Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic, she loves to code and loves to go in depth on coding topics

Mihaela and I got introduces on Clubhouse. I loved how she respectfully was able to tell people if they were wrong on many topics. Sometimes she was not subtle on purpose. But she has always been right. And that’s impressive. Learn more about Mihaela. I would love to meet her in person one day on a conference.

You can find her on Twitter: @civeljahim

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• The cooking videos mentioned.

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:46

Hi, and welcome to another special episode of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Michaela, she has a very distinct name that I won't even try to pronounce. So, Mikayla, if you if you like, you can say it yourself because, yeah, it's a very distinct name that is specific to where you're from in the world.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 1:06

Yeah, it's Mihaylo.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:08

Okay. And where are you from? Actually,

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 1:11

I'm from Croatia to be specific Dalmatia

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:15

split Dalmatia.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 1:17

Yeah, like a dog. And I do have a donation dog.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:20

I've heard online, that you're indeed a dog person, and that you really like going for long walks with your dog. But next to that you're also a software developer. And you're very keen on iOS development. And I really wanted to dig into that and just get to know you a little bit and see who's the person about behind all these interesting takes? And basically, ideas that you have on software development and iOS development specifically. Because, yeah, I've we've had some interaction online. And each and every time you pretty much surprised me quite a lot. And I'm just curious about you. So I'm, just to get started. When did you get your hands on your first computer?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 2:08

I was in seventh grade, or eighth, I'm not sure. And I got Schneider 6028. And it had a DOS as an operating system, it has a monitor this monitor, which was great. And it also had a way to, to load games. So you would buy this, and then you would load game or you could even type a game from a computer magazine. So there are those two options. So I just did some basic programming.

Jeroen Leenarts: 2:41

So yeah, just some basic programming as a as a small child. Really? Yeah. So how did you get started then? Because just read magazines, or is this a manual with a computer? Or what was the what was the way back then?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 2:56

Yeah, then I hit puberty, and I stopped. And I was on to them boys and music. And then I went to college, I studied Information Science and speech science. And then I got my first Windows PC, it still had a DOS as operating system. And when you want it to do windows, you have to type when, you know, yeah. And so I started with Windows 3.1. And then Windows 95. I was so excited to get it. I was in college. And then I started programming using Delphi. I prior to that I used to robust call and Turbo C. From Borland, which was a great company that Microsoft I don't know how to save, extinguished, destroyed.

Jeroen Leenarts: 3:48

I think Microsoft calls it embrace and extends, right?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 3:51

Yeah, yeah, they basically kidnapped Anders Helzberg. Probably blackmail his wife with his paycheck. And then he left his amazing job at Borland, and way superior product to C sharp and all the net crap. And he just did Java for Windows, which is horrible. First, he did FoxPro when he came to Microsoft for what no one remembers from from. And then they want to Java that only runs on Windows, which actually beat the purpose. And now they're trying to sell us JavaScript as nice. So oh, this is just amazing. I don't know what to say they they stole him from his true calling, which was Delphi and Turbo Pascal. And they pushed him into this horrible met thingies.

Jeroen Leenarts: 4:42

So that's already like a small tangent. But yeah, I do agree that ball was a great company. And they had such such good developer tooling and developer relations. That that was like the thing that I did back in the day. So yeah, you got started on on Delphi. And and then what happened?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 5:03

Then I worked for some horrible companies in Croatia doing accounting software, and business software. You know, that's where developers go to die.

Jeroen Leenarts: 5:15

The soul crushing for it?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 5:16

