Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview with Davis Dunham Date: 2026-01-26 Meeting participants: Davis Dunham, Clarence Stone


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1 00:02:11.050 00:02:12.010 Davis Dunham: Hello, hello?

2 00:02:14.310 00:02:15.430 Davis Dunham: Hello, hello?

3 00:02:30.290 00:02:31.490 Davis Dunham: Hello, hello?

4 00:05:36.500 00:05:38.480 Clarence Stone: Davis, sorry I’m late, man.

5 00:05:38.480 00:05:40.499 Davis Dunham: No worries, Clarence, nice to meet you.

6 00:05:40.860 00:05:41.949 Clarence Stone: Nice to meet ya.

7 00:05:42.070 00:05:58.850 Clarence Stone: So, what’s up? I love that you… you were able to respond same day. I’m gonna confess that I haven’t done my usual of looking up candidates, so I’m walking into this fresh, and I just want to learn a lot more about you, David. So, yeah, tell me about yourself. What’s up?

8 00:05:59.020 00:06:08.349 Davis Dunham: Heard. Well, I appreciate you setting up the interview. I saw the link earlier, and I was like, I’m gonna do it. I’m just gonna… I’m gonna do it today.

9 00:06:08.750 00:06:20.730 Davis Dunham: you know, get it done. I feel like I’m good with off-the-cuff type stuff, so… a little bit about me. I currently work at Sammy’s. It’s a fine Italian dining restaurant in Austin.

10 00:06:21.070 00:06:34.250 Davis Dunham: I’m a server assistant there, so I essentially assist with, operations on the floor, you know, getting people things that they need, and then, like, communications between front of house and back of house.

11 00:06:34.350 00:06:39.389 Davis Dunham: I… the reason I’m interviewing for this job is cause…

12 00:06:42.870 00:06:44.589 Davis Dunham: Think that coding is my passion.

13 00:06:45.400 00:06:53.370 Davis Dunham: I… yeah, I, I, was always interested in doing it when I was younger, but I didn’t…

14 00:06:53.790 00:07:10.520 Davis Dunham: I guess find, like, a good way into it. I don’t know anyone, I didn’t know anyone when I was younger that did coding. My uncle was in IT, in Houston, so, you know, we were building PCs back when I was, like, in middle school and stuff, and I always found that to be fun.

15 00:07:10.720 00:07:16.330 Davis Dunham: But, during COVID, when I had a little bit of free time, I,

16 00:07:16.450 00:07:21.640 Davis Dunham: decided that I was gonna build a, a water gun alarm clock.

17 00:07:23.210 00:07:30.420 Davis Dunham: And this was just, like, a personal project of mine. My buddy, Irvin is a,

18 00:07:30.840 00:07:46.170 Davis Dunham: programmer, or, you know, a software engineer, and he works in AI, specifically, like, vision AI, and my initial idea was to just have, like, a bucket of water with a servo motor, you know, put a timer on it, and just if I didn’t get it out of bed, it’d dump a bucket of water on me.

19 00:07:46.590 00:07:50.389 Davis Dunham: And he was like, let’s over-engineer this, you know?

20 00:07:51.100 00:07:59.810 Davis Dunham: I was like, okay, you know. So, we used a computer vision model called Yellowv4, trained it on pictures of my head,

21 00:07:59.910 00:08:09.829 Davis Dunham: And, then I got, like, a little ESP32, used a MQTT, like, communication server, and had the…

22 00:08:09.930 00:08:29.659 Davis Dunham: model running locally on my graphics card here, and then would send the coordinates over Wi-Fi to the little controller, have little server motors on it, and it would auto-aim at my head, and then, you know, shoot water, when, you know, I didn’t get up. And that was my first foray into coding, and I loved it. It was, like, one of the things that…

23 00:08:30.160 00:08:35.949 Davis Dunham: I feel like when I really enjoy something, I’ll hyper-focus, and I can just spend days doing it.

24 00:08:36.250 00:08:41.349 Davis Dunham: And it was… this was one of the first things in, like, a while that I had sat down and just, like, there was…

25 00:08:41.760 00:08:53.390 Davis Dunham: you know, I had one problem at some point where some of the syntax for microcontroller C versus just normal C was, different, and so I was trying to use the normal syntax…

26 00:08:53.390 00:08:59.510 Clarence Stone: keyboard you end up getting, too, if it’s from Seed Studio, some of the microcontrollers are actually different. It’s… it’s fun.

27 00:08:59.510 00:09:06.659 Davis Dunham: Yeah, idiot one, it’s… I was struggling with the same problem for, like, 3 days, and I didn’t know how to get it, and it was such a simple… I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was…

28 00:09:06.970 00:09:14.770 Davis Dunham: fairly simple. It was just, like, a simple function, and it was not working correctly. And, I spent, like, 3 days just, like.

29 00:09:14.990 00:09:17.120 Davis Dunham: Churn in on it, and

30 00:09:17.290 00:09:21.190 Davis Dunham: I knew at that point that this was something that I wanted to… wanted to get into.

31 00:09:22.970 00:09:36.850 Clarence Stone: Cool! So, so, Davis, tell me, like, what you’re exploring now. Like, how do you see coding now? Like, what have you kind of been diving into? What’s interesting, in your coding journey, as of late?

32 00:09:37.200 00:09:39.990 Davis Dunham: So, I love, I love…

33 00:09:40.290 00:09:47.720 Davis Dunham: Well, AI. I know it’s a bit of, like, a… a bit of a topic, you know, because, some people…

34 00:09:48.160 00:09:57.160 Davis Dunham: don’t know whether it’s going to be as helpful as some people say that it’s going to be. I personally think that it is. I think that it’s going to be…

35 00:09:57.480 00:10:01.370 Davis Dunham: And kind of already is, revolutionary.

