Manuel Carrasco Molina, aka Stuff MC, politician, activist and iOS developer

Manuel has been programming since he got his C64 in 1987. He also has been a local politician in Germany and an activist for many years. Whether for the cause of the environment or helping Refugees on the road, Manuel is eager to make an impact. He loves giving ethical talks at technical conferences.

• Manuel on Twitter
• Manuel's "About Me" page

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:46

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with stuff MC, I'm allowed to call him stuff. His normal name is Manuel. But we'll probably dig into what's the deal with what the stuff handle? So I'm very curious. I know him like, a little bit on and off over the years. I know he did some conferences back in the day. Apparently, I'm told he also did a podcast like ages ago. So this, I think, plenty of stuff to dig into. And first of all, you're also an iOS developer, right?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 1:23

Yeah, actually, I'm a real iOS developer. I probably sounds weird to a lot of people. But I would say I became an iOS developer. When the when the iPhone arrived, when I that's the funny part of it is when I was doing my podcast about Apple ages ago, as you mentioned, I was back in the day still a dotnet. developer. So which is the funny the funny story and, and the irony is that the day I became an iOS developer, I kind of stopped doing the podcasts about Apple, because I wouldn't have time anymore to the podcast or whatever. So it's kind of funny that, that that that now? Yeah, but I'm also kind of still trying to come back to the podcast, think so.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:13

So just people who who look you up online, they will most likely find plenty of conference talks that you've given over the years. But what I noticed with all the conference talks that you do is that there's always like this. Yes, it's about technical content. But you also have like this bit of activism going on with pretty much anything you do. So can you share a little bit about that? What's the what's the idea with that with you? Yeah,

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 2:41

what the gist of it is, back in the days when I was doing the podcast. So I'm talking like we started podcasting in 2005. Or I started the podcast, season five, I was just an apple nerd, I was just a fan of Apple. So when I, when I started this podcast back in 2005, which is called podcast by the way upon because of apple and French, so P Om cst.com, that still exists. I was just basically an apple nerd, I was just somebody enjoying the apple technologies. But then, over the course of the years, like people change, I started being more and more political. And in 2011, I joined the Green Party. And then in 2014, I was in this city council of the city of Kaplan, which is near the humble forest. And so I got to know all those environmental activists that were in the forest, they were basically in the trees since two years. And so I get to meet a lot of people understand a lot of the stuff, which is the reason why after a while I became vegan, and all the stuff that I do today, and I kept on being involved into politics now I'm still in the, in the city council in another city, and also in the regional council. So I'm very much an actual, like, local politician. But I also consider myself a part of, of the whole activism world, and as bubbles. And so I, because I'm an I'm a developer, I always wanted to kind of marry both, you know, like, find a solution to all the problems that we are partly generating as, as, as an IT world. And, and so and, and I, I also probably because I'm one of those imposter syndrome. People so I, every time I give, like a technical talk, I always think like, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I think everybody does. And so I kind of found my niche in in speaking about more and more ethical stuff. And so I wrote a book about privacy. And but so when I was doing this talk about privacy that was, was half political and ethical stuff and half API's, like showing out you. Then I did did a talk a couple of years ago, about energy optimization. And so but it was still again, like half ethical and half showing API showing how to do in Xcode. I even, like had the opportunity to write a book about this about energy optimization, but I skipped on that because I knew how much of work it was to write a book. And long story short, I realized more and more over the course of the years and discussing with friends of mine, that that the politician or the activist was hiding Behind the developer. And it's so funny because on one side, I have this impulsive syndrome, where I don't find, I think that I'm not taking technical enough, I don't know enough about Swift or architecture, all this stuff. But at the same time, I didn't feel brave enough to just go on the stage as a politician much more than then than a developer. So I finally decided, really, two things, I decided, number one, I don't want to hide myself anymore. On behind API's, and the number two thing is, I want to go to other conferences than just iOS conference, I want to leave that that cozy world that I really love about Apple, for the sake of, of spreading the message way bigger, because if you only target the iOS folks, then you're going to touch 1% of the, you know, of this IoT world. Whereas if I decide to go at a lot of developer conference with potentially even an IT conference with doesn't have to do anything for developers, I will touch much more people. And at the same time, I think that me by being part of this world, being a developer, most probably a lot of people will give me credit much more than if I was like a regular politician, which, you know, like, doesn't have anything to do with technology.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:17

So and just just to condense it down a little bit, what are some of the topics that you are concerned about in relation to technology in it? Yeah.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 7:29