Yeah, it was. It was depressing. It was horrible. I will say peanuts. But I could I could do development. I couldn't do some I had, you know, I just had that on my side. And so out of pure frustration. I was listening to podcasts that were just beginning and that was Tim O'Reilly. He had a great podcast and I would just I had another Windows PC that served as a computer PC so that I could watch YouTube on a big TV 40 inches was considered big. Now 75 is small for me, but whatever. And I heard about asterisk. I said, Wow, this is interesting, because all the Windows software was boring and stuff, you know what I could do another text editor, another file manager, you know, image editing was too complex to do anything meaningful other than just listing images. And so, I want I want to do that. So I bought a Linux PC. Well, I just bought a PC, then I put Linux in a Debian. And I ordered some bbs hardware, you know, like the ports hardware. And then I started playing with asterisk. And then I started to, to actually try to sell that as a service. So I installed the call centers in Croatia. And then they were in need of software. So I thought to myself, I'm going to write software just for them. No, I'm going to do software, there's going to be I'm going to sell it as a shareware. But I'm gonna customize it from them. So I sold the share up. That was called sem reports. It made more than I think, 100k dollars in seven years. So, but it took me five months of effort.

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:16

Yeah. That's a good return on the investment of your time, I guess, obviously.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 7:22

And what I really realized having the product is everything. Yo, I still don't have a product yet. But I definitely will. Because it's amazing. You sleep. And you'll make money. Okay, you do have a customer support. But if you love your product, it's a fun part. Yeah, so that's me in short,

Jeroen Leenarts: 7:42

yeah, that's a quite a lot of things that you already shared there. Because, yeah, PBX for people that don't know what the acronym stands for. Can you explain it a little bit?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 7:53

private branch exchange. Actually, PBX is a piece of software hardware combination, that accept phone calls. They were only voice calls, actually transfers it into voice into digital something. And then it lets you program the logic of the PBX about what would happen when someone calls, you can program it according to the phone number, to the time to anything, it has its own very primitive language. And it also lets you do many things with it, you can record it, you can translate it, if you have additional software, you can do a lot of things. So basically, what you get is a completely programmable phone system.

Jeroen Leenarts: 8:38

Yeah. So but how do you get from PBX development and the shareware that you created for that all the way to iOS development? Because yeah, still, both our phones, and just PBX is like the the connected phones that you have an office space and that you can call your colleague and all those kinds of things. But then getting into iOS development, because there's still quite a distance between the two. It feels like,

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 9:04

yeah, they have nothing in common. I did PBX because developing in Delphi was I mean, it just painfully boring. In production companies, you know, are the icon accounting, or I don't think that any other apps, maybe some business that horrible, horrible boring. And so this was just for fun. And then I had a Nokia phone, because I didn't like iPhone one, two, or three, or 3g as I don't like them. Yeah, the first one I really wanted was iphone four. And incidentally, the first chip that Apple made, all the others was Samsung, or something. This is the first Apple chip, and it was in iphone four. So the first one I wanted. So I got iphone four. And I said, Wow, this is amazing. I mean, and then I just loved the device. I wanted to problem for it. But then I went to the we don't have an Apple store in Croatia because we're like, well, less than Burkina Faso. We're like no one. And so we have like premium reseller. And it was like three times what I would pay for a PC or two times or I will pay for a gaming PC. So it was like what? So it seems so incredibly expensive. Now it's like, oh, that's just that boy. It's not expensive. You know, like I have an iMac roll. So I don't think it's expensive for what it delivers. But then, yeah, I didn't. I wasn't on the same thing. Yeah. And so actually my husband borrow money for me to get entry iPhone that wasn't even the retina in 2012 Not iPhone, Mac, and I got it. And then I wanted to leave my painfully boring job. So I save some money. And I just resigned. And I took a month off to do for hire these Stanford class. It was the best thing ever. I mean, Objective C looked so trivial. It was just like Pascal, you know, but it has integrated implementation, everything. But with C, I preferred it to Pascal. I thought Scott was stupid after it. I loved it. And he explained it so thoroughly, I thought, wow, I can I understand it so good. And then I wrote a silly app that just scraped and banks creation bank for currencies. And I did it like universal app for iPad and iPhone, and it had some networking. That actually landed me a very low paying job. But I worked for an agency where I learned a lot. So that's actually the only job I ever learned anything from anyone.