36 00:10:01.520 00:10:05.380 Davis Dunham: Plus, it’s so cool. I’m sorry, AI is just, like, a really…

37 00:10:05.620 00:10:13.889 Davis Dunham: I don’t know, wonderful, wonderful space to be in. Right now, I’ve been working on two projects, both of them…

38 00:10:14.450 00:10:25.350 Davis Dunham: kind of… kind of slow going, just because of… I’m taking classes, and working, at this, fine dining restaurant at the same time, and finding free time in between all of that has been…

39 00:10:25.550 00:10:28.120 Davis Dunham: a little difficult. But,

40 00:10:28.440 00:10:34.809 Davis Dunham: My two projects currently are, this is what I’m calling Don’t Laugh, Please. It’s called Project Jarvis.

41 00:10:35.290 00:10:38.110 Davis Dunham: And the goal is to create a personal assistant.

42 00:10:38.430 00:10:45.580 Davis Dunham: like, a conversational assistant. I bought this old pair of, you know Google Glass?

43 00:10:46.010 00:10:46.410 Clarence Stone: Yep.

44 00:10:46.410 00:10:48.960 Davis Dunham: Like, circa 2015, 2014.

45 00:10:48.960 00:10:50.239 Clarence Stone: OG Google Glass.

46 00:10:50.370 00:10:53.850 Davis Dunham: I got a pair for, like, 80 bucks on eBay, and…

47 00:10:53.850 00:10:54.600 Clarence Stone: Awesome!

48 00:10:54.600 00:11:00.249 Davis Dunham: I wanted to integrate them, have that be the interface for Project Jarvis, and essentially the idea would be…

49 00:11:00.400 00:11:06.570 Davis Dunham: Have a conversational assistant, in the front.

50 00:11:06.750 00:11:18.569 Davis Dunham: And then, the actual brains in the back, which would be slower working, and essentially create, like, API calls for, banking, you know, calendar.

51 00:11:18.760 00:11:19.400 Clarence Stone: Yeah.

52 00:11:19.400 00:11:33.710 Davis Dunham: have lists for, like, some kind of rag for lists of, like, you know, restaurants, or, preferences, things like that. And then, the cool part, all this stuff has been done before, been mostly, like, practice for me.

53 00:11:33.940 00:11:39.830 Davis Dunham: And the… actual cool part that I haven’t really seen before would be…

54 00:11:40.310 00:11:45.229 Davis Dunham: using the little screen on the Google Glass, I would have some kind of…

55 00:11:45.420 00:11:51.819 Davis Dunham: And I haven’t… this part hasn’t been developed at all yet, but the idea, essentially, is having a…

56 00:11:52.020 00:11:57.590 Davis Dunham: quick, coding-specific, LLM model.

57 00:11:57.840 00:12:02.389 Davis Dunham: that would… Receive instructions from the brains of the project.

58 00:12:03.050 00:12:06.230 Davis Dunham: That would then create, like, a bespoke interface

59 00:12:06.480 00:12:20.729 Davis Dunham: containing the information that I am, trying to, like, that I’m talking about. So it would create a quick, like, a really quick, like, React, or just, like, even HTML, like, web page that would then display information that we’re talking about

60 00:12:21.180 00:12:22.460 Davis Dunham: in real time.

61 00:12:24.010 00:12:25.820 Davis Dunham: And then at some point, I’d like to…

62 00:12:26.130 00:12:31.920 Davis Dunham: The goal was to expand on that, to be able to, like, save different interfaces for different,

63 00:12:32.520 00:12:43.540 Davis Dunham: use cases. So, like, if you found, like, a calendar layout that you liked a lot, you could just save that, and then it would use that same type of layout next time when you’re talking about, like, a calendar event or something like that.

64 00:12:45.930 00:12:52.029 Davis Dunham: That, and then also I’m doing a little bit of web design for, a friend. We’re trying to build a…

65 00:12:53.070 00:12:56.030 Davis Dunham: Essentially a web app that would allow people to.

66 00:12:56.730 00:12:59.230 Davis Dunham: connect in, like, the Austin music scene.

67 00:12:59.860 00:13:03.689 Davis Dunham: Between, like, bookers and artists, and…

68 00:13:04.020 00:13:09.530 Davis Dunham: because right now, it’s very fragmented, and I think that there is a pretty big opportunity for

69 00:13:09.960 00:13:15.489 Davis Dunham: I don’t know, essentially connecting, artists and bookers, having essentially… essentially, like, a…

70 00:13:15.910 00:13:21.420 Davis Dunham: A really, a social media, but very focused on, like, the social aspect of it.

71 00:13:21.840 00:13:26.889 Davis Dunham: That is to connect, artists, bookers, and artists and artists, throughout Austin.

72 00:13:27.770 00:13:31.430 Clarence Stone: Cool, that’s neat! So you got a couple things on the back burner.

73 00:13:31.580 00:13:44.399 Clarence Stone: And you’ve started this journey teaching yourself how to code, and the first thing I’ll say is, you should never feel bad that you weren’t classically trained, by the way.

74 00:13:44.760 00:13:47.360 Clarence Stone: I’m… I’m a biochemist.

75 00:13:47.480 00:13:50.779 Clarence Stone: And coming out of college, I didn’t have a job, right?

76 00:13:50.780 00:13:51.260 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

77 00:13:51.260 00:14:03.049 Clarence Stone: backpacked through Southeast Asia, trying to find out, you know, what is my MO in life, because I got into a 7-year medical program, and I just decided I didn’t want to be a doctor, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do.

78 00:14:03.050 00:14:03.410 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

79 00:14:04.390 00:14:10.940 Clarence Stone: Funny enough, I had worked at the Apple store, you know, hanging out with my friends, talking about dumb startup ideas.

