CodeNewbie

S15:E7 - How to communicate complex technical topics (Anna Skoulikari)

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about how to communicate complex technical topics, with Anna Skoulikari, technical writer at Mambu. Anna talks about transitioning from UX designer to front end development, how to explain complex topics like Git, and why technical writing isn’t as boring as some might think it sounds.

Anna Skoulikari

Anna is the instructor on the highest-rated Udemy course Git Learning Journey that teaches Git version control. She is currently working as a technical writer at Mambu and in the past has worked as a UX designer and frontend developer.

S15:E6 - What is cryptography and how to get into it ( Marcus Carey)

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about cryptography with Marcus Carey, enterprise architect at ReliaQuest. Marcus talks about going to the military and learning cryptography, what cryptography is, and the foundational things you need to know in order to make sure the apps you’re building are secure.

Marcus Carey

Marcus J. Carey is an Enterprise Architect at ReliaQuest where he does security research and product development. Prior to joining ReliaQuest, Marcus was the founder and CEO at Threatcare (acquired by ReliaQuest) and has 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Marcus has worked in penetration testing, incident response, and digital forensics with federal agencies such as NSA, DC3, DIA, and DARPA.

S15:E5 - What you need to know about APIs (Sue Smith)

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about what you need to know about APIs, with Sue Smith, developer educator at Postman. Sue talks about transitioning careers at 30, what APIs are, and why it’s important to have a good understanding of them.

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Sue Smith

Sue Smith has worked in developer education since 2007, focusing on using tech to enable people from a variety of backgrounds. Having worked in open source, community, and developer advocacy, highlights including contracting and partnering with the Mozilla Foundation, co-founding education non-profit Hack Aye, and driving API education at Postman, Sue is most enthusiastic about programs that connect people to opportunity.

S15:E4 - What is Node.js and when might you use it (Danielle Adams)

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about Node.js with Danielle Adams, Node core team member, and lead software engineer at Heroku. Danielle talks about what Node is, when you might want to use it, and what her role is like on the Node core team, as well what the best way to learn Node is, and whether you need to focus on and get really comfortable in JavaScript first, or if you can jump right into it.

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Danielle Adams

Danielle Adams is a lead software engineer at Heroku, release manager on the Node.js core team, and director of Women Who Code NYC.

S15:E3 - How to build an app from idea to maintenance (Kyle Lee)

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about how to build an app from idea to maintenance with Kyle Lee, senior developer advocate at Amazon Web Services. Kyle talks about having some trouble with JavaScript and then diving into mobile development instead, his advice for learning the basics of mobile app development, and where he draws inspiration from.

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Kyle Lee

Kyle Lee is a self-taught iOS Engineer with over five years of software development experience. He is currently a senior developer advocate at Amazon Web Services.

S15:E2 - How to code without typing (Matt Wiethoff, Tommy MacWilliam)

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about how to code without typing, with Serenade co-founders, Matt Wiethoff and Tommy MacWilliam. They talk about how Matt’s repetitive wrist injury started to derail his coding career, how they needed to invent the accessibility tool, which one of them literally needed to help build the tool itself, and what stack they used to build it.

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Matt Wiethoff

Matt is co-founder at Serenade, where he works on enabling programmers to write code with voice. Matt entered the voice space when a career-ending injury forced him to look for an alternative way to be productive. Before Serenade, Matt was a machine learning engineer and tech lead at Quora.

Tommy MacWilliam

Tommy is the co-founder and CEO of Serenade. Previously, he was Quora's Head of Platform, leading teams focused on developer tools, and a developer at CS50, Harvard's introductory Computer Science course.

S15:E1 - What are the skills you need to go from developer to entrepreneur (Ben Halpern)

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about what are the core skills you need to go from developer to entrepreneur with Ben Halpern, co-founder of Forem, which acquired CodeNewbie in 2020. Ben talks about getting into development with entrepreneurship on the brain, building DEV and now his new venture, Forem, and what skills he looks for when hiring developers.

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Ben Halpern

Ben Halpern is co-founder of Forem.