Jeroen Leenarts: 11:55

Okay. Yeah. Because the course that you mentioned that that's the Stanford course, that was back in the day. Yeah, Apple really was like, advocating for that through there. I think it was called iTunes you right? It was this it was this iTunes like thing. But then for, for course, contents from universities. And it's the Stanford course was one of their their flagship offerings really in in that platform. And it was free. So and it was great. So a lot of people actually learned software development on the Mac ecosystem and the iPhone ecosystem through that. So that's really awesome that Apple back in the day was already providing good content to learn from.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 12:35

And you know, what said, I don't think there has ever been a better course than that one, even today. That's like the best course if anyone tells me I want a course on this guy that no, just do that. This is the beta because Paul Haggerty worked on next. He was he worked on Objective C 100. And then now swift and swift UI. So he really knows historically, what was happening. There are no things that Paul Haggerty doesn't understand about the Mac ecosystem or iPhone ecosystem. So he just comes from such a deep understanding that it just rubs on you. Yeah, so

Jeroen Leenarts: 13:14

yeah, I did that you sometimes you met, you meet these teachers that just being taught by them, it just makes you a better person, just because you understand the basic concepts are really, and because I don't know, I don't, I think that depth of knowledge can only be gained by creating the thing yourself, really, and as you mentioned, because for people who are not aware, next was actually the company that created the next step operating system. And the next company was bought by Apple when Apple really was at their their low point, really, and created Mac OS, the new mac os 10, based on this next step operating system. And that's why if you're dealing with Objective C, you still see all these NS prefixes in your code. And that's the NS for next step. And yeah, that's a lot of history in just a few words, really. But you should really dig into that and see where Mac OS really comes from, because it's a very interesting and exciting history that because Apple as a company almost didn't survive back then. So yeah, so

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 14:18

Microsoft, gave them 100 or $2 million dollars, and Microsoft actually saved them.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:23

Yeah, yeah. And the only the only requirement was that they would help Microsoft, get the Office Suites on the Mac, right? So there was still with all these nice pen stripes in the UI and that original Aqua interfaces. So yeah, I got started on Mapquest back in the day, as well as an end user, and then I really loved the look and feel of those machines, even though they're by current standards are really slow. So yeah, you got started with what Apple development because the Stanford course is broader than iOS development only I think it is.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 14:58

It wasn't but he he couldn't help it. Yeah, he always brought in things, you know, that were not only for the iOS ecosystem, he always, that's why I think he's the greatest teacher ever.

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:08

Yeah. So yeah, but you got started with like, your first app that scraped the bank's information, and then you got your first job at an agency that allowed you to really learn a lot. But of course, this agency didn't sound like that was the place for you to to work for on the long term. So what did you do after that?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 15:32

Well, I'm now almost 50. I'm 49.8. Something like that. Yeah. And then I was 42. Yeah, and my boss was 27. And I had three kids didn't have a dog Yeah. So I just wanted to do what I love. Yeah. You know, I mean, people say, oh, you should be a manager this age. No, I imagine three kids, I'm fed up with managing, you know,

Jeroen Leenarts: 15:58

manage anyone, you're managing your own kids. That's already

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 16:01

my kids. I and my husband, you know? So, you know, I don't want to manage I just want to have fun. Yeah. And so. So you're too old to do is like, no, no, I know what, seven feels stupid telling me I'm too old. So I just wanted to do that, because it was a fun thing to do. And I didn't feel like working even when it was like a pressure you have to do this time, time and everything. And so I just asked the agency, I started applying on Upwork. And I got work there. So I stopped working at that agency. And then I had a few clients. And I had one client, one American guy for almost four years. And it was really nice. The the pay was really well, and the culture, I love the culture. We had the daily meetings, I learned all about Scrum, JIRA, you know, the points, everything. It was fun, they even paid for some of, you know, tutorials on Scrum and something like that. So it was really, really fun. And then after that, I just, I just continued working as a freelancer.