Well, it's what's basically two to like two pillars, it's the whole privacy stuff, which I talked in my book, and then the whole energy consumption, environment, co2 production, and all this stuff. And so it's, it's really both of them have have not a lot to do with each other, except that they have a lot of time the same kind of people working on those subjects. And it's, there's a third one, which doesn't have a lot to do with it, but which I am really fond of, is I'm also a refugees activist, or being helping refugees in many countries, and you find the same people again, whether it's talking about privacy, and obviously privacy, and you know, security and those kinds of stuff is is obviously very important in in activism, but also also for protecting refugees. You know, this is why this is why privacy is so important. And this is why the debate about some politicians, including the ones in my side, willing to kind of get a grasp or interfere with stuff like Telegram, which on a on a on a on a way is good. But on the other. On the other hand, you have to be careful not to do it the way with, you know, with backdoors, because then it could be dangerous for other people. And so and so I know that that the IT world is hiding a lot of problems. So to say behind the scenes, like I know, the amount of energy that we are potentially consuming is a problem. So I just want to raise attention on some some topics. And I think if we speak about it, then and I'm not bringing all the solutions. But if we speak about it, then my hope is always that, that some people will be impacted by that and will make decisions in their own life, but also their companies.

Jeroen Leenarts: 9:30

So it's really like, focused on creating awareness within groups of people that are in some way. Active with software development. Yes. Or it in some capacity. Yeah.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 9:43

Yeah. Because I've been myself. I mean, I know myself where I'm from, like, I know, like, like 10 years ago, or, or I wouldn't have been stuff that I consider super important today, like plant foods, plant based food wasn't important to me. 10 years ago, I was I was the first one to make jokes about about vegetarians, obviously. So I know, it's um, it's like that with everything in life. People are a different stage of their life, and they do different stuff. And also, they are things that you might have seen were important 10 years ago or more that you thought were important, and then you don't do anymore. Because Because life so yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:31

yeah, people change and you gain new perspective, just truly experiences that you come across in your life. Yeah. But you as an iOS developer. Over the years you've been pretty busy, right? Because how long have you been doing software developments in the broader sense.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 10:48

So yeah, so I, I studied in Belgium actually, I'm, I live in Germany since 19 years. No, but I'm originally from Belgium, I studied at, yeah, in another in another century. And we see, I know, in another millennium. So I went out of school in 97. And, yes, so I've been a professional software developer since 97. So it's like 23 years, 24 years, whatever, a lot of time. And so I basically I was straight, at that time back in the days into the Microsoft world, like Visual Basic, and stuff like that, and then went into dotnet. And, like, after I did, like, the legacy ASP stuff, I went to ASP dotnet stuff, did some C sharp, and discovered the Mac, around, also the year 2000. But only the Mac as like, as a user, and that did this, this podcast, but I couldn't not really, I couldn't really start on the platform. Because everybody who has went the path of Learning Objective C know that it was, it wasn't an easy path, especially coming from dotnet. And, you know, I had to learn about pointers and memory management and stuff like that. So every time that I tried, I remember back in the days, it was kind of painful, because I tried and then I, I, I failed miserably. And try it again, six months later and fell again. And then because of the podcast, I get to interview a lot of, of developers. And I get to be friended with a lot of of those. And, and so they, they, yeah, when I actually started in 2008. I don't this is probably my biggest luck is every time I had a question, there was somebody somewhere in the world that was ready to enter my stupid question.

Jeroen Leenarts: 12:51

Yeah. And how did you stay in contact with these individuals that you met through your podcast, so some

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 12:58

of them became real friends, like, amazingly amazing, good friends, like I was mentioning just before we started recording, the people from Ecamm, he cannot come so they do this, this product, which is pretty great, which is Ecamm live. So it's canon gland to two twins from from Boston. And they're amazing human beings. And we, we after I record an interview with them, I obviously met them at the DC so everybody will tell you the same stories about that people, people know each other over some random podcast or on Slack or whatever. And then they get to meet in San Francisco once a year that was back in the day is like that, at least. Which from from an environmental perspective is another topic. It's not It's I always say I I have been taking flights in our for a few lives up until I decided not to fly anymore. But so so yeah, I met those those those people at various conferences. Obviously, you have affinity with with different people. And so and also, the other thing that I really liked about dub dub and about this community is that it allows me to have to, like do some touch base on all the countries and the languages that I speak. And so all of those different communities, whether it's Germany, France, or, or the US or Spain, they're all kind of different. And I really enjoy to keep in touch with all those people.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:36

You already mentioned that. You met a lot of people through your podcast online, but you've also organized your own conferences, right? Yeah. So what what was the what was the idea there? Why why did you at some point, like, wake up Sunday and think like, yeah, organizing conference? Sounds like a good idea. And then afterwards, you have some insight in the process. And you actually do it again.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 15:02

