Ruby on Rails and AI at a Software Company with Benito Serna

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno, and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today with us is Benito Serna. He's from Briq MX. He's a CTO there, and it's a real estate crowdfunding platform. How are you, Benito? Hi. I'm fine, thanks. Um thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure. I've known Benito for many years going back to the college days and uh the music scene, mostly through that area. I've known Benito to be an outstanding musician as well as coincidentally he's also a a great at software, which is where where our paths have also met in the past. Now, recently I've been seeing some of the posts that Benito has been putting out on his LinkedIn. Very interesting content, and I'll I'll give out Benito's LinkedIn later on as well so that you can follow their content. But, I wanted to get his perspective on what really happens behind a software company. And this case, it's a very interesting platform because they have the software stack, but also the crowdfunding aspect for for the real estate. So, I'll let Benito do a brief introduction, and we'll get right into it. So, Benito, what is briq.mx, and and how did it get started? Okay. Well, as you said, Briq is a crowdfunding business. We crowdfund real estate businesses. It's like a marketplace. In one side, we have investors, and in the other side, we have real estate businesses that needs need funds for their for their business. Uh it started I think we have 11 years now, but I but I've been there like 7 years. Currently, I'm the CTO. How it started? It started what The beginning is very interesting because it started very small. Well, we are a small company. We are less than 30 people. It is started like a side **[00:02:00]** business in in Inku, another company um that just builds software for other for other companies. Um It is started as a small side business. Yeah, uh with like two people looking for the projects and investors. Uh uh um Something interesting is that it is started with a a website. And also, we didn't have the the all the mechanism that that we have now. For example, to show the advance in the in the in in the campaign, the process of updating the page was manual. Uh we were we we do a bit another deploy to update the page. We we didn't have this um mechanism to to count the investments and let some uh It was very very very lean in the beginning. Um Well, I I'm not sure what else to say. That's No, actually, that's a great thing to start with because I think a lot of people get trapped in the oh, I have to build the whole thing and they haven't done a product market fit. They haven't seen if clients will actually use it. So, they spend months building this thing and all the back end for it where that's not really needed. You just need to sell. And in your case, that's a perfect example. The website and then people could get there. They could use it. Right? You're selling. And then it doesn't matter if they They to see the results. And that means that you have someone behind the scenes updating it manually, and then they see it. Who cares if it's that person doing it manually or the computer? They just want **[00:04:00]** to see the progress, right? So, that's an excellent example of how you can really make something really lean, make it work without spending a ton of money, prove a concept, and then you actually build. Uh-huh. Well, yeah. Yes. We Yes, the bar the bar was manual, and and it needed another deploy to to update it. And after that, we invest more in the in the product. So, Inku, we had the privilege to work with Inku in some co- uh projects a while back when we're doing mobile applications. Inku, apart from Briq, has had other businesses spun off as well, right? Yes. Uh the more famous business or the biggest uh businesses for us, one was Aventones. Mhm. It was a business about carpooling. Before Uber? And then, like BlaBlaCar. Mhm. And then, uh other other businesses, Reservamos. It had started as Reserbus, but then then it changed the name as Reservamos and Briq. Um I think these are the the biggest businesses for us. Yeah, and I reme- I remember uh this was a while back. What was maybe 2007, 2008? These some of these software companies by the the team at Inku were taking shape. They were They were already working in that market way before some of the bigger players later did something similar, which was was very interesting to me. You were really ahead of the curve in that sense, and I expect you're **[00:06:00]** very likely ahead of the curve today as well. I do have a question regarding the stack. We were talking a little off camera right now about Ruby on Rails, right? Or Rails, which is which is a stack that that I remember you guys were working with a long time ago and and still do. Is is that right? Yeah, yeah. Well, Inkoo was a Rails shop. Not all the projects, I think, but maybe almost almost all of them were were uh with Ruby on Ruby on Rails. And Breakwater Ruby on Rails uh uh system is a big monolith um that uses Ruby and most I think the stack is almost uh the vanilla Rails stack. We use RSpec and other things that are not really in the vanilla stack, but but but this is just Rails. What do you like about Rails? Well, we'll get into I I think people that are listening might not necessarily know that there's so many software languages out there, but Rails is is a big one, but it's not as commonly propagated in the media as you would see JavaScript or PHP or Python now with all the AI stuff. So, what is it that you personally like about Rails? Well, I think I started with Rails because I just I I'm I'm not sure if I should say love, but but I love how it puts the beau- the beauty of the language, how