80 00:14:11.130 00:14:12.860 Clarence Stone: Yours are…

81 00:14:13.150 00:14:26.049 Clarence Stone: actually way more coherent and smarter than the things that we were talking about. One of those, you know, ideas got picked up, and the first thing that I found myself in is being the COO of an entire startup at, 22.

82 00:14:26.270 00:14:28.650 Clarence Stone: And… And,

83 00:14:28.970 00:14:48.809 Clarence Stone: that became the impetus for my journey to learn how to code, because when I looked at my team, like, we had one developer, and that wasn’t going to be sustainable, right? So, this is me dating myself now. I learned how to code from this thing called Linda, where they used to supply you with CD-ROM drives on how to code. So.

84 00:14:48.810 00:14:49.630 Davis Dunham: That’s lovely.

85 00:14:49.630 00:14:54.070 Clarence Stone: People would go home at the end of the night, and I would, you know.

86 00:14:54.300 00:15:01.330 Clarence Stone: fire up Lynda and learn how to do front-end code, learn Angular, learn React, and I think…

87 00:15:01.520 00:15:09.820 Clarence Stone: you know, there’s nothing wrong with that approach, I think. In fact, part of that journey, a few years later, I actually

88 00:15:09.820 00:15:24.589 Clarence Stone: thought about going to school for a master’s in computer science, sat through the first semester, finished all those courses, and was like, this is bullshit. They’re teaching me things that are not applicable to actually building in real web development, in real applications.

89 00:15:24.590 00:15:30.489 Clarence Stone: So, in many ways, what you’re doing and this journey you’re going on

90 00:15:30.620 00:15:45.319 Clarence Stone: is more applicable to what you’re going to see in the real world, than, you know, anywhere else. So, I commend you for that, and I don’t think you have to feel bad about being self-taught. I think, in many ways, the best developers are.

91 00:15:45.810 00:15:50.559 Davis Dunham: This is… I’ve heard this before, and I, it’s something I like about coding a lot.

92 00:15:51.610 00:16:03.679 Clarence Stone: And I think what I find interesting about you is, you’re probably one of the first few people I’ve talked to that understand the connection between the physical and digital layer of the world, and you’re making, you know.

93 00:16:03.680 00:16:16.269 Clarence Stone: many of your ideas have this crossover into having a physical device or real-world applications that, you know, I typically don’t see from your coders, so that’s really cool.

94 00:16:16.270 00:16:16.770 Davis Dunham: Thank you.

95 00:16:16.770 00:16:21.789 Clarence Stone: With soldering by yourself, by the way, with all the microcontrollers and stuff? I gotta say, that’s the one thing I hate the most.

96 00:16:22.040 00:16:39.920 Davis Dunham: I did some. I will admit the, the water gun alarm clock always existed as a, breadboard. It never got to the soldering stage. Gotcha. But, I’ve done some soldering. I’m not… I’m… I’m no professional soldering guy, but I’ve done some soldering, I have to admit.

97 00:16:39.920 00:16:46.589 Clarence Stone: Well, I would say, like, keep at it, you know, because it’s really cool. I mean, I’ve got a custom keyboard here.

98 00:16:46.590 00:16:47.080 Davis Dunham: Nice.

99 00:16:47.080 00:16:54.280 Clarence Stone: powdered by me, there’s probably… oh, that McLaren sign is 3D printed, and it’s got a LED strip in it.

100 00:16:54.280 00:16:54.800 Davis Dunham: Love that.

101 00:16:54.800 00:17:02.919 Clarence Stone: All of these things are, you know, great ways to learn how technology works, and I guess what’s top of mind is, like.

102 00:17:03.020 00:17:12.419 Clarence Stone: you know, for… for really great learners like you, you become motivated by having a purpose or a need for this technology, and then you go, I’m gonna build the damn thing, right?

103 00:17:12.420 00:17:12.890 Davis Dunham: Mmm.

104 00:17:12.890 00:17:20.870 Clarence Stone: And I love that, but there’s a downside to our industry, and this is me being super transparent about, like, what some of our work is.

105 00:17:20.869 00:17:23.700 Davis Dunham: You might not find some of this stuff interesting.

106 00:17:23.720 00:17:48.239 Clarence Stone: like, how to sell more cereal in e-commerce, or, you know, like, find out what the better click flow is to get people to sign up for a conference, right? So, what are your thoughts on that? Are you, like, are they still challenges that are interesting to you, or, you know, is that going to be a little bit hard to adapt to? Because, yeah, like.

107 00:17:48.240 00:17:52.330 Clarence Stone: I gotta say, not all our projects are as exciting, so what are your thoughts?

108 00:17:52.650 00:17:55.469 Davis Dunham: I… actually, I’ve done some thinking about this as well.

109 00:17:55.670 00:17:59.549 Davis Dunham: I think off the bat, I just like…

110 00:18:00.150 00:18:04.209 Davis Dunham: optimizing a system. Like, I really… I really enjoy

111 00:18:05.330 00:18:25.139 Davis Dunham: I guess, to kind of… to start, I’ve been in a lot of fast-paced environments in the past, so service industry, I’ve worked at, actually, a number of spots. I’ve done landscaping, I’ve done… I’ve worked at a machine shop, I’ve assisted with, like, automotive maintenance. I’ve done a lot of different things, and a lot of these things have been fast-paced and, like.

112 00:18:25.320 00:18:31.630 Davis Dunham: you know, the solution has to come not after, like, thinking about it, it needs to come right now. And…

113 00:18:32.020 00:18:35.920 Davis Dunham: what… I find… really,

114 00:18:36.820 00:18:53.020 Davis Dunham: something that I think would be very enjoyable in this industry specifically is the ability to have, you know, I know not, like, a ton of time, but at least have some time to sit down and optimize something, and figure out the best flow, the best way to make it work.

