--- title: "An interview with Eduardo from the Vue.js core team" description: "In this video I'm interviewing Eduardo San Martin Morote from the Vue.js core team. What a privilege to speak to someone who actually built the tools I use on a daily basis! Eduardo humbly explains how he sees life and how he acts as a contributor to open source projects. What a guy." date: "2020-02-13T09:42:00.000Z" url: "https://timbenniks.dev/videos/tim/106-lkiomruiaae" youtube_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKioMRuiAaE" playlist: "tim" image: "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LKioMRuiAaE/maxresdefault.jpg" tags: ["frontend", "developer-experience", "devrel", "career"] --- # An interview with Eduardo from the Vue.js core team In this video I'm interviewing Eduardo San Martin Morote from the Vue.js core team. What a privilege to speak to someone who actually built the tools I use on a daily basis! Eduardo humbly explains how he sees life and how he acts as a contributor to open source projects. What a guy. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKioMRuiAaE ## Transcript what's up Tim Ben exhale we hit a huge milestone this week there's over 1500 views on all the videos and we have 120 subscribers maybe even more by the time this comes out man I'm so happy that people actually took the chance to watch the videos and subscribe I appreciate all of you and I'll be keeping the videos coming today's interview is super exciting for me I got to speak to Eduardo from the Fuji escorting I used Fuji s every day I used the tools that he's built and then to be able for me to ask him what it's like to be a Fuji s core team member but also what it's like to be a speaker and a c-stand developer um he goes into depth about all those things and I think it's brilliant that he actually opened up about everything so as you've noticed I have not spoken his full name yes it's a Spanish name and it's a super fancy name and I have a Dutch accent and I'm just going to butcher it completely so my first question will be can you please say your name yes good here we go okay so um it's really funny I just try to do the intro for this and then I said read your name and I'm like okay I'm never going to be able to say that nicely in my Dutch accent so for the people can you actually pronounce your name the way it's supposed to my name is in Spanish what about Samantha Marathi but I've never cared too much about this pronunciation since I've been living your friends yeah so how do you say it in French with a French accent yes we will do some of them about there yes I could not say that any other way I just go I'm just gonna call you Eduardo yeah that's the English yeah exactly and my like I always like these kind of different culture stuff so that's why I'm asking how you say this and also because you're Spanish right so you move to France is life different here like work-wise or anything yeah well life is different also also well friends is also quite big and right now I'm living in Paris which is a very different city from the rest of the friends sure regarding people helium prices well yes but Anwar culture everything is quite different people's mood and interactions are different for sure from the rest of friends and it's even worse when you convert to Spain because I find Spanish people to be warmer and I definitely see this one I'm having conferences communities in Spain or so much friendlier to me and I I do speak I speak both languages like I might have both to mother tongues French and Spanish so that's really not an issue at all for me and I see a huge difference like a really really big when it comes to interactions in conferences with other attendees Wow also world culture I haven't worked in Spain officially as like as an employee but one of the reasons I left Spain was to study abroad and work abroad so because the situation wasn't really good when I when I was 18 and I had the opportunity because I knew French and I had a French French studies so it was very easy for me to just go to very easy yeah I was very easy yeah like definitely not a chance that anybody could get and I knew that the situation there wasn't great especially because it was right after the crises in Europe and Spain will spin is a bit of yes one of the part one of the asses of Europe so it it was like we knew that people were being a bit exploited at work and and I still hear stuff read stuff that happens in Spain that is not great after working friends it really disgust me especially friends they the worker writing friends are really great we have to say that people fought for the rights and you have a lot of rights as an employee and that's great salary wise I feel sometimes that Spanish in Spain the culture is not always very healthy and of course it changes depending on the on the city I think that in Madrid and Barcelona things have evolved very well because I have a lot of friends who work there and they seem to be very happy so I don't think I'm going going back to Spain okay but I think that change happened since and even though there is a difference in culture for people the work culture is is changing and getting better than what it was before but it's the difference is still there of course if I do actually get what you say so when I had a conference in Barcelona it was so chill and people are so nice to me all the time and not that it's not the same in France but that was truly something that I noticed from that so that's yeah it's a cool thing for sure anyways so a lot of people know you because you are a few GS core team member right so I don't think that's an easy thing to do or become even though I know that even you once said who wants to be a core team member I need people I notice but still how did you how did you land that gig oh yeah that's sorry that's more of an American way of saying a job no no I because it's funny because I mean makes me think like I don't know what is exactly the image that people have with being a core team member of something I feel like there is a so big reason why I asked and this is one of them yeah seems to give it a lot of importance like yes I don't mean something and I don't think it means what it looks to me when I when I well I hear all the people saying to me it just means that iíve been doing something in the vehicle system for some time and that I contribute I I help I hope you grow of course there are some tiny calling a view court remember I guess they have through the discussion channels that we have internally I assure that will be the clinical difference but from contributing