S14:E9 - How to build tech for social justice (Alex Qin)

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about how to build tech for social justice, with Alex Qin, co-founder and CEO of Emergent Works. Alex talks about the challenges she had to face being a woman in tech, how shaving her head caused people to treat her with more respect and launched her on a path toward social justice, and her company’s first in-house app, Not 911.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Emergent Works
Not 911
How to go from convict to coder
Python
Betaworks
GIPHY
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race
Gamergate
Women Who Code
Shaving my Head Made me a Better Programmer
The New Jim Crow
The Fortune Society
React
Doodle Jump

Alex Qin

Alex Qin is the founder of Emergent Works, a nonprofit software company that trains and employs formerly incarcerated coders. She is a reformed software engineer who has been working in the space of prison reentry and criminal justice reform since 2018. She spent most of her career before that writing code and advocating for a more diverse and equitable tech industry. She is also an international public speaker and some of you may have seen her talk about how shaving her head made her a better programmer. And she is a performance and visual artist. Her first solo show, Losing Things, premiered in New York in December 2019.

S14:E8 - What is .NET and why is it useful (Maria Nagagga)

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about .NET with Maria Naggaga, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft for .NET interactive and ASP.NET. Maria talks about how coding was actually a great path because of her dyslexia, what .NET is, what it’s good for and what the learning curve is to use it effectively.

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Maria Nagagga

Maria Nagagga is the senior program manager at Microsoft for .NET interactive and ASP.NET.

S14:E7 - How to stay motivated and get your first job ( Danny Thompson)

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about how to stay motivated and get your first job, with Danny Thompson, software engineer at Frontdoor and the chapter founder and organizer of GDG Memphis, a meetup for providing resources and supporting developers along their careers. Danny talks about going from gas station fry cook to developer, how to maintain drive and motivation on your coding journey, and his four steps to landing your first job.

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Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson is a software engineer, community leader, and the chapter founder and organizer of GDG Memphis, a meetup for providing resources and supporting developers along their careers.

S14:E6 - What is Typescript and when should you use it (Dan Vanderkam)

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk Typescript with Dan Vanderkam, principal software engineer at Sidewalk Labs, and author of Effective TypeScript. Dan talks about the difference between working on a personal project versus a project at scale, what typescript is, and how it can help you once you move to those larger projects.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
TypeScript
Sidewalk Labs
Effective TypeScript
The Secret Guide To Computers
BASIC
Mount Sinai
Alphabet Inc
AlphaGo
JavaScript
Type Systems
C#
Turbo Pascal
Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs, Third Edition
TypeScript Handbook
Basarat's TypeScript Deep Dive
Basarat's T
Programming TypeScript
TypeScript Quickly

Dan Vanderkam

Dan Vanderkam, a principal software engineer at Sidewalk Labs, has built engineering teams and processes for all of its products and spinouts, all of which use TypeScript. He previously worked on open source genome visualizations at Mt. Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and on search features used by billions of users at Google (try "population of france" or "sunset nyc"). He has a long history of working on open source projects, including the popular dygraphs library and source-map-explorer, a tool for visualizing JavaScript code size. He is also a co-founder of the NYC TypeScript meetup.

S14:E5 - What are the benefits of learning to code when you’re older (Allison Sheridan)

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about learning to code when you’re older, with Allison Sheridan, creator of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, and former IT Fellow at Raytheon. Allison talks about why she picked up coding in her retirement, her challenges and successes on her coding journey, as well as her tips for learning.

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Allison Sheridan

Allison Sheridan is the host of several tech podcasts including the NosillaCast, Chit Chat Across the Pond and co-host of Programming By Stealth with Bart Busschots. She's a mechanical engineer who took up programming after she retired.

S14:E4 - How to use code to build cross-cultural understanding (Laura Gutierrez-Funderburk)

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about how to use code to build cross-cultural understanding, with Laura Gutierrez Funderburk, data science intern at Cybera’s Callysto Project. Laura talks about how diving into projects and finding mentors helped push her through her coding journey, using Jupyter Notebooks to create curriculums for teachers with the goal of cross-cultural understanding, and why building tech with that mission in mind is important.

Laura Gutierrez-Funderburk

Laura Gutierrez-Funderburk holds a mathematics degree from Simon Fraser University, located in Vancouver, British Columbia. She’s experienced in creating in-person and online data science lessons for Grades 5-12 students and teachers that spark creativity, celebrate diversity, and foster critical thinking skills. In her spare time she likes building software with RLadies and PyLadies and doesn’t miss a chance to learn how she can use her Python skills to interact with databases.