115 00:18:54.250 00:18:58.970 Davis Dunham: I don’t know, it’s like adult Legos, you know? I,

116 00:18:59.690 00:19:19.240 Davis Dunham: I think that I would really, really enjoy, sitting down and optimizing something, even if it is, you know, selling cereal better, or finding the thing that people will click on faster than something else. I think that looking at data and then trying to, like, engineer a solution, and having time to engineer that solution well.

117 00:19:19.440 00:19:22.280 Davis Dunham: It’s something that’d be really, really rewarding.

118 00:19:22.580 00:19:25.009 Clarence Stone: Cool! Cool.

119 00:19:25.430 00:19:41.559 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I mean, those are… those are the questions that were top of mind for me, man. And I sincerely hope you continue to do that. I mean, I’ve… I’ve got a Miata in the garage that I used AI to help me tune. So there’s an inane Miata sitting in there that.

120 00:19:41.560 00:19:42.089 Davis Dunham: Oh, yeah.

121 00:19:42.090 00:19:45.809 Clarence Stone: All reserve high-tuned by ChatGPT.

122 00:19:45.810 00:19:46.560 Davis Dunham: Oh, yeah.

123 00:19:46.560 00:19:49.679 Clarence Stone: So, the possibilities are amazing. Yeah, sorry, go for it.

124 00:19:49.680 00:19:53.119 Davis Dunham: Well, I know you’re A-OK, I actually, on the way back from,

125 00:19:53.240 00:20:03.159 Davis Dunham: Houston, this goes into the automotive maintenance and the landscaping part, because my parents are building a shed in the backyard, and they know that I’ve done landscaping before, so I spent the last

126 00:20:03.510 00:20:09.230 Davis Dunham: weak, Essentially digging and pouring a bunch of, you know, soil, stuff like that.

127 00:20:09.230 00:20:10.480 Clarence Stone: quitters, exactly.

128 00:20:10.480 00:20:13.809 Davis Dunham: Yeah, yeah, and then using a laser level to make sure it’s all just, like.

129 00:20:13.820 00:20:28.429 Davis Dunham: perfect. But, on the way back to Austin from Houston, my… my… I have an F-150. I love it. She’s an old gal, but, you know, when she goes, I go, honestly. She,

130 00:20:28.430 00:20:45.820 Davis Dunham: or the engine, blew a spark plug. Like, literally forcefully ejected a spark plug on the way out of Houston. Insane. And I used Jim and I to figure out, like, what had happened and how to fix it. And you literally have to drill a new hole into the engine, like, bore out that spark plug hole, and then re-thread it.

131 00:20:45.820 00:20:50.459 Davis Dunham: Put an insert in. I know, it was terrifying.

132 00:20:50.770 00:21:00.660 Davis Dunham: I had to sit and make sure, like, I was all in my head, like, did I pull the threading out too much before I, like… I hope I didn’t cross-thread it, you know, all this stuff, but,

133 00:21:02.450 00:21:10.509 Davis Dunham: Yeah, I’m not… I forget, I forget the initial point here, but Jim and I… I use Gemini to figure that out, and it’s funny, I’ve… I’ve…

134 00:21:10.930 00:21:12.380 Davis Dunham: actually been…

135 00:21:12.810 00:21:31.899 Davis Dunham: using, you know, I think Gemini and Claude are my two favorites, mostly because I think Gemini and ChatGPT are kind of, like, fairly equivalent most of the time, and I already am in the whole Google workspace and ecosystem, so that, you know, 20 a month is also a terabyte of Google Cloud, so I’m like, might as well.

136 00:21:31.900 00:21:33.559 Clarence Stone: They’re not a deal, man.

137 00:21:33.560 00:21:42.509 Davis Dunham: Oh yeah, oh yeah. But I found myself using, like, chatbots and LLMs, like, more and more, as time has passed, just to…

138 00:21:43.100 00:21:45.550 Davis Dunham: Find solutions to problems in my own life.

139 00:21:47.240 00:21:48.680 Clarence Stone: Yeah, that’s…

140 00:21:49.620 00:22:06.870 Clarence Stone: I mean, I think you’ve got all the ingredients from my perspective on being successful here, especially getting started out, so I guess, like, I’ll give you the floor for the next 13 minutes, ask me anything that you might be interested in, get a different perspective or a different answer than you may have gotten with you, Tom.

141 00:22:06.870 00:22:12.709 Davis Dunham: Yes, yes, I actually have a couple of questions for you, and the first one that is on the top of my mind…

142 00:22:12.830 00:22:13.840 Davis Dunham: is…

143 00:22:14.200 00:22:26.480 Davis Dunham: I, definitely have some experience coding. The water gun alarm clock was all before, you know, like, we had ChatGPT and stuff like that, so that was all I was looking on, you know.

144 00:22:26.500 00:22:35.780 Davis Dunham: Stack Exchange and stuff like that, and I was just finding ways to do things, implementing them, changing them, making them work for me.

145 00:22:35.930 00:22:49.299 Davis Dunham: which, as I understand, is, like, a very common flow for, people that are coding. You know, you have, like, your own tools, and then you’re also finding implementations, and then adapting them for your own workflows.

146 00:22:50.790 00:23:05.040 Davis Dunham: But a lot of my, experience coding and my, like, learning process has happened with these LLMs and chatbots existing. And I guess my question to you is, how do you balance

147 00:23:05.700 00:23:10.509 Davis Dunham: Learning and retaining These tools and abilities.

148 00:23:10.780 00:23:15.339 Davis Dunham: Which I know that you did a lot of your learning prior to these chatbots being available.

149 00:23:15.630 00:23:33.130 Davis Dunham: But I guess as advice to someone like me, how do you balance the learning and maintaining of these skill sets with also having these chatbots that can do a lot of this stuff for you, and then you have to do a lot of the quality assurance and fixing of smaller things?

150 00:23:34.310 00:23:40.130 Clarence Stone: Yeah, I would imagine this…

151 00:23:41.100 00:23:44.199 Clarence Stone: Transformation that’s happening in this industry.

