Hi, I'm Craig, welcome to the Treehouse Show.

The treehouse show is our weekly conversation with the Treehouse community.

We have a very special guest on the show today, Moses Finlay.

He is a student and a longtime fan of the Treehouse Show, and

the creator of many applications.

Most notably, the video note taking site, vdnote.com.

Yeah, did I forget to mention?

He's 11.

Moses, I am so happy to have you on the show today.

>> Yeah, it's good to be here.

I'm really excited.

>> Yeah, I heard that you're a fan of the show.

>> Yes, I am.

I watch it, like, almost every week.

>> That's awesome!

>> Yeah. >> So, we're so

lucky to have you on the show.

>> Yeah! >> I have a question for you.

How did you get started in technology?

>> Okay, well, for

all my life I've always loved knowing, building things and knowing how they work.

>> Okay.

>> And one day my dad was like, hey, you should get into programming.

>> Okay.

>> And I'm like, okay, that sounds really cool.

What is it?

>> How old were you?

>> I think I was, maybe eight.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah, so then he was like, okay, just basically, where are you?

Tell the computer what to do and you can build websites and stuff like that.

So we found this place called codecademy and

I started learning on there for a little while, and then,

I started playing on Treehouse because I found out and I'm like, this is amazing.

>> Okay. >> So, I've just been doing Treehouse for

the past year and a half, I think.

>> Wow! >> Or two years, yeah.

>> And so how old are you now?

>> I'm 11. >> You're 11 now, wow.

Okay, so you've got a lot of experience under your belt.

What are you taking on Treehouse?

>> So right now I'm learning JavaScript.

>> Okay. >> I'm going through the full stack

JavaScript track, yep.

>> Okay. Awesome, so

you have two years experience there.

So what sort of advice would you give to students that are learning JavaScript?

>> Okay, so, well first I would say find a great place to learn, Treehouse.

Treehouse is a great place.

Also, sometimes you might be down, and

I just say, if you have any questions just go to a forum.

>> Okay. >> Like Stack Overflow is a great one and

just ask questions.

Also sometimes you just need to just take a break.

>> That's a great, taking a break is great advice.

>> Yup. Taking a break, yeah.

Mm-hm. Yeah, just take a break and yeah.

>> Do you ever get frustrated?

>> [LAUGH] Yeah sometimes, but I just, if I have a question I just ask it and

then usually when I'm frustrated I just put it away, thing about it, and

then you know, once it comes to me or once I figure out the problem,

I'll go back- >> Right.

>> And it works!

>> Isn't that funny how that works?

>> Yeah, I know.

>> Like when you're really upset about something and you're focusing on it, but

when you walk away that's usually when it- >> One time,

there was this big bug in my program and I was like, what?

What's going on?

And then I just put it away, I went to bed, next morning light bulb.

A typo.

>> A typo, wow.

>> I was like thinking about my code and then like, it's a typo.

Or I just like typing the wrong thing out or I'm not doing it the right way.

You just.

Yeah, I usually just think about it and there's also lots of great experienced

programmers and I usually ask questions from them.

>> That's great.

Asking questions, I think, is a great advice and a lot of people,

sometimes feel like maybe you shouldn't ask questions, but you should.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Don't feel like you shouldn't ask questions because, yeah.

>> Its kind of, is it easy to pick up?

Did you think it was easy?

>> Yes.

>> Okay.

>> Well no.

Sometimes I'd spend like a couple of hours just trying to figure

out- >> Okay.

>> Like something.

Because so like there would be like a bug in my code and

I'd like start digging through it.

>> Okay. >> And I eventually find out and

then that kind of just like helped me gets stronger.

>> Okay. >> And then like next time I'd be like.

>> How did you- >> That's easy, yeah.

>> So how did you find that, how did you keep going?

That's the advice that I was kind of looking for, but

I think you probably have some.

>> Like, like. >> You might not have thought of it

as advice before.

How do you keep going?

How do you keep going after [CROSSTALK] >> I don't know.

I love it, I love it a ton.

>> Okay. >> And.

I don't know, it just comes to me.

I just do it all the time.

>> Okay, why do you love it at time?

What do you love about programming?

>> Okay, you can build things.

You can tell the computer what to do and

the computer is a very, very powerful tool and it's just.

I just love it, because you can tell it what you do and build things, and

you know how it works.

And if you learn enough you can build anything.

>> Right. Anything.

Do you have a dream of, what would you like to build if you could?

>> Well, I don't know, maybe a social media.

>> Okay. >> That would be really cool.

>> Okay.

So, you showed me a little bit earlier a project that you were working on.

Can you talk about that?

>> Yeah, so I built this project called VDnote.