Yeah, well, so actually, it was a good idea. And I don't regret any any second of that, because it wasn't amazing, right? So the gist of it is dub dub again, and then NS conference. So NS conferences for most of us, like the mother of all doesn't exist anymore, sadly. But there was, I think, eight or nine of it. And Scotty organized the first NS Conference, which at the beginning was even called the Mac Developer Network or whatever. In 2009, I think and I went to the UK or over there, I think the first one and then went again, and then after, when I was there for I think for the third Time in 2011 I was thinking like, Oh, that would be also awesome if there was something like that in Europe, but like in actual Europe, not in the UK. So in continental Europe, and it turns out it's so funny, because up until that they, there was a bunch of conferences in, in the US like, like small conference in the US. Like Ay ay ay ay 263 60 IDEV. And stuff like that already existed back in the days and, and C four is like, a legendary conference organized by Wolf Ranch, which is an amazing developer and an amazing human being. And so I was thinking like, okay, so I should organize something like that. At home. And, yeah, I same as we podcast, which was the first podcast about Apple and French because nobody thought about doing a podcast about Apple. And when nobody knew what a podcast was in 20, in 2005, I just found a niche and and started, what I then called objective cologne. Because the language was called Objective C, and because it was in Cologne, which is the biggest city near which I live. And so I started it. And I think my biggest luck was two things in terms of budget, because when you run a conference, you like a physical conference, you need some money is number one thing is is colonias pretty cheap, if you compare it to. I kind of know what, how much money the guys from French kids need to run a conference in Paris. And number two is I had a bunch of friends from the podcast. And so I call all those friends I called I called the twins I called Jason Harris. I called Altman ganz I called all the people that I that I kind of knew since many years, and I asked them, would you come to my conference, obviously, for free? And so yeah, I and and I think it's really hard to recall because it's 2012. But I think the first one, I didn't have to pay anything. I think even everybody paid for themselves for the for the so it was a good kickstart for me. Yeah, so it was was fun. And then it went for a couple of years after and so the current name of the conference is actually Swift, Swift, calm, because obviously, we have to rename the conference because Apple renamed their language. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:14

yeah. So is the is the conference still a thing that that that has some mindshare with you? Is it something that you think, Okay, once world conditions permit, there's going to be another one, or what's the deal? So I,

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 18:28

I actually, I left the conference at the previous company. So I left it there. So I started working for for the company, which ran the conference the last years in 2014. And it's funny because, you know, the conference is one of those pet project that you do just, you know, just for fun. And you think it's it's probably going to be an interesting reference. And maybe you can get a gig because people know you over the conference. But when I was interviewing for this, this company back in the days where they hired me as their first senior iOS developer, they told me actually, oh, you know, we've seen that you organize a conference. And if you want, maybe we can organize it together, like you organize it with with our money. And so that's what we did for a couple of years. And then when I, when I left, when I left the company, I actually said, You know what, you can organize the conference further, because I've done that a couple of years now, I've been there, done that, I want to do something else, I need some. And so I left there, but sadly, so the last one was 2019 swisscom.com, the website is still showing the conference from 2019. I love those websites, which never get updated. And because they decided that they won't make an online version during the pandemic. So I found that it's a pity but I had kind of lost control of that, that it's it's like kind of my old CTO, which was running that I had though, next colleague running that also properly. But when when I just changed companies last year, I actually took back my colleague from the company. So now there is nobody running this conference over there. So Swift is for the moment I in in the I don't know state.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:16

Yeah, that's that that happens with with conferences. Pretty much had like similar experience as well with do iOS in Amsterdam. So that was a conference that I organized with my then employee, employer, and then the second edition. I actually didn't work at the company anymore, but they hired me as an external consultant. Yeah. And then it went dormant for a few years and then just like, just, I picked up the phone and call them like, hey, like all these assets of this conference may be 20. For over to this nice nonprofit I have here. Yeah. So that's the Dutch cocoa hats and then, and then they would Yeah, whatever here, we'll just send it over and sign everything over. It was like done within like 20 minutes. And I was like, seriously? So sometimes that's funny,

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 21:00

I actually tried to get back to conference last year or the year before, even because I was kind of, I was kind of, like, annoyed that nothing was happening with my baby, you know, because I was, I left the baby in a good family. But then the family stopped taking care of the baby. Yeah, so I just actually asked, so can I get the conference back? And so, and they actually told me nicely, that they would still like to do something out of this, but obviously don't do. So I actually have kind of Pallone Bay, I have something in the back of my mind the idea of another conference, but obviously online, to be honest with you, I mean, even though there will sure be real conferences and in the future. And actually, I was in last September, I think in Paris. At a conference, I think if my, if I organize myself a conference, I'd rather do it online, on Zoom or something, for for many reasons. And I guess the main one is that I know how much work it is to organize a conference in real, like, you need to take care of the food and, and you need to put people in hotels and whatnot. And also from an environmental perspective, it's it's kind of a tricky one to organize a real conference nowadays, because you're gonna have people flying for all over the world. And if the speakers you get kind of get to decide where they're from, but if some random American thing that your conference is awesome, is flying to your conference, it's kind of tricky. So. Yeah, so it's I if I ever do a conference, I think it's going to be online.