it communicates, how how you see the the text in the in your text editor. How How you can express How you can express your ideas there. It you Ruby Ruby is It is like a like pseudo code. I before learning Ruby I I studied mechatronics. So, I I **[00:08:00]** I have I had written programs with C or Java or assembler or um LabVIEW, MATLAB, and different languages. But, then when I for I'm not sure why I saw Ruby and I said like, "What is that?" And and I really love the expressiveness of the language. And then I learn about Rails. And the um and also how it bundles everything that you need to together to build a website or a real big Not just a website, but but a a really software real big software system. The I started to learn. I I had invested a lot of time learning it. So, I and I have continued learning it in all these years. I have been programming with Rails like maybe 12 years or or more. I have seen also and I have programming also with JavaScript and other frameworks and React and Ember JS and and and the Backbone C and and all and all other JavaScript frameworks. Well, not all. But, Rails I think it's still um a very efficient way to write software. And especially web applications. And also it's a very expressive way to write software. I like a lot um how Matz, the author of Ruby says that Ruby is a program a programming language for the for the people. Not not not necessarily for for the computer, but the the people that read that writes the the for programming programmers happiness is **[00:10:00]** the like that phrase of Ruby. That's that's very interesting. And again, for anyone who's not a software developer or has not even live coded. Nowadays everyone has tried some live coding as well. The fact that you express yourself about a programming language that way that the aesthetic of it the aesthetic I think how pretty it looks. And I'm looking at some Ruby code right here. And you're right. It's just like English. So if you if you send belongs to author default create user has many comments. Like it's it's very It has many comments. Never never used rails, but I'm looking at some code here and it I understand perfectly even if I couldn't write this myself because I don't I don't know the language. I understand what it's doing. It's not it's not complicated like other languages are. Yes, Ruby itself is a very complicated language inside to to help you expressing that in a simple way, I think. I see. And and something interesting you said as well. So the creator of rails is still on the project? Yes, DHH David Heinemeier Hansson is a is a creator of rails and also the creator of Ruby Matz I cannot pronounce it his name, but Matz he he is still developing Ruby. And that speaks well of it, obviously, because because they're still there. They didn't just sell and leave. They they're really interested in it. And I'm seeing some of the companies that Maybe some of these have changed to other stacks, of course. We don't know, but but I see Basecamp, of course. All the all their stuff, but then Shopify. Shopify. GitHub. the the biggest company the the the biggest Rails shop in the world is Shopify. And is it Is it Rails like Is Shopify still **[00:12:00]** Rails? Yes. Yes, it's still Rails. And they They are one of the company that that contributes the most to the to the framework. Interesting. So, when we see Shopify, the monster that it is, and all the millions of stores that are running there, and billions of dollars that are being sold in the marketplace, that whole thing runs on Rails? I mean, and and the ancillary stuff, of course, but Yeah, they they they have a lot of stuff. I haven't seen a Shopify code, but but I As far as I know, it is a big Rails monolith. That is very interesting. Founding core member of Rails Foundation was a Tobi is. Yeah. part of the Rails core team. Wow. That is impressive. And because they use Liquid. I know when I've seen Shopify code, they they use Liquid for all the templating, right? Yeah. Well, Tobi is the author of Liquid. Tobi is the CEO. That's so interesting. Yeah, I like I like that it's that it's a a framework that's easy to read by humans. And now, everyone wants everything to be read by agents, right? We're shifting a little, but still, the agents are very good at understanding natural language. So, I expect that Rails is very good when using it with LLMs. Is that Do you think that's that's accurate? Yes, well, at least for us uh at least for us and also I think in the Rails uh website, they have also something like the I'm not sure the words, but the thing is that Ruby is one of the most efficient ma- most uh one of the most talking efficient languages in uh that exist because is very concise the way you can express the code there. And so, it's also good for AI. And also, like Rails has these patterns that um **[00:14:00]** that come these conventions that every um well, not every, but almost all projects Rails projects follow. So, for AI is is very easy to see or to understand what goes where. Like you have model views and controllers, and everything has this kind of the same shape, so it works really well really with AI. You You talked about model view controller. Most people listening won't know what that is, but we are going No, it's perfect. It's perfect. I I want I want people to see how far ahead this this was because back in the day the model view controller, right, paradigm wasn't the typical paradigm that everyone used. Rails has it, but I remember back then when when we were still in college or or or close to that like graduating, we had the software business, and we started with the Apple as soon as Apple released. We were doing BlackBerry applications, but when when Apple released the the I think was iPhone 3G where you could build your