>> VDnote.

>> vdnote.com.

>> You got a website?

>> Yep it's on a website yep.

>> Wow. >> So, basically,

you can watch videos on my website by pasting the YouTube URL.

>> Okay. >> And then you can take notes

based on that.

>> So it plays the video in your website and you take notes with it.

>> Yep, and you can email the notes to yourself if you want and

I'm working on adding new features and stuff, so.

Yeah.

>> Wow, that's super cool.

What technology did you use?

>> Okay, so I used html,

CSS just to build the website structure and then I used JavaScript.

>> Okay. And did you learn all that stuff here?

>> Yes all of it.

>> Wow, that's super neat.

That's cool.

And so you're taking notes on any video.

>> Any video. >> Because you can paste any video

in there.

>> Yeah. Any video off YouTube.

I'm gonna work on adding other videos from other websites.

>> Okay. >> But currently just YouTube.

>> Cool, that is super neat.

So when you were building that app.

When you were building this VDNote.com, which is awesome that you have a website.

>> Yeah. >> Did you run into any problems?

>> Yes, so for the email thing.

So like you could add notes and

then if you remove a note, it would still show up in the email.

So I had to turn each thing into, just give it its own little ID.

So you could access that ID.

Every time you removed it you would completely remove it from the program.

>> Cool! >> And then it would remove it from

the email too.

>> Wow!

>> So, then it, yeah, so it works now, so- >> Nice!

>> Yeah.

>> Awesome! >> Yeah.

>> So, if you could do me a favor and users of vdnote.com, what's

something that they wouldn't know about you from just using your application?

>> You mean like me personally?

>> You personally, yeah.

>> Yeah, okay.

Well, I live in Hawaii.

>> Okay.

>> And I go surfing almost every day.

>> You go surfing?

Wow, okay.

>> Yeah, so yeah.

And I'm home schooled.

>> You're home schooled.

Awesome.

>> Yeah. >> Awesome, awesome.

>> Yeah. >> Have you built other apps,

other than your video?

>> Well, I'm working on getting some other ideas for apps.

>> Okay. >> But I do have my website.

>> Okay. >> Well, kind of like my portfolio website

where I post my projects in there.

>> Nice, awesome.

>> Yeah so- >> Let's share that out.

>> MosesFinlay.com.

>> MosesFinlay.com all right awesome.

>> Yeah.

>> Cool great.

When you see things like technology where it's headed right now,

so you see the self driving cars and

things like that do you have any ideas on what you'd like to see happen?

>> Well one thing that would be cool is like the computer could make programs and

make things just by itself.

>> Write itself.

>> That would be cool.

Have you seen those movies?

>> No, I don't think so.

>> Okay, cuz it gets kind of scary.

[LAUGH] >> Yeah.

Yeah.

>> Awesome. So, they could write their own thing.

>> I think that would be cool.

Yeah. >> Like, the computer makes its

own Facebook.

>> Yeah. Well, maybe not that.

>> So they could chat with each other.

>> That would be also be really complicated, but yeah, probably.

>> Right. >> That would be kind of cool.

>> Do you think the robots need to have a social media app?

[LAUGH] >> That would be like one of the coolest

things ever, like texting, what did you do today?

>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, that would be really cool.

>> That's awesome.

All right, I really want to say thank you for being on the show.

You are such an inspiration to see you sticking with it and

being so, just showing that you can do it and stick with it.

I'm really excited to have you on here.

And please keep us updated on what you're doing

>> Okay, I will, yeah.

>> Because it's amazing.

I'm so impressed with everything you do.

>> Thank you.

>> Thanks for watching The Treehouse Show.

To get in touch with the show, reach out to me on Twitter or

hit us up in The Treehouse community.

See you next time.

Since Moses was in the office,

we figured we'd let him take a spin doing a screen cast.

Is there anything this kid can't do?

>> Hi everyone, my name is Moses and this is my website.

Right here, and I have some projects that you can view here.

What I really wanted to show you guys is this note taking app I made for videos.

And you can paste any YouTube URL for

any video you want, and can take notes based on that video.

So I have a video up here that I'll copy.

And then we can go over here, and paste that in here.

So then, the video shows up right here.

So now you can take notes based on the video.

You can take notes based on the video like this and then it just pops down here.

So you can just like basically take notes on any video you want.

Also I had a little bit of trouble making this,

like you could add notes like this and then when you would.

See. So when you look at this, there,

you could remove a note like this but it won't show up on email.

And I had to like give each note specifically an ID or

something to basically identify it.

So that when you would send the notes, they would pop up right here, even though,

I removed all those.

So, yeah, that's basically it.

So, yep.

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