Welcome to Toffy TV, let's talk about Hammers Rodriguez, because we've not talked about him enough, we've not spoke about Hammers Rodriguez enough. I felt as though I should have had the amber kit on for this one. Not the kit. The full kit.  Just the top. Obviously we spoke on him quite a lot in terms of playing football and you know where he's going to fit in the squad, what his best position is, all those things. But let's talk about how he was announced. Let's talk about what we've seen come out of Everton since that and what we hope comes out of Everton next, because obviously the club have appreciated that. This is a huge signer. That commercial is a huge signer in terms of Hammers Rodriguez as a player and the followers he's got on social media and all those kind of things. It's a huge signer and they have tried to meet that the best they can. How do you think they have done so far? I think it's been amazing. From us so far it's very far ahead of anything we've done before. I accept that we haven't had a player of Hammers Rodriguez has reached before, that's fair to say. But I think we spoke about it on other videos or that we've done when Wayne Rooney came back. He was a massive name, albeit we were coming to the end of maybe his tough life career, but I don't think he did enough at that time. He hasn't got to reach Hammers. He was still a well-known player all over the world. But I think the club have really stepped up with this. We spoke about it the other day in advance of this, what we hoped they would do. I think to be fair they've exceeded what we hoped they'd do. We've seen the stuff that they've done and the continuance they've built on it. I've noticed today at the time they called on this they just released the full video interview they've done with him because a portion of it came out. It's just things I've built on top of what's good and editing people talking about it and have been for a few days now and a lot of Colombian fans are certainly on this channel getting in touch with us. I can see it on the main, the proper evidence channel, the official channel, Colombians there. People are interested. They want to know about evidence. They want to see the link up with James and I think the club have done really well to build on that. I think from the club's point of view they did straight away, they had their billboard in the city centre five minutes after it being announced. We've seen that. I thought that was a good way to signal straight away in your city right in a key point straight away. There's a lot of Liverpool centre things down there at the moment. A lot of advertising in Liverpool players which is very understandable in the city centre. So it was great to see that straight away and then that went on to Goddison. There was something at the Alvedoch as well. Basically over the road from where he is staying as well so that would have been nice for him to see that. So straight away within the city you are making it known that you've signed a top-class player and you want everybody to know. In case you missed the news, this is what happened. Is it global? That's what he is. So straight away it's there. It can be seen within your city. They've got that out there and then gradually over the next 24 hours the biggest thing we saw was Bogota. Obviously the capital of Colombia. I think it was the biggest tower with the 19 going round and obviously the local ESPN and things like that. They picked up on that and they got the message out of what it was because I don't know how it would have been received there. The 19 going round, the blue lights. So that was put out to straight away. Then it was the front page. To add on to that, the front pages of the biggest newspaper in Colombia had Hamza Rodriguez sitting down in his evidentiary and it was the big news over there. So you are hitting it. You're not getting away from it. You're hitting that straight away and I think that was really important. Following on from that we had the Hamza Rodriguez billboard on a boat in Miami and obviously the local fan Everton supporters group had been made aware of that to get the news out there and spread that and get it on Twitter later on in the day. I thought this was the big one and I had no idea this was coming. By the way, Times Square, a billboard in Times Square and that to me, I think that's the one way people have gone wow, wow. Times Square is so iconic. It is such an iconic thing and to see a billboard of Everton and the fact that we've brought in this play I just thought that was an incredible statement to make going forward. Yeah, we're out of shadow. Everything that you've done from all of those things you've listed there was better than the last one and better than the last one and better than the last one almost and obviously to have that towel lit up in Bogotat. The news is broken. I think it was two o'clock local time in Colombia and the news radio picked it up and there was a discussion about it there and everything's followed on from that like you say, the papers have got it front page, this towel has been lit up in blue with his number and then we did into the American particularly Miami which a lot of our Colombian friends have been on and said there's a strong Colombian community they love Johannes Rodriguez in America and as well as being in Colombia and saying in other parts of it and then to see like you say I guess the only thing this has got nothing to do with Everton everton done there Times Square wasn't as busy as what it would know to be obviously because of what's going on but Everton can't control it. But I don't think that's problematic because I don't think that's a... You're not advertising to the people who are in Times Square you're advertising to the world and we've seen Liverpool do it Liverpool had I think Mohammed Salar up there a while ago I don't know whether it's still around there but it's a great way to it's statements on time I say this a lot about we both say a lot about football is that perception is a matter of thing of football it's huge and I don't think enough people realise that in terms of football clubs are your perceived the top clubs do hence why they continue to become the top clubs in terms of commercial aspects they realise that if we put this perception out of ourselves other people latch onto it and it's about creating I think it's interesting as well and I don't know whether this is intentional but I haven't been clearly looking to get a viral response as well rather than a rather than a professional response if that makes any sense so all the videos that have come out of all these things have all been shot by clearly just people using their phones so that's why I'm sure the New York Evertonians were related to it and we've put it on our Twitter but when we got though that was from I'll go down on that one but that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying it's the video we've put on which has got thousands it's not our video but it's got thousands of retweets and people have picked up on it because obviously because our Twitter is like 40,000 and I wonder whether that's the response ever I'm looking for that organic response rather than they sent a film crew down there to film it and then they take that and then they put that out because I think there is that idea of when it's viral and it's oh my god have you seen this oh glucky someone was down there that kind of feeling rather than it doesn't need to be professional no it doesn't and that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying it's just it's Jamie Miller I think they need people to well he's done another one but the main one we're using because I know people have reacted I know Jamie the guy who went down and got a video he responded to our video oh yeah he went down to see if it was still there yeah yeah yeah so Evan I've obviously looked at that and that's good that's a good way of doing things you'll lay people as I said like the supporters groups to send someone down get some video and then hopefully that video goes viral which it has and it was good like you said though it felt like it was that everyone was getting better than the last one and that's no that's no criticism of like the one in Bogotar it's just that the one in Bogotar it's just a it's just a number and but then it was like Miami and everyone was like oh my god and then Times Square is like the most iconic visual place in the world as far as I'm concerned certainly like man made anyway you know and we see it on everything we've seen films and TV and everything so for Evan to have something there I thought that was really important and showed that it had been thought about and they understood that it was important and you mentioned Wayne Rooney before and I remember Wayne Rooney and there was a lot of criticism I think Saintine I would have criticised the club at the time because I always felt like Wayne Rooney coming back was underplayed like we don't know how people are going to respond to this so we best keep it on the quiet a little bit what I always find is completely wrong if you're going to do something do it do it fully if you think someone's going to be a big icon forget about what anyone thinks just go and you're going to get your criticisms no matter what but with this it's slightly different you see I thought when we showed Wayne we should have done something in DC we should have had something there I think you said at the time we'd like welcome Wayne or thanks Wayne something with Evan and DC United something like that that people go that for him and that's quite cool you know and all that but the club listen you can only go from I said this about the team and about Carlo Antillotti and if you can put it on Twitter obviously the head of what we knew was coming but basically just to say we've got an opportunity to move forward and create because Carlo coming in December and then we didn't do anything in January and Covid hit and all that that to me is like an unreal not really happen we just kind of wanted to get the season done and done so the way it felt and we didn't finish the season very strongly and it almost feels like we had to I felt patient from a patient level it was time to reset the button and go we've got a world class manager who we want we've got plans in place and now we've had loads of false stones I get it sat here before and said we need to press the reset button now when Marko Silver come in and went Ronald Coom but this is the top class manager he's evidence that