own applications and sell them in the store and things like that. We started looking in into what it would take to build in the iOS ecosystem, it was Model View Controller. And or I'm maybe I'm I think. And it it was very different. I remember seeing it seeing the Stanford classes and it was a complete paradigm shift of what traditionally we would see software as. But at the same time, Rails already was doing that, right? I'm not sure if at that time really. Well, because it it's I think Rails, let's see, when did Rails start? I'm very curious. Rails. I think it's 2004 Yeah, then yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because it was it was built over Ruby. Ruby was from the '90s, but then **[00:16:00]** the Ruby on Rails, 37signals, it's about yeah, 2003 2004. And the iOS part of it, let's see. Uh iPhone 3G, I think, date that was 2008. Well. Yeah. Yeah, so so yeah, and I remember all the the 37signals team was was doing very impressive stuff back then compared to everyone else. And then things like the rest evolved and all that, whatever it was, but but they were pioneers of many of the things. When you talk about Rails as a it's a full stack. Yes, a full system, right? So, how does that compare to I don't know if you can explain it, but in the to a JavaScript framework for example, like I don't know, Next JS that that's also a full stack. Do you just have everything in Rails, the the back end, the front end, the functions? Like how does how does that work? I'm not really familiar with Next JS, but I I have seen something. Maybe I'm not I will not explain this right, but well, as far as I know, Next JS is has the server and the client and you can sometimes render write something that can be rendered in the two places. Well, well, yeah, yeah, that's that's more recent. Yeah, you can you can have server rendered but then also client rendered then you can have some things that hydrate differently and that's a little more complex but but in general I don't understand really how how it works but but let's go back to Express for example the framework. Yeah, yeah. Rails has Express and Sinatra. I'm not sure if you know Sinatra but well it Ruby has this frameworks that are very similar to Express that you receive the HTTP request and then you send the **[00:18:00]** response. Well, Rails is very similar. Rails but it has a lot more. For example, you uh it has something that is called router. I think Next JS has something like that but it's like folder based like but Rails is a is a file that the class that declares the the routes and and also it declares how one route is linked to a controller. A controller is the is the class that processes or the object that processes the responses. So it has this like um linking between the the routes and the controllers and also it has an a pretty nice uh uh objects relation ORM object relational model thing that that can help you uh talk to the talk to the database. Uh it has it is called active record. It follows active record pattern that is a pattern using in many places documented by by Martin Fowler in one book uh and then Rails follows the active record pattern and you can it it has like many functions that that makes you work with the database um pretty easy. Like the the thing that you read like uh post has many comments. Uh comment belongs to post. You can write this this like DSL and it and it um gives you a lot of functions that you will expect in that in that relation. It also has a pretty nice uh UI framework to work with templates. And all all those templates are server-side rendered. You send the HTML to the to the client. All of it is server-side rendered. But it also has this uh I'm not sure if it's new but because it has a lot of time but but this framework **[00:20:00]** that is called hotwire that is part of rails that you can what it does is like it involves the the HTTP response like in in one context of of JavaScript. So when you send the HTTP request it catches it and then you just swap the the body of the of the of the response and it does a lot of things more to to make it work properly but it it has this that makes your your face feels really fast and it also it feels like a kind of um single page application but with without the complexity. Mhm. Or well, not the complexity the repetition because when you write uh something in the client and then you have to write logic in the in the JS framework and logic to to serialize that. So you send the HTML. And then it also has this uh JavaScript little JavaScript framework called stimulus JS that helps you um like they say sprinkle JavaScript there because you do things like um uh uh like attach uh little JavaScript functionality to to to certain components or certain certain actions to of the client. So, when you to listen clicks and to attach behavior to to to small parts of the HTML. Um and also there is this framework to work with with web sockets and and to do like uh to a communication between the client and and the and the server to push uh content to from the server to the client. It has like all that you need. Uh uh something very important I think is this **[00:22:00]** framework uh well, for us and and is this framework to process uh background jobs. Uh in Rails Yeah. we have one like um like one one DSL that is called Active Job, but one implementation that it that is also part of Rails that is called Solid Queue that it works save the save the the jobs in the in the database. Um but there are also other options in the community like like Sidekiq or Delayed Job that that was from Shopify. I think it other one is Good Job. We have a lot of options for that for that kind of job that kind of like functionality that is very important because as far as I know other frameworks or