Jeroen Leenarts: 17:08

Yeah. So yeah, you got your jobs internationally through Upwork. I think you said, and besides this client, that really worked out well, for you for four years, what was your general impression of getting work as a software developer through Upwork?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 17:26

Well, Upwork is a hit and miss. The, the important thing is that there is a lot of spam, like probably 90%, spam 90%, if I even I had to find other developers while working on Upwork to help me. And the only the only thing, the only way I would advise anyone to approach that is to give 10 developers a job for $100. So you have to be able to spend to you know, just wait $1,000 And then just just give them the same amount of work and then just judge them on that. Otherwise, you're just going to be spending a lot of time for nothing. Because there is a lot of scam, a lot of people are either have imposter syndrome, or Dunning Kruger there's nothing in between. So you either get great people that think because they don't have a PhD, they can't do anything, or you get total confident idiots, you know, and so it's really hard. So the easiest thing is to just get to people, 10 people$100 assignment, it will be something meaningful that you can just see how they, how they think, how they work. And just tell them don't don't use any frameworks. And just do something, either networking or maybe some sorting whatever. Yeah, and then just just make it and just see how they did it and then ask them on it. interrogate them kindly. And I think that, that that should help you. So it's horrible. I just raised my price very high. Just to avoid all the spamming, you know, and then I think I put at $5 now, and then still I get offers for$10 for an app. Yeah. So I don't know.

Jeroen Leenarts: 19:15

Yeah, it's like, that's the thing with opera. That's the thing with Upwork, that I noticed myself as well, that it was really, it's all over the place. And it's so hard to like really find the gems hidden between all the cruft that is on the platform. So yeah, you did freelancing on Upwork, and then you by the sounds like things left the appropriate form and started freelancing on your own without the help of their services. So and is that something that you're still doing nowadays?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 19:48

Yeah, I actually have a client that gets me clients. So he actually pay me a retainer, which is very good. So I'm happy like that. I don't have to, even if I have some, like time, I'm compensated for it. Yeah, I take the time to, to learn, you know, like my core animation obsession. So it's, it's been in between clients, and I have a new client. And it's really, really fun.

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:18

Talking about obsessions, really, because I know about your core animation obsession, every time that there's some topic that piques your interest. You go deep on that topic, but you go way deep on the topic. So how do you manage to do that? Because I noticed that there's a lot of different parts of the iOS ecosystem. We're actually the frameworks that Apple offers, and there's some really in depth latched on very broad topics that you are able to present. So what's your way of actually, like getting out all this information in your head? Because it's impressive.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 20:57

It's difficult, but I can't help it because I don't think I know something. If I don't understand it as if I wrote, yeah. So when I, when I sometimes don't talk to people, and these are not people, I would call friends or colleagues, they're just some people that surprised me in a bad way. And they say, I know it, you just, you know, you don't you don't know, can layers below it. So the thing is, I don't know how to use it. I mean, with core animation in particular, you know, there are there are like two parallel processes. This is just for example, because what's happening in core animation is actually happening in another process, it has nothing to do with your app, if you want to know, let's say, you're automating something from one to 10, you're moving in 10 steps. And by the time animation is happening, in your model, in your app, nothing is moving, if you want to know what happens. Step five, you have to ask that other process, please give me the presentation layer. So when you're doing animations, and if you tell me, I understand Corona Meishan, and you want to do something interactive, while animating, you're gonna be staring at a gaping hole not understanding thing. Or, you know, because it's going to be what, what, that's all you really have to go deep with Apple frameworks. Because if you look, if you look at it, I think that core animation is the only objective C framework. I don't think maybe it's not, maybe Core Data,

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:20

I'm not sure. But yeah, Core Data, they they spend some time to actually make it like a reasonable citizen in Swift land, really. And they spend, Apple spent a lot of time in actually making sure that the existing frameworks were able to adopt into the Swift language. And I think, yeah, core animation, that's one of the frameworks that you still have to do a lot of like the add the old style interrupt between Objective C and Swift that you really get like these, these points that are unmanaged and crazy stuff with foundation. And, yeah, that's one of the frameworks that really has a lot of rough edges. Really.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 23:00