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:47

Yeah. Because that's, that's the environmental impact. That's just so huge with with plane travel. Really? Because you mentioned earlier already, yeah. That, that you have, like, made it a goal for yourself to never fly an airplane anymore in your life. So I

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 23:04

don't think it's, I think at one point, I will have to fly but yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:09

So but it does mean that you like what are transportation options that are available to you then in your in your view? Because of course, you can take the car, the train, maybe the maybe your bicycle, but But yeah, you can pretty much then you can cover a lot of ground, you can basically end up in in China if you want to, but it takes time. So what's the what's standing the limit of your of your travels then that you consider to be like, yeah, acceptable? And it of course, depends a lot on the mode of transportation, I guess.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 23:43

So it's, it's, it's, it's a lot the same, like the question about food like, like, you know, if, if I mistakenly bite in, in meat thinking that is soya, that's it, I even if I, even if I eat it, I won't, you know, I won't regret it and and slap myself for the next 20 years, I would just go over it. It means what I'm saying trying to say is if I have to take a plane in the future, I will have to, and I will do so. But I'm trying to reduce as much as I can. And I'm trying to extend that period of non flying as long as it lasts. It has been now I think three years last time was I think, October 2018. And obviously, it limits the travel options. So to say. Actually, there is one thing which kind of pains me slightly is it's not for me, because I've seen so many stuff, and I've seen California and stuff like that. But it's for my kids, because I've always said I want to show California to my kids because we've been we've been in 2016 visiting the twins in Boston, for example. So they they've seen this part of the world. But they haven't seen the west coast and I really liked California. But for me, on the other hand, I know that there is still so many stuff to see in Europe, which I haven't seen, like for example, it's it's it's funny, but the highest country in terms of latitude, I always have to think about latitude and longitude, which direction it is, which is funny, by the way, because I work with latitude and longitude every day at my work. The highest one that I've actually done is Germany or or, or the Netherlands where depending on how you put it on a map, but I've never been to Denmark and I've never been higher. I've never been to any of the Nordic countries. So I want to visit those countries, hopefully potentially with my family this summer. And this is all doable with by car or by train The other direction that I went once is I went to iOS Dev, iOS Dev. UK. Yeah, it was the UK, it I am confused with a lot of those conferences, because the names are sometimes so similar. And that was in Wales. And, and, and, and I actually took the train to, to go there. So I spent the whole day in the train, like eight hours or whatever. But it was an OK trip. I mean, and you can always go, you can even go like my, my, my mother is, is a lot of the time of the year she is in Cordova, where we are from, or my parents are from, because I was born in there and raised in Belgium, but my whole family is actually from under Lucia. And so we've been also thinking about going over there with either the car or the train. And it turns out if you take a train, that there is an amazingly fast train from Paris to Barcelona, for example. So if you if you do some combination, like you know, and Cologne, Paris is pretty fast with the talus, and then you take the French train, Paris, Barcelona, and then you take the next round Barcelona, severe or something like that. So it's feasible. But obviously, that's an extreme. That's kind of an extreme case. I always kind of joke that if as Spain starts again, I would really love to go there again, because I, you know, I like the crazy spin yard people. But then, that would be a lot of trains. But I think I would try it at least.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:24

And I can imagine, because and Europe, even though in the scale of the world, it's it's relatively small. But there's just so much stuff to do. And to see just in this small area. Yeah. already. So you mentioned something interesting as well, because you said something about your, your day job. So you work with longitude and latitude? Can you quickly remind me what's just like, up and down on the map and what is left and right on the map?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 27:52

So that's funny, because there was a student who told me that lately, so left and right is longitude and up and down is latitude. Okay, I always think my, the way to that I remind this is it's because it's long. On one side, it's longer than on the other side, you know, on the other side, it's, it's way shorter than on the other side. So and I think if I remember correctly, the latitudes, they only go up to a certain point, whereas the longitude, they go to a higher number. So longer.