perspective to the project you don't have to be a core team member to be a contributor no it's actually I am a contributor I've done a bunch of poor requests but what how am i different from you how did you get to become core team member oh I did get the country by the way you said I have any access which is a cool way right that's the way to go yeah it's funny it was it wasn't a time when I had a I had a lot of free time or rather I could afford to spend most of my free time doing whatever I wanted and at that time I wanted to do to work on projects and also discover other libraries fronted libraries so it was a time of angularjs je yes sorry I remember that time French and it was about it was about time for that library and I was using that our work and I didn't like it so I was started looking for alternatives and I find these library called UGS which has a French name yeah ex echo and I started using it in my personal projects and I feel how everything clicks very well and it was at a time the Oh point 12 came out there was pv-1 and very shortly after that after I started using it even posted these issue is finding the changes for the view one and it was very exciting it was it was how this is everything looks really really great here like it's becoming even better so everything combined make me want to spend more time knowing the library and using it and so what I did is did spend most of my time just reading issues so it's kinda like going through Stack Overflow answering questions you don't always have to answer the question but the simple fact that you are being confronted to all those people problem makes you learn more just yeah that's how it is right sure yeah and so I spend time answering on github on github some of the issues also on the forums I will pay attention and just keep building my own stuff and building some libraries for you at the time it was like a view material library that I don't maintain anymore and I don't think there is any reason to do so because we have solutions like beautify and give X 0 X 1 when they have their own teams I don't need to do that and III felt that it was very easy to contribute to the ecosystem like the age I was really easy to build on top and that was great to me personally was a great experience and given that possibility of spending a lot of time of my free time doing that helped me grow faster I guess and maybe be worth fee so to save that's what people want to see like some kind of being worthy but there is no such thing is just the worthy is just giving making the project better ok oh the ecosystem so it's kind of sorry yeah it kind of science like just be there and be good at what you do this is you don't have to forget the thing about being good is if you want to I mean if you want yes you're gonna get good at what you do if you keep practicing sure are but what you're gonna create is gonna get better also so the ecosystem your the ecosystem you're improving is gonna gonna get better too because the way you just learn to from your mistakes so the libraries you're creating are gonna have better api's they're gonna have sometimes less parts as well they always have bucks and you're gonna keep making things better understanding what people do how they do it and how to make API start make more sense for them yeah and so did you have to be certain way behaviorally to deal with with with haters or people who don't like certain changes or stuff like that I don't think I had to I think Evan Evan probably did I I don't think I had to deal with that as much as he did he don't know very well how much I've had to deal with deep with people like this I think I I mean I'm pretty sure I've dealt with people like this of course here I probably dealt it not very well but I I've learned from mistakes I think I'm doing much better now and I've also learned not to care too much about noisy negative comments which is what comes from toxic people generally and the fact that they are not representative of what must what the average person I mean IV average opinion ease they are not representative the average all right but to you when sometimes it hurts you and it feels like it's more people than ever ease which is usually one person sometimes more but it seems important to keep so that's what I learned what I learned is important give yourself a be open-minded and keep keep the the feedback coming sometimes because even even if sometimes people can be can be can express things in a very aggressive way there is a lot of things to take into account so I'm just talking here about technical discussions again sure and not anything else so sometimes you can it can come aggressive or derogatory not often but happens and in this situation is too important to get to the technical part because sometimes there are important things you want to keep and just give the derogatory terms and either person just keeps doing it then and even though you who you are not doing it because if you keep if you're also using Oracle there are go you should man they're local tourists right you I don't rock Ettore I don't know the territory you're insulting to a person but yeah but if you behave the same way they do then everybody's gonna you both going that way so if you are if you are trying to be if you are being if you are ignoring the negative person I'm focusing on the painful part and the other person is still being aggressive then I think the best is to drop out the conversation yeah because at least for us in VG s we have more people there there is enough people for us to to focus and other people are gonna come with the same feedback but they are gonna be able to to view a conversation that brings you somewhere to improvement instead of negativity yeah exactly this and I don't think I have dealt with that as much as other people have dealt with yeah I think I've learned a lot from the mistakes talking too fast and not reacting correctly and that now it affects me way less than I did before you are talking a little bit about failures and I think that's our mistakes right and this is also a really good topic because a lot of people who are super successful to the outside world you look super successful you know you're speaker you're in the few core team and all the fancy stuff but there are definitely mistakes that people make that make you a better person or teach you more do you have a specific thing that you remember that happened that actually make you better at what you do or feel better about what you do yeah definitely but I think that for the first thing is that for people and when you think