S14:E3 - Introducing DevNews (Joseph Cox)

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode of DevNews, hosts Saron Yitbarek and Josh Puetz, cover how Apple server problems caused slowdowns and crashes for app launching in all versions of MacOS, the rise of school districts being the targets of ransomware attacks, and GitHub reinstating youtube-dl, a program to download videos from YouTube and other video sites, after a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown. And then they chat with Senior Staff Writer at Motherboard, Joseph Cox, whose piece titled, “How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps,” shines a spotlight on the location data industry, and who is being targeted.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps
Standing up for developers: youtube-dl is back
Schools Struggling to Stay Open Get Hit by Ransomware Attacks
Apple Addresses Privacy Concerns Surrounding App Authentication in macOS

Joseph Cox

Joseph Cox covers privacy, hackers, and crime for Motherboard.

S14:E2 - How to get into spatial computing (April Speight)

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we chat we talk about spatial computing with April Speight, cloud advocate for spatial computing at Microsoft. April talks about moving from fashion to development, what spatial computing is, and her personal curriculum to learn what she needed to in order to make the switch from project management to the world of extended reality.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Spatial computing
Extended reality
Project management
Consumer Technology Association (CTA)
Google Career Certificates
Augmented reality (AR)
Virtual reality (VR)
Mixed Reality
HoloLens
Magic Leap
Program Management
Vive
Oculus Go
Oculus Quest
Google Cardboard
Udacity
Unity
Python
C#
Codecademy
Channel 9
Scott Hanselman: Announcing free C#, .NET, and ASP.NET for beginners video courses and tutorials
Mixed Reality Toolkit
Chatbots
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Data Science
Microsoft Azure
Facial Recognition
MIT Reality Hack
Mixed Reality Academy

April Speight

April Speight is a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft with the Spatial Computing technical team. Her interests include playing with holograms and creating new realities.

S14:E1 - How to go from convict to coder (Rick Wolter)

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about about going from convict to coder with software engineer, Rick Wolter. Rick talks about being sent to prison for murder as a teen, deciding to learn to code while being locked up, and what it takes to land that first job with a felony on your record.

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Rick Wolter

S13:E8 - How to get into data science and machine learning (Jay Feng)

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about how to learn data science and machine learning, with Jay Feng, co-founder and head of data science at Interview Query. Jay talks about how data science got him back into development after some bad coding experiences, how the different tools for machine learning and data science work together, and if machine learning is really as difficult as it sounds.

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Jay Feng

Jay is a data scientist and co-founder of Interview Query. He's worked in data for five years before starting his own business working on getting more data scientist enthusiasts into the industry.

S13:E7 - What it’s like to build React (Sophie Alpert)

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about React with Sophie Alpert, engineering manager at Humu, former manager of the React core team at Facebook. Sophie talks about the decision to drop out of college to work full-time at Kahn Academy, what her favorite things about React are, and going from the top open source contributor to React to then building it on the core team.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
React
Humu
JavaScript
Angular
Vue
React 16: A look inside an API-compatible rewrite of our frontend UI library

Sophie Alpert

Sophie Alpert is an engineering manager at Humu. Previously, she worked at Facebook as the engineering manager for React, an open-source library used by millions of developers. She’s an expert at fixing software systems and really enjoys good food.

S13:E6 - How to think about accessibility and empowerment (Sareh Heidari)

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about accessibility in tech and how tech can be used to empower people from a variety of backgrounds, with Sareh Heidari, Software engineer at BBC News. Sareh talks about transitioning from physics to development, how networking and meetups helped her land her first job, and how the BBC integrates accessibility in their workflow.

Sareh Heidari

Sareh is a Senior Software Engineer at BBC News, based in London, UK. She cares about web performance, accessibility, and how we can use tech to change the way we live and work, for the better.

S13:E5 - Why you should consider learning Ruby ( Jay McGavren)

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk Ruby with Jay McGavren, author of Head First Ruby and Head First Go, and web developer at Kajabi. Jay talks about the pros and cons of using Ruby, what coding in Ruby looks like, and if it’s a good language for beginners to first learn.

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Jay McGavren

Jay is the author of the books Head First Ruby and Head First Go. He has over 15 years of software development experience, including 4 years of teaching development online.

S13:E4 - Why you shouldn’t forget about CSS (Hui Jing Chen)

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about learning and loving CSS, with Hui Jing Chen, UX Developer at Shopify. Hui Jing talks about how playing professional basketball led to becoming a developer, how she became a CSS expert, and why you should always read the specs.