in the last few days the players have said the barm we've seen other players in the media putting stories like I'd love to join Everton and things like that and it's at the like the core they've all said it so we've got that momentum and I'd put a thing out saying we have to press the reset button as fans and just go we're backing this we're going all in with this fella because we've got it we've got it and it feels as though this is almost that point for the whole club though because now is the time for us to really go let's go with it that's how it feels I think that's having a player like this is we spoke about it and we did a live reaction video and if anyone watched that I apologise we're probably reiterating a lot of the same points but we're trying to make them a little bit more succinct in this Everton have to build off the back of this because he's a huge player but this will test people at the club to see whether they can keep that going that momentum going there will be a thirst for information there will be a thirst for media there will be a thirst for kits everyone in Colombia will want to know right now how they can get an Everton kit and I've already seen messages saying Everton need to react to this pretty quick because otherwise you know what will happen they'll all be getting fake kits right listen we might as well talk mention there's nothing getting around it Everton have to meet the expectation and I don't know listen I don't know whether Everton have got a a system in place in Colombia South America do that I honestly don't know right but in America where you're going to get like we mentioned Miami you know you know America when we talk about like cracking America and things like that this is a country where Mexicans can international games get higher attendances than American international games because that's where that's where people go and the other thing as well of course is with South Americans is that they're born into football exactly it's a football day don't get me wrong loads of United States fans now and everything else loads of soccer fans in America who are Americans who are getting fallen in love with the game and follow it and loads have done it for years it's growing there's no doubt about it but South Americans it feels like the most like the Scouts thing here of like you're born into it that thing is football you know soccer whatever you want to call it it's there are in front here and that's why we build on it that's where Everton and Fanatics have got to get this right they've got to meet they've got to be ready and that's not just shades that's t-shirts I was going to say the one thing is and it might be a money thing and I don't know people's finances are different so Everton top to like £55 that might be far too expensive for some people but what I'd like to see them do is almost creator hammers t-shirts but a little bit like the kit but with like ham you know what I mean like a t-shirt version of the kit maybe that people can go can grab for $15 or whatever it may be and have your own and it's got a badge on it and it's got hammers 19 on it or whatever it's whatever not everybody not everybody can buy a kit I told you the story of when I went to Paris not long after they got Neymar and the kits with the name and number on were over 100 euros so for 30 euros they had a yellow Nike t-shirt with a Paris Saint-Germain badge and Neymar 10 on the back and I swear to God they were flying everybody there wanted a something a souvenir of Neymar and that was the closest thing and listen I'm not I don't think I'm qualified enough but as a consumer I would be saying well if someone can't afford let's say what is it say $80 for a shirt you add Rodriguez to the back of that you're talking over 100 no hammers yeah hammers you add hammers 19 to the back you're talking over $100 not everyone can afford that as much as you could all think out they can't and if you've got kids so if I was ever going to be saying like to Hummell or to Fanatics let's get a shirt out there even if it's just a basic like Hummell t-shirt with a blue one so everton badge and hammers it's that thing isn't it and get that out in the shops because you know what you might make $5 on every t-shirt make a shirt up no I don't know what it is but say it was $5 it's not even at the moment it's not even about the monetary side it's about people walking around in Miami walking around in New York walking around wherever with a hammers thing with an everton badge on it you can throw a kazoo on it look as much like that kit as you want just bouncing around with hammers and people are like you know people but I've done it in I want to go to America I've bought t-shirts with like things or you know all on the world whatever but other things I've got a New York City top and everything else because they look cool some of the t-shirts about Brazil stuff you know and get all kinds of kits you know you've got the new PSG one because my brother knows just come off and take it with you know the kit and he's made up another PSG but people will see it and go oh that kit lovely watch that and it's got evidence it's a great chance for people to go it's all it is it's advertising the club like you said monetary wise what would you rather have would you rather have someone walking around with no shirt would you rather have someone walking around with a fake shirt or would you rather have someone walking around with an evidence t-shirt on that at least you made a little bit of money from and it's real and also you can then judge the numbers you can judge the market you can see who wants what you know that you know people might there will be people in America there'll be South Americans in Colombia and every who will buy if they can get hold of it an evident kit an evident top rather they'll buy that shirt whether it be the yellow one because it's like the Colombia colours but it's evident with hammers on there will be but there'll be a lot of people that won't be able to before that and go but if they can get an evident t-shirt may it's blue and a yellow one just thinking off the top it's similar to the kit with that and hammers on then they've got something with them and it represents awesome and it's an idea that's just popped in my head and pops the word a pop-up shop in like Miami or somewhere I don't know the best whatever the best place wherever people go shopping generate put a pop-up tell the people in that area where it is listen ever nothing really well we're just strong but I think that'll be a good answer yes we'll just send a load to the sport number one soccer store in Miami or something or number one soccer store in up in 90 in New York on Bogota on Bogota and just send a load of stuff limits edition t-shirt and get it and let's get some numbers out and then everton just thinking again off the top on my idea everton could then be like right if you get this t-shirt take your picture off where you're from send it to us on we'll be sure and that is continuing to keep the story going I'll look at me with my hammers oh you buy a t-shirt there's one you buy a t-shirt right and you get a picture with it in like New York or Bogota or Miami or something like that get a picture with it on some kind of landmark or even in front of like I don't know I don't think that everything's still about like there but and you send it to everton and you hashtag it and you could be in the competition to win to win a signed shirt or something like that Worldwide I'm just saying there's opportunities there is a lot a couple of final points Everton also mentioned that they were preparing in the summer to have go to America and South America for friendlies so that would be interesting to see where that can happen next summer and Matthew and us the only thing will be obviously the Copper America is next summer possibly have Alan and Hammeas and Jeremy and the Copper America but if that's the case and we're over there anyway do what Everton didn't do when we went to America that time and you know we came out with the Ram we just didn't have them even there make sure look at the way it feels the games are played and all that and make sure that at the games at least when they go off for 10 minutes with the kids on over there hopefully that happens hopefully but I think that would be huge for us to go to America and South America but the other thing as well is Everton have now got plans to open an office in America and they're in Florida probably Miami or in Southern California which is again big because that's something that elite clubs do you know I noticed the other day I think Chelsea have got Man, it's just that you already had a dedicated reporter in America someone who used to work for MLS to do all the all the viral stuff and all the rest Chelsea have just employed someone now do the same so they've got someone on their Twitter who's on the ground in America reporting, getting a crossover through videos and stuff like that I don't know if they have an account in America but it's you know I know this is quite American-centric and stuff but it's only got like six or seven thousand you know but build on that hopefully it's official open all kinds of opportunities build on that get someone on the ground get someone who's working with the Everton fan groups over there cos that don't forget I've got a lot of fans in America but of course like anything else over there they're all spread out going over there and playing the game like we saw last time it helps bring those people together I think that would be a big thing for Everton but getting that office in and starting to work with clubs cos Everton have already said that they're working with clubs they've already worked into Miami and we know it was the e-sports game that Richard Larson played and I know that might seem like a big thing but that's where the relationship to conversations and again it's about spreading the brand isn't it and we've got a global superstar at the forefront of her he's a fabulous player we can't wait to see him but imagine if we went let's say next summer we went and played Miami in a new stadium and Beckham's there and Beckham's meeting and there's Bowfex Real Madrid players as well imagine how much hype that would create you know that would be phenomenal so there's all these links all big names it creates it creates stories isn't it and then obviously as well Everton they've launched two new Twitter accounts Spanish speaking Portuguese speaking there's landing pages as well