about someone's to say it's successful they probably look up to some other people as well so and probably the image you have of them is better than they actually are that's the first thing especially when you can't when it comes to speakers because when you are speaking in a conference you are talking about a topic you like yeah your topic that you usually deal with and you're usually good with and comfortable speaking with so if people only see that version of you will for sure you're gonna look like someone that knows their because that's the point of the top there's you you know the things you're talking about otherwise you wouldn't you wouldn't enjoy talking about it most of the time although you can still give a talk about something you don't know well to get to know it I'm sure when you know when you give the talk usually you you ended up doing more research and learning more so we're not that far like when I look at other people as well all the speakers I'm like oh my god they know so much about obesity and I look up to them as well but I know that it's distort reality about the person that is just an idea that we have of that person that we don't need you really know that person so the the thing that the failures I had me you know the most succeed so to say or to prefer to say grow because I think that growing is something that applies to everybody and every can resonates with anybody no matter where they are in their careers I think he's realizing that having failures is normal that everybody has it that the people you look up to also have them and that what worked very well for me personally he's verbally accepting that so so basically saying I'm wrong oh you're right I'm wrong I did this mistake verbally saying that you're wrong is like a reality check yeah and it helps it helped me personally too give less importance to the mistakes we made I mean this is very generic of course but I'm talking about mistakes that are not like in technical things and something that has not you're not giving someone you know I mean no sure they're but like some things you can you can reflect on your actions and and what happened and an improvement on the next time so if you start by accepting that using a mistake and you are you're more more open to the idea I might have done a mistake or a few mistakes usually a few mistakes multiple ones when I did these thing then you're more likely to grow as well and that's the thing that I would like to keep now that there is not I've done everybody does a lot of failures but if you don't shame yourself on failures they all equalize more or less I mean I'm talking about talking about careers of course because this is very generic speaking yeah sure but because you kind of mess up with all the things that are more that have an impact are very different but if you're looking at how you perform things and how how you're doing a career and you don't you're not so ashamed to accept your mistakes you're gonna think less about the mistake itself and think more about how it could have been different so that you change the behavior in the future and you grow as a person yeah man preach it I agree I love it and I always ask this question and I'm getting similar questions Zimmer similar answers and but yours went really well I think it's great because it has it's not just about code like a lot of developers they go into yeah but I did this pool request and it went wrong it's not about that at all just be a good persons on every these failures like this recognizing you're wrong is about everything so that's why I'm also saying that some mistakes have bigger impact sometimes you're not the only person involved exactly in something but in your career most of the time hopefully you're not gonna hurt other people when I'm talking about these things to make you grow but of course you can you should also grow form from personal mistakes and they probably be the one that maybe will make you feel the best oh for sure it's a person totally agree so and you always have to deal with other humans or human beings so Gordon's a person is something that you then I use the whole your whole life for sure no matter what happens in your life okay Watchers or fewers you should really listen to this I like this a lot is this this stuff can can basically if you listen to what you're saying and you apply this you can change your career or your life if you're not able to understand how that feels right so I think it's super important yeah it does change what you see yeah well you need a bit of experience to get there clearly but so yeah this is a funny question you know it's so what are you an expert at that nobody actually knows about like something that you are really good at that nobody on the outside has ever seen it's so it's hard to know when you're an expert at something like because you don't know what qualifies as expert true so it's hard to get that validation and say and confidently say okay I'm was an expertise at least I don't know if I'm an expert right now at anything I would say that I was a very good swimmer I mean I was doing a lot of swimming when I was younger and I was doing national championships and I'm still very good at swimming if I don't train anymore I try to swim sometimes but I don't as often as I should and I know I'm pretty good at swimming if I just we might've been a few times a week in a month I'm back Hannah Erin and a nice speed for short distances of the school yeah all those things I never done music I'm not good at music I'm not good at drawing you don't have to be man you just have to be happy I'm happy yeah yeah let's go I will maybe good at some video games that I don't do any more video games do some speed running at some point okay this is a question I stole off of Tim Ferriss who's like a podcast host and a writers is awesome dude and so what he always asked is like if you had a billboard that like millions and millions of people would see that's empty what would you put on it for them to read so there are different versions of these of course you could send a message like more values and stuff that would be difficult for me to to create a a good one it's something you have to think about it if I had to talk to people about something for me like personal thing it would be about the it would be around making open-source more sustainable and personally for me would be my sponsorship and github I yes because I wish I could have more people sponsoring me and the reason is it's very it's a lot there is a lot of people using the things we create and the libraries we are building on