Chat with David East about Firebase - Coffee with a Googler Video Lecture | Coffee with a Googler - IT & Software

so now firebase it's a part of Google
but I hear that you were part of
firebase for a long time I've been
firebase for almost two years now and I
was a big user back in the early days
you know when I first discovered it you
know I was building a lot of apps and so
having something that just made anything
up so easy I was kind of like my gut
they've done it like Wow built the holy
grail of development and then one day
they posted up a developer advocate job
and so sent my resume and I'm a Sunday
they called me on Monday took a coding
test on Tuesday flew out on Wednesday
brought my whole family to my wife and
my 16 month old son got the job that day
so the only thing faster than the
database is the hiring committee yeah
yeah no it was a pretty fast process
just letting everyone knows like oh by
the way I'm moving to San Francisco
pretty much Wow and so now you're a
developer advocate at Google and
firebase is a part of Google how is that
that's been great like you know it's
been about 15 months ago that we were
acquired and it's been a really awesome
experience because Google is just sort
of thrown a lot of resources into us
you've expanded the team so much and
we've able to focus on the core product
and you know making firebase better we
are in the middle of releasing a unity
plug-in that's out there for beta for
beautiful tests up yeah yeah and there's
some pretty cool samples and lots of
cool stuff there today but but I mean
how does the developer get started with
that so the best way to get started is
just like right on the firebase website
so firebase comm and you can like sign
up but also firebase comm slash Doc's
our Doc's are one of the things that we
really pride ourselves on so by just you
know reading our QuickStart guide you
can already get just of how to get
started and then in each platform
integrates totally with you know
whatever dependency manager it has so
with Android it's you know great with
Gradle with iOS you can use cocoapods
and you know web webs web right now one
of the things I remember about firebase
is that you guys used to do things like
epic hackathons where you gave out like
really cool swag yes that's not
something you're still doing well we
used to make a joke that like firebase
was actually a swag company and we just
were kind of pulling up front that we
did time to make software yeah
pretty much what we say so yeah we we
used to make and we still do actually
make tons of likes like pieces why we
did firebase hot sauce was pretty
awesome
my favorite is headbands so like give
these sweatbands and so I was at a
hackathon once and I saw this guy he was
like hey can I have a couple and by a
couple he meant like 16 and then he like
started putting them on and kind of like
mummified himself and then just sat down
and started hacking and I was like that
dudes gonna win did he now in all
seriousness though that's I'm a
developer middleware is really hard you
know 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 yeah no that's I mean that's
all we're doing like we always say our
mission is to help people build like
extraordinary applications and so like
there's so many pieces of building
something and the backend is just so
easy to like get wrong or so easy you
can just spend so much time like I
remember one time I was building an
angular app and I was like so excited it
was like I don't know write directives
and I'm gonna build this cool web app
and then I spent like an entire month
just building out the backend for it and
then I realized I was like I haven't
written a line of JavaScript yet and so
it was like in firebase you don't have
that problem you can just immediately
start doing like what the user is
interested in cuz you're only gonna see
the client side stuff like right I
always say you're never gonna get an
email from you know an app review or
someone saying like hey man your app is
so good I can tell you you so many
databases it's really awesome they're
just going to tell you to review your
app get that review let me know let's
see it but most people gonna say like
you know the gestures were great or like
it was really responsive like I love it
you know I love this feature like that's
what people really care about yeah I
mean I've worked for middleware
companies and when we ever we built apps
it was a case of we designed all the
middleware brilliantly first and then
the app was like that
the thing that came at the end and I've
worked in purely mobile companies and
like we were building mobile apps and
then the middleware was the thing that
came at the end and yeah of both them so
but to be able to make that middleware
easy with the authentication and of
course the static hosting which is it's
it sounds trivial but and it often
overlooked but it's actually really
important well the static hosting is
really awesome because it's the setup is
so easy with it there is a CLI so use
installed on NPM and once you have it
installed type in a command in firebase
in it and that kind of does like sets
you up a little file that says oh this
is a firebase database I'm gonna point
to or this is the URL I'm gonna set up
and everything and 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 you know
it's a static file so we actually cache
them and see it in a CDN that has like
you know pops all around the globe so
wherever you're you know users are like
viewing your site from its you know
delivered to them from whatever that
local pop is so for a developer to get
started firebase comm tutorials on there
I know you've written a series of
tutorials on some various sites right
yeah I mean our documentation is one of
the things that we just like pride
ourselves on so much one of the first
biggest projects I was on when we joined
and it's you know we have a we have a
QuickStart so you can get started any
platform and five minutes and then after
that we have you know your zero to sixty
guide or you can go from knowing pretty
much nothing to being an absolute Pro
and we actually you know take pride in
the fact that they're written for humans
and not for you know like you know
technical geniuses
yeah nonhumans exactly well cool well
thank you David learned a lot I'm gonna
go check out firebase comm and see what
I can write with firebase in it thanks
for having me Lomo if there's any
Googlers you'd like to talk to contact
us on our G+ page and would love to put
them in front of the camera thanks again
and happy coffee
you