on the website which are really important as well so people can come and speak they don't have to go through the translation process and it's not only that though but it's not everything we all have different customs we all have different ways that we take things in or whatever so to have those things that are directly go towards them will be a big thing as well yeah huge you know we're looking at having to think about some Spanish subtitles or something but Everton to do it it's massively important people are saying yes when he moves on people will leave a lot of people will go with wherever he goes next but a lot of people will stay as well and a lot of people will know Everton and talk about Everton and it's about creating that brand that you get bigger and like you say you know the more moments that he gives us a lot of Colombian fans are being on and going he just wants to get he just wants to play and be happy and be happy and shows are done that he was wrong and all that and we're getting a clarity and also you listen to his interview to win it the lad it makes me laugh and you hear people say on particularly clickbait radio shows he's done nothing since 2014 he's won champions leagues and world club competitions and eight league titles and this that he's done a lot he's done a lot he's got a golden boot winner at the world cup he's a fantastic player now if we can keep him fit for the majority of the time I'm sure he'll be incredible and for Colombia as well if he's playing for Everton he's playing well and he's fit then he's playing for Colombia if for Colombia isn't it just one final thing just before we go everything's been very positive really really good the one thing I'll ask you is do you think Everton should have given the number 10 shade and gone all in it's a tough one the head side of it with everything and the iconic stuff and all that says yeah because he's hammers 10 isn't he but then again he won 11 at right just 16 at right on the grid last season he was 11 at Bayern Munich so yeah he's hammers 10 for Colombia and I think that's what they're identifying with but what you do Guilfee Sigurdson has been Everton's captain Everton's captain at the weekend in the friendly he's number 10 and that's his number if Everton knew for a fact that he was leaving then you can take the number off him and go well you know out with the old name of the new boy Sigurdson stays around and you took his number off him you risk causing I suppose the only thing Everton could have done was said to Guilfee how attached I was to number 10 isn't it Maybe he did he might have just been and I think I just don't think you want to destabilise the thing and for all we know hammers might have been quite happy to take a different number because like I said he's had a different number of Bayern he's had a different number at Real Real last season this is his opportunity to be hammers 19 at Everton what I will say is I think next summer Everton will give him a hit I think he had he was a picture gone round wasn't he showing one of his first clubs he won number 19 did he and he had eight as well 19 on his shorts and I think so maybe that's the base in there I think he'll get the Everton number 10 eventually I think he'll get it next summer because I think Sigurdson would only have a year left next summer and I think Everton will be looking to unless Guilfee might still leave who knows if someone come in for him but I think he will there'll be a time when hammers is number 10 I believe so Digo, let us know your thoughts how Everton have dealt with the signing of Hammers at Adegas have you been surprised have you been amazed have you been impressed are you hoping this continues are you hoping for more because it's going to push it's going to push Everton it's going to push the people who work at Everton it's going to mean that Everton are going to have to go out if the people can't handle it Everton are going to have to go out and find people who can't handle it what I would say is they've set the bar that's what I would say and I know there's plans for other stuff but they've set the bar so it's up to them now to continue to reach that level that's all it comes down to those people are good enough and they've proved over the last few days that the ideas are good can you stay at that level that's what the key is a lot of it's on him now to perform on the pitch I mean that it has to anyway but let us know your thoughts and if you are a newly newly found Everton fan in Colombia or in America or anywhere in South America let us know your feelings on the what does the club need to do for you in terms of merchandise in terms of shirts in terms of understanding the history of Everton football club let us know your thoughts in the comments on that does the club need to almost restart telling you about Everton football club from the start let us know all that in the comments make sure you give this video a like subscribe if you haven't already lots of you have been subscribing which is fantastic we've got a new range of Colombia, t-shirts inspired by Hammansaradiga as well on our website the link is in the description and if you want more videos exclusive videos, live daily videos join us on our page as well the link is in the comments in the description for that as well thanks for watching, see you later


The study found that phone obsession negatively impacts social connectedness among adolescents in Malaysia through communication disturbance, leading to a sense of belonging and potentially causing a social disconnectedness epidemic. This article was authored by Qin Shang-on, Kaimei Tao, Yongluang, and others.


on refactoring your language knowledge portfolio. I want to talk a little bit about questioning what we do and how we could go up and adapt a certain different paradigm of programming. And we've been programming in a certain way for a long time. And there's been a few different paradigms. So it's a good time to kind of re-question and rethink about what we do. So that's what I want to do here. Let's talk a little bit about where we are and what we do. We work in a very exciting field. And if I kind of reflect back to my own life and what I've done over the years, I started programming when I was in school. And of course, I wanted to be an engineer. I really got drawn into a computer science and computer science and engineering. I went on to do a BS in computer engineering. I went on to do an electrical engineering masters. But then I kind of came back into get a PhD in computer science. So a lot of my work in the initial phase was definitely drawn towards science and engineering. But a few decades later, I am still a programmer. And the reason I'm a programmer is really a little different now. So if I want to kind of reflect back on my time, the science in programming is what drew me in. But it's actually the art in programming that actually kept me in. And the more I program, the more I work with software systems, I realize that it's a form of expression. As much as, yes, it is engineering. It is science. And that's kind of what really excites me, the art form of it more than the engineering form of it, even though that part is still important. And as we work through this, I want to kind of reflect back on this quote. It says, I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things you cannot see from the center. And I can relate to this very well on two fronts. One of the things I do when I go home mostly is I go mountain hiking. I live near Boulder, Colorado. And I have little boys. My little boy started hiking when he was four years old. And he can hike for about nearly 11 hours. He's the most avid hiker that I know personally. And he can do a lot of hiking. And one of the beautiful things about going up the mountain after struggling up there is the view that you enjoy when you're on the edge. And the other edge I'm talking about, of course, is programming. And I want to push the edges and do stuff. And I want to always try something different than what I had done before or I'm used to. And out on the edge, you can see things that you cannot quite see when you are confined with the environment that we normally work in. But programming itself, as we know, is a very nascent field. We have been doing this for a good about, what, 40, 50, 60 years, depending on how you give or take. So it's a very nascent field compared to other things we have done as human beings. Medicine, building constructions and stuff like that. So very nascent field. So I want you to think about this for a minute. Imagine I want to buy a car. And I'm going to ask you, what kind of car do you recommend that I buy? And of course I want to be a bit cautious about environment. I don't want to burn up gas and pollute the environment more. So you probably would say, Venkat, why don't you consider an electric car? That's reasonable, right? So I go buy an electric car. But of course if I buy an electric car, I need to charge my electric car, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So I buy electric car because you told me to. You go tell other people to buy an electric car. Bunch of people buy electric cars. Then what do we need? We need a station to charge those electric cars, don't we? That's a great idea. So we would have something like this, isn't it? And we would start charging these electric cars. And then now you would need stations and stations where you would have to have electric cars, isn't it? Seems reasonable. So we would have to build these stations of electric car charging stations. So what if a lot of us buy these electric cars? So we would kind of have something like this, right? Makes sense. So the whole of the United States will be sprinkled with electric car changing station. Hey, somebody wrote that actually in a paper. When did they write it? In 1899. Now wait a second, wait a second, that's a misprint, Venkat. Did you mean 1999? Even that is early. No, 1899. What? We're just about getting excited about electric cars. Well, most cars on the streets wear electric cars back then. They didn't have gasoline powered cars back then. They had electric cars back then. And there was a few problems with the electric cars. It took effort to charge them. And they wouldn't go too fast. And they had other problems with it. The other cars that roam the streets were steam cars. Steam cars, what's the problem with that? It took forever to heat them up. Honey, do you want to go shopping? Oh, maybe in two hours? Right, we've got to heat up this particular car, right? So eventually they found gasoline cars, and of course the technology folds wagon and Ford, all those people came about and they said, let's go mass produce these cars. And slowly as time went by, we forgot about electric cars. Until now we are all excited about, and hey, look, we can build electric cars. Well, in our field, we are going through something very similar. So back in time, steam powered cars and electric cars were the norm and then we kind of forgot all about it and gasoline powered cars were really popular until now again we are interested in electric cars and I see this exactly happening in our field except we're not dealing with electric cars. This is an evolutionary phase. It turns out in our field what was really up there was functional programming and structured programming. This is way back in time. And then came along object-oriented programming. Does anybody remember the year when OOP was introduced? Don't worry about being wrong. I'm wrong most of the time myself. Just throw a number at me. Don't say 18, please. What is it? 87. 