152 00:23:44.570 00:23:53.850 Clarence Stone: to… Imagining that the first role you can get in this industry is leading an agent.

153 00:23:55.820 00:23:58.930 Clarence Stone: Right, so… your skill set…

154 00:23:59.320 00:24:17.980 Clarence Stone: of being able to brute force, like, just bang out a ton of code is… becomes less important, and your ability to organize, plan, and articulate what you want to build, identify the limits and guardrails that need to be implemented.

155 00:24:18.260 00:24:23.979 Clarence Stone: And… You know, verify that something has been built to spec.

156 00:24:24.130 00:24:24.540 Davis Dunham: Hmm.

157 00:24:24.540 00:24:31.569 Clarence Stone: Becomes a much more demanded skill than it was in the past for junior developers.

158 00:24:31.570 00:24:31.990 Davis Dunham: Yes.

159 00:24:31.990 00:24:45.979 Clarence Stone: So what my biggest piece of feedback then is you’re only as good as all the experiences you have, and now AI is allowing you to take way more shots at the dartboard.

160 00:24:45.980 00:24:46.870 Davis Dunham: So…

161 00:24:47.130 00:25:02.039 Clarence Stone: Get those experiences in as inexpensively as possible, start to find the boundaries and limitations of these tools, and formulate your own techniques to get winning products that work.

162 00:25:03.510 00:25:11.300 Clarence Stone: Identify, you know, where they fail most often, and, you know, find ways to… to prevent that from happening.

163 00:25:11.700 00:25:22.709 Clarence Stone: But, long story short, I think the biggest difference between, you know, when I started till now, I used to say it was access to the knowledge. Now it’s not.

164 00:25:22.710 00:25:23.170 Davis Dunham: You don’t like.

165 00:25:23.170 00:25:31.780 Clarence Stone: it hasn’t been for a long time. The latest techniques to developing great apps have always been, you know, pretty public.

166 00:25:32.950 00:25:42.529 Clarence Stone: I think the gatekeeper now is, you know, how do you leverage these tools to code the same solution 10 times faster than a peer that’s gonna just…

167 00:25:42.690 00:25:44.810 Clarence Stone: Write it, you know, manually.

168 00:25:44.810 00:25:45.510 Davis Dunham: Yes.

169 00:25:46.940 00:25:59.730 Clarence Stone: So, I think some insight into the culture of this company, which is… it’s a little funny aside from Friday, but, like, also speaks volumes on how we see things and our perspective.

170 00:25:59.730 00:26:07.149 Clarence Stone: overall, it’s like, I got a document that I can clearly tell wasn’t written with AI, and it was 14 pages, and…

171 00:26:07.700 00:26:16.320 Clarence Stone: The first reaction I had was, Holy crap, somebody actually… wrote 14 pages.

172 00:26:16.320 00:26:16.920 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

173 00:26:17.320 00:26:19.850 Clarence Stone: And I’m about to completely destroy them with feedback.

174 00:26:21.330 00:26:30.160 Clarence Stone: And, like, there’s the only thing I could wish is that we had clawed back that time, and we would have reached failure in a more inexpensive way.

175 00:26:30.160 00:26:30.480 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

176 00:26:30.480 00:26:33.439 Clarence Stone: Right, so we can course correct. So…

177 00:26:34.040 00:26:51.509 Clarence Stone: how would you, you know, be a unique value proposition amongst peers? Well, be able to go through those iterations faster, analyze, understand what’s happening in each of those iterations, and make quick course corrections, right? Yeah. Because, I mean, here’s… here’s the…

178 00:26:51.590 00:26:58.120 Clarence Stone: The thing about life, like, we get so many shots at the dartboard, right?

179 00:26:58.310 00:27:10.890 Clarence Stone: But why I love AI and what’s happening in this moment so much is that it allows people who know how to make use of it to get as many shots at the dartboard as they would want.

180 00:27:10.890 00:27:11.600 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

181 00:27:11.600 00:27:18.249 Clarence Stone: It’s really your ideas, or your time, your capacity to work with AI that’s going to be your limitation here.

182 00:27:18.730 00:27:27.220 Clarence Stone: I would say make use of this moment. I… I don’t think we’re gonna see this kind of inflection again in my lifetime, but…

183 00:27:27.360 00:27:34.839 Clarence Stone: who’s to say? I’ve… man, I’m a 90s kid, so I’ve gone through the whole cell phone era, too, so we’ll see.

184 00:27:34.840 00:27:35.420 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

185 00:27:35.610 00:27:40.080 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so great question, David. That’s… that’s… that’s my advice. Hopefully that’s… that’s helpful.

186 00:27:40.080 00:27:43.670 Davis Dunham: No, that was very helpful, because I feel like there’s a bit of a…

187 00:27:44.330 00:27:51.839 Davis Dunham: I don’t want to say, like, imposter syndrome, but, like, there’s a bit of, like, this hesitancy that I have had, I guess.

188 00:27:52.020 00:27:56.550 Davis Dunham: In, like, wanting to learn coding, but then also allowing

189 00:27:56.590 00:28:10.130 Davis Dunham: myself to use these agents and models to, like, assist with that, because there’s been this, the hesitancy comes from, like, me worrying I’m missing something by allowing myself to use these things.

190 00:28:10.130 00:28:19.520 Davis Dunham: And that’s really reassuring, like, what you’re saying, because what you’re really saying is, is, you know, if you have to manually code something, like, it took me 3 days to figure out something that Claude would have…

191 00:28:19.540 00:28:23.279 Davis Dunham: Figured out in literally probably less than 5 minutes, you know?

192 00:28:24.440 00:28:37.290 Davis Dunham: And I think that, in the end, you know, what does it matter that I was using the wrong syntax for C or micro-C? If Claude had figured it out for me, I still would have known the fact that there now is a difference between normal C and micro-C.