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Hui Jing Chen

Hui Jing is a self-taught designer and developer living in Singapore, with an inordinate love for CSS.

S13:E3 - What’s the deal with auth (Sam Julien)

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk auth, with Sam Julien, developer advocate engineer at Auth0. Sam talks about how he got out a rut and into development with a little help from his friends, what auth is, and what are the things you really need to know about it

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Sam Julien

Sam Julien is an Angular GDE and Collaborator, a Sr. Developer Advocate Engineer at Auth0, and the creator of UpgradingAngularJS.com and GetAJobIn.Tech. He's also an author for Thinkster.io and egghead. His favorite thing in the world is sitting outside drinking good scotch next to a fire he built himself.

S13:E2 - How newbies can contribute to open source (Janessa Tran)

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about getting into open source, with Janessa Tran, junior software engineer at Ten Forward Consulting. Janessa talks about being one of a triplet of coders, how contributing to open source early on helped her to level up her dev skills, and what you should look for as a beginner when choosing what open source projects to work on.

Janessa Tran

Janessa is a data analyst turned software engineer who was inspired to make a transition in her career upon discovering the Ruby programming language and community. She is a triplet, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and a first-generation college graduate who currently works at Ten Forward Consulting as a Junior Software Engineer in Madison, WI.

S13:E1 - How live coding can level up your development (Jesse Weigel)

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we’re talking about live coding with Jesse Weigel, senior software engineer at Dicks Sporting Goods, and YouTube live streamer for freeCodeCamp. Jesse talks about how he got into live streaming his work, the ways in which live streaming has helped him as a developer, and his advice for folks who want to start their own coding livestream.

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Jesse Weigel

Jesse Weigel is a senior software engineer at Dick's Sporting Goods who live codes for the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel. He is currently building things with React Native. Jesse loves sharing his coding experiences with other developers, including his struggles and failures, and is happy when he gets a chance to encourage new developers.

S12:E9 - Introducing DevDiscuss (Penelope Phippen, Ben Halpern, Jess Lee)

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0400

As an industry, tech is not well equipped to accept when people change their names. This problem effects a range of people, including those who have a change of marital status. However, it can especially effect the security of those who are survivors of domestic violence, and those who are trans, who have to suffer through deadnaming by their tech accounts. This constant barrage of deadnaming can be very psychologically and emotionally harmful. DevDiscuss hosts Ben Halpern and Jess Lee speak with Penelope Phippen, director at Ruby Central, and author of the DEV post, "Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science," about this issue and what can be done to make it better.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Ruby
RSpec
Rails
Ruby Central
RubyConf
RailsConf
RuboCop
Go Format
Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
GitHub
One Medical
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
GLAD
SheCodes
LivingSocial
Rubyfmt

Penelope Phippen

Penelope Phippen (she/her) is a multifaceted Rubyist who works as a Director at Ruby Central, is the creator of Rubyfmt, and was formerly a lead maintainer of the RSpec project. She frequently writes and speaks about about complex aspects of the Ruby grammar, and issues of social justice for trans people in computer science. She's sad that she can't hug every cat.

Ben Halpern

Ben Halpern is co-founder of Forem.

Jess Lee

Jess Lee is co-founder of DEV.

S12:E8 - How to harness privilege to create equitable design (Aubrey Blanche)

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we’re talking about how as an industry, tech should strive for equitable design, and how you can harness your privilege to help create diversity, with Aubrey Blanche, director of global head of equitable design and impact at Culture Amp, and Founder and CEO of The Mathpath. Aubrey talks about how the term “diversity and inclusion” might not be as actionable as you might think, how “culture fit” may not be the thing you actually want, and how we should all be using our individual privileges to help other marginalized groups.

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Aubrey Blanche

Aubrey Blanche is The Mathpath and Director of Equitable Design & Impact at Culture Amp, and startup investor and advisor. In all her work, she partners with organizations to design equitable talent processes and programs, products that create fairness and inclusion, and helps individuals reach their potential as allies to build a better world.

S12:E7 - What it looks like to be a frontend developer for 20 years (Crysfel Villa)

Mon, 25 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about how frontend development has changed over the past 20 years, and how to keep on learning new skills, with Crysfel Villa, Senior Software Engineer at InVision, and backend lead at Coding Coach. Crysfel talks about how he navigated his english language barrier learning to code 20 years ago, how putting himself out there through blogs and remote and on-site teaching led to the most opportunities, and how he ended up diving into being a backend lead, even with his primary experience being a frontend developer.

