SF Scala: Max Ovsankin Interview

SF Scala: Max Ovsankin Interview

Recording: SF Scala: Max Ovsankin Interview

[Music] hello everybody I'm Alex rubber of the organizer of SF Scala SF spark and such a dupe adopts others here we're on location on orange Silicon Valley this is our first time at orange it has a research lab here and we have a great meet up tonight we have a talk about what she drew it and we have a talk about Scala metalwork which marks of something who is our speaker did with a Twitter language group and max will will talk about it today so welcome max thank you thanks for coming so first of all tell us a little bit about your career in computer science you've internet nitro earlier I remember that and now you're at Berkeley so how did you get into this whole field you know and yeah sure I I guess I started programming pretty early in high school or I guess that's when I started programming with Java they actually started if you know this game Minecraft mm-hmm the game with you know like blocks and you kind of like assemble them it's a really fun game that's actually how I started programming I just made Java modifications to it okay and that actually they have like pretty vibrant open-source community around like making Minecraft mods and that was how I got into open-source and got introduced to this concept and like just contributing to open source off so that happened all before I knew about the existence of scholars how old were you when I started doing this it was around the time I don't know i made my github account and like november 2011 i think okay so i was 13 yeah that was a while ago now but yeah i mean that that's how I really got started I learned about Scala when I took I don't remember what a duration it was but it was owed their skis course mm-hmm and I was just interested you know like learning another programming language and it kind of I fell down this rabbit hole of functional programming and Here I am like every internship I did actually for my first internship I did I worked in like a startup that was doing Scott mhm and then you know I worked at Salesforce oh she's doing Scala and then worked at Twitter she's doing Scala right so I kind of stayed with Scala because I just you know I just enjoy programming with it and it's an interesting challenge every time and you know it's unfortunate that Berkeley doesn't have you know I go to Berkeley and study computer science there they don't really have like a great functional programming like class but I was able to take like the programming languages class and kind of deepen my knowledge there yeah I mean we all know that sparking from amp well yes right and so which which is like the hallmark of you know function programming for data so I know the real brand does rise up right and yeah like more native yes yes this is true yeah I mean you can still see the influence now because even in the introductory courses they teach spark mm-hmm maybe not with Scala at least what I thought right I know is easier for people to get started with but yeah it's still very much so curious so you did Joe before did you learn about skull from GBM in the context of GBM like do you recall how you came into knowledgeable this wonderful world um I I think my first exposure to functional programming was not through the JVM it was doing this amazing textbook called structure interpretation of computer programs over by Sussman and someone else you know and this was a textbook on scheme so that I mean that was like a really enlightening experience for me to just see a textbook that's so clearly explains the foundations of programming so then that kind of that what I knew functional programming existed that's when I just saw you know how can I try to apply this in what I'm doing and and that's when I came across gone so I wouldn't you know I thought wasn't my first kind of exposure to functional programming but I would say that's definitely like the one that has been most likeable for me because there's not a lot of shops you know that run skiing right now that's right although I found that Lisp is coming back in various forms like clothes yes right yeah there is a blockchain startup cadena which built smart contract language which is actually lisp implemented in haskell it looks like you know less so that's I think it will be living forever you know for like X expressions interesting so yeah I remember at night or you you know we discussed internship and like we had to get a special dispensation from HR because you were not yet 18 yes and so right like there is a whole labor laws involved in this so but nitro was a scholar shop and a business sales force is a strong place for Scala and Twitter so I'm just curious right like you are as an intern you come to these new organizations yeah right so what do you find it's like what what what connects that was special about places which you Scala you know like what can you say about the developers did you find any patterns did you find any kind of common traits and one of the people who use Scala yeah I think it dries I mean just the fact that you're using Scala draws very interesting kinds of programmers like people who are maybe interested in programming for the craft of it mm-hmm I definitely notice those people a lot more just at the scholarships I was working at like people who were really passionate about like yeah more so than just as an end to like create some kind of product right they were actually very involved in like what a language should look like we're like you know just how to be how to make the programming experience better for people that's what I noticed and that that was like what really attracted me and kind of made me stay there is like just having that kind of community there I mean I can't really comment you know I can't really compare is I've not I've never worked in a non scholar shop so I can't really compare what it lives outside you know I could just compare with my university experience that's good for you right like yeah I think you're very lucky right like well lucky being in Silicon really get this experiences right of all this companies around us so it does this does this approach and a thoughtful approach to social engineering does it extend to for instance devups did you get to deploy the code song did you like see called the whole stick work so did you work one Li like an Aneesh like part of this whole picture yeah it definitely depends on the company right I think when I worked at the scala startup I actually I helped them I wrote like a slack bot for a deployment and I mean that the place of my own code as well okay I was I was more involved in the DevOps side there because okay you know they give it to the intern because that that will just help them I think for companies where there's