87, 87, 87. In the 40s, no. He's not that old. 1967. You're making him a grandfather. That's what I'm saying, right? All right. What year you're saying? 67. I'm not going to have a debate with you here. How about that? No, I haven't asked for it. She refuses. I don't want to have a debate. It's okay. Whatever year you say is good enough for me. Yeah. So it was a long time ago, right? 1967, according to what I know, she can have another year. That's fine. I'm not going to argue with her. So basically the idea really is it was in 1960s or whatever it is. And then came along what? 1987 is when we were like, whoa, this is awesome. But even then, right? The small talkers were really doing OOP. But what about the rest of us doing C programming, structured programming? What changed the world? C++. Because overnight, you didn't have to do anything, but you were OOP programmers. This is awesome. How great is that? You go home as a structured programmer one day. You came back the next morning as OOP programmer. What did you do differently? I used to work for a very fine guy. He said, Venkat, we're going to interview you, but we want to make sure you understand what you're getting into before you get into this job. He said, what is it? Well, my team will tell you you're going to be programming an obturant system. Well, once you join the company, you will notice that we are programming with C++. Well, after a few months, you will come back to me and tell me that all that you can see is a code filed by the C++ compiler. There's a big difference between these, right? But that's one of the beauties of adoption. You didn't have to do a whole lot, but you could paradigm shift. How is that? Because that's the beauty of C++, right? So the idea really is that we got really got into it. I remember back in time, as I was developing software, there would be arguments on the mailing list. This was funny to watch. OOP will not work.  It'll be poor in performance. People endlessly arguing on the mailing list, right? And then we would talk about whether you have a diamond structure, deep hierarchy versus wide hierarchy. This was fun times back then. And then suddenly everything quieted out. Nobody talked about those things anymore. And they were quietly doing OOP. And all of a sudden, people went overboard with this. And now we've got a big people. Could you stop doing objects? The other day I was pairing with somebody and that person said, oh, we've got to create a class. I said, why create a class? And then looked at it like, what do you mean why create a class? How would you do without a class? And we got into a point where we assumed that everything should be in a class, right? So it's a pendulum. And we've gone all the way to this side. And I think it's a balance we have to strike. And now, of course, we are getting excited about functional programming one more time. And as if this is like great idea, but it's been around for what, a good 50 years or more, depending on how you count it. So let's focus on Java just for a little bit. Java, of course, I'm really speaking about Java 7 and before, not referring to Java 8 here. And Java, of course, has been around for a long time. And we could look at this as this, you know, as this hierarchical thing. And right at the bottom is the JVM. On top of this is the JDK. And of course, the Java language, it's sitting on the top. And of course, we have told that Java is simple, but really, it's simple. It's more simpler than C++, right? But it's evolved over time. And as things evolved over time, the JVM became more ubiquitous, more powerful. And of course, the JDK is one of the widely used libraries, but of course, Java really kind of became the weakest link along the way. But when it comes to the emergence of technology, if you really look at it, I'm going to use the word, more of a strong word.  We're tired of this. Java has become heavyweight. It is really hard to program in this. It takes a lot of time and effort. We're not going to put up with this. And they, what did they do? They turned in their passports. They sold their homes, gave away their pets, and emigrated to this barren land called Ruby on Rails. There was not a whole lot there. And they said, that's fine. We would much rather be in a land where we can build stuff on our own and work with all this heavyweight things. And they turned in their passports and emigrated, and they found this new found land and started building things. And they were brave. And I'm not talking about just anybody, right? I'm talking about guys like Bruce State, who wrote the Bitter Java book, Bitter EJB book, and said, that's enough. In fact, if you want to really look back in time, Bruce State is a great guy to look at. He wrote Bitter Java, Bitter EJB, better, faster, lighter Java. You look at his, you know, book titles that kind of tells you his life as a professional. And then he wrote Ruby for Java programmers, right? That's where it's in a rear-view mirror. And he's kind of emigrated to that, and he's gone. But the beauty is this, right? I would call this a period of renaissance, where we started having new languages on the JVM. And all of a sudden, this was different. You didn't have to sell your home. You didn't have to go give away your pets. You didn't have to emigrate to this foreign land. You could sit exactly where you were, comfortably in your chair, and you could reach out. And you could reach out to functional programming. You can reach out to structured programming. Reach out to objective programming. You could do concurrency the way you want it to be done. And all of a sudden, this platform really started supporting multiple paradigms. Java didn't at the time, but other languages kind of started coming in for making this happen. And this was powered to the programmers that wanted to make use of this, right? That's the beauty of this. So there were these languages, like, for example, Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Clojure. I absolutely cannot fit all the languages here. So if there's a language that you really care about and it's not here, well, you can put that in there absolutely. So the way I look at this world is now this way. There is the platform, there is the library, but on top of it, you have these languages' landscape. You got Java, Groovy, Scala, JRuby, Clojure, and you can reach out to them. And this, to me, is democracy in the programming world, right? You're not forced to say, you will use this one language. You pick and choose what you like. And you're not forced to use one. You could mix them based on what you're trying to do. That becomes the power for us. But what was old is suddenly new again. And functional programming has resurrected. In fact, Java 8 is going to be more functional than ever. But we keep talking about function languages. I always wonder, if there are functional languages, does it mean there are non-functional or dysfunctional languages? You kind of wonder, right? So yeah, there are some. But what it really comes to is this. When I introduce programmers to languages, one of the things they immediately talk about is, I don't like that syntax or I like that syntax. And I think both of those are really a wrong way to look at it. And the reason is, a syntax only plays a very small part. You know, I struggle, but I can comfortably program in maybe about eight languages and maybe a little bit more. Everybody could be looking at the same code. We all react to it differently. One person may look at this code and be scared. Another person may look at the elegance at the same time. How could two people look at the same language? One guy's screaming, other guy's like, wow, this is cool. Hey, guess why? That's an art form as well. That's why art is not a standard, right? Different people look at it, react differently as well. And that is there as well. But like I said, it is idioms that make a big difference. Idioms play a very important role. So when you hear things like, it rains cats and dogs. When has it ever rained cats and dogs, right? And you look at this and say, what does that mean? And you kind of wonder, where did these stories come from? Where did these idioms come from? Programming languages sort of like that, right? We use idioms to program. And then that is extremely important to develop things. So when we work with systems, culture is extremely important for us to understand. When you're programming in Scala, by the way, you've got to know how Scala programmers would program. When you program in Groovy, you've got to know how Groovy programs, where you get embarrassed, we get stuck into this world. So it's important for us to know these things as we develop it. But the way I see this is, is it functional programming? And I see this kind of, you know, two divisions of people forming, and that is a bit problematic. Those people who say, OP is great, it's worked so well for so long, why do we want to change it? And then this other camp that says, functional programming rocks, we should never do objects, it is wonderful, that's what we should use. And I believe neither one of them is right. I believe in more of a hybrid model now. And the hybrid model basically is to really bring those two together and utilize them a little bit. Now, of course, this requires a bit of a rethinking on our part. My good friend Stuart Halloway has a blog, I highly recommend you Google for this and read this. It's a very interesting read. He talks about the so-called essence versus ceremony. And this is something we cannot take lightly. As programmers, what do we do? Most of us soldier our way to write code. We are sitting there and writing code in Java or C-sharp, and somebody says, is that a lot of work? You take a deep breath and say, that's life in the big city, what can I do? So we kind of take it upon ourselves a lot of times to do stuff. But what do we do? We entertain ceremony.  