JavaScript frameworks don't have this this mechanism. And well, it is needed. Yes, it's It's funny. It's like many She There's a lot of tools that people use every day and huge platforms are built on and they don't properly support a recurring job or things like that sometimes. And And they're these are simple basic primitives that Unix operating systems have had forever. Well, yes. So, we know they exist and we need them. And so, it's very nice when when a framework has that and and sometimes it's funny you see some new releases of things and they're like, "Now we support cron." And you're like, "What?" What So, Rails, is it You mentioned a community. Is like, you know, in in JavaScript world that you are building something and then you might need a little toast element or something. So, you might NPM install Sonar or or something like that because somebody else already built a little package or a library and you can bring it in and you can use it. But, as we've very recently seen, there's more **[00:24:00]** and more attacks on the water hole as it is colloquially called where someone can affect a package and then a lot of people install it without knowing because that package is part of another package and etc., right? So, how do how do packages work in the Rails world? Is it something that's mostly all core or are there a lot of extra packages? How How does that work? Well, those packages are called gems. And gems Ruby gems are part of the language, not part of Rails. Rails has a lot of a lot of gems and Rails is a gem itself. So, we have Ruby and Ruby use this tool that is called Bundler that helps you. And you have a gem file similar like a package package. Package JSON. Well, you have the gem file then where you declare your dependencies. Rails has some like um some official gems that that the that the Rails core team manages. But really a gem can be built by by everyone. So you it is up to you who you trust or what package you you what gem you you want to use. But Rails you Rails has a lot of the things that you um well a lot of things that you can No, Rails has enough enough things that's for for your project. That's what I yeah, that's that's what I gather, right? Like like lot of things to to ship a Rails thing with people that you can trust. But but but there are other people in the community that you can trust also and um yes, it's it's a matter of trust. Well, of course, but but that's what I gather from what I've heard about Rails **[00:26:00]** that you can sort of get away with doing a lot out of the box without having to sort of package a bunch of things just in a like if you're in the JavaScript world just to get something going. You are already installing a bunch of different packages, right? And this used to be the case even more before when you even needed Axios, which was the recent recent incident and and now it's part of node fetch and fortunately for for some years we've had that in core, but other than that like you you really need to use a bunch of packages to do things. So having a stack that I don't know if you could call them saying defaults, but it has things that just work and you could just get going. Uh-huh. It's opinionated in a way, right? Yes, really opinionated. Does it have anything for like because you mentioned the model, right? So it's model view controller basically you have the database access right with the ORM, you have the controller which are like the functions and logic to things and then you have the view which is the what you actually template see templating, right? Which is also it has templating like right again JavaScript you have to you're building something, you have to like create your own templates and then a template engine sometimes even to get it to like repeat otherwise you're re-redoing every page which is funny but anyway separate subject. So going back to rails with is does it have anything for like user management or what's what's the recommended route if you're if you're like if you're building a real app, what can you get away with with just rails? Okay. It has a kind of framework that is a generator that is called authentication so you you run I think the command is rails generate authentication and it and it builds like the session a session record. I think there is a user record also and enough views and controllers to has a sign in. **[00:28:00]** I think it it doesn't have the the the registration and another stuff but it has the session and the sign in. The community has also other libraries like one is famous is called device. I have used also other that is called uh authentication zero. I like it because it it has like only generators. It it is not like a library that you use to to run your code. It has it is a library that you use to generate the code. And it is interesting because you generate it and then you can modify the the code uh to follow what you want to um do. Uh and I think that there are other or other libraries for that, but but with those you even with the or with the default or with device or with these authentications you already think you are good with. That's That's That's super interesting. There's There's so much to to think about when you want to build an application or web application that you have to decide which language you want to use, but then also which stack, which framework. Like a lot of people now are using TanStack instead of Next.js because it's more open and you can do anything. It's based on React Router that many people have used for so so so much so many years. Uh Tanner Tanner Linsley Linsley Linsley Sorry, Tanner. But uh yeah, great stuff that that they put out and it just works, right? And so with the rise of the LLMs being used for coding I see this divide of for some reason Codex and Claude