Crysfel Villa

Crysfel Villa is a senior software engineer at InVision, and backend lead at Coding Coach. He has over 20 years of experience with more than 9 years of working with JavaScript on a daily basis.

S12:E6 - Why personal projects are so important (Ze Frank)

Mon, 18 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we’re talking about personal projects, with Ze Frank, former president of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, and creator of the massively popular website, zefrank.com. Ze talks about his creative process, the wild west that was the internet of the early aughts, and the ubiquity of Flash. He also shares his journey into coding by creating funny and obtuse interactive projects on his personal website, zefrank.com, which won a 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Website and in 2005, was featured in Time Magazine’s “50 Coolest Websites.”

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Ze Frank

Ze Frank is the former president of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, and the creator of True Facts, The Show. and zefrank.com, which won a 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Website and in 2005, was featured in Time Magazine’s “50 Coolest Websites.”

S12:E5 - How to not get bogged down in technical debt (Nina Zakharenko)

Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode we’re talking about technical debt, with Nina Zakharenko, Principal Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft. Nina talks about what causes technical debt, what can happen when it gets out of control, and how we can mitigate the accumulation of that debt.

Nina Zakharenko

Nina Zakharenko is a developer advocate, software engineer, pythonista, & speaker.

S12:E4 - How no-code tools can help your coding (David Hoang)

Mon, 04 May 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about using no-code tools to aid in your coding journey and your work, with David Hoang, director of design at Webflow. David talks about how he got into code through the fine arts, the utility of using no-code tools both for learning to code as well as in your career, and what some of his favorite no-code tools are.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Webflow
Macromedia
Adobe Dreamweaver
HyperCard
Apple II
Commodore 64
Microsoft Excel
HTML
CSS
Myspace
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Codeless innovation: experience prototyping with visual programming
One Medical
Bubble
Airtable
Quartz Composer
Makerpad
Ruby on Rails

David Hoang

David Hoang is a design leader, technologist, teacher, and startup advisor. He's currently the Director of Design at Webflow and User Experience Design Instructor at General Assembly.

S12:E3 - How to hack legally and penetrate the security field (Karen Miller)

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we're talking about how to hack legally with Karen Miller, associate cyber security engineer at the Software Engineering Institute. Karen talks about getting into cyber security through forensic and security competitions, reliable and safe resources to learn how to hack, and how to do it legally.

Karen Miller

Karen Miller is a Carnegie Mellon University graduate from the Information Security, M.S. program and currently works full-time as an Associate Cyber Security Engineer at the Software Engineering Institute. Although introverted and still early in her career, Karen is passionate about making tech and security accessible to people of all backgrounds and helping others learn new skills that align with their goals.

S12:E2 - What is COBOL and should you learn it (Pete Dashwood)

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we're talking about COBOL, with Pete Dashwood, CEO of PRIMA Computing, a company that helps other companies move off of COBOL. Pete talks about what it was like to be a programmer working in COBOL in the 60’s, what the programming language is good at, and the current state of COBOL.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
PRIMA Computing
COBOL
COBOL, a 60-year-old computer language, is in the COVID-19 spotlight
High-level programming language
Assembly language
Java
C#
Python
IBM Basic Assembly Language and successors
Mainframe computer
BASIC
PL/I
Von-Neumann Model
Object-oriented programming
Batch processing
Cretaceous COBOL Can Spawn Jurassic Java
Object-oriented COBOL
Commodore 64
Sams Teach Yourself COBOL in 24 Hours
Straight and Crooked Thinking

Pete Dashwood

Pete Dashwood is the CEO of PRIMA Computing, which helps companies migrate off of COBOL. He started programming computers before what most people call a "computer" was invented. He started with punched cards and paper tape, and much of the history of computing is the history of his career.

S12:E1 - What is vanilla JS and how can it help you (Chris Ferdinandi)

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we talk about about vanilla JavaScript with Chris Ferdinandi, author of the Vanilla JS Pocket Guide series, and creator of the Vanilla JS Academy training program. Chris talks about how he went from HR professional to JavaScript expert, the pros of getting rid of all that tooling and learning good old fashion vanilla JS, and why this is relevant, not only from a personal perspective, but from a public safety perspective as well.

