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In this episode we interview a long time fan of the Treehouse Show, and amazing Treehouse student Moses Finlay! Also, he's 11.
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Hi, I'm Craig, welcome to the Treehouse Show.
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The treehouse show is our weekly conversation with the Treehouse community.
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We have a very special guest on the show today, Moses Finlay.
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He is a student and a longtime fan of the Treehouse Show, and
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the creator of many applications.
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Most notably, the video note taking site, vdnote.com.
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Yeah, did I forget to mention?
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He's 11.
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Moses, I am so happy to have you on the show today.
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>> Yeah, it's good to be here.
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I'm really excited.
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>> Yeah, I heard that you're a fan of the show.
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>> Yes, I am.
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I watch it, like, almost every week.
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>> That's awesome!
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>> Yeah. >> So, we're so
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lucky to have you on the show.
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>> Yeah! >> I have a question for you.
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How did you get started in technology?
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>> Okay, well, for
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all my life I've always loved knowing, building things and knowing how they work.
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>> Okay.
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>> And one day my dad was like, hey, you should get into programming.
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>> Okay.
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>> And I'm like, okay, that sounds really cool.
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What is it?
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>> How old were you?
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>> I think I was, maybe eight.
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>> Okay.
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>> Yeah, so then he was like, okay, just basically, where are you?
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Tell the computer what to do and you can build websites and stuff like that.
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So we found this place called codecademy and
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I started learning on there for a little while, and then,
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I started playing on Treehouse because I found out and I'm like, this is amazing.
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>> Okay. >> So, I've just been doing Treehouse for
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the past year and a half, I think.
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>> Wow! >> Or two years, yeah.
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>> And so how old are you now?
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>> I'm 11. >> You're 11 now, wow.
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Okay, so you've got a lot of experience under your belt.
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What are you taking on Treehouse?
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>> So right now I'm learning JavaScript.
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>> Okay. >> I'm going through the full stack
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JavaScript track, yep.
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>> Okay. Awesome, so
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you have two years experience there.
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So what sort of advice would you give to students that are learning JavaScript?
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>> Okay, so, well first I would say find a great place to learn, Treehouse.
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Treehouse is a great place.
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Also, sometimes you might be down, and
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I just say, if you have any questions just go to a forum.
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>> Okay. >> Like Stack Overflow is a great one and
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just ask questions.
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Also sometimes you just need to just take a break.
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>> That's a great, taking a break is great advice.
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>> Yup. Taking a break, yeah.
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Mm-hm. Yeah, just take a break and yeah.
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>> Do you ever get frustrated?
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>> [LAUGH] Yeah sometimes, but I just, if I have a question I just ask it and
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then usually when I'm frustrated I just put it away, thing about it, and
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then you know, once it comes to me or once I figure out the problem,
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I'll go back- >> Right.
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>> And it works!
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>> Isn't that funny how that works?
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>> Yeah, I know.
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>> Like when you're really upset about something and you're focusing on it, but
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when you walk away that's usually when it- >> One time,
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there was this big bug in my program and I was like, what?
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What's going on?
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And then I just put it away, I went to bed, next morning light bulb.
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A typo.
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>> A typo, wow.
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>> I was like thinking about my code and then like, it's a typo.
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Or I just like typing the wrong thing out or I'm not doing it the right way.
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You just.
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Yeah, I usually just think about it and there's also lots of great experienced
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programmers and I usually ask questions from them.
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>> That's great.
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Asking questions, I think, is a great advice and a lot of people,
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sometimes feel like maybe you shouldn't ask questions, but you should.
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>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
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Don't feel like you shouldn't ask questions because, yeah.
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>> Its kind of, is it easy to pick up?
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Did you think it was easy?
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>> Yes.
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>> Okay.
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>> Well no.
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Sometimes I'd spend like a couple of hours just trying to figure
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out- >> Okay.
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>> Like something.
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Because so like there would be like a bug in my code and
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I'd like start digging through it.
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>> Okay. >> And I eventually find out and
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then that kind of just like helped me gets stronger.
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>> Okay. >> And then like next time I'd be like.
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>> How did you- >> That's easy, yeah.
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>> So how did you find that, how did you keep going?
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That's the advice that I was kind of looking for, but
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I think you probably have some.
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>> Like, like. >> You might not have thought of it
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as advice before.
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How do you keep going?
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How do you keep going after [CROSSTALK] >> I don't know.
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I love it, I love it a ton.
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>> Okay. >> And.
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I don't know, it just comes to me.
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I just do it all the time.
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>> Okay, why do you love it at time?
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What do you love about programming?
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>> Okay, you can build things.
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You can tell the computer what to do and
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the computer is a very, very powerful tool and it's just.
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I just love it, because you can tell it what you do and build things, and
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you know how it works.
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And if you learn enough you can build anything.
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>> Right. Anything.
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Do you have a dream of, what would you like to build if you could?
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>> Well, I don't know, maybe a social media.
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>> Okay. >> That would be really cool.
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>> Okay.
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So, you showed me a little bit earlier a project that you were working on.