sort of their base thing is build a Next.js application and Tailwind and shadcn, right? Um which is okay because you can really quickly get something spun up, but I've seen that that many people in the community in **[00:30:00]** general are like, "No, let's let's just use TanStack cuz it it does mostly everything that Next.js does, but it's completely open and you can host it anywhere you want." So and LLMs are really good at at working with it. I would say TanStack. If there was a funny video yesterday, Wes Bos from he has a Syntax.fm uh it's a like a JavaScript podcast. And they were testing the new xAI um speech-to-text Okay. and transcriber. And so they they had it transcribe 150 episodes and it was really cheap because it's it's really good model. So he was saying how accurate it was because he had it run through 150 uh videos and and cut every time they say TanStack. So he put it the video on X where it was just like Tanstack Tanstack Tanstack Tanstack Tanstack. Like they're just like everyone's talking about it in the in the episodes. But, I like the fact that that people are starting to not necessarily follow just what the LLM is guiding you to. They're like, "No, no, no. Use this other stack that I like." Like in your case, maybe you don't, but use Rails, right? You just tell it. And and I think people should know this. If you're about coding an application for your business or anything, which is fine, especially for an MVP, you want to sort of test things out before hiring someone, maybe, then you don't have to follow what the LLM is saying. You can tell it, "I like Rails. Please, I heard Benito talking about Rails. Sounds amazing." You do that, and then it could use it. And the benefit of even using something like Rails, I again, I haven't built anything in Rails, is like you're looking at it now, even someone who doesn't code will more easily be able to see the code and be like, "I understand what it That makes sense what it says." versus looking at JavaScript, if it's not very well commented, you're going to be like, "What is going on here?" Yeah. Yes, yeah. Uh what what you say about Tanstack and the and the frameworks, I think it with the AI the AI is will be very useful or **[00:32:00]** very important to have these conventions in the in the way we write software because LLMs have has its own convention, like they learn about everything, or I'm not sure how they they they were trained, but but they have these patterns that are not really always the better patterns pa- patterns. So, so you I think we as an engineer we as engineers or as a community that writes that writes certain kind of software, we need to establish conventions our way of writing things that we can trust. Uh and maybe also uh these LLMs will be trained with these uh ways of writing the things to uh well, to be better and assembling these uh the pieces that that are needed in the in our software. That's a great point. Yeah. When when someone's not an engineer and they want to build something, what would you recommend to the point that you were doing right now that they do while they're building it or after they build it, what are some tips that you by having also used LLMs and seeing their deficiencies in some cases compared to a lifelong engineer doing software, what what would you recommend that people do to try to follow best better practices at least in terms of of uh building a software? I haven't seen someone that is not an engineer to build a software product or software tool that is that can go more than like **[00:34:00]** uh 10 or 20 messages in a conversation uh in a in an LLM conversation. I I'm not sure. Like if you are in B0, if you uh start giving more than 20 uh messages or or maybe in it in cloud, you're you're building kind of tool, it will start to building something that you don't want. But but for someone that is not an engineer and wants something, what I recommend uh normally is like try to build to tell the the AI to build to you something that is just an one HTML file. In that way it builds something. Well, don't don't use React, don't use anything, just HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. And give the um tell the AI to to build just one HTML file. I think the result is normally very good and they can give you something really usable. But it has its limitations. So, you you cannot build something bigger or something more complex. But if you but you can you can really produce an artifact that works and that you can use. Maybe you want to build a report or maybe you want to build some kind of visualization or or something that that reads uh CSV file and present something. But I think if you ask for one HTML file with JS there it can build a pretty decent thing for a lot of applications. If you need something more well, I think that you can uh tell the AI to build or build independent uh HTML files or well, starting to learn more and start with something like Rails or TanStack or **[00:36:00]** something that integrates all that that has a proper documentation or something that you that you can follow or where you can follow people. But at this point you need to learn something. I think that you Well, I'm not sure. May maybe there there are people that can can do it, but I think that passing passing the one or two HTML files is with complex logic and maybe databases so it's it's going to be it's going to be difficult, but I'm not sure. I think that's a good point. Now, it's it really depends on on the harness you're using. So, if if you're using just the chat interface, yeah, I agree. A lot of people just think chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or just what you see in the browser. And there, I've seen many people go down a rabbit hole, like you're saying, where