’t tell” – except instead of showing your actual skills, you’re telling stories about when you supposedly used them! It’s like your professional life as fan fiction, where the hiring manager is desperately hoping you’re not writing in the genre of fantasy.

These interviews operate on the radical premise that past behavior predicts future performance. Revolutionary, I know! It’s like assuming that because I once played “Lady of Spain” on my accordion at a Tampa dev meetup, I’ll do it again given the chance and sufficient sangria.

The formula they want is STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. But what they’re REALLY looking for is STARBS: Situation, Task, Action, Result, Bull$#!t – that special sauce where you frame yourself as the hero who saved the project while maintaining perfect diplomatic relations with that passive-aggressive PM who kept moving the goalposts.

The trick isn’t just recounting what happened – it’s storytelling with a corporate-friendly narrative arc. You need conflict (but not TOO much conflict), challenges (that showcase your skills), and resolution (where you emerge victorious but humble).

Remember: in behavioral interviews, there are no failures – only “growth opportunities” and “valuable lessons” that conveniently transformed you into exactly the employee they’re looking for!

Adjusts glasses, takes dramatic sip of coffee

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice my own STAR stories for when someone inevitably asks me about “a time I demonstrated adaptability in a challenging situation” – which is code for “that time I coded for 36 hours straight because someone in management promised an impossible deadline.”

My questions, after reading Claude’s output:

  1. Am I really that much of a smart-ass?
  2. “STARBS” — Situation, Task, Actions, Result, Bullshit — is pretty clever. Whose writing did Claude lift that from?

So I did some web searches using terms like starbs star situation task action result bullshit, and couldn’t find any instance of STARBS. It seems to be one of those effectively new creations that an autocomplete-on-steroids can generate.

I’m not gonna lie: I kind of like STARBS, and wish that I’d come up with it myself.

(If you’re interested, see if you can do some searches to find other instances of the term STARBS.)

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Conferences Programming What I’m Up To

I’m speaking at Kansas City Developer Conference!

I’ve just been informed that I’ll be one of the speakers at the 2025 edition of KCDC — Kansas City Developer Conference — which takes place August 13 through 15!

What is KCDC?

This will be the 16th KCDC, and it’ll take place at the Kansas City Convention Center in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

KCDC draws 2000+ attendees each year and features tracks for the following topics:

  • Architecture
  • AI and Data Science
  • Cloud
  • Data
  • DevOps
  • Human Skills
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Methodologies and Process Management
  • .NET
  • Other Technologies
  • Security
  • Testing and QA
  • UI/UX and Design

My talk

My talk, titled The Best, Most Fun Python Platform You’ve Never Heard Of, is a programmer’s introduction to the powerful, fun, and all-too-often-ignored Ren’Py. While Ren’Py is called a “visual novel engine,” I prefer to think of it as the fastest, most fun way to create Python applications.

Here’s the description for my talk:

Python’s occupied the number one spot on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for the past couple of years, and it’s the preferred programming language in for AI and data science. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about learning it, but the thought of having to do another set of “Hello World” style exercises is filling you with dread. Is there a more fun way to get up to speed with Python?

Yes, there is, and it’s called Ren’Py. It’s billed as a visual novel engine and often used for writing dating simulation games, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a platform that lets you code in Python (and more) and deploy to desktop, web, and even mobile platforms, and with a fraction of the effort required by React, Vue, or Angular. It’s a fun framework that’s been used to produce games you can find on Steam, but it’s got applications well beyond amusement.

In this session, we’ll look not just at the basics of Ren’Py development, but the building of a dating game based on KFC’s official game, “I Love You Colonel Sanders,” a simple turn-based combat game starring Florida Man, and building mobile apps in a way that’s less frustrating than usual.

Chris Ayers is speaking too!