193 00:28:37.290 00:28:45.960 Davis Dunham: And then I can use that going forward. The actual syntax itself is not irrelevant, but way less relevant than it would have been 20 years ago.

194 00:28:46.440 00:28:52.159 Clarence Stone: Yeah, 110%. I… I fully agree with that. Go through those iterations faster.

195 00:28:52.160 00:28:52.770 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

196 00:28:52.970 00:29:07.019 Clarence Stone: Yeah, find those failure points, learn quickly. I’ll also add to it to say that for most of my career, I was a front-end developer, and I didn’t have access to these AI coding tools, and now that I do, though, like.

197 00:29:08.030 00:29:12.800 Clarence Stone: I would say trailing part of, not last year or year before.

198 00:29:13.030 00:29:16.059 Clarence Stone: When coding, like, cursor first became available.

199 00:29:16.060 00:29:16.410 Davis Dunham: Yeah.

200 00:29:16.410 00:29:19.639 Clarence Stone: That was the moment I became a really great full-stack developer.

201 00:29:19.880 00:29:26.059 Clarence Stone: And here’s my pro tip. All I did to actually learn how to be a really good backend developer is I asked.

202 00:29:26.440 00:29:27.740 Clarence Stone: I ask her, sir.

203 00:29:28.580 00:29:47.789 Clarence Stone: like, what is your plan for this implementation? It does a plan. Why did you decide to organize it this way? What does this component do? Why did you code it this way? And in doing that, I actually solved a lot of the problems that existed in my app, because I was just directly, like, pointing to, hey, what is that, right? But…

204 00:29:47.950 00:29:52.990 Clarence Stone: It also, because you have this tool, just remember that you can ask it anything.

205 00:29:53.450 00:29:56.900 Clarence Stone: Right? Yeah. You know, another insight’s the way we work.

206 00:29:57.140 00:30:22.069 Clarence Stone: I’m sure Usan’s probably mentioned this to you, but we have a GitHub repo with the entire vault. That’s how we work. That’s our knowledge store. And a lot of the times when I have questions on how to do something, like, initially it was, oh, I should ping someone in the company to ask, but now that I know how things work around here, all I have to do, like, somebody goes, hey, you know, information was missing in this ticket. I was like, hey, what are the standards for writing a ticket?

207 00:30:23.230 00:30:37.220 Clarence Stone: They go, I don’t know. Well, hey, let’s take a look at cursor and ask, in the vault, where’s the document that specifies what should be written in a dev ticket? Oh, it’s right here. Oh, this is what you’re missing. Oh, the answers are already here. That’s cool.

208 00:30:37.270 00:30:55.909 Clarence Stone: So, I think your level of success in this organization really is going to be, like, having that muscle that you can flex to be able to answer those questions on your own, because, like, if you can get to that point, you’re already, like, 10 steps ahead of some of the people that are in this org.

209 00:30:55.910 00:31:00.589 Davis Dunham: Yeah, yeah, what’s… I’ve… honestly, I had to do a little bit of the, this was…

210 00:31:00.950 00:31:05.900 Davis Dunham: I guess when I started developing this web app, we were calling it The Connection. It’s a…

211 00:31:06.010 00:31:10.410 Davis Dunham: Cool name, so… I came up with myself, but…

212 00:31:10.510 00:31:28.439 Davis Dunham: started developing it, and I had not done any real web development before, and I used a mixture of Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, because DeepSeek had, like, just come out, and I was curious about it. It did… it performed quite well, honestly, but either way,

213 00:31:28.440 00:31:37.289 Davis Dunham: and was learning about, you know, SQL, and then back-end and front-end, and of course, like, I had all the core,

214 00:31:37.680 00:31:50.930 Davis Dunham: I guess, well, and not all of it, but I had a large portion of, like, the core functionality implemented that I was looking for, which essentially was, you know, a page where you could register.

215 00:31:50.960 00:32:04.159 Davis Dunham: and then log in, and it would send you a JSON web token, which would be valid for an hour, and then you’d log in, and you could… the homepage was empty, it just said… had one button that said My Account, and you could go to My Account, and you could change all of your…

216 00:32:04.540 00:32:07.510 Davis Dunham: information within the SQL database.

217 00:32:07.890 00:32:12.830 Davis Dunham: And, I don’t know, it was, it was,

218 00:32:12.890 00:32:24.580 Davis Dunham: cool, it was fun, it was a fun process, but there were a lot of, like, issues and holdups at that point, especially with the models, and they wouldn’t know how to do something, so I had to go through and figure out what was wrong, which…

219 00:32:24.580 00:32:37.869 Davis Dunham: With web development, there are a lot of files. The directories are quite large, which I don’t know if that, in comparison to other projects, if they’re, like, larger or smaller, but definitely larger than I had worked with in the past.

220 00:32:40.670 00:32:57.410 Davis Dunham: And, I met with Utam and he told me to check out Cloud Code, because I’ve used Cursor before. My choice… my choice IDE is VS Code. I just… I started on that one first, and it quickly… it’s mine now, I love it.

221 00:32:57.610 00:33:08.550 Davis Dunham: I’ve used Cursor, but I tried out Cloud Code, and I was just experimenting, and I had the connection there. I haven’t worked on it in a little bit, because Ian had gone off to Maine, my friend that I was working on the project with.

222 00:33:08.600 00:33:20.549 Davis Dunham: And I was like, let me see what Cloud Code can do. And so I went through and I revamped the entire website, and it took me 3 hours. And now it looks… I have two versions, two different branches. I have the retro branch.