they ask for too much. And as the context window gets used, the results are not as good. They start getting worse and things like that. And and you start getting some trash in it, as well. So, it's very good at doing things, and it's getting better. And it can create very good artifacts now. And the good thing is now even Claude, just the the chat, creates these artifacts and like separates them out and has some file management. So, so it's getting a lot better. If I'll talk about Claude code and codex and doing it for real, right? That that that works. You can build whatever you want there, but but I'll get to it. But if you are, like Rito says, if you're just in the chat, then yes, sometimes it might we forget how powerful HTML, JS, and CSS are. You can build the thing that you need. Maybe you need a tool that you use every day, but you don't need to store the data. You just need to use it to transform CSVs, create reports, task lists, etc. You can build it. JS HTML CSS file that or files that have all the logic that you need right there in one thing that you can move over wherever you want. You can use local storage in the browser to keep **[00:38:00]** everything, and it'll go through sessions, things like that. It's SQLite. You could use SQLite to have like a portable database. So, you can do something very powerful without having to think of all the rest of it. And so, there's less things that can break. Because once you enter the whole React stack or things like that, like there are some million things that can go wrong. And if you just wanted to do that that proof of concept or that little tool that you're going to use, it might not be worth it. Is that sort of what you think? Yeah, yes. I think if you if you are if you are an engineer, you can use Claude Code. You can buy a lot of things. But if you are not, something breaks and then you What do you What can you do? Like you will uh Keep asking it to fix. Uh-huh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, Claude Code is amazing. Uh Cloud Design, the tool that they made recently, is also impressive. We did a demo a few days ago when it launched, and it was is really good at creating these presentations. It's really good at creating these prototypes. We had it build If you haven't watched this, I was talking with Mike Carlo, and we were We said, "Okay, let's demo it." The first day it came out a few hours after, and he said, "Well, I have this idea for a website for one of the podcasts." And he wanted to do sort of a CLI themed website. And so he had a mock-up of the homepage. So we gave it to Cloud Design, saying, "Hey, we want to build this site. These are the episodes of the podcast, a YouTube link, or whatever. We wanted to have this aesthetic." So it asked us like three or four questions, and it went to work. And it created this massive website. Amazing. Just like a static site, but so well executed that I was amazed. And it had command K, and you could search the episodes, and it had CLI commands to like go to 21, and it would go to the episode 21. Wow. It was amazing. I'll show it to you. But it's getting there. Like the harness, this is what a lot of people don't understand uh and when we try to **[00:40:00]** explain as much as we learn, cuz we're all learning this. The AI, the LLM is one thing. Claude is one thing. Like it's the the processing, etc. of of or the thinking, if you want. But then it's just a one-turn thing. You send it something, it processes it, gives you a response. That's it. But then the harness, like Claude Code or Cloud Design or Codex, the harness is the tool that uses the LLM and has other steps, like first do this, then think about it, do another loop, do this other thing, then create a task list, then connect to this tool, then like it has these things so that you can actually create real work. So, that's where you start to see the difference. Maybe Well, maybe now you can ask for more. But But I think I think the problem is the same. If If the thing breaks, If the thing breaks, be harder. 100% Yes. And that's the thing that it makes it so easy to build. It's like I tell people, it's like the images. You tell it right now, create an image of a house with a front door and a chimney and some trees in the front. It will make an amazing picture. You'll be like, "Wow, that was great." But can you make the door light brown? And it like changes the windows and removes the chimney and puts a swing in front. You're like, "What?" Well, the same happens with code, right? It's Mhm. Unless you know what you're doing, like when you two saying, you don't have to be a software engineer, but you have to learn. Just like you said, like do your homework, start learning a little bit, watch YouTube videos maybe or get into the documentation, learn a little bit about what how Rails works or React or whatever or HTML even. That way, if you are building something bigger, you can at least troubleshoot it a little bit, know what you're talking about. Don't go in blind and build this massive thing that then could have security holes in it as well cuz you don't know **[00:42:00]** what you're doing. So, by all means I invite people to always experiment. Like it's fun. Try try to do smaller things first, like when you two saying, I think that's a great idea. And then if you're doing something bigger, learn about it or at least get in touch with a professional and and have them coach you a little bit on on what to do, what not to do. There's a lot of YouTube channels talking about this stuff as well. Because you can have a very costly mistake also because of how easy it is to start things. Yeah, but but well, as you said that well, you can ask for little things, but it is good, I think, once in a while ask for bigger things because nobody