The PRQL: The Portability of Engineering Fundamentals with Ioannis Foukarakis of Mattermost

Eric Dodds 00:05
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel where we replay a snippet from the show we just recorded. Costas. Are you ready to give people a sneak peek? Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Kostas, what an awesome episode with Ioannis. I mean, it’s clear that the big takeaway is that if you neglect your quake, Quake Arena practice, those skills will atrophy over time, and will cause regrets for you. I actually made me think about Duke Nukem, you remember do I do? That was again, like you had those friends who were just like how, you know, how did you get so good at this like? Yeah. It’s amazing.

Kostas Pardalis 00:57
It’s interesting how I mean, if you think about, like, because we’ve had like, this conversation with Yang’s and like I started, like, remembering like how we were, you know, like playing games and stuff like that back then. And so there were like a couple of things like in Wake arena. That’s okay, you’ve had like, first of all, like, it was crazy to see with the rail gang cards, like the aim that some people had, and like how they could do like headshots, but it was like, crazy. I mean, I don’t know what kind of like reflexes like this. I never like managed to get to that level. But like, there were people that like when they entered the arena, like you will just leave because it didn’t make sense. Like it was almost like TV, you know, and they were not sleeping. Yep. And usually the was the result of like, spending way too many hours like weighing instead of studying

Eric Dodds 01:54
100% Yeah. Like an effect on your don’t Yeah, I mean, you’re talking about people who would like take the mouse apart and like clean the ball and like clean the mousepad before the game, you know, because they had like a very

Kostas Pardalis 02:10
Bull, the bull, the bull, like something that doesn’t exist anymore. Okay. Yeah,

Eric Dodds 02:15
Exactly. Yeah. But it’s super important. Because like, you know, once you got really good, you can tell if the ball got dirty, like.

Kostas Pardalis 02:25
And, yeah, measuring the ping to the server. Like, because, yeah, that was

Eric Dodds 02:31
So good.

Kostas Pardalis 02:33
The other thing that I think like it’s at this time, in lieu of, like, the human creativity here is that there was like these things going on, like the rocket jump, right, which takes time, but with a default, like, settings, you couldn’t do it because you were actually like, exposing yourself, right, but we were changing, like the settings. So you could use like the rocket jumping. And that like completely, like changing, like, the way that you were playing? Right? So actually, it’s like, really interesting to see how people were not just like, playing but also how to like innovating on top of like the game to make it like a new game. Right.

Eric Dodds 03:13
100% I think that’s actually a really good, you know, that was really fun to talk about that when we think about the episode and talking with Yanni. You know, who now works as a data engineer mattermost You know, who does really interesting work around super high security team collaboration, you know, for the Air Force, and for, you know, Bank of America and other huge companies. He’s a systems thinker, right? He breaks down systems. I mean, he studied electrical engineering, and we got a really interesting view it sort of his art going from electrical engineering, back end software development. And they’ll do engineering. And then now data engineering and hearing about that story was absolutely fascinating. But it’s true. I mean, it sounds funny, but the way that you talked with him about trying to break down the Quake Arena game and like, execute that, you know, during class and other things like that. It was a bunch of really smart, creative people like solving a systems problem, right. And so that’s really, really cool to me to hear his story. And I think anyone who’s interested in sort of transitioning from different disciplines and taking the best of that discipline with you to the next one, this is a really great episode.

Kostas Pardalis 04:36
Oh, yeah. 100% and like Young’s like, give like, I think like a very pragmatic, like, how’s your description of how, like the fundamentals of the end like do not change I think like you mentioned those like, a couple of times with like, how we go like bulking cycles, similar weight, and things that we were doing in the past. We like, do again, like today and like all these things, and And that’s not actually like a bad thing. Like, it’s a good thing like innovation doesn’t mean like, throwing away completely what was happening in the past and bringing like a completely different party like it’s much more, let’s say iterative in a way. And there are fundamentals that they remain there no matter what, like some things cannot change, like the fundamentals are there. And so, investing time in like learning these fundamentals and enjoying working with these fundamentals, I think it’s probably like the most important thing about like someone can do in their career. And it doesn’t matter like if you have them, you can go through software engineering, back end engineering, front end engineering, ml to data engineering and whatever is next. So, I think it’s a great episode for anyone who wants like to learn about that.

Eric Dodds 05:53
I agree. Well, thank you for joining us. Definitely subscribe. If you haven’t, tell a friend. Give us feedback head to the website, fill out the form. Send us an email actually sending email to Brexit dataset show.com. He’ll respond faster than near Costas. And we will catch you on the next one.