Chris Ferdinandi

Chris Ferdinandi is the author of the Vanilla JS Pocket Guide series, creator of the Vanilla JS Academy training program, and host of the Vanilla JS Podcast. My developer tips newsletter is read by over 8,500 developers each weekday.

S11:E8 - How to not let imposter syndrome hold you back (Allen Whearry)

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we’re talking about tackling imposter syndrome and succeeding, with Allen Whearry, software engineer at Yelp. Allen talks about his strategy for teaching himself to code, conquering his self-doubt, and how after applying for job after job, he finally landed a position at Yelp.

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Allen Whearry

Allen is a self-taught iOS Developer who made the switch from a professional sales career and now sits as a software engineer at Yelp. He believes anyone can learn to program, they just have to put in the time and effort.

S11:E7 - Why site reliability is so important (Molly Struve)

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we're talking about site reliability with Molly Struve, lead site reliability engineer at DEV Community. Molly talks about going from studying aerospace engineering, to becoming an options trader, to then becoming a site reliability engineer. She gets into the history of site reliability, what it is, and what it takes to do it well.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Site Reliability Engineering
DEV
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails
Water Cooler Meetings
LinkedIn
Hacker News
Aisle50
Kenna Security
Elasticsearch
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
DevOps

Molly Struve

Molly Struve is a self-taught software engineer turned SRE. During her time working in the software industry, she has had the opportunity to work on some challenging problems and thrives on creating reliable, performant infrastructure that can grow as fast as a booming business. When not making systems run faster, she can be found fulfilling her need for speed by riding and jumping her show horses.

S11:E6 - What are the pros and cons of working in civic tech (Aidan Feldman)

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we’re talking about civic tech with Aidan Feldman, Technology Director at General Service Administration’s Technology Transformation Services. We get into the pros and cons, and hurdles and hoops of working in civic tech, as well as the skills you need if you want a career in it.

Aidan Feldman

Aidan Feldman is the Technology Director at the Technology Transformation Services (TTS), where he supports the programs and people that transform how government uses technology. Previously, Aidan worked at startups like GitHub and Artsy, and has taught software development at places like Cornell, New York University, and General Assembly.

S11:E5 - Why defining your narrative arc is important to getting hired (Caitlin Cooke)

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we’re talking about getting hired with Caitlin Cooke, former VP of HR at Nava, and current Career Mentor at Pathrise. We get into the difference between getting hired in tech as opposed to other types of industries, the different steps to step up your interviewing, including creating a “behavioral matrix,” and the pipeline strategy of the job search process, including when to do cold emails and when to use a wide spread approach to send out your applications.

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Caitlin Cooke

Caitlin formerly led all things people at Nava and was GitHub's first recruiting leader. With her deep background in recruiting, she helps students and professionals land jobs in the tech space.

S11:E4 - How to get into game development (Jonathan Jennings)

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we’re talking about game development with Jonathan Jennings, software engineer at RelayCars. We get into how he got into game design, the struggles of learning to code, and what it takes to be a successful game designer.

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Jonathan Jennings

Jonathan Jennings is a software engineer who works in the AR, VR, and video game spaces. He currently works at RelayCars developing Automotive VR and AR applications. He’s been a speaker at the Blacks In Tech Conference, Urban Tech Connect, and multiple colleges. His first published essay, Black Unicorn, is available to read in the book Game Devs & Others : Tales From The Margins. He’s been involved in multiple development roles including rapid prototyping, core mechanic programming, user Interface engineering, multiplayer programming, and publishing processes for release, among others. He has over 8 years of development across both games and VR / MR / AR applications experience and titles he has worked on have had over 2 million cumulative downloads across several platforms. When not working he is most likely playing and studying the latest giant mainstream release or an obscure indie game.

S11:E3 - Why apprenticeships are important for equality, diversity, and inclusion (Ryan Carson)

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we talk about the necessity of coding apprenticeships in making the tech world a more diverse and inclusive place, with Ryan Carson, CEO and founder of Treehouse. He talks about the limitations of the pure bootcamp model and how apprenticeship programs can lead to real change in terms of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

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Ryan Carson

Ryan Carson is the CEO & Founder of Treehouse, an online school that's taught software engineering to over 850,000 people. He is a leader and champion of self-directed learning--inspiring others to take the helm of their own education. He is also an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion within the tech industry, specializing in helping companies like Verizon, Nike, Adobe, Mailchimp, and more, invest in their local communities, building diverse teams, and creating generational wealth for families who have been locked out of tech. Treehouse is partnered with AnitaB.org and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America on a massive movement to build the ladder to high-paying jobs in tech with projectunlocktheamericandream.org.