Yeah, but my point was, it's Objective C framework, which most the way Apple does things, we need a new framework, we're going to do it in C, because that way, we don't have to care. I mean, you're not going to do on your framework in Python, Python is just a scripting Excel language for a C, something library, whatever, you know, static code, or whatever. So they almost all frameworks, and even the newer ones are in C, because the way people do hardware and software, collaboration, but core animation was written in Objective C, because John Harper, the creator of core animation, he did it as his own project. Yeah, it was his fun project, because he was so frustrated, but people trying to replicate the genie animation, which you probably remember from MAC. Yeah. And everyone is using OpenGL differently and crashing the Mac and said, Okay, I'm gonna do a framework for it. But the interesting thing, I heard this, I'm not sure if this is true or not. When Steve Jobs so core animation, he said, Oh, cannot now we can do this because we can offload UI on a different process. And in iPhone one, we only had 128 megabytes not gigabytes of RAM.

Jeroen Leenarts: 24:15

Yeah, nowadays. Nowadays, an app is like bigger than that. Really?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 24:21

Yeah, probably. Maybe,

Jeroen Leenarts: 24:25

if it's an electron app, it's probably a gigabyte or something. But But yeah, it's it's crazy to see that like one of these foundational frameworks within the Apple ecosystem was such an enabler for all these things that you don't even think about it nowadays, when you're developing for the iOS platform. That yeah, everything.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 24:45

The other one is core graphics. Yeah, Core Graphics was before that. Quick Draw, which you did see nacwa You mentioned and it was another pet project from another developer, it was something he did for himself. And those two are the base stones on everything Apple ever did even Apple Watch. So core, core animation uses Core Graphics extensively, like everything information is correct, or maybe some video framework. It was AV foundation now it's it's still open some other video core video or whatever, core images for a

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:23

course

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 25:24

or something. But those core core graphics and core and core animation are the base of everything. And now when we using Swift UI, we are still doubling window and when people tell me they're gonna replace core animation, it's like telling me, I don't know. People are gonna make airplanes with that walk. I mean, it's such a such The only thing you know to say because so much r&d is already there, and it's used everywhere. So, core animation is not a lot different from that what people think, or animation is based for all the UI, it just has a cute, stupid name. Its original name was layer kit. Yeah. So it could be, should be called core layer kit, or something like,

Jeroen Leenarts: 26:10

yeah, you still in the naming of like, the class that you deal with. It's still layer is a very meaningful concept. In core animation there really. So pillars were again on a tangent. So where were we we were at you doing freelance development, because you really wanted to do work that you love doing and not being a manager. And you've been on the upper platform, and then you had like a client that gets you clients and even pays you a retainer, which is amazing, I think. So how does your regular workday look nowadays?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 26:50

Well, I love to sleep till noon. Because I used to work from 3pm to 11am or so I'm kind of used to, you know, that West Coast timezone. Yeah. And so now I'm somewhere in between our my current client is you from EU, so I can make so I work from noon today. Yeah, at the moment, but Well, I'm just wake up, have a coffee and then do some work, then I go, maybe do some jogging and walking my dog. And then I just, you know, continue working. And sometimes after midnight, I'll work if I didn't have time to do something. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:34

So yeah, really flexible in your hours, and you try to match your, your day with the time zone of the client that you're working with. So what are your plans currently, for the for the future for the next few years?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 27:51

Hmm, well, I have three or four products in my head, which are brewing. Some have been brewing for a while, like my cooking up. I was on a raw vegan diet. Now. I'm on keto. So the cooking up would obviously have to be very eclectic. It can be just one day, I want to make it. I don't like any cooking. They're horrible. You know, and I kind of want to some combination between cooking up and my fitness pal. And, you know, but there are those that are just, I don't like, either too much chrome too much UI. Or, you know, or just such a big emphasis on cooking. Maybe I'm not doing cooking. Maybe I'm ordering or something. And then it should even include fasting because I'm into fasting as well. Yeah. So cooking up that tells you not to eat. That's, that's silly. So yeah, I do want to continue being freelancer, but I want to do my product, because I still remember some report. And all that amazing, you know, things that happened when you have a product?