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Can you talk about that?
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>> Yeah, so I built this project called VDnote.
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>> VDnote.
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>> vdnote.com.
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>> You got a website?
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>> Yep it's on a website yep.
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>> Wow. >> So, basically,
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you can watch videos on my website by pasting the YouTube URL.
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>> Okay. >> And then you can take notes
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based on that.
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>> So it plays the video in your website and you take notes with it.
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>> Yep, and you can email the notes to yourself if you want and
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I'm working on adding new features and stuff, so.
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Yeah.
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>> Wow, that's super cool.
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What technology did you use?
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>> Okay, so I used html,
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CSS just to build the website structure and then I used JavaScript.
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>> Okay. And did you learn all that stuff here?
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>> Yes all of it.
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>> Wow, that's super neat.
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That's cool.
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And so you're taking notes on any video.
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>> Any video. >> Because you can paste any video
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in there.
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>> Yeah. Any video off YouTube.
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I'm gonna work on adding other videos from other websites.
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>> Okay. >> But currently just YouTube.
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>> Cool, that is super neat.
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So when you were building that app.
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When you were building this VDNote.com, which is awesome that you have a website.
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>> Yeah. >> Did you run into any problems?
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>> Yes, so for the email thing.
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So like you could add notes and
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then if you remove a note, it would still show up in the email.
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So I had to turn each thing into, just give it its own little ID.
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So you could access that ID.
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Every time you removed it you would completely remove it from the program.
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>> Cool! >> And then it would remove it from
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the email too.
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>> Wow!
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>> So, then it, yeah, so it works now, so- >> Nice!
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>> Yeah.
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>> Awesome! >> Yeah.
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>> So, if you could do me a favor and users of vdnote.com, what's
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something that they wouldn't know about you from just using your application?
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>> You mean like me personally?
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>> You personally, yeah.
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>> Yeah, okay.
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Well, I live in Hawaii.
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>> Okay.
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>> And I go surfing almost every day.
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>> You go surfing?
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Wow, okay.
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>> Yeah, so yeah.
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And I'm home schooled.
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>> You're home schooled.
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Awesome.
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>> Yeah. >> Awesome, awesome.
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>> Yeah. >> Have you built other apps,
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other than your video?
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>> Well, I'm working on getting some other ideas for apps.
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>> Okay. >> But I do have my website.
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>> Okay. >> Well, kind of like my portfolio website
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where I post my projects in there.
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>> Nice, awesome.
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>> Yeah so- >> Let's share that out.
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>> MosesFinlay.com.
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>> MosesFinlay.com all right awesome.
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>> Yeah.
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>> Cool great.
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When you see things like technology where it's headed right now,
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so you see the self driving cars and
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things like that do you have any ideas on what you'd like to see happen?
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>> Well one thing that would be cool is like the computer could make programs and
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make things just by itself.
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>> Write itself.
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>> That would be cool.
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Have you seen those movies?
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>> No, I don't think so.
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>> Okay, cuz it gets kind of scary.
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[LAUGH] >> Yeah.
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Yeah.
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>> Awesome. So, they could write their own thing.
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>> I think that would be cool.
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Yeah. >> Like, the computer makes its
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own Facebook.
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>> Yeah. Well, maybe not that.
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>> So they could chat with each other.
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>> That would be also be really complicated, but yeah, probably.
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>> Right. >> That would be kind of cool.
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>> Do you think the robots need to have a social media app?
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[LAUGH] >> That would be like one of the coolest
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things ever, like texting, what did you do today?
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>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, that would be really cool.
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>> That's awesome.
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All right, I really want to say thank you for being on the show.
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You are such an inspiration to see you sticking with it and
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being so, just showing that you can do it and stick with it.
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I'm really excited to have you on here.
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And please keep us updated on what you're doing
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>> Okay, I will, yeah.
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>> Because it's amazing.
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I'm so impressed with everything you do.
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>> Thank you.
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>> Thanks for watching The Treehouse Show.
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To get in touch with the show, reach out to me on Twitter or
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hit us up in The Treehouse community.
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See you next time.
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Since Moses was in the office,
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we figured we'd let him take a spin doing a screen cast.
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Is there anything this kid can't do?
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>> Hi everyone, my name is Moses and this is my website.
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Right here, and I have some projects that you can view here.
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What I really wanted to show you guys is this note taking app I made for videos.
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And you can paste any YouTube URL for
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any video you want, and can take notes based on that video.
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So I have a video up here that I'll copy.
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And then we can go over here, and paste that in here.
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So then, the video shows up right here.
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So now you can take notes based on the video.
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You can take notes based on the video like this and then it just pops down here.
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So you can just like basically take notes on any video you want.
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Also I had a little bit of trouble making this,
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like you could add notes like this and then when you would.
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See. So when you look at this, there,
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you could remove a note like this but it won't show up on email.
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And I had to like give each note specifically an ID or
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something to basically identify it.
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So that when you would send the notes, they would pop up right here, even though,
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I removed all those.
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So, yeah, that's basically it.
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So, yep.
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[SOUND]
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