Jeroen Leenarts: 28:29

I think, yeah, let's face it, I always remember that, but like, okay, that's, like, higher on the world. So you need like, a ladder?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 28:36

Oh, yeah. That's another way to, to think about it. Yeah. And then,

Jeroen Leenarts: 28:40

you know, the other one as well, by extraction from that. Yeah. So but what is your day to day job? Besides, besides being politically active?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 28:48

Yeah. So I don't know if I'm allowed to, to say a lot about this, but I think that would be cool. If I say that I, I work for, for a company that that does stuff with AR kits. And, and also with, with, with, with iOS, obviously, and we basically develop a technology, which allows us to show the underground world in 3d, like, you know, the nd by the other ground world, I mean, you know, when people are, when they are putting new cables, like new electricity, cable water, or gas, or, or fiber, like internet cables, then they usually open the ground, and then there is they, and then they close it again. And then they they make a map to know where the cables are. And what we do is, instead of, of actually writing on paper where it is, we actually scan the ground while it's still open. And so when you close it again, we know what it was there. And we also exactly know precisely where it was like the geolocation. So it's always tricky for me to, to, to say and to tell about the stuff that I do because for two reasons. Number one is obviously like I like secrets stuff and and, and the competitors shouldn't know too much about how we do stuff, because it's it's a set of interesting technologies and which is what motivated me to start in the company because when they first showed me the product, I was like, Oh, this is this is unseen. And, and also, you know, the, the it's not really hard as an iOS developer. Knowing Apple's hardware to realize what kind of technology we use to do those kinds of stuff. On the other hand, I and I totally understand that any company that I work for wants to be very careful about me being public. Because I always speak about for me, obviously, and not for the company that I work when I am very political. And when my when my subjects are, are like, not really work subjects, but more ethical subjects. I understand that they want some kind of, you know, some some some, maybe I should say, distance between me the activist or the political guy, and the guy which works at the company, and which basically does his job. So I'm on the same Yeah, and I and at the same time, I, because I am like the way I am it's, it's probably not not easy to manage me. So to put it nicely,

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:47

somebody said, the the GPS, the GPS location, capabilities of like an iPad and the iPhone, are they like, like, accurate enough to to map out those kinds of things? Or do you need additional proprietary hardware that we will not discuss here?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 32:04

This is the Joker. There's a trick, there's a catch in there. But yeah, that's you basically entered the question yourself? Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:15

Yeah, yeah. So that's the additional hardware that you need to be accurate enough. So

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 32:18

it's the hardware we, we do and, and it is not only stuff from Apple, it's, it's a bunch of different stuff put together. It's also a bunch of different people put together, which is kind of crazy I work with, I'm kinda I'm kind of lucky, because I work with with, with so many people, which have so many different knowledge. And some of these are people who actually studied, I think it's called geo Daisy, or whatever, like, to Geo people, like they know, all stuff about, I think, in French in school geomet. So the

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:58

people, the people that don't make sub longitudes and latitudes, right,

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 33:02

definitely not. And the people that understand that the people that understand that, if you are in a certain city, it is potentially possible that your software is not working, because you are at a different latitude. And so and because Germany is really big, we actually found without, without me really revealing too much. We actually found out something funny recently, where some of some of us was in another CD, and all of a sudden, the software wasn't working as expected. So yeah, so so. So that's a lot of that. So that's a lot of people which are really like, like, I would say, scientists, and at the same time different people working in different teams, because if you if you if you look at it, if if somebody would look at where I where I actually work and look at the different technology we use, it's not only iOS, we have a lot of back end people we have we have people that know stuff about about machine learning. And, and we also have people on the field, which now the stuff that is normally used the way it is being done for the last whatever, 50 years. But yeah, I yeah, I again, it's it's also very tricky for us to know what we are supposed to speak about because now we actually have a website that where which actually shows a lot of stuff we do. But we also know that we don't want to show too much of the of the of the stuff we do. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:33

Okay, yeah, because with these cables in the ground, I did some remodeling of my house to improve installation and there was some big machinery that needed to be like place to get all the stuff on the roof. And and one of the things that I did was actually request like a map with all the all the all the groundwork that was around my house, so that they know where they could place the machinery without damaging any underground structures. So like that sewers and mains and powerlines and stuff like that, because you get like this little map that's quite accurate that it's like down to the centimeter. Now, you could see like, okay, down here, that's where the internet is then 10 centimeters to the right, that's where the water is. And then on the other side, there's like, there's like sewage. And they were especially very careful not to place any thing near the sewage lines because they those are probably most fragile. So yeah, that's it. How long have you been working at this company doing a lot of geo related technologies for a

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 35:38

year I actually only that's kind of a running gag with me is like I actually He managed to work three years and three months in the same company one time in my career. And that's my record. And by the way, that's the company I work at, where I gave the I left the conference.