Jeroen Leenarts: 29:04

Yeah. So and but what's keeping you from from creating the product? And if you have, if you have ideas, then, of course, time, but what's the what's the difficulty? Or what's the challenge for you to actually

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 29:18

challenge it? I don't know. I'm not. I'm not I don't know, Apple frameworks good enough. It was a senior senior developer. Because when I realized when I started working on investigating core graphics and core animation, and I realized I don't know it well, yeah, I know, I can't write softer. I mean, I can't write those. I can't write software that I want. For myself, you know, I'm not I'm not qualified yet. So I'm, I'm just gonna I'm now working on. I'm still working on my book on core animation and core graphics. But I'm still not even I haven't even come to the table of contents, because I'm still working on source materials. And then I'm going to compile them because I was actually transcribing all the WWDC from 2009. I'm now in 2013. So there's a long way to go. And I realized that Apple developers were trying to teach us some lessons, but we didn't we just couldn't learn that. And I spoke about it on 360 either conference, we could go Yeah. And I just tried to tell everything that Apple developers were trying to tell us and it didn't stick. So it was just my attempt to tell it because those Things are still there. Even insert you why when they because my thinking is like this, we try to teach these idiots but now they can't teach. Okay, let's do something silly. Okay, let's make swift UI let's make it easy for them because they can't comprehend this. So okay, I'm being cynical praise don't anyone take offense? I'm, I'm including myself in it. So I just want to that's why I think that's why they did swift UI. This is too hard. They're never gonna comprehend this. Yeah. So it's not too hard. Intellectually, just too many steps. You know, none of the steps is hard. Every step is trivial. Just

Jeroen Leenarts: 31:23

Yeah, cuz it's all built on top of each other in the end. So but would you would you self diagnose as a, as an somebody where who's dealing with some imposter syndrome? And this is just an open ended question. Because you you from the outside view as an outside observer, when I see you talk about certain technical topic, it's really well, wow, she really knows her stuff. And she can tell so many details and so many things you haven't thought about yet. And and now I hear you saying, okay, but I don't still don't know enough about these in these in these frameworks. So so how do you how do you how do you reflect on that?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 32:03

I don't, that's just my criteria. I'm really, just, but I don't think I would be judging other people like that. Because if I see someone who doesn't know anything, doesn't even see us a background, but that's intelligent, inquisitive, and positive, I will always hire that person. You know, because passion is so important. But I, in order to write the software that I admire, and I'm telling you this, everyone who's I've got boned by someone else, everyone who's I've got featured, they all know the stuff that I still don't know. Yeah. I'm telling you and the, okay, this is embarrassing. If you can just edit this. For the guy that's writing the best book in the world. He knows all this stuff. You know, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And he knows, he knows all this better than me. And that's why I bought his book $400, I will deploy paid more. And I think he's amazing. And his book was amazing. So and he sold his app for I don't know how much but it was, it was okay. Some. And that's because he knows all this stuff. And I'm telling you, I think everyone should know this stuff. And that's why I'm writing the book. I'm writing the book not to show how smart I am. Because I'm writing a book about someone else's creation. I'm not writing the book to have a book under my name. I'm writing the book so that we software developers could understand this easily. I'm going to do it deductibility. So bird's eye view, just what core animation is. And Core Graphics Core graphic, just say it's a PDF layering engine. Okay, core animation, composition, again, in animation, just those things when you just realize core graphics is Photoshop. Okay? Then you can go from there. And then if you want to know why Photoshop I can show you. So I want every developer to understand this easier. I just want the learning process to be easier than mine. And I know from my college days, I always made manuscripts and people say, Wow, you have the best manuscripts. And the reason why was it just took so long for me to do them. I would just iterate and iterate and iterate and iterate. And then I would make the manuscript, that five year old kid could understand complex topics. It took longer, that's why it was better. I'm not smarter, I'm not better equipped. It just, I just iterated longer. And that's what I want to do with these with this book. But it has to be core graphics as well. Go Animate, you can't understand when I tell you blending mode water blending mode, you know. So I think this answer a couple of your questions, why I understand some things deeply. I do. But there are many other things that I still haven't covered.