223 00:33:20.610 00:33:37.999 Davis Dunham: which Ian wanted it to look kind of early internet, you know, just HTML kind of based. And then I have the, like, kind of modern branch, and I implemented OAuth, you know, so now you can sign in with your Google account, and that works. And, like, it took me 3 hours to do…

224 00:33:38.080 00:33:40.939 Davis Dunham: what’s… Probably would have taken me…

225 00:33:42.500 00:33:43.960 Davis Dunham: I don’t know, like, a month?

226 00:33:44.420 00:33:58.700 Davis Dunham: You know, otherwise, if I was learning all of it and having to implement it by hand… and the coolest part is that I did learn as I was doing it. I learned about, like, how OAuth works, and, like, how they exchange tokens, and how that gets assigned to your JSON web token.

227 00:34:00.160 00:34:00.840 Clarence Stone: Nice.

228 00:34:01.220 00:34:03.140 Davis Dunham: So, I guess my…

229 00:34:05.300 00:34:09.709 Davis Dunham: my next… I have… I guess I have two more questions. I know that we actually have very little time.

230 00:34:09.710 00:34:10.819 Clarence Stone: We got this.

231 00:34:10.820 00:34:12.629 Davis Dunham: Oh, I heard. I have… I’ll make them… I’ll make them quick.

232 00:34:12.639 00:34:14.389 Clarence Stone: Oh, you’re good, man.

233 00:34:14.679 00:34:23.259 Davis Dunham: I was wondering about, like, best practices, specifically within this, industry, because I know that,

234 00:34:23.819 00:34:25.669 Davis Dunham: Y’all are dealing with…

235 00:34:26.699 00:34:37.189 Davis Dunham: you know, companies that have a requirement for certain levels of security and, data protection, privacy, and I have,

236 00:34:37.689 00:34:48.199 Davis Dunham: very little, if, if, you know, if not none, if, if not no experience with, I guess, commercial-grade or enterprise security.

237 00:34:48.609 00:34:52.109 Davis Dunham: And so I guess the question would be.

238 00:34:52.249 00:34:59.989 Davis Dunham: what would the flow state be in terms of if I were to work at Brainforge and be shipping code?

239 00:35:00.139 00:35:05.599 Davis Dunham: What would be the best practice, or the flow state of…

240 00:35:05.819 00:35:10.229 Davis Dunham: Me shipping code, and then ensuring that it follows best practices.

241 00:35:10.230 00:35:13.549 Clarence Stone: Yeah, so I’ll give you the happy path.

242 00:35:13.690 00:35:14.370 Davis Dunham: Like…

243 00:35:14.580 00:35:32.420 Clarence Stone: what should happen is every single project that we start has its own ProjectMD file and instructions on how to handle the file system, the security measures, and all that good stuff. So, if you had prompted your system to create a new feature and it didn’t comply to that, then, you know.

244 00:35:32.470 00:35:42.219 Clarence Stone: That’s another case, but, you know, you should be already shipping code that’s compliant, because our… we set up our systems to kind of comply to the rules that are there.

245 00:35:42.220 00:35:42.720 Davis Dunham: Cool.

246 00:35:43.890 00:36:03.470 Clarence Stone: To follow up on that, what happens next, after you write the code, you’ll probably test it and make sure everything’s functioning, you’ll do something called a pull request. Basically, you’ll say, hey, I love this code, like, it should be part of the main codebase, and it’s going to be reviewed by a senior developer. Cool. That’s where, you know, you’re gonna get your direct feedback on, hey,

247 00:36:03.490 00:36:05.120 Clarence Stone: You know, this is…

248 00:36:05.130 00:36:15.059 Clarence Stone: okay right now, but we’re gonna… we typically want to add a new additional, you know, security layer, or this is how we typically handle it, even though the AI writes it this way.

249 00:36:15.060 00:36:39.140 Clarence Stone: you’re gonna learn from those moments of, like, how you can adjust your code or not, like, and normally in the PR reviews, we’ll catch those things, and then there’s automated unit testing. So, when we deploy code, it’s gonna go through, like, all the JavaScript components, the Python packages, or whatever that we’re using to ship the code. It’s gonna double-check that all the versioning is up to date.

250 00:36:39.160 00:37:03.830 Clarence Stone: that there’s no API keys that are exposed, and, you know, all of those things. So there’s automated unit testing, human reviews, and, you know, a senior dev that’s going to help you mentor you to write better code in the future. So, I think you’re pretty covered. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. A lot of the industries that we focus on are not, like, high-side security, not the kind of places I came from where, you know.

251 00:37:03.830 00:37:05.270 Clarence Stone: You’re… you’re thinking about.

252 00:37:05.660 00:37:16.369 Clarence Stone: like, a, more containerized layer, so, yeah, I think there’s, like, one medical company so far, so aside from that…

253 00:37:16.550 00:37:17.660 Clarence Stone: Kind of gig.

254 00:37:18.140 00:37:20.480 Davis Dunham: Lovely. Okay, very cool.

255 00:37:20.480 00:37:21.950 Clarence Stone: What else? You had one more, right?

256 00:37:21.950 00:37:24.799 Davis Dunham: I had one more, and my last one was…

257 00:37:25.200 00:37:43.190 Davis Dunham: Something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, I have a buddy named Josh, he works at Deloitte, and has told me about, kind of, the process of consulting at Deloitte, and it’s brought up this idea of, data management, or just information sharing within a company, and Utom had covered this a bit.

258 00:37:43.450 00:37:48.310 Davis Dunham: add Brainforge, and how, like, you know, he… he’s… he’s… he does not like…

259 00:37:48.530 00:37:53.069 Davis Dunham: Deloitte system, because it’s very island, or very,

260 00:37:54.970 00:38:00.720 Davis Dunham: like, individual teams do not communicate with each other almost at all. They’re, like, individual islands.

261 00:38:00.960 00:38:10.460 Davis Dunham: And he talked about Brainforge being, much more, like, cohesive, kind of like one company working on something, and there are, of course, people that are specializing on certain projects.

