LAURENCE MORONEY: Welcome to "Coffee with a Googler."
Today I'm chatting with Jen Person, who
has been the face of Cloud Functions for Firebase
for some time.
JEN PERSON: Hey, how's it going, Firebase developers?
Install the Google Cloud Storage module.
Name is its path in storage.
I'll log the event and then return.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Jen's here today to talk about this
and also a couple of nice big announcements
that she has for us.
Welcome, Jen.
JEN PERSON: Thanks.
Happy to be here, Laurence.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So you've been working
Cloud Functions for Firebase.
Can you tell us all about it?
JEN PERSON: Sure.
So I have made some content around Cloud Functions
for Firebase.
It runs serverless in the back end.
And so that enables you to run code
that you wouldn't necessarily want your client
to have access to.
And prior to working on Cloud Functions for Firebase,
I hadn't worked with that kind of trigger before.
And I really loved that it was so easy to learn.
So at first, I was like, I thought, you know,
a lot of this is stuff that I could do myself already.
An IOS developer.
I could do a lot of this from the client.
But then I realized that it was definitely
worthwhile to learn Cloud Functions for Firebase,
even though I wasn't that familiar with JavaScript
before now.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And one of the magic things of Firebase
when we first launched, it was like all this stuff
that you can do in the client without having all
of these tiers and managing these tiers,
like for simple things like data reads and writes.
But we've learned over time that, of course,
people still need to have code running on the back end.
JEN PERSON: Yes.
That's true.
We still need some things running on the back end.
But Firebase is still taking a lot of that work out of it
for us.
So it scales up and down the service for you
so you don't have to worry about managing that yourself.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And you don't have
to worry about managing specific servers, right?
JEN PERSON: Right.
Exactly.
LAURENCE MORONEY: FTP to this one
to deploy code and FTP to that one to deploy code,
like in the bad old days.
You just push it into the Firebase and it does the rest.
JEN PERSON: It just works.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And now Functions works off
a concept called triggers.
Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you think?
JEN PERSON: Sure.
So a lot of times you're going to run some code in response
to something that happened, probably client-side,
or it could be something like a write to the database
or adding something to storage, authenticating a new user,
maybe some sort of important analytics
event, or maybe HTTP or Pub/Sub.
Something that normally happens in your app and you
want to run some snippet of code every time.
The code is triggered based on that event.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And that was a perception change
that I had to make.
And I didn't get functions at first.
And I watched some of your videos,
and then suddenly it just dawned on me that--
because to me, like, back-end code would always be,
I have to make a call, and it would execute something.
And I might have a Cron job that does it occasionally,
or it's just something to respond to users.
But now it's like a field in the database changes,
and the code will execute.
Or an off-event happens and code will execute.
JEN PERSON: Right.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's really cool.
JEN PERSON: Yeah.
And there are a lot of great samples of this
on our GitHub Function Samples.
And it's great to check it out and try it for yourself,
because if you're not sure what it can do,
there are a lot of options out there to try out.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So there's a code lab as well
for the friendly chats, and some functions
have been added to that.
Have you seen them?
JEN PERSON: Yeah, actually, and it also
uses machine learning as well.
So you can really see how Cloud Functions works
with all sorts of other code that you'd
want to use in your apps.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
There's one really neat function in there
that like-- because friendly chats for a chat room.
And then sometimes people upload bad pictures to chat rooms.
And so what it does is it uses a cloud function
to call our cloud services to see if this content is
objectionable.
And then if it is, it blurs the image.
JEN PERSON: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's really-- that's one of my favorites.
Whenever I demo, I like to show that one.
I show them the blurred image and ask
them to guess what it is.
You'll have to watch some of the videos to see for yourself.
So Cloud Functions, you've been doing a fabulous job on this.
JEN PERSON: Thank you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And you weren't even
a full-time Googler when you were doing it.
JEN PERSON: Guilty.
Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I hope this doesn't
seen too much of an empty compliment,
but I was really surprised when I found out
that you'd become a Googler, because I
thought you were one all along.
JEN PERSON: Thank you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Which is great.
JEN PERSON: Yeah, I had been a vendor.
So working for third-party at Google
for a little over a year.
And actually, this is my second day working as a Googler.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Always the joke
when somebody is on their second day of job
is like, you came back.
So how's it been?
How's the second full day of work been?
JEN PERSON: It feels great.
You know, it's such a welcoming community anyway.
I always felt like I belonged as well.
So in a lot of ways, it feels like business as usual.
But it's nice to have the title.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's good that you mentioned community,
because you're going to be doing some community
work in the coming months, right, some conferences you're
speaking at.
JEN PERSON: Yes.
I'm going to a couple of conferences soon.
I'm going to Google Developer Days Europe, which is
going to be in Krakow, Poland.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
JEN PERSON: I'm going to be doing a talk on app growth
and app quality.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
JEN PERSON: And yeah, I'd love people to check it out.
Showing some cool Firebase features.
It's got a great story.
And I'm especially interested in seeing other female developers
come out.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
JEN PERSON: I'd love to communicate with them
and see what they're working on.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Sure.
It's been a tough time for women recently in Silicon Valley.
So it's great to have women up front speaking and women
talking about cutting-edge stuff the way that you have.
So if you're watching this video and you're a woman in tech,
please, please come along to our conferences.
You're very, very welcome.
And we'd just be delighted to have you there.
And when we have folks like Jennifer up front speaking,
hopefully it's--
she's been an inspiration to many of us here
and hopefully she will be to you too.
So as well as the Poland one, you're
also going to be speaking at the Firebase Summit.
JEN PERSON: I am going to be speaking at the Firebase
Summit.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Can you give us a hint on what it will be?
JEN PERSON: It's definitely a favorite talk.
People really enjoy it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: No spoilers?
JEN PERSON: No spoilers.
LAURENCE MORONEY: This is like "Game of Thrones."
OK.
So this is going to be end of October, right?
JEN PERSON: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
So you're going to be there.
The whole Firebase team is going to be there.
JEN PERSON: All of us are going to be there.
LAURENCE MORONEY: We're going to do a bunch of talks.
I'm not allowed to talk about my talk either yet,
but we'll be there answering questions on stage.
And the whole thing's going to be on video as well,
which is great.
So thanks very much, Jennifer, for coming.
Thanks for being on this show.
JEN PERSON: Thanks for having me.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I know it's day two,
and you're supposed to be doing your orientation,
but we dragged you out to put you in the studio.
So we appreciate that.
So thank you so much for watching this episode
of "Coffee with a Googler."
And if you've any questions for me
or if you've any questions for Jennifer,
just please leave them in the comments below.
I would love to see you at our events, particularly
the two that are coming up.
But you're always welcome at any Google event.
Thanks so much.
It's going to be fun in Poland.
JEN PERSON: I can't wait.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I wish I could be there.
JEN PERSON: Next time.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Lots of great food.