And in languages, I'm not really, you know, worried about Java syntax. When I say we got to look at other languages, I'm not worried about Java syntax, I'm fine with Java syntax. Java syntax doesn't hurt me. It is a ceremony that languages like Java can impose, which Java 8 is really trying hard to at least fix partially, if not fully, right? And that is what really damses. And Stuart Holloway talks about how a high ceremony code damses twice. It takes more effort to create this code, but it also takes more effort to maintain such a code. It becomes really hard and it becomes a burden. And those programmers who realize this burden really try to flee from this and saying, I want something else. And those who don't realize this burden become the frog in a boiling pot. You know the story of the frog in the boiling pot, right? There's a water, they put frog in it, it's happy. They turn up the heat and the frog doesn't even know because the heat is slowly increasing until one point it gets boiled. And we do that sometimes because we've been doing that only that we don't even know that the ceremony has just come around us, it's grown around us, right? And we don't have the sense to realize that this has heated up too much. That is very dangerous. How do we solve the problem? Go out, program with somebody who doesn't work in your company, right? Have a group meeting. User groups are extremely important. Form a code retreat and have them challenge you. Look at some other piece of code than you have been working with and see how it bends your mind. And that can show us different ways. You don't have to accept it. I think it was Aristotle who said it's a sign of an educated mind to entertain a thought, an idea, without accepting it. What a great thought. You don't have to accept somebody's idea when you listen to them, right? We're not saying you agree, sign here in blood. Entertain the thought. Just receive it in and say, what does that mean? How would it feel? It's a sign of an educated mind to entertain a thought, an idea without having to accept it. Then you can come back and say, does this make sense? Do I want to make the change? Do I want to adapt it? Now, think about some of these things. This is the dolly, the little sheep that was cloned. Well, cloning. Let's talk about cloning for a minute, right? We all know what cloning is. How would you do cloning in Java for a minute? So I want to clone. What did Java do? Java said, hey, you know what? C++ is horrible. We're going to make Java simpler. Well, what is the problem with C++? Once again, problem with C++ was not the syntax. Problem with C++ was things that you have to know. And if you don't know what will C++ do, you forgot to write a copy constructor. Will the compiler give you an error? Any C++ programmers here? A few of us, right? Would C++ give you an error if you forget a copy constructor? No. What will it do? Potentially make a shallow copy. What will it do if you take a particular data or object and cast it to a wrong type? What will it do? Will it give you a compilation error? No. What does it do? Right? That's the international symbol for, I don't know. Right? This is the beauty, right? If you are a C++ programmer or look at C++ programmers, they get up in the morning and they are eager to go to work. You ask them, why are you so eager to go to work? Because they say, I want to know what the code does today. Because I don't have a clue, right? It is totally unpredictable. I don't know what it's going to do, right? That's what box you down in this language. Unpredictability. You're like, damn, how did that code do that? And you got to go back and fix it. So Java said, no more copy constructors for you. Yay, that's great. But I want to make a copy of an object. How do I do that? Well, you got to implement a clone method. All right, we'll do that. So public, and I'm going to say object, obviously, clone. And I want to clone this. But in this case, I could say return. And I could return maybe return member-wise clone, right? So member-wise clone. Or whatever you want to return, right? You could do that, member-wise clone. What's going to happen when you try to compile this code? You will get a compilation error, right? What does it say? Actually, in this case, I'll just say return null for a minute. Who cares what I return at this moment? I'm going to return that. What does it say? It is going to tell you, well, obviously you can't do this. You got to implement cloneable. So there's a structure to this. Yay, that's great. So I'm going to implement cloneable. Implements cloneable, right? All right, great. We can do that. And what does it tell you now when you try to implement cloneable? It is going to say, excuse me, but you need to handle the exception. What exception do I have to handle? Clone not supported exception. You say, but I am supporting clone. And Java says, but you have to handle the exception called clone not supported exception. The minute I put member-wise clone there, it will say, you got to handle clone not supported exception. But I am doing it. And you find yourselves one afternoon arguing with the Java compiler. Now you know you have hit the lowest point of programming, right? You should never argue with the compiler, right? Then at some point you realize no longer is the compiler working for you, now you're working for the compiler. And you're saying, okay, fine, fine, fine. Let me know what you want. I'll get this done. But Java programmers are clever. They said, fine. If you want that, I will invent an IDE to solve that problem. Then comes Eclipse rolling in. Now you don't have to do any of these, right?  So this is where you can see how the ceremony comes to damage, right? And you finish all of this and you say, what did I spend the last 15 minutes doing? Oh, I was working for the compiler. Now I can do my own work, right? There is absolutely no reason to do this, right? But yet we face this problem quite often in what we try to do. I want to do file operation. How do you do that? Again, this is when, again, the exception handling comes to us. The API comes to us and it can really slow us down. But I want to think about, I want you to think about something else. This is something I did not realize for a long time. There are statements and there are expressions. You see, I've been programming in C++, Java, C sharp. I didn't even know that this distinction really exists in that regard. Then I started programming in language like Ruby. And language like Ruby doesn't have statements. And what does it mean? I want you to just think about this. Close your eyes for a minute and think about it and tell yourself the word statement. How do you feel? Grim, right?  It's a statement given to you. Now who say the word expression? Feels relaxing. She's smiling now. See that? That is a beauty of expression. Expressions make you feel good. Now, I was talking about mutability, right? Mutability is evil. Especially shared mutability is evil. We want to avoid mutability. Now think about this for a minute. I want to write a if statement. What do you do with the if statement? I say, hey, I want to come into this block of code. And within this block of code, I want to say in here, do some work for me. So what am I going to do? If something, right? And then do something. Something happens here. But this is an if statement. So what does a statement do? Statement says, I will do stuff. Thank you, statement. What did you do? I won't tell you. But I need to know what you did. Well, I did something. And I put it over there. You can go get it yourself. So what does it mean? Statements automatically inject mutability in code. Think about that for a minute. Statements are not pure. They have side effects. The minute you call a statement, you said, I have to go set a value somewhere so you can come and get it. So by definition, the by behavior, statements introduce mutability. This is something I didn't realize for a while. And the minute I learned this, I'm like, whoa, look at what I've been doing so far when I program in languages which have statements, automatically I have introduced mutability in code and I know mutability is a bad thing. Why is mutability a bad thing? Mutability is a bad thing means there are moving parts. Michael Feathers. Michael Feathers tweeted one day. He said, oh, programming is about encapsulating moving parts. Functional programming is about eliminating moving parts. What a great way to think, right? You're not encapsulating moving parts anymore. You're eliminating moving parts. Why? Moving parts cause trouble. Moving parts cause bugs.  