the view ecosystem are not just one should libraries or things that you muled you know in our region they require a lot of maintenance and right now for for instance I do like 80% of my time on open source which is great well names a lot like TV I saw some open collective money as well first donations on github and he had that doesn't take for the moment share like a cut out of the of the nation which is great and when you think about it even one dollar a month I I mean even one dollar like the least eat low is the nation that you can change the amounts but one dollar a month is absolutely nothing for a developer I be honest like no matter the VIX you are well to buy a laptop with that you could buy a laptop with that Oh takes you a while I mean oh yeah yeah so like no matter where you are in the world if you're working as a developer I think and dollar a month represents nothing for you but this is not the problem is also the people the people who donate are usually people that the individuals how do you collect the entities in coordina could who is an 18 right now is mostly people yeah but what is great about open source is how easy is for anybody to start something by basing their work on someone's else work and going starting something quick this is great because this helps people learn these help people build things in general not only products but build things no matter whether I mean yes they still in a computer of course but it helps people to for example create which is not a little example but you don't have to buy a software to build your application so to say so we have a very very simple simple example but the problem is after a while sometimes companies become profitable so they make money and most of the companies do not give back to the projects they use now before like some of us some of the companies are buying products and then it's different because they are actually paying for the service but what about all these open-source libraries that do require maintenance and a constant maintenance every every day every week it would be very easy for companies and very not expensive for them at all especially when you are talking about agencies for example exactly yeah it's really not expensive for them we know how much they charge I certainly do I work at one of them yes I worked as I work as a freelance I know how much I charge and how much they are able to pay me yeah I'm working on them and what I'm asking is like 1,000 times less or more I don't know I'm Jimmy Wayne that's that's crazy man it's true you're right but the thing is a company shouldn't be able to give away more than that they should be able to spend especially on an urgency like Spain 5,000 euros a month in to open stores I give back to the things that use well I understand this because I use few router let's say every day I know I'm good at this I know what I use it for right so these are things that I think it's important and I remember someone s was a while back but this is the guy who came up with Jay as lint I forgot his name the American guy yes or yes linked now Jay a schnitzel like a long time ago and he actually said well that became es lint I think it just morphed but basically what he said like he was working a lot and his wife said yeah so I'm two people used the stuff you built it says yes everybody and remember thinking about in person so he he built yes lean yeah I think it was es Lindo Jesslyn I don't remember I think it was both I think it's the same guy but then his wife as how much money did you make of that he's like zero yeah I used this every day it's insane the truth is also that open-source has gotten better yes UTSA also is very successful in that point it seems so they have like all this patreon stuff going on no I mean compared to where if Guillaume is doing quite well once Guillaume who is doing quite well on this who did the few CLI stuff I hope so I hope so too I know a couple of people who are sponsoring him also as companies that's great yeah if he has more sponsors than I have for sure that's something I know figure out how he does it and then do the same no I think it's different the stuff legumes does are visually appealing so it's very easy is very easy it's not very easy it's I will be more likely to to give him money I understand the psychology behind it makes total sense when you see his work is way easier to grab is what he's doing because it's visible it's also ridiculously good that helps no it helps that is ridiculously good it's very good yeah but the UI that he builds you is like the phone detective or if you feel you are here but they are most of them except for via polo they have a visual side and this is so helpful for anybody to just see the value like it's quite easier to to grasp that there is value in there whereas when you think about for example via polo which he also build yeah with the API you're using it you're thinking oh this is great it was great I know I did it's all Susy first and the old it takes more time to see the value whereas with the view CLI vui even if you don't use it you just see the thing you're like wow he build this thing Wow look at what it does and the value because you can just show it with the other one you have to use it that's yeah if so I will make it my mission to for a tool to see who I can get to donate to you I start myself that's a start but that doesn't mean enough because I know what's also cool and people a lot of people don't know is that github also also gives you invoices and for a company okay that's interesting so you can write stuff off and you can do real stuff with that I remember right pretty sure that you can I don't know how a good world the taxes partners are different for every single country exactly um so I don't know I have no idea about that but I I sponsor people and github medium for example I mean things oh cool all of you look on the core team because I also user work and and I haven't by email i I received these invoices I nobody doing okay I will try to to reach out to vaulteq for example because we use your stuff all the time I cannot promise anything because it's this political stuff is happening right and there's so much beautiful red tape especially in France with how all that works but it's nonetheless I think it's important anyways I want to thank you a lot for taking the time today to do this and I'm also super excited for Monday when you come and train our team all right yeah that's gonna be serious you have to finish a couple details for the other workshop yeah that's fine okay so thanks a lot and hopefully see you soon