S11:E2 - Why all developers should understand the basics of testing (Angie Jones)

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we’re talking about testing code with Angie Jones, Senior Developer Advocate at Applitools, and former Senior Software Engineer in Test at Twitter. Angie talks about how she got into testing, some of the testing and problems she had to solve while working at Twitter, and why all developers should understand the basics of testing.

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Angie Jones

Angie Jones is a Senior Developer Advocate who specializes in test automation strategies and techniques. She shares her wealth of knowledge by speaking and teaching at software conferences all over the world, as well as and leading the online learning platform, Test Automation University. As a Master Inventor, Angie is known for her innovative and out-of-the-box thinking style which has resulted in more than 25 patented inventions in the US and China. In her spare time, Angie volunteers with Black Girls Code to teach coding workshops to young girls in an effort to attract more women and minorities to tech.

S11:E1 - Why ethics and contributor behavior matters in open source (Coraline Ada Ehmke)

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 -0500

In this episode, we're talking about ethics in open source with Coraline Ada Ehmke, software developer, and creator of the Contributor Covenant, as well as the Hippocratic License. Coraline talks about her coding journey, open source, licenses, and how and why it’s important to create an ethical framework for those licenses.

Coraline Ada Ehmke

Coraline Ada Ehmke is an international speaker, writer, and developer with over 25 years of experience in software engineering. She was recognized for her work on diversity in open source with a Ruby Hero award in 2016. Coraline is the creator of the Contributor Covenant, the most popular open source code of conduct in the world with over 40,000 adoptions. She is a founding panelist on the Greater than Code podcast. Coraline is co-authoring a book on practicing empathy in software development, and writes and records music in her home studio.

S10:E8 - What you should look for in online coding courses (Colt Steele)

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0500

With the explosion of coding bootcamps, video courses, and other resources for coding, it can be tough for somebody starting out to cut the wheat from the chaff. We chat with Colt Steele, Colt Steele, developer and bootcamp instructor at Udemy, about his winding road to becoming a coder, what makes a good course, and the best way to find and learn from them.

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Colt Steele

Colt Steele is one of the most successful web development instructors on Udemy, and also runs a consultancy where he helps companies turn non-technical employees into developers while leveling-up existing engineers.

S10:E7 - Why you should learn to speak machine (John Maeda)

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0500

We chat with John Maeda, Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient, about his journey into combining art and technology, going from working in academia to silicon valley, and his new book, “How to Speak Machine: Laws of Design For a Computational Age.”

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Design in Tech Report
WordPress
STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics)
Square
RISD: Rhode Island School of Design
Kleiner Perkins
Automattic
Kickstarter
Publicis Sapient

John Maeda

John Maeda is an American technologist, designer, engineer, artist, investor, author, and teacher. He is Chief Experience Officer at Publicis Sapient, the technology consulting and delivery arm of communications and marketing conglomerate Publicis. He has held positions with Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com; the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins; served as president of the Rhode Island School of Design; and began his early career at the MIT Media Lab at the intersection of computer science and visual art. Named as one of the “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” by Esquire, Maeda draws on his diverse background as an MIT-trained engineer, award-winning designer, and MBA-community translator to bring people and ideas together at scale. He is the author of several celebrated books, including The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his talks for TED have received millions of views.

S10:E6 - How can we make the future of programming more inclusive? (Tim O'Reilly)

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We chat with Tim O'Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, about what we’re doing wrong and what we’re doing right with teaching programming today, and how we need to make coding more inclusive for more than just career developers.

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O’Reilly is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of O’Reilly Media, the company that has been providing the picks and shovels of learning to the Silicon Valley gold rush for the past thirty-five years. If you’ve heard the term “open source software”, “web 2.0”, “the Maker movement”, “government as a platform”, or “the WTF economy”, he’s had a hand in framing each of those big ideas.