The other day somebody showed me a code. He said, this is my code. I can't maintain this anymore. Please, why doesn't this work? And I'm reading this code. It's only 10 lines of code. I'm reading it, reading it, reading it. And eventually, oh my goodness, you took the input variable and you modified it. And your brain doesn't accept it at this point. You're in denial this happened. And in fact, this guy wrote the code and his brain doesn't even process that. So mutability is bad, but statements promote mutability. Actually, statements impose mutability. What are expressions? An expression says, I will do stuff and I'll give you the result back. And as a result, you can use that result, right? So if you're programming in a language like Scala or Groovy or Ruby, you could do this. You could say, for example, let's say age equals, let's say 20. I could say if age is greater than 17, I could say can vote. Otherwise what else? I could say go home kid, right? So this is, and I could simply say over here, for example, vote or not equals, I could then put the if statement through it, right? And then when I'm done with it, I could say vote or not and I can ask him vote or not, right? So basically the idea really behind this is you are able to write an expression in the code essentially in this particular case. So this is basically saying I'm going to have an age property and this is going to give us an expression of some kind and whatever this is going to return, I could put this into a function and this is going to return and that's going to return a value. And if I were to, you know, roll this into a function, for example, define this as a function and I'm going to put this into this code, notice I'm not mutating variables at this point and I could say, you know, age, let's say 20, I'll pass that as a value in this case and this is going to be the age value that's coming in. So we are asking him what's the value in this case? Notice I didn't mutate the variable, right? So why? Because if is an expression. The minute you realize it, you say, whoa, languages that only have expressions are superior because they hurt you less. Whereas languages that, you know, separate expressions from functions really begin to damn us. So when I look at a language, I don't want to look at the syntax. That's the least interesting to me. Hey, does the language have statements in it? Yes, I want to step away a little bit from it, right? Because it's going to force mutability on me. That's the view I want to have about how these things look like. Am I making sense? Right? So that is something to think about in terms of how the languages are going to influence us, what we do. But I'll complain about languages, by the way. But you know what? It's human nature to complain, would you agree? But if you complain about it in mother-in-law, you get in trouble with the wife. I figured it's safe to complain about languages, right? Only a few people really get upset at the time. And that's okay. These are professionals that can stay upset. And I complain about languages endlessly. You tell me a language. I was giving a talk in Java 1. My talk was on Scala, by the way. I was giving my talk, and I said, hey, but let me tell you something funny about Scala. And I was going to call out on something really silly in Scala. There were 300 people in the room. And my eyes locked on somebody right in the middle of the room. And I said, oh, wait a minute. Oops, I don't think I want to say it anymore. Because it was the man in the room, right? It was Martin Odorski, the guy who wrote Scala. And of course, knowing Martin, he's the most genuine guy I ever know. He says, bring it on. I would much rather hear it from you so I can go do something about it. I complain about every language. People think. And people think that I only favor one language. I wrote Book on Groovy. And then people came to me and said, oh, you like Groovy. And I wrote a book on Scala. They said, no, you don't like Groovy anymore. You like Scala. How did you know that? My good friend Scott Davis probably is the one who really has the trick. He turned on the camera and he said, Venkat, I want to interview you. I said, sure, what do you want to talk about? He said, I don't know what I want to talk about. Hey, I've got a question for you. I said, yeah, and I was totally unprepared. He said, you wrote a book on Groovy. Do you really know that you're seeing other languages? I was shocked. I said, I mean, how do we respond to it? I said, you know what? I'll be in trouble if these were girlfriends. But fortunately, they are really good friends. And I really, really believe it. I do believe we can mix and match these languages. They're not exclusive. And so why should I say I want this language and not that language, right? So after all the complaints, I would say one thing I like about these languages is I have a lot of respect for these languages. Why? Because I fundamentally believe that every language leaves a mark. Every language leaves a mark. If you ask me, do I have respect for C++, I have the utmost respect for C++. So much that I don't code it anymore. I put it on the pedestal. No, I'm just kidding here. I do like it. I code in C++ if I have to. Nothing wrong with that, right? But C++ has made a big difference. What are those? Beyond Struister, the gentleman who created C++, he created C++. He was working on his dissertation and he was trying to program his highly concurrent application and he found out that it was very hard for him to do this. And so he tried to program in Simula. And it was really slow. It was so slow, he was scared that he would never be able to graduate because the program would not complete on time. Then he wrote it in a C-like language. Boy, it ran fast. But it was all buggy and all that. Once he graduated, went to AT&T labs and they said, why don't you sit back here and think about what you want to do. And he said, wouldn't it be so cool if I can have a language that was fast and furious and provided a paradigm. You see, once you go back to the history of why things happened, then you are learning the culture of it. Now you no longer have the apathy to it. You are like, oh, I see why you had done this. When C++ was coming out, performance was a big concern. They didn't need a whole language. Small talk was there for that. Other languages were there for that. But all the languages had one thing in common. They were slow. If you study the V-table of C++, what a marvelous idea. Your polymorphic calls were just two steps away in memory calls. What a great performance. And so C++ said, performance first, accuracy later. That was a design decision. And so if you don't mark a function virtual, it was not virtual. Why? Not because beyond Stubb didn't know what he was doing. It is because that performance overhead was now acceptable. Why? If you have ever programmed a 1980 processors, you would know that, right? It was slow. Not that machines are very fast now. That's called Thomas law. And that says that no matter how fast the machines become, your operating system and other applications suck it down. But machines were really slow back then. And that was really hard. And so C++ was created. So a way to think about C++ is amazingly fast, but incredibly dangerous. But that was by design, the language design decision. Beyond Stubb says that this was a language that will give you a loaded gun to shoot yourself in the foot. And many people have done that. I have scars in my body because of that. Where I've done C++ programming and I've shot myself over. But then came along Java. Okay, so what was the contribution of C++? I said languages leave a mark. What is the mark? C++ made OOP mainstream. Hands down, right? OOP has been around for a long time. Most corporate programmers won't touch it. What did it do? It said, you don't have to learn a thing. Hey, I know C. No problems, see you tomorrow. Right? You can code this. So can I start coding in C with C++? Absolutely. Then what do I do? Gradually make the transition. And you can go towards OOP. I'm not talking about perfection here. I'm talking about what the reality was. And you could take what you do and what you know and you could do this incrementally. And that's what really helped. Programmers become mainstream. Why? You didn't go to them and say, fundamentally change your way. You said do what you do and slowly start changing what you do. And people said, I can handle that.  But I can slowly start changing things, right? Absolutely. That's powerful, right? That is great for corporate programmers. Then came along Java. What did Java do? Java said, hey, OOP is mainstream now. No longer do we have to sell OOP to the world. Great. Machine performance is not big deal anymore. Great. Then what do we want to do? We want to ease development. We will simplify this, okay? Can you believe this? Can somebody remind me why we all got excited about Java? Scary, right? No. Applets. This is silly, but we were like, woo. You could put applets on the browser. This is 1994 browsers. Browsers were new at the time, right? And what is shocking to me is we got infatuated with Java for client side. And where's the power of Java today? On the server side. Wow. What a difference. So what was Java's contribution? Intention was something, sure. But to me, the main thing that Java did was it brought garbage collection to the mainstream. Once again, OOP has been around for a long time. C++ brought it to the mainstream. Garbage collection. Hey, which language had garbage collection? Lisp did decades ago.  It said it's practical. We could do this. I remember sitting in corporate offices where they said Java would suck. It would never perform.  And look at what Java did. The virtual machine has just become vibrant.  So the point I'm getting to is I want to see languages differently.  To me, languages, I view them as what are called bridge languages. So what is a bridge language in my opinion? A bridge language is a language that helps me cross the chasm. It is not a destination for me. It is a pathway towards something different, something better. Most of the coders today are using OOP, not because they are programming C++, but they are doing it because there was C++ as the bridge. Today you wouldn't really entertain a language which doesn't have automatic garbage collection. Even Objective C does today. Why? Because Java did that bridging for us and said you can have automatic garbage collection and fully decent performance most of the time. So I view these as bridge languages. Bridge languages make us cross this chasm, the paradigm. And now we turn around and say look where we are. But this doesn't mean we have arrived at the destination, but we have moved. We have changed and we are moving forward, right? And when you look at languages as bridge languages, you tend to accept languages much more willingly than saying I don't like it. I don't want to touch it. It's not a destination. You're not in bondage going into it, right? That I think is the power. So the new bridge languages on the JVM for me are JRuby, Groovy, Scala, Closure. These are, but not all these are doing the same thing. That's the fun part of this. So they all share one thing in common and that is they are all concise. They're all highly expressive and they're all functional style. That is one of the key things. So what does it mean? Well, the first thing is in a functional programming, you got immutability. You have pure functions. What is a pure function? A pure function is a function that has no side effects. It has no side effects. What does it mean? It has no side effects. It doesn't go, you know, mess with something around on the other side. You may say, why is it such a bad idea to mess with things? Well, you first know that the code you write is not the code that runs, right? The code you write is compiled into bytecode. But then that's only one compiler. Then comes the jit compiler, the just in time compiler. That compiles it further. An enormous amount of optimization happens in the code. But for the compiler, the jit compiler to optimize your code, what does it need? It says, I need to make sure this is correct. And if your program, if your code, if your expression, if your function is having side effects, the compiler says, whoa, this is pretty messy. I don't think I can rearrange and optimize this so easily. And it can do less optimization.  