knows how how far can can these things go. Yes, you should try. Try Yeah. That That That's cool. That's true. is what a lot of things are just won from that way. Yeah, that's that's that's an excellent snippet right there. A lot of things are just won from the way. I think kids don't have the fear of experimenting sometimes Yeah. and grown-ups do. So, sometimes you're like, "I don't want to ask about this." But try it. I mean, unless you're doing something risky, but try it and and it might surprise you what what the result is going to be. Uh-huh. Yeah, and if if it And then you can try it in other ways if if it if it doesn't work. That's the other thing. That's a really good point. We've We've talked about that as well where it's so fast that if you're doing it properly, you have commits, you're using a repository, you can do something and then try something else just because you want to. It'll do it so fast that if it breaks it, you just revert and try again. And it'll do it so fast again that you don't really lose anything by trying it unless you run out of tokens and then you have to wait. But other than that, you should be fine. Yeah, yeah. What is your perspective on **[00:44:00]** like you you you are a CTO at a software company or a software technology company that powers other tooling. How do you see AI being used nowadays in software and technology companies? Well, in our experience, how we use AI in the in the software team, in the we call it the tech team, we use it every day like I think I'm not sure. I I don't see a lot of the the the analytic analytics uh dashboards in the in tools. But, we use it a lot. I bet more than 80% of our code is is written now by by AI. But, everything is also reviewed well with AI and manually. Our process is more or more or less like um a a each engineer has as a project that for one for one or one to three weeks, more or less. For that project it it breaks the project in different tasks or stories, and they they create this pull request. And in the process inside, they use the they chat with the LLMs and to produce the code. Maybe I'm not really seeing everyone the process, but my process is like just chatting with with the with the the harness. Some use cursor, and other use Claude Code. I have been trying a lot of these tools like cursor, Claude Code, code x. I use pie, um also open code. I think that's all. That that's the one that I In in Briq, we use cursor mostly because we is the one that we pay for since last year. But, we are trying a lot of the the tools. And then, when the pull request is ready, other person reviews the the the pull request. We have this like command or skill or **[00:46:00]** whatever you want to call it, a skill in in the cursor that says review this this thing, and it gives you a brief of what can be dangerous, or what can break things, or some recommendations of uh changes that can be um done later, or or maybe it can break it needs to be done now be- because it can break other thing. Um So, we have this review process, and then we just merge it. And the So, that's it. Yeah. Also, that in the in the company, in the software development process, it is very integrated in this way. We are trying to experiment in other ways. For example, I have this skill that to to produce one co- one thing one artifact that we have called problem or idea be- because in our process, before a project is is like defined, we have this board in notion where where we write problems or ideas that we have with the software development team, but but also that the other people in the company. Documents have like a a structure because where we put the problem, if the if the problem or solving that that issue would um is aligned to our objectives or not, if it if it is necessary right now, or can wait a little. And also and solu- a solution idea. So, one one of the things that I do a lot is like sharing with the with the LM team our repo in in a repository, not not in the in the chat window, but but it in cursor or cloud editor, or whatever that I'm doing that where where it has the context of the the repository of the code that we have **[00:48:00]** and sharing with it about our problems problems that that we think we have and maybe asking things like, how can we solve this or is it really a problem or not? Mhm. And then maybe brainstorming different kind of ideas to solve it. And then decide something take some decisions but without implementing everything because some things are sometimes are big big changes. So and and after that we I slash uh problem idea and and it builds this markdown file with with the specifications of our of our notion board and then just I just paste it and it it has helped me a lot in um this this notion well, this process of writing problems idea because it's it helps you document all that you have already shared with it. So you have done this investigation with with the tool and and with inside your repository and deciding some things and then it can just brief in the format that you brief all the all the conversation in the format that you want Yeah. and is like one or two seconds and it's pretty interesting. Other things not me personally but but our designer well, he works real well with with the AI and it builds he builds a lot of little mockups and with HTML. This kind of this kind of mockups. Real mockups. Uh uh he uses the CSS or CSS files and it has his his own repo little repo with with different experiments in the UI uh oh doing a a lot of things um and and building as you said real real **[00:50:00]** mock-up chatting with with our with our CEO chatting with the AI and our CEO all together to find the right solution before building it and then it this produces something that we want to ship as a project to to and