Jeroen Leenarts: 34:52

Yeah. Yeah. So that's very interesting. Really, that's somebody who's so open and sharing knowledge that you're like, really critical to your own level of knowledge are really critical, in a sense like that. You'll want to develop more on your knowledge level reading. And so what are some of the things that besides just doing the freelancing work, that in the sense of software development, you'll really enjoy? Is it like seeing other people's work? Or are helping other people who have a question or because I've seen online that you you're always willing to, like, give an answer to give an explanation. And then if people follow up on your explanation, then yeah, then then the entirety of of your expertise comes out, really. So how do you how does this fit with you as a person as your personality? Because I noticed that in your wording on specific things, you're very, very sharp, very direct. But for some reason, you still remain as a as a very friendly person to interact with at least that's my take on it. So how does this Yeah, how do you do this?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 36:04

Yeah, you just the only thing, when you're dealing with people, the only thing that's important is motive is if people have a good motive, even if they're wrong. I just can't be rude. I mean, it's not it's not something that happens. It's not even in my frontal lobe. You know, it's my, it's my, you know, old brain. It just, you cannot be rude to a nice person. Yeah. It's not natural. So if someone is rude, I'm not going to be rude. I'm trying, I try to be funny. And make the person you know, just with humor, because humor lets you do things that are not allowed. Otherwise, yeah. And so I kind of try to do that. If I can't be funny, I just leave it. But I just hate being rude personally, because I got now kids, and now they reminded me of how horrible I felt as a kid when I was accepted or something. So I just don't have it in me to be rude. But when I when I'm discussing something I really don't like when someone is exhibiting a huge confidence and they are obviously wrong. Because how can you be obviously wrong? I mean, if you don't know something, why would you even discuss it? I don't understand. You know, like, why would you have such a huge confidence? And then, if I realize it's a Dunning Kruger? It's okay, I'm in progress. Okay. It's correctable, new, you know, novices are like that, and it's totally okay, just be kind to them. But if they're rude, I'll just block them. So that's why you don't see me being mean, because I block people that are mean, I don't want to you know, I don't feel nice when I don't feel well, when someone is rude to me. Yeah. But I really enjoy explaining things that I know. But more than anything I enjoy when I'm learning something from someone. Yeah. And, and sometimes it's very hard. I just want to give an example, I contributed to this GitHub, repo open API kick, the guy is way better engineer than me. He's so meticulous. And the thing is that he writes one line of code with a lot of content in it. A lot of generics, you know, that he used. And I never seen such a beautiful goal. So I was so happy. It was really, it was difficult to even contribute something. But it was so rewarding. Yeah. You know?

Jeroen Leenarts: 38:35

Yeah. And is that is that what motivates you to because just learning the act of learning is that but what keeps you going? Or? What?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 38:44

No, I always have a goal. Just the act of learning means nothing. I would rather you know, what's YouTube? I don't know what's Breaking Bad for the Sunstein. Yeah, you know, because that's the best thing ever created, including idiot, the novel, you know, I mean, the Breaking Bad is my go to think Yeah, but you know, I can be lazy. But this is something I want something. And I don't know how to reach it. Like core animation, I wanted to do something I want to do the 3d rotation. That doesn't include the cubes is the 3d a bit like a self UI? And then I realized, okay, there are like, 200 pages to read. Yeah, just to do that. Yeah. Okay. I don't know this. Let me go back. And so this is why I did but then I was excited while I was discovering things, understanding things. And then the sheer joy of it explaining something on Twitter in a nice way that was useful to someone it was it was a rush of dopamine. Yeah. So I guess I guess I explained it like that.