Now you say, all right, that's cool. But what benefit does it have for us? The functional programming paradigm really came from the, you know, lambda calculus. But this has really, really huge benefits if I could borrow this from you. So the idea is this. I've got expression one here on my hand. I've got expression two on my hand. Imagine these two expressions are independent of each other. They don't relate to each other in any ways. And what you have is you're taking the result of these two and doing some operation further down in the chain. If you are the compiler and you know that these two functions are pure, you say, hey, look, this is interesting. This is expression one. This is expression two.  And then I'm going to run expression two. Is there a problem with that? Not at all. Or I say, hmm, there is actually a benefit in terms of whatever that I'm trying to optimize for. And I think I should run expression two first. And then that was after all not so pure. And then run expression two, right? Is there a problem? Not at all. The result is exactly the same. Or I'm the JIT compiler right just in time. I'm about to optimize this code.  Look what I found. There are two cores in front of me. Why do I have to run them sequentially? I'm going to give this to core one. And I'm going to give this to core two. And run them concurrently. Did we lose anything? No, we gained performance. Look at the optimization the compiler can do. The JIT compiler can do when it knows that these are pure. What I just explained is called referential transparency. It can relocate things really well. And it gives us a real good performance. And we got all the benefits. But all that relies on one single thing. That the code is pure. So what does it mean pure?  You send something in and it gives you something out. And while it's running, it doesn't sneak around and change some data elsewhere. While it's running, it doesn't pull data that keeps changing. Right? What is the benefit? I explained one benefit. Referential transparency, multi-threading concurrency can help. But there is another benefit to this. It is easy to prove the correctness of this code. Mathematicians care about it. You say, I don't care. I live on the edge. What fun is it if the program just works? Well, it's easy to unit test that code because there are fewer moving parts in this code. Look at the benefit, right? That is functional style on one hand. The first is to evaluate the risk versus the reward. Be unemotional, by the way. Don't get emotional. Be unemotional. Don't take it personal. This is purely evaluating. Right? That's what you're doing. And you're saying, I'm going to evaluate this. I'm not committing to anything, but I'm going to assess the risk and the reward. If the reward's outweigh the risk, why shouldn't I go forward? It's only for a good, greater good. Now, change is hard. By the way, here's a small thing to think about. Think about early 1900s. This, by the way, is Salt Lake City right here. And that, by the way, is Cheyenne, Wyoming. The only problem is right in between is the Rocky Mountains. Very difficult to cross. And at this time, weather changes rapidly in this area of region. Rocky Mountains can get clouded up. In the summer, you could have snow, by the way. And as a result, they were having trains and trucks and all those good stuff that was going around this place. And wouldn't it be great to fly? Now, think about back in the early 90s. They did not have the technology they did today. They didn't even have maps. In fact, you know how the airplanes took off and went? They would take off the airplane and they would follow the railway track. I'm not kidding with you. Because they deviate from the railway track, they will get lost. And there were crashes and people died. And at this time, you would say, man, think about this. We live in a safety of an office. We are programming on the compiler. The worst thing that happens is we get a compilation error.  And a guy named Jepsen, the Denver airport is named after this guy. And Jepsen said, I'm going to fly these airplanes. He was 19 years old. He got his pilot license from the great, I'm just blanking out. Who was the one who did the Wilbur Brothers? He got the pilot license from them completely blanking out. Absolutely. And then he said, I'm going to fly this. You know what he did? He said, I'm going to fly it. And he started taking notes. And he created the first chart. His company eventually became United Airlines, the one I fly the most. And they adopted his charts as the first. In fact, the pilots would pay him $10 to buy his charts from him. And that became the standard eventually. He created this company. Don't do anything new. I'm at a disadvantage. A smart company makes one team do stuff.  You go try out that. You go try out that. Come back in a month and tell me what you found. We can learn a great deal from the bees. What do the bees do? The bees have what's called a forage. They go out looking for honey. Not all of them are going to find honey. Some of them will find honey. But some of them may find more honey. And they come back and they give up dance.  But they dance. They dance. And the bees that found the most honey has the most brilliant dance. And the rest of them abandon what they did and they follow it. This is exactly how corporations have to run. You send out these people. Your workers are like the bees, right? Why? We are hard-working people. That's what we do. You're sitting there day and night struggling with the compilers. What else is it? But let them say, go on. Try out these.    Try it. Come back and show us what you found. Then we will decide after the dance happens and we'll compare and move on. And what's the benefit? We can pick up new technologies that will change the world for us. So, as an individual, what can you do? So, here is an interesting thing to think about. The electorate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. If you ask me, what do I do every day? This is what I do. I learn and I unlearn and I relearn. Or I struggle to do that. Let me put it that way. But this is extremely important. And if we don't do that, that's what makes us illiterate in the modern world. Not that you cannot read, but that you cannot or more important, you're unwilling to unlearn and then relearn. We can learn something from the Pavlo's dogs. He was doing the experiment. This man, by the way, is the one known for learning about the digestive system. And he learned it by studying dogs. He found something very interesting. He was observing dogs and he noticed that when the nurses or the assistants would come into the office, these nurses were feeding the dogs. And over time, the nurses or the assistants would just come in and the dogs would start salivating automatically. But they didn't have food with them. The sight of these people coming and they were salivating. By no means am I comparing us to dogs. We are more intelligent. But we have the salivation, by the way. We like stuff. We like to play with things. So build the environment where you will reward people for salivating about trying new ideas. Look at the corporate culture we can build when we do that, right? The environment changes our behavior. Where do you work? What kind of office do you have? What's your environment? Do you geek out with your colleagues? That makes a difference. One thing we should definitely avoid is that, right? Where do you say, I don't want to talk to anybody. I don't want to look at anybody. I don't want to listen to anybody. I will sit there and code away. This is a problem for us because we don't learn. I love going to conferences. I go to user groups. I hang out with people. Why? I end up learning from you guys. I was out in the corridor this early this morning and somebody said something. I said, wait a minute. I'm intrigued by what you're saying. I did not think about it that way. I want to go play with this a little bit more. There's osmosis, right? The worst thing that will happen to us when we interact with people is we become better. That is the beauty of what we do. So go ahead and collaborate, find people, and tell them, hey, what have you done recently? What are you playing with? Do you want to come over? Do you want to sit down? Maybe this evening we can pair up and program with something. We both suck at it, but we can get better at it by trying it together, right? And then invite people to do that and see what happens. There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risk and cost of comfortable inaction. The worst thing we can do is not do anything. We are so worried, oh, what if I fail? And this really bothers me. Why are we not trying new things? Oh, I don't want to fail. Look at a toddler. The toddler falls down 100 times a day. When my children were toddlers, my wife and I agreed on something. When my children fall down, we'll pretend we didn't see. We'll kind of take a look and make sure they're not bleeding, right? We'll pretend that we didn't see them. The first day the child falls down, looks up. If you make an eye contact, the child immediately cries. Oh, baby, did you fall down? Immediately, it cries even more. Not because of anything. It sees a six-foot figure rushing towards. It's scared to heck, right? Leave children alone. See what they do. They don't cry. My children never cried when they fell down, unless they were terribly hurt.  And then we become adults. And the minute we slip, we say, oh, my God, I'm embarrassed. I couldn't fail. Why should failure be such an embarrassment? It only means we are learning. So go ahead and try things. If they work, you learn. If they didn't work, you learn more. In fact, I get worried when things work because the days things don't work. At the end of eight hours, I come out and say, boy, there were so many things I learned because it did not work. In fact, sometimes I pray that it doesn't work when I tried the first time because I can learn so many things along the way when I'm trying it, right? So that is the benefit we get. So let's not stay put. Let's not be afraid. Let's go rock the world. Thank you.