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:57

So and is it like? You mentioned? Yeah, you're typically hard to manage is that somewhat related to this search for new jobs?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 36:08

Yes or no. So, so I was freelancing for many, many years, I have mentioned on that. So I was, I was basically friends. So I said, I left school in 97, I was an employee for two years. And then I was a freelance from Intel since 99. And for 15 years, and until 2014, I was basically freelancing. Like the first part of it in dotnet, and the second part of it, I made the switch in 2008, when the iPhone iPhone came, but around 2014, I was harder to get the next project as a freelancer and so I accepted to become an employee again. And so I said three years and three months in this company, and then I you know, it is I got a call to get to for a better offer. So I moved to another company. But the problem was that in the next company that I was in, so at, at at seven principles, which is a company which owns swift Comm, I was only doing Swift, I was lucky enough that and when I started in the company in August 2014, you have to remember that exactly when a swift was announced, I did only swift for two years. And then I changed to another company. And over there, they did a lot of stuff with C++, which I had to work with objective C++, I tried to do a lot of Swift in there, up until I realize this is so much hurdles, trying to speak swift to this C++ thing at the end, because in the meantime, you have to have some kind of, you have to have bridging headers, and, and whatnot. So I kind of gave up on Swift for like 18 months in this other company, that then I was like, boring myself as hell. In this company, I actually I went to a point where I and I think a lot of us have been to the situation where you woke up in the morning, you wake up in the morning, and you don't know why you don't know we there is nothing in the day, or in the code base, which will excite you. So I, I was searching for another project. And then I found a friend of mine was working at a company in Germany, which produce electrical Karl. It's a very local company, they're called ego. And I worked there for four, six months, actually. And I did a nice did swift and I actually even started doing a little bit of looking at swift UI back in the days. But over there, it was really the case that I actually was speaking so much about ethical stuff, and you know, and all the stuff that. Yeah, I saw, there's not a lot of social filter in my brain when it comes to that because of older, their radicalism that I'm exposed with environmental activism, and all the stuff. So I was probably posting too much stuff on Slack or whatever. And they didn't really like that. And so they decided not to prolong my trial period of six months. And so for the first time, that's funny, because for the for the second time in my life, and the first time was when I was actually 21, at the very beginning of my career, I was basically fired. So basically, but But it was interesting, because I wasn't, I was kind of I was kind of offense, but at the same time I was thinking I knew that it wasn't, it wasn't going to be hard to find the next job, you know, as a senior iOS developer, so I took kind of a break for a couple of months and then started looking way more at at swift UI and whatnot. And in 2020, I actually did another gig as a freelancer again, and fully swift UI but at the end of the year, the company that I'm now working on actually get in touch with me and make this offer again and so i i left again the freelance work to become an employee again. And so, this is um, this is why this is there is a part of it, which is me. Like, being not very corporate oriented, oriented and not very manageable and but I try to manage myself, which is not always easy. But there is also the prompt, which is just if you are an iOS developer, you are most probably going to move, change change roles very often and so on So time, time will tell that and the other thing is, I always have tons of ideas in my head. So that's, that's my main problem like, like I always, I'm always thinking about I could do this conference, I could do this website, I could do this hardware project, I could do this political stuff. I could do all this. And then so I, it's very hard for me to focus on something.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:11

Yeah. And it's just so much cool stuff for fun stuff to work on. Also important stuff that it's sometimes really hard to decide and, and choose your battles on what you can spend your energy on, on any specific topics that we forgot to touch upon, because we talked about so many different things, or is that something that we need to like, unpack a little bit more or something new, I'd

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 41:37

like you to kind of go into some of the subjects of my talk. Which is, which is why I am trying to, I'm taking this as a mission to go to the different conferences. The next one is going is actually going to be Kham Kham 40 two.com. And which is a conference, which is a set of conferences on different topics. And, and one of these is actually more mobile. This is going to be oh, by the way, my first non strictly iOS conference. Because it's it's mobile. So it's, it's iOS and Android. And, and so and so and my talk, I'm speaking about different stuff, but I guess the one that I have the most to my heart is is, is the food industry and the plant based food, because the more I think about it, the more I look into it into those. Yeah, those 234 different problems. It turns out that even though people think that vegans are crazy, veganism, or at least the majority of veganism in the future, is the only way to get out of this mess, because of all the, of the amount of of land that that that that like meat industry or dairy industry is producing of the amount of metal and then then calls are producing, because everybody speaks about co2, but co2 was just a joke compared to meeting. And, and it turns out to me that it's also not very hard because I used to eat a lot of meat 10 years ago. And, and then I just one of the thing that ticked me was, was obviously all the stuff that I that I all the times that I was in the humba forest and discussing with the people over there, but also that my my dad actually got cancer and in 20 Actually, well my dad actually died, like a couple of months before Steve Jobs, but not from the same cancer from like a brain tumor. But so I started reading books about different stuff and what is cancer and the fact that we all have it in our in our bodies somehow but it develops in different stages. And then I read all the the the food parts of it. I'm not saying that it's a solution to all the problems and I'm never going to say that that people shouldn't do the regular stuff with chemotherapy and stuff like that, because that would be the that would be the Steve Jobs passed, which is the totally wrong one is just don't go to the classical past I think you have to go in both directions. But so I I started eating less meat and like two years later, became in 2013 Vegetarian, which is funny by the way, it's fun fact. I decided to become a vegetarian the day that Angela Merkel was reelected. Every time I tell this story, I think it's so stupid but so funny. Because it was kind of this was kind of a reaction of myself like saying, if you are reelected that I'm going to be vegetarian