really implementing also using AI so so we are we don't really say to the AI build Right. we break things or or the little tasks that we have and use it in different ways and we also are trying to introduce all the rest of the company to the AI to use it in different tasks but we are we are just starting with that like Yeah. for for for for all the different tasks in the company like human resources for or or maybe more in marketing or or analysis or different things but with that we are just starting real Those are excellent examples all of them. I've seen all of this in practice. It's amazing because Mhm. people sometimes again don't don't know if they're not in the spaces. If you have a very large code base like I imagine biggest Yeah. huge code base you have you can have your IDE your your development environment with all the code and then if a bug comes along reported by users or found by your tooling before you would have to dive into and make scenarios and figure out and now I found like just for my experience with projects that we've managed for a long time but still have the code base and sometimes we get a request sometimes someone might say something as simple as hey the transcript for this person is not appearing. They have these Oh, okay." And we could just tell Claude, "Hey, this person the transcript is not appearing." And then Claude's like examines a thousand lines and then says, "Oh, it's because the slug of that **[00:52:00]** particular way they have their I don't know, college level set up is missing in this part of the code." And then it can ask you if you want to fix it or not. And so, it's impressive because it gives you if you have everything there and it's documented and everything. Well, sometimes it still doesn't even have to be documented. It finds things really fast for for debugging just by talking to it. One example that I have when I when I face something like for something like that is months ago, I think, we have we had this problem in our accounts with a difference between our concentrator account and our internal movements. In Briq, we have this bank system with account systems. We have this mismatch. We always are checking what we what we have in our bank and what that in our bank and what we have in our internal accounts match always. Like every second. Mhm. But one time we had this mismatch for $1, one peso or something. And and it's very difficult to find to find kind of problems. And I was chatting with with the LLM too. I think it was Claude. But I I was chatting with the LLM about the problem and it helped me helps me build a little script that the that then I run to produce one CSV, one giant CSV. Then with that big CSV, I write other a to to produce a more output a different kind of output that that helps to identify the problem better. And then it finds it found the problem like like very easily and and it was very hard **[00:54:00]** because for me to write this script or to think in in all the all the things that I had to maybe it could be like one day or or two of well one day of work and it helps me and I did it in like I'm not sure but maybe minutes less than half an hour or something like that. Yes, that that one. When before you went to debug something, you either do it manually or you spend a lot of resources building something. You just wouldn't do it. You just would not build a dashboard to find the bug, right? But now you can literally have it help me build a dashboard to find this bug and it could create even a UI for you to like scan things Yeah. and have fun with it and and actually find the bug which you wouldn't do because it's expensive that don't make sense but now it's so easy to tell it that yeah, you can have your way yes have your debugger running in real time and and find like you did your report and it'll just give you exactly what you need. It's not all about having it do everything. You have processes that you've had at Briq for a long time but now you use AI to help with those processes in a structured way. The outcomes are are repeatable and so it's that's that's a difference also. Mhm. Yeah, amazing. I I think there's so much to unpack behind the scenes of of what happens at these type of companies and now with AI of course it's it's getting super super interesting. Um we didn't get into the the crowdfunding aspect of it but I know we're we're we're past the time uh and it has been super fun. What is if you want to learn a little bit more about Briq, I don't know if this is just for for the Mexico economy or other people but if people want to learn more about Briq, how it works, how they can participate if if applicable, what's a good place to to get more information? brick.com.mx **[00:56:00]** That's the name of the company and the page. Uh yes. It's a tricky word. brick.com.mx you can find everything. Yes, you need a Mexican bank account. You don't need to be a Mexican but you need a Mexican bank account. But if you are real estate developer, you we we have fund also projects in the United States. Interesting. Excellent. All right and for those listening of course it's Briq b r i q dot m x, right? Perfect. All right. Well, Benito this has been a lot of fun. A lot of great examples that I think our listeners will take away. So if they start their journey as well, they can they can have some good ideas on how to do things better and also giving them a glimpse of of what happens behind business like this one. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And for those listening if you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast, please do so. There's like and subscribe button and that way you learn every time we have a new episode with amazing guests like Benito here. Thanks everyone and we'll see you in the next one.