S10:E5 - How to be a good manager and a good employee (Lara Hogan)

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400

You can be an amazing developer, but a terrible manager. We chat with Lara Hogan, former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, co-founder of Wherewithall, a company that coaches and levels up managers, and author of the new bestselling book, Resilient Management, about her background going from web developer to manager, why becoming a manager isn’t necessarily a promotion, and some of the most important skills people need to not only be good managers, but in any supporting role.

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Lara Hogan

Lara is the former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, co-founder of Wherewithall, a company that coaches and levels up managers, and author of the new bestselling book, Resilient Management.

S10:E4 - Building a personal brand early in your development career (Amy Chen)

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We chat with Amy Chen, systems software engineer at VMware and creator of the Amy Codes YouTube channel, about her career two years into being a professional developer, getting into coding for distributed systems, and the benefits of creating a personal brand.

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Amy Chen

Youtuber & Distributed Systems-er.

S10:E3 - How do you prepare for bootcamp and break into tech? (Ruben Harris)

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We chat with Ruben Harris, CEO of Career Karma, and a man with bit of an unconventional background. He’s worked as an event organizer for athletes and celebrities, an investment banker, and professional cellist. We chat with him about how he broke into the startup world, his advice for people trying to do the same, and his app, Career Karma, a resource for people trying to find a coding community and preparing themselves for bootcamps.

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Ruben Harris

Ruben is the CEO of Career Karma and Co-Host of the Breaking Into Startups Podcast. His mission is to help blue collar workers get white collar jobs in less than 12 months, starting with people that want to become software engineers through coding bootcamps. He shares the stories on the Breaking Into Startups Podcast and before this he worked in Admissions at AltSchool, building out two-sided marketplaces for vocational training (nurses) at Honor, and workforce development with government during his time at Hustle. Prior to his work in tech, he was an investment banker for 3 years and he has been playing the cello for more than 25 years.

S10:E2 - What are the pros and cons of getting paid for open source (Katie Delfin)

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400

For all of the benefits of open source, such as pushing innovation and creating huge collaborative ways to build powerful products, there are also very legitimate concerns in terms of sustainability, exploitation of new developers, and the privilege of who actually has the time and resources to contribute to open source. We chat with Katie Delfin, one of the four software engineers who worked on GitHub's new "GitHub Sponsors" tool, which hopes to solve some of these issues.

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Katie Delfin

Katie Delfin is a senior software engineer at GitHub, and one of the four engineers who worked on the company's new funding tool, GitHub Sponsors.

S10:E1 - What does ageism in tech look like (Ariana Tobin)

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Ageism in tech has been an open secret in Silicon Valley for years. We spoke with Ariana Tobin, engagement editor at ProPublica, and co-author of the investigative piece "Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM," about what ageism in tech really looks like, and allegations of ageism against the tech giant.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Got a Story About Age Discrimination in the Workplace? We Want to Hear From You.
Cutting 'Old Heads' at IBM
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

Ariana Tobin

Ariana is engagement editor and reporter at ProPublica, working on community-sourced investigations. She has focused on technology and problematic labor practices, from Facebook-fueled discriminatory ads to large-scale layoffs of older workers at IBM.

S9:E8 - Why you should read the new edition of the Pragmatic Programmer (Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas)

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400

The Pragmatic Programmer was published in 1999 by software engineers Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, and is considered to be one of the quintessential books on programming. For its 20th anniversary edition, we chat with Andy and Dave about the book’s impact, what’s changed in the new edition, and what remains the same, along with things they’ve learned over the past 20 years.

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Andy Hunt

Andy Hunt is a programmer turned consultant, author and publisher. He has authored award-winning and best-selling books, including the seminal The Pragmatic Programmer (now in a new and heavily revised 20th Anniversary Edition) and many others, including the popular Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, the Jolt-worthy Practices of An Agile Developer, and Learn to Program with Minecraft Plugins for the kids.

Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas likes to code.

S9:E7 - How do you create visual recognition software ethically and responsibly (Nashlie Sephus)

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400

At the time of this recording, the New York Times released a report titled "As Cameras Track Detroit’s Residents a Debate Ensues Over Racial Bias," which discussed some of the issues in machine learning such as algorithmic bias, and facial recognition software giving more false matches for black people than white people. We chat with Nashlie Sephus, CTO of Partpic, which was acquired by Amazon in 2016, and now an Applied Science Manager at Amazon Web Services, about her journey into machine learning, developing Partpic, and tackling some of the ethical issues in machine learning in her new