262 00:38:10.860 00:38:18.029 Davis Dunham: And so I guess I was wondering, you already mentioned this earlier, but in terms of information sharing.

263 00:38:18.450 00:38:23.520 Davis Dunham: If you are… using Cursor or Cloud Code or something like that.

264 00:38:25.950 00:38:32.120 Davis Dunham: Is this using… is it using RAG, or is it using… is the context large enough to be able to contain the entire codebase?

265 00:38:33.010 00:38:36.529 Clarence Stone: Oh, okay, yeah, so you wanna actually… okay,

266 00:38:38.280 00:38:42.089 Clarence Stone: I’ll give you the short answer. Recursive loops, KB Cache.

267 00:38:43.590 00:38:45.310 Davis Dunham: Recursive loops, keep it cache.

268 00:38:45.310 00:38:50.140 Clarence Stone: And playing around with KVCache will…

269 00:38:50.490 00:38:57.099 Clarence Stone: solve a lot of the problems that Cursor manages in context, that’s how they get the tabs forever.

270 00:38:57.510 00:39:09.360 Clarence Stone: So that’s on the technical level of that, but, recursive context management happens kind of live as you’re going through things, because it… I’m not sure if you noticed, but Curse will create these MD files.

271 00:39:09.370 00:39:20.059 Clarence Stone: planning.md, or, you know, rules.md, whatever it is. Those things are reference documents that end up, you know, contributing back to the baseline RAG.

272 00:39:20.060 00:39:20.530 Davis Dunham: approved.

273 00:39:21.580 00:39:41.070 Clarence Stone: what would happen on a very technical level is you ask a question to say, like, hey, we need to add this component to this homepage. It’s actually going to traverse your entire code path and say, these are the documents I need to load up into KVCache, right? Now that I’ve finished the recon, this is how I’m going to build it, and it starts writing to the files.

274 00:39:41.070 00:39:45.850 Clarence Stone: Cool. So, the context management happens live. It’s…

275 00:39:46.620 00:39:51.199 Clarence Stone: Not as much rag, but more of, like, a hybrid search that’s happening.

276 00:39:51.200 00:39:51.980 Davis Dunham: I heard, yeah.

277 00:39:52.230 00:39:52.840 Clarence Stone: Yep.

278 00:39:53.220 00:39:55.040 Davis Dunham: Very cool. Oh, very cool.

279 00:39:55.200 00:40:01.930 Davis Dunham: Well, lovely, I think that that’s… I believe that that’s all the questions from me. Sorry, I know we’re going over here a little bit.

280 00:40:02.490 00:40:10.980 Clarence Stone: Cool, so I will impart you with one last piece of wisdom, and then just say I’m gonna refer you back to who Tom Sang had a good convo.

281 00:40:11.110 00:40:14.710 Clarence Stone: I, like… there’s…

282 00:40:15.230 00:40:23.590 Clarence Stone: With your determination and your energy and your aspirations, there’s really two major paths that you may find yourself in life.

283 00:40:23.880 00:40:40.489 Clarence Stone: One is really diving in deep, understanding how all these core technologies work to the bare bones of, like, being able to explain to me live right now, how a transformer model works, which I could do for you if that’s, like, you know, where your world is at.

284 00:40:40.570 00:40:55.619 Clarence Stone: But I want to emphasize to you that we live in Option B. We live in Option B, where all of these tools exist, right? And their implementation, their enjoyment, their permanence in business is still yet to be determined, or written.

285 00:40:56.220 00:41:09.829 Clarence Stone: Where we have this opportunity space to say, this technology exists, and we can come and deliver it to you in the best way possible, and no one else can, in the same speed and velocity and way that we understand your business. So…

286 00:41:10.160 00:41:13.190 Clarence Stone: Yeah, like, this job is all about

287 00:41:13.510 00:41:26.350 Clarence Stone: Understanding, hey, all of this technology is cool, it’s awesome, but how can we actually make use of this to impact the lives of people, and improve businesses, improve processes, and make it real?

288 00:41:26.490 00:41:26.870 Davis Dunham: Yes.

289 00:41:26.870 00:41:43.680 Clarence Stone: So, yeah, keep that in mind, right? Like, are you taking exercise to learn how something works fundamentally, and you want to live in that world? And if you do, I mean, there’s tons of other, like, opportunities. I’ll refer you, it’s not a big deal. But in this world, we are… there’s…

290 00:41:44.210 00:41:46.390 Clarence Stone: a bit more high touch, right? You’re talking.

291 00:41:46.390 00:41:46.710 Davis Dunham: Yes.

292 00:41:46.710 00:41:52.799 Clarence Stone: who have a demand, who have aspirations, who have their own, you know, psychological concerns over.

293 00:41:52.800 00:41:53.150 Davis Dunham: Huh?

294 00:41:53.150 00:42:00.899 Clarence Stone: change that’s happening. I just want to make sure you see that, you know, this is the world that we’re sitting in.

295 00:42:00.900 00:42:01.260 Davis Dunham: Yes.

296 00:42:01.260 00:42:05.409 Clarence Stone: Something for you to consider on your side on, is this the path that’s perfect for me next?

297 00:42:05.410 00:42:08.330 Davis Dunham: Absolutely. I appreciate it, Clarence.

298 00:42:08.530 00:42:17.049 Clarence Stone: Cool! Well, Davis, it was great meeting you, man, and I am in San Antonio, by the way, so I’m not too far, and hopefully we get to meet each other in real life sometime.

299 00:42:17.050 00:42:18.270 Davis Dunham: Yes, sir, I’d love that.

300 00:42:18.510 00:42:21.050 Clarence Stone: Cool. Awesome. Thanks, Davis.

301 00:42:21.050 00:42:22.399 Davis Dunham: Thank you, Clarence, have a good day.

302 00:42:22.400 00:42:23.720 Clarence Stone: So, all yours.