kind of more of a process for the appointment like yes like Salesforce of Twitter you know I think it's probably good that they didn't let me touch any of that just for their own safety but um yeah I mean I still I still at least got to say just from talking with people and I was able to deploy code just in different formats I think at both Salesforce and Twitter my main contributions in terms of deployment have not been like you know running software systems just deployment terms of like an open source project like some kind of library huh that's where the main impact I've been able to make is so you know you're a third-year undergraduate Berkeley and obviously some people dropped out of college like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and you know so so obviously like Peter Thiel advocates you know dropping out of coalition paint bball the doors I see people walking around the Thiel fellowship shirts all the time yes my campus I work in my you know early startup I worked with one of the like first year you know court graduates so yeah so obviously that works with some people and and you know your person undergrad degree in computer science you know I mean like I think it's amazing we have Berkeley like it's you know obviously there are all these startup opportunities and you've been exposed to them right so some people basically go and they you know strike it lucky and you know the founders and unicorns and stuff like that so so what's your feeling right like you've seen startups you've seen you know big companies what's your motivation to pursue your undergrad degree what's advantageous in full four-year degree at Berkeley when to go to grad school after that like what's thinking of all of this yeah um I mean this question actually came up every at the end of every single summer mm-hm because my experience in working is that it's it's I mean it's qualitatively different than being at school no school at least the way I do school it's stressful there's a lot of stuff to do there's a lot of deadlines know there's a lot of the work kind of never stops um so it's definitely much more fun to like be an industry so then every time I came to that question of like you know what what is the reason why I'm staying at school and I think it it's like the conclusion I came to is that school is a really good place for me to just develop myself for them you know academically of course I can learn a lot of stuff in Berkeley the computer science curriculum is is fantastic like I've been able to learn so much and then just in terms of personal growth just like it's a fantastic place to just meet diverse minds right not just in computer science everyone's there's people studying even at Berkeley even though the computer science major is huge there are people who study not study computer science they get to just interact with them right and I feel like it is harder to do that in industry where you kind of in a bubble especially it's you know scare for the score you kind of in the tech bubble you just very much in it it's hard to like stick outside yes so that kind of experience I think has been very valuable for me and then I guess in terms of future plans I also discovered that I really do like just doing research I suppose and it was at Berkeley where I found I really liked math and now I'm trying to you know do research teach for theoretical computer science that's like the field I like to go into and you know I'll see what happens right I'll try to pursue grad school try to go further yeah because it's very interesting for me to do research there and you know I I think the nice thing about working in this field is that at anytime I can kind of you know if I if I see them in a bad situation things are not working out for me in academia I can always go to industry and there's plenty of like very interesting awesome opportunities to do research in industry as I experienced you know the summer and for yeah so it's definitely not a bad choice to make but yeah I'm I'm still to just experience I could give me a little more and see what that's like it's awesome but though this is the research level I just learned that orange because it's the research really as do many car manufacturers right like folks are gonna tell you basically a lot of companies so I think this is amazing and I fully agree with you know like I'm looking back at my studies I did not do the most efficiently when I was down the graph yeah right but I now think this is an amazing luxury right I think personally right like looking back like it's an amazing luxury if you have time to develop yourself before I have a family or job application I think it's like looking back I think that's absolutely the best choice you can learn in a rigorous academic discipline like the servitor systems and you know theoretical computer science although this is available but like this job is very hard to do right so yes that's really cool so that's awesome so in the last questions like basically you're you know a target to the foreign languages to you like you've worked with the Twitter language group with Eugene Burma which is some of the most mind-boggling and involved you know called bases so so what what interests you in such complicated things like Stella matter like most people will find hard find them hard to grow no I mean I is very hard to grab it took me I mean you Dean was awesome he kind of led me through and explained a lot of stuff to me and helped me get up to speed with how everything was going mm-hm I think you know yeah it's I had the nice opportunity of like each time I got to pick a project and for Twitter I I wanted to go to Twitter specifically for this kind of thing I wanted to go to Twitter specifically because you know Eugene was working on a scholar related tools I think that's just an interest I've had in programming languages since forever like I used to write I wrote lisps that would compile to JavaScript anytime because I thought it was really cool yeah yeah yeah not as good but I yeah I did a lot of that stuff and I think you know the complexity is kind of it's it's it's a lot like research I mean it was a research right I enjoy research because you really get to dig deep and have to analyze things it's at the point where you cannot keep the entire project you have to do in your head it's just too complicated and I think just having that challenge is really enjoyable and I think that actually just motivates a lot of my decision to continuing doing research or just pick the kind of work I do because it's having that challenge that's really exciting cool so you know thank you very much for sharing it with us we're looking forward to your main talk and you know we're happy to have you in the community yeah I think it max thank you so much [Music]