LAURENCE MORONEY: So now Firebase,
it's a part of Google.
But I hear that you were a part of Firebase for a long time.
DAVID EAST: I've been with Firebase for almost two years
now.
And I was a big user back in the early days.
When I first discovered it, I was building a lot of apps.
And so having something that just made making apps so easy,
I was kind of like, my god, they've done it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow.
DAVID EAST: They've built the holy grail of development.
And then one day they posted up a developer advocate job.
And so sent my resume in on a Sunday,
they called me on Monday, took a coding test on Tuesday,
flew out on Wednesday, brought my whole family,
too, my wife and my 16-month-old son.
Got the job that day.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So the only thing
faster than the database is the hiring committee.
DAVID EAST: Yeah, it was a pretty fast process.
Just letting everyone know, I was like, oh, by the way,
I'm going to San Francisco.
LAURENCE MORONEY: See you.
DAVID EAST: Yeah, pretty much.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow.
So now you're a developer advocate at Google and Firebase
is a part of Google.
How is that?
DAVID EAST: It's been great.
Like it's been about 15 months ago that we were acquired.
And it's been a really awesome experience,
because Google has just sort of thrown a lot of resources
into us.
We've expanded the team so much.
And we've been able to focus on the core product
and making Firebase better.
We are in the middle of releasing
a Unity plugin that's out there for beta,
for people to test out.
LAURENCE MORONEY: A Unity plugin?
DAVID EAST: Yeah.
Yeah, there's some pretty cool samples.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So that's cool stuff there, David.
I mean, how does a developer get started with that?
DAVID EAST: So the best place to get started
is just like right on the Firebase website,
so Firebase.com.
And then you can sign up, but also Firebase.com/docs.
Our docs are one of the things that we really
pride ourselves on.
So by just reading our quick start guide,
you can already get a gist of how to get started.
Each platform integrates totally with whatever
dependency manager it has.
So with Android, it's great with Gradle, with iOS,
you can use CocoaPods.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, one of the things
I remember about Firebase is that you guys used
to do these epic hack-a-thons where you gave out
like really cool swag.
Is that something you still do?
DAVID EAST: Well, we used to make a joke like Firebase
was actually a swag company and we just kind of put on a front
that we did--
LAURENCE MORONEY: So it's a swag company that makes software.
DAVID EAST: Yeah, that was pretty
much what we used to say.
So we used to make-- we still do actually.
We make tons of pieces of swag.
Firebase hot sauce was pretty awesome.
My favorite is headbands.
So we have these sweatpants.
And so I was at a hack-a-thon once
and I saw this guy who was like, hey, can I have a couple?
And by a couple, he meant like 16.
And then he started putting them on and kind of like a mummified
himself and then just sat down and started hacking.
And I was like, that dude's going to win.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Did he?
DAVID EAST: I don't think so.
LAURENCE MORONEY: In all seriousness, though,
I'm a developer.
Middleware is really hard.
If I want to have some kind of a database,
if I want to have some kind of synchronization of data,
it's a case where I can just go out and use Firebase today,
right?
DAVID EAST: Yeah, no, I mean, that's what we're doing.
Like we always say our mission is
to help people build extraordinary applications.
And so there's so many pieces of building something.
And the back end is just so easy to get wrong, or so easy,
you can just spend so much time.
I remember one time I was building an Angular app.
And I was so excited.
I was like, I'm going to write directives,
and I'm going to build this cool web app.
And then I spent an entire month just
building out the back end for it.
And then I realized, I haven't written a line of JavaScript
yet.
And so in Firebase, you don't have that problem.
You can just immediately start doing
what the user's interested in.
Because the user is only going to see the client side stuff.
Like I always say, you're never going
to get an email from an app reviewer or someone saying,
like, hey, man.
Your app is so good.
I can tell you used so many databases.
It's really awesome.
They're just going to tell you--
LAURENCE MORONEY: I'm going to review your app with that now.
DAVID EAST: If you ever get that review, let me know.
I would love to see it.
But most people are going to say, the gestures were great,
or it was really responsive, I loved this feature.
That's what people really care about.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I mean, I've worked
for middleware companies.
And whenever we built apps, it was a case
of we designed all the middleware brilliantly first
and then the app was like the thing that came at the end.
And I've worked in purely mobile companies
and we were building mobile apps and then
the middleware was the thing that came at the end.
But to be able to make that middleware easy
with the authentication, and of course
the static hosting, which is-- it sounds trivial
and often overlooked, but it's actually really important.
DAVID EAST: Well, the static hosting
is really awesome, because the set up is so easy with it.
There is a CLI, so you just install it on MPM.
And once you have it installed, type
in the command Firebase in it and that kind of
does-- it sets you up a little file that says,
this is the Firebase database I'm going to point to.
Or this is the URL I'm going to set up and everything.
And then from there, you say, Firebase deploy.
And then you have a website out on the web, just like that.
And then every single file is a static file,
so we actually cache them in a CDN that
has pops all around the globe.
So wherever your users are viewing your site from,
it's delivered to them from whatever that local pop is.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So for a developer to get started,
Firebase.com, tutorial's on there.
I know you've written a series of tutorials
on some various sites, right?
DAVID EAST: Yeah, I mean our documentation
is one of the things that we just
pride ourselves on so much.
It was one of the first biggest projects
I was on when we joined.
We have a quick start, so you can get started
any platform in five minutes.
And then after that, we have your 0 to 60 guide,
or you can go from knowing pretty much nothing
to being an absolute pro.
And we actually take pride in the fact
that they're written for humans and not for technical geniuses.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Non-humans.
DAVID EAST: Yeah, non-humans, exactly.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Wow.
Cool.
Well, thank you, David.
Learned a lot.
I'm going to go check out Firebase.com
and see what I can write with Firebase in it.
DAVID EAST: Thanks for having me, LoMo.
LAURENCE MORONEY: If there's any Googlers you'd like to talk
to, contact us on our G+ page and we'd love to put them
in front of the camera.
Thanks again.
And happy coffee.