Better still, I won’t be the only Tampa Bay geek speaking — Chris Ayers will be there too, and he’ll be delivering his talk, The Power of Dev Containers and GitHub Codespaces:

Dive into the future of software development with our session on Dev Containers and GitHub Codespaces. Dev Containers bring reproducibility and consistency across any platform with Docker, simplifying project onboarding and setup. GitHub Codespaces takes this a step further, offering scalable, cloud-hosted development environments, accessible from anywhere.

In this session, you’ll gain insights into:

  • Dev Containers Fundamentals: Understand their role in creating consistent development environments.
  • GitHub Codespaces Integration: Explore how Codespaces enhances Dev Containers, providing flexible, cloud-based development.
  • Practical Implementation: Learn to configure Dev Containers for your projects, including tool installation, VS Code extensions, port forwarding, and software setup.
  • Maximizing Codespaces: Discover how to customize Codespaces for remote development efficiency.

François Martin will be there!

If you were at the March Tampa Bay Java User Group meetup, you saw François Martin deliver a presentation with a not-at-all-controversial title: Why Software Testing is a Waste of Time.

Anitra and I had the pleasure of taking him around Tampa while he was in town, and I even lucked out by being able to catch up with him for dinner while we were in Greece earlier this month!

He’ll deliver two talks at KCDC:

  • 82 Bugs I Collected in a Year You Won’t Believe Made It to Production
  • How writing just one import the wrong way slows down your website

…and yes, I’m bringing the accordion.

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Meetups Programming Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Suncoast Software Skills Meetup: Making sense of Git and GitHub — Monday, March 24 at Embarc Collective!

With everything else that we developers have to know and learn, many of us use Git and GitHub “on autopilot,” using them to perform a handful of daily tasks that out of habit with little understanding. If you want to get a better understanding of Git and GitHub — and have fun at the same time — Monday’s meetup is for you!

The tl;dr

Why attend this meetup?

New developers have trouble with Git and GitHub, but so do experienced ones! Would you like to take a step back and really understand these fundamental developer tools? If so, thus upcoming session at Suncoast Software Skills Meetup is for you!

Join us for a beginner-friendly seminar designed to demystify Git and GitHub! Whether you’re a coding novice or simply looking to get a better understanding of version control, we’ll guide you through the fundamentals with a practical hands-on exercise.

And yes, this is a SHAME-FREE ZONE. Even after all these years using various source control systems leading up to Git and GitHub — rcs, cvs, Visual SourceSafe, Subversion (svn), TFS — we still stumble. This workshop is all about getting good at Git and Github!

We’ll also look at ways you can fix common Git mistakes that we all make, courtesy of Katie Saylor-Miller’s and Julia Evans’ delightful book, Oh Shit, Git!

You’ll also learn about great resources for getting better at Git and GitHub, such as Oh My Git!, a videogame that makes learning about Git fun.

This will be a fun meetup at one of Tampa Bay’s best meetup venues, Embarc Collective. And thanks to the Embarc Collective / Bank of America scholarship, we’re able to provide food (it’ll be cuban sandwiches, empanadas, and potato croquettes).

Join us this Monday, and let’s sharpen our software skills!

Once again, here’s the registration page (and yes, it’s free)!

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Artificial Intelligence Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Tampa Bay AI Meetup on Monday, March 17 at Embarc Collective: Build an AI Job Application Helper App!

The tl;dr

Details

You’ve probably heard lots of stories from friends and acquaintances about how much work you have to do to conduct a job search these days.

There are a fair number of data points showing that this is true; the Silicon Valley-based career guidance service Pathrise, says that job seekers who sent 20+ job applications every week got more interviews and landed a job sooner.

That’s a lot of work, especially since the general advice is to customize your resume for every job application.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to get some help customizing your resume for every job application you have to fill out?