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:55

and then and then you had to commit because

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 44:58

I was stuck in this thing like and then and then I but I didn't I didn't wait that she was reelected in 2017 to became a vegan. I made it a year before in 2016. And so I've been a vegan since 2016. And it's really easy for me to live a lot of people think it's really hard but turns out if you learn all the you know all the alternatives and if you if it's not painful for you it's actually super easy to live actually. Yeah, so on

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:34

and of course the the the amount of resource that's that's needed for your for your plate of food. Yeah, is way less because there's no less No meat involved Yeah.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 45:47

And that's just yeah it's just it's just an amount of very much shorter but the other thing is we also try to like I was mentioning in my talk also we also try to buy as less packages as we can we try to buy we are a big family of I have four kids, which is from an ecological point of view we can discuss about that but I always see it as they're gonna do good impact on the on the planet I hope. So we buy for example pasta in 10 kilos because that would be ridiculous for us to bypass as in one kilos because we do or even in 500 grams because when we do pass that we need more than 500 grams so when we buy a 10 kilo package of pasta it means that we actually cook Yeah, probably 12 Time pastor and that's it. Yeah and so and so same thing with muesli you know, with cereals we buy them also in five kilos because we we are for that we are very German we own breakfast with with cereals. Some of the kids with like more chocolate cereals medium, just more like the regular muesli think. And so yeah, all of those stuff. We try, we try to reduce as much as we can. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:11

Okay. Um, I think we've covered pretty much everything

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 47:16

that we could speak about tons of other stuff I could speak, speak about gadget electrical cars, for example. There are two interesting companies in the in the world and one is in Germany. And the other one is another is an is in the Netherlands. And they both do solar electrical car, which is probably the future. But yeah, we'll leave it there. But that's

Jeroen Leenarts: 47:40

like an entire new episode. I one thing I wanted to ask you still was what made you decide to get started with iOS development? Because of course, you were like working already in dotnet types of environments, or at least Microsoft based technologies. And then the iPhone came out. But yeah, you did mention that you switched when the iPhone came out. And I reckon that would be like the, I think was the iPhone three G that was most likely the one that had like the real SDK available, I

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 48:14

think it was. So I was probably one of the first person in Europe to have an iPhone, because I had the iPhone before it came to Europe. Because that's also a funny thing is the twins that I was mentioning, they had a Mac app. And me being a Windows developer. The deal was that I was going to make a Windows version of their app, which is still called Phone drive, I think if it still exists, or whatever. Long story short, I never managed to make this app because it turns out that it was It wasn't trivial at all to basically read the contents of of the iPhone. But they to the way they they paid me was by sending me an iPhone from the US. So the like the first eight gigabyte iPhone. And so I use the basically like everybody back in the day, so. So I was almost about to hardware, unlock it because back in the day, so to do the geo hot thing like with on, like soldering or whatever. And luckily, just before I did that the hot the software analog arrived. And so yeah, so So I use my iPhone, and so and then when it arrived, and on the German market, I swapped it for a telecom iPhone, because then I didn't have to deal with the, you know, the hacking stuff. And I really love my iPhone a year long. So when they announced finally in around March 28 2008, that they were going to do an SDK, this is where I said, Okay, this is this is the thing, now I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to leave all that the dotnet stuff and. And to close on this, when I came back from dub dub 2008 He was working in an agency as a, I think, a PHP developer or something like that Drupal, I think. And I said to the boss over there, if there is ever an app to be done, I know it's done. Well, I didn't know a lot, but I was one of the few people at the time that that knew at all anything about iOS. And so this is all my iOS career actually just started jumpstarted into in 2008. And yeah, and it worked, even though Steve Ballmer thought that it was going, it was not going to work.