The 8 Best Countries in Asia for Teaching English Abroad Asia is a premier destination for English teachers due to the ease of travel between countries, good salaries, extra benefits, free flights, free housing, and the abundance of available jobs. Teaching English Overseas provides unlimited opportunities for English speakers from all backgrounds to live, work, and travel overseas. Here are the best countries in Asia to teach English as a foreign language in 2018. Vietnam, the land of the ascending dragon It's no wonder that Vietnam is currently one of the top locations to teach English abroad. Beautiful landscapes, vibrant cities, and a fascinating culture make the country a true gem. The capital Ho Chi Minh City has a vast job market with hundreds of English-language schools that hire English teachers year-round. The low cost of living makes it possible for teachers to live comfortably and also save some hard-earned cash each month. Employers prefer hiring native English speakers and those with a Teflor or T-cell certification. Check out our Vietnam Country Guide for more information about life in Vietnam and take a look at our in-class course option in Ho Chi Minh. Japan, the land of the rising sun Japan is one of the best places to start out your EFL career. Many teachers work through the government jet program which has been successfully in place for decades. Japan's alluring culture and amazing natural wonders make it a wonderful place to live and work. The high salaries and attractive benefits such as end-of-year bonuses, paid airfare, and healthcare make it possible to live a comfortable lifestyle. It is true that the cost of living in Japan has risen in recent years especially in the big cities, but the country is still an attractive option for teaching overseas. Sign up for our in-class Teflor T-cell course in Tokyo and check out our Japan Country Guide. South Korea, the land of the morning calm Each year around 24,000 native English speakers work as English teachers in South Korea. The country is especially popular due to the high teacher salaries allowing you to live a comfortable lifestyle and easily save 1,000 US dollars a month or more after expenses. Paid housing, 2-4 weeks paid vacation and great health insurance coverage are waiting for those who decide to work in South Korea. It is worth noting that currently only those who hold a passport of an English-speaking country are able to work as English teachers in South Korea. Check out our South Korea Country Guide and sign up for one of our online courses to get an advantage over the competition. We also have a brand new combined course option with 10 days of training and soul. Thailand, the land of smiles Thailand's exotic culture and diverse landscape make it a popular option for teaching English abroad. Being a major hub for travel in Southeast Asia anyone eager to explore this part of the world will have a wonderful time living and working in Thailand. While you might not get rich teaching in Thailand salaries are comparably high for the region allowing you to live a comfortable lifestyle. Should you wish to save a few extra dollars a month many teachers top up their salaries with private tutoring. Sign up for our in-class courses in Bangkok, Phuket or Chiang Mai and check out our Thailand Country Guide. We also offer our popular combined course option in Phuket and Bangkok. China, the land of the Red Dragon In recent years one of the best locations to teach English as a foreign language is China. With over 300 million English learners across the nation the demand for qualified teachers is through the roof. Every year over 100,000 foreign teachers work in China. Added to that are the lucrative benefits on offer including free housing, paid airfare and a comparably good salary. The low cost of living lets teachers live a comfortable life while saving a bit of money each month. Check out our China Country Guide and our four training centers for high quality in-class training in Beijing, Shanghai, Chuhai or Chongqing. Also read our related article Five Reasons Why You Should Teach English in China Taiwan, the Treasure Island Taiwan has been one of the more popular destinations for teaching English abroad for several years and with good reason. This fascinating country in the tropics of East Asia combines rich cultural heritage with high tech modernity. While the cost of living in Taiwan is higher than in some other parts of Southeast Asia teachers are still able to save a great deal each month. Taiwan offers good pay and benefits for TEFL certified English teachers with a salary between $2,220 US dollars and $2,730 US dollars per month. Check out our Taiwan Country Guide and sign up for one of our online courses to get an advantage over the competition. Cambodia, the land of peace and prosperity. Despite its small size, Cambodia is one of the fastest growing EFL markets in the region. Especially for teachers without a degree and those who aren't native English speakers, Cambodia offers bright job opportunities. The demand for qualified teachers is high throughout the country and salaries are rising. On top of that, the low cost of living ensures a relaxed lifestyle. Get started by taking an in-class TEFL certification course in CMREP or Kokong City, Cambodia. Learn more about living and teaching in Cambodia in our Country Guide. Russia, the land of the SARS. Another newcomer on the EFL market is Russia. Being the largest country in the world, there are seemingly unlimited opportunities for both native and fluent English speakers. A TEFL certificate is almost always required by schools in Russia. Moscow and St. Petersburg have the most teaching positions and the highest salaries, but the demand for teachers is high all over the country. Get started and take our four-week in-class TEFL certification course in Moscow, Russia and find out more about living and working in Russia in our Country Guide. Hong Kong, the pearl of the Orient. Since English is an official language in Hong Kong due to its British colonial past, the demand for qualified teachers is very high. However, employers tend to only hire native English speakers and those with a TEFL certificate. The salaries and benefit packages in Hong Kong are lucrative, with most teachers getting paid airfare and housing near their school. Get started and take our four-week in-class TEFL certification course in Hong Kong and find out more about living and working in Hong Kong in our Country Guide. Singapore, the lion city. Similar to Hong Kong, one of Singapore's four official languages is also English. On top of that, Singapore is a major epicenter for international trade and the exchange of ideas. However, the cost of living is the most expensive in the region. This also means that teachers earn a much higher monthly salary than in many other Asian nations. For example, a salary of $4,000 a month for experienced teachers is not uncommon. Get started and take our four-week in-class TEFL certification course in Singapore and find out more about living and working in Singapore in our Country Guide. Are you ready to teach English in Asia? Asia is a popular region for teaching English as a foreign language due to its fascinating cultures and natural beauty. Being based in Asia will allow you to not only explore the country you have made your new home, but also all the other vibrant nations in this part of the world. Apply now for your TEFL or TESOL certification course and start teaching in a matter of months. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll-free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.