Jeroen Leenarts: 39:52

Yeah. So it's really, it seems like what really, what really triggers you is that if you're able to grasp a complex topic, or subject and then be able to explain it to somebody else in such a way that you could see if you could say that then this person if they're able to see the light because of your explanation, that that's one of those things that really, it really triggers you in a good way that it really is what what, what makes you happy to be able to do those kinds of things to like, make somebody more knowledgeable on a specific topic, just through the act of explaining something to them.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 40:36

You know, I think I have one superpower, and that's just one. I think I can explain things a bit better than I A regular person, not too much better. I'm not, you know, some some crazy novelist that can do amazing things. But I think it was when you just take the older developers, so we are a bit particular. I think in the in just the claws of developers, I'm maybe on the 30 percentile, you know, of explaining things. And I but once I grasp because I think I can explain a bit better than a normal person. Yeah, but not too much. And, and then I enjoy it. Yeah, I enjoy explaining things. So I think and I just love to talk, you know,

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:23

that Yeah, I noticed. So yeah, um, so just to recap everything a little bit. You started software development at a very young age with something basic, quick, basic, and then you went on into Delphi, then you stepped away a bit. While you were more interested in, I think it was boys and music, I think you said, and then you got back to software development and computers, when you had to choose your primary education after just your university. Education. You started working there, worked for some companies, companies didn't enjoy a few of them, but had very great experience with other clients and companies. You started freelancing through Upwork. And at some point, you stopped with that. And you had another gig that really kept you going and motivated to keep on learning on the iOS platform, and also the Mac platform. And now you're like somebody who's able to look back a bit and and see that. I don't know, for some reason you have this one superpower of being able to explain something. And yeah, I think it's like, it's just so wonderful to just listen to you because it's always great to, to have somebody Yeah,

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 42:42

but you miss the thing. I miss my greatest, my other superpower, which is not superpower, because I'm just I just, I just, I just worked too much. I can cook 10 kilograms of food in 30 minutes, or 20 people using two instant pots. You know, I timed myself what I can do. I can do also. buco. Yeah. Which is a hard thing to do. For 12 people, everyone will be fed without with only meat. They will be fed up to this using to Instant Pot. Yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 43:21

that's, that's, that's true superpower. Because that's like, being able to feed an orphanage really, with with that much.

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 43:29

I mean, I have I have two teenagers. And a husband. You know, my oldest daughter is in college. She doesn't eat here, but she did last year. So it was I mean, she ate like Michael Phelps. I really, and she was in color. Yeah. Okay. She has a, you know, figure to prove it. Now. She lost some weight. But I mean, she, Michael Phelps, you know, 25 eggs and stuff like that. And so I just I ordered two magazines and thought, and I use two. So when I go to the butchers, he always thinks are you having a feast? No, just a regular lunch.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:05

So you also enjoy cooking for your family?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 44:08

No, I don't. I don't enjoy. Enjoy because Instant Pot was that was built by a software engineer in Canada. So Instant Pot is amazing thing that can save you five times the time to cook something so I can do also buco in 32 minutes I timed myself and 32 minutes including cleaning 40 carats Yeah. So also buco from zero to start. 42 minutes. 32 minutes total time. Wow, that's that's my, I think real superpower, but I trained for it. So I can my husband can tell me we are having 20 people in an hour. And I can I can do it. You know, we don't have 20 people and I hate hosting people. I only cook for my family. Because I hate cleaning the dishes.

Jeroen Leenarts: 44:55

Yeah, that's the that's the horrible part of having guests over having to clean up afterwards. So yeah, with with that

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 45:04

I had to share this video. No, I thought, no, no, no, I

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:07

now have to link instant pots from my show notes. I think. So I'll definitely do that. Make sure that they have to correct. Make a model once I do. So yeah, with that. Mikayla I really enjoyed listening to you because I didn't really have to do that. But stalking and yeah, if there's if there's anything that people want to ask you what's the best way for them to find you online?

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 45:34

Twitter, just my Twitter just like my Twitter. It's my last name in reverse. Okay, the middle one. Yeah, I

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:40

will make sure that it's linked from the show notes because I have you on my list as well. And it's always Fun to see you have a go at some technical topic with people. And again, thanks for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation. And yeah, I really hope that we can, I don't know sometime meets at a conference that that and

Mihaela Mihaljevic Jakic: 46:05

yeah, I mean, Croatia was fought this summer so if you have a calm call me to, you know, make sure people you know, don't fool you when you're renting or something.

Jeroen Leenarts: 46:15

Yeah, that's a good one. So, thanks for your time and yeah, talk to you soon. Thank you. You're done. It was a pleasure. Bye bye.