Jeroen Leenarts: 50:38

And that's, that's that's like, hindsight is always 2020 Right?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 50:43

Yeah. Well, that's that's about But to be honest in in 2008, I wasn't sure if it was going to work. I just left my dotnet project and I, I said, Okay, I'm going to my very first impounds are important project was for Orange and friends. So it was kind of a big client, I make a small memory app for them. So I was super happy to do that. And but I didn't know if it was going to work. Or if I was going to have to do some dotnet again, or whatever. But turns off from that point on, I was always busy.

Jeroen Leenarts: 51:16

Yeah, yeah. So it was basically a bit of a leap of faith. And then it worked out quite nicely.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 51:21

Well, yeah. So that's, that's basically my recommendation a lot of time to people is believe in stuff, like try stuff and do stuff that are potentially not paying because boomerangs are coming, like, you know, the conference, the podcast. The Yeah, the other stuff that I did are actually paying in somewhere or orders, whether it's financially or just like, personally, because all the political stuff that I do, or all the videos that I do@black.org They don't pay anything, but I totally need them for my balance. Because if I would be still working five days a week, instead of four days a week, and wouldn't have all those social parts of me. Then I think I would definitely miss something.

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:12

Yeah, yeah. kind of mentioned. Yeah, there's like one final question. And then I think we're done.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 52:18

So with dentures with me,

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:20

what's with the stuff MC thing that you keep beginning?

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 52:25

Yeah, so um, stuff is, is my is my hip hop name. Actually, the MC is actually the is actually the real thing, like Master of Ceremony. So, back in the days when I was 14, I think, I think I probably wrote my first text in 92. I started rapping. And as a kid, and you obviously need a nickname, you cannot go on. You cannot write, you know, text and being called Manuel. That's just ridiculous. So I had to find a nickname. And because I wasn't, so I didn't know a lot of English, I just opened a word, like, you know, a dictionary. And I looked at words that were rhyming, like English words, rhyming in French. And it turns out there is a lot of F words in French there is birth stuff, guff Murphy stuff, if there is anything you can imagine. And so I found this thing called stuff. And I was like, Oh, this sounds good. And I don't remember if I knew if I realized that it actually means just think, or whatever. But long story short, I kept on using this, I started a radio, hiphop radio show back in the days, and at the beginning, I was using the name, my first name, but then like, like another rapper, told me, Well, this is inconsistent, you cannot be Manuel on radio, and stuff on stage. And so I kept the stuff. And when I started my podcast, I actually, I actually kind of wanted to not, like show my real identity or whatever, which is kind of ridiculous, in a way. So I just use stuff and stuff. MC so it's funny because the hip hop thing ended up in in the computer think? And yeah, for Twitter, or whatever. It's always good. You know, pull has to Stroz I don't know if you know the story behind two streams, but that's an interesting one as well. So yeah, I think it's cool that if people are referencing about that, man will, except for the very long name that I have anyways, they will know which Manuel.

Jeroen Leenarts: 54:41

Yeah, that's true. So and what's the deal with the two straws? Oh,

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 54:46

I think I pull used to want to have two Stroz in his glass when he was a kid. And I think his mom or whatever, something like that in the family actually told him something like, I think we're going to call you to Stroz. And that's but but it's it's better to ask Paul himself. And yeah, I actually once asked to Paul Hudson, what's the fee with the two Stroz? Yeah, but yeah, so that's so funny. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 55:18

Yeah, I think I think we're now at the end of our recording. Also, at the end of our recording time, actually. How can people find you online? You already mentioned that they can find you on several platforms online on an acronym stuff MC so that's on GitHub, I think on Twitter as well on

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 55:37

Twitter. Yeah, mainly, um, there is this. If you want to look at some of the videos that I do on It's a, it's in German, it's bleibt.org. So, b l, e ibt.org. If you just put my last name all together Cresco molina.com, you'll see some of the political stuff that I do. And then there's podcast that comm podcast biz, all kinds of different stuff. And if you if you look up my name, it's actually the whole name. It's only me. There's a bunch of Carrasco in Spain, but there is only one, Manuel Carrasco. Molina.

Jeroen Leenarts: 56:21

Okay, I'm gonna make sure that I linked us up in in the show notes so that people can have a look at some things that you're doing online and web stuff. Thanks for your time.

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 56:36

Thanks for having me. It was a was was funny, and it's and I would mention, it is really great to be in a podcast that I don't have to go to record myself.

Jeroen Leenarts: 56:46

Yeah, the editing bit, right. Yeah. The whole thing bit. Yeah, it's it's some work to do to run a podcast. So that's, I've been doing it for like, one half, you know? Yeah. And, yeah, there are days that you really think like, I don't want to do it. And then you just struggled through and then other weeks it's just, it's just easy. Yeah. Well, so I just loved

Manuel Carrasco Molina: 57:10

the discussion part of it. So I thank you for having me. And, yeah, I will definitely catch up on the next ones.