With Anitra and I leading you through the steps, you’re going to build just that on Monday, March 17th at the Tampa Bay AI Meetup at Embarc Collective. Along with us, you’ll code up an AI-powered application that takes two inputs…

✅ Your resume
✅ The job description of a job you’re applying for

…and it produces a version of your resume that’s been fine-tuned in these ways:

  • Present you in the best possible light
  • Make changes so that your experiences, talents, and achievements show that you’re an excellent fit for the job
  • Tune your experience and skills to better match the job requirements
  • Update your resume to use key words and phrases from the job description
  • Correct spelling and grammar mistakes
  • Fix phrasing to be more clear and concise
  • Improve sentence structure and use action verbs

Bring your laptop! We’ll provide you with a “starter” project and access to an AI account, and we’ll walk you through the process of writing a Python app in Jupyter Notebook that does what we described above. In the process, you’ll learn:

  • About Jupyter Notebook, one of the preferred tools for AI and data science
  • How to make calls to an AI API
  • How to build an application based on an AI API

You will leave the meetup with a working Python app that does what we’ve described above: help you fine-tune your resume for specific job applications!

Join us on Monday, March 17th and let’s build this app!

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Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Tampa Bay AI and Suncoast Software Skills Meetups — powered by Embarc Collective and Bank of America!

Great news — the meetups that Anitra and I co-organize…

are the recipients of Embarc Collective’s and Bank of America’s Tampa Bay Tech Meetup Scholarship!

For 2025, this scholarship will make it much easier for us to organize our meetups. It will provide…

  • Dedicated Space: One of the challenges of running a meetup is getting a space to hold them. Embarc Collective has amazing event spaces right in downtown Tampa, close to the interstate, and well-suited for tech meetups. Being able to host our meetups at Embarc is a really big help!
  • Financial Support: The costs of renting premium spaces like those in Embarc Collective and feeding attendees are also a challenge for non-corporate meetup organizers like us. The financial support from the Scholarship is invaluable.
  • Community Connection: Embarc Collective is one of the hubs of Tampa Bay’s tech ecosystem, and having their community connections will help us take our meetups to the next level.

Our first meetup to take place at Embarc Collective will be the Tampa Bay AI Meetup’s Build an AI job application helper app, which will happen on Monday, March 17 from 6 – 8 p.m.. We’re working on a date for the Suncoast Software Skills Meetup event, so watch this space!

We’d like to thank Embarc Collective and Bank of America for creating the Scholarship and for selecting our Meetups to be recipients. We’re going to put on some great meetups this year!

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What I’m Up To

Company headshots / What I’ve been up to

Here’s a quick little post that’s here to let you know a couple of things. For starters, Packfiles’ site now includes company headshots, which include Yours Truly:

To recap, Packfiles makes a SaaS called Warp, which migrates source code repositories from other, lesser source control systems (Azure DevOps right now, but BitBucket and GitLab soon) to GitHub.

Migration is a tedious manual process that’s like this:

But with Warp, it’s more like this:

My title, Technical Experience Lead, is something I made up on the spot, but it pretty much covers what I do. I make sure that the people who use the SaaS have the best experience possible, from the moment they visit our site and try our service, to the actual migration process.

I’ve been recording how-to videos in my nice, quiet, and conevnient home studio, but yesterday, internet service went out in our neighborhood. Luckily, Embarc Collective — where I do my non-recording work — has a content studio and they were kind enough to let me book it for all afternoon yesterday on very short notice.

Here’s the booking screen outside the studio…

…and here’s what it was like inside:

It’s a busy time for me, and I’ll write more about it here — watch this space!

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Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Last night’s “Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer” meetup

Last night’s Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer meetup was a lot of fun — and a lot of new faces, with people who’d never been to one of our meetups joining us for the first time!

Held at Magnanimous Brewing Seminole Heights, this meetup is simply a get-together for people who write code, aspire to write code, are creative, or aspire to be creative. We like to say that it’s “All conversations, no presentations!”

( ℹ️ And in case you were wondering, there are non-beer, non-alcohol options at every place we hold Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer. Anitra and I drink, but you don’t have to in order to join us. We also always pick places with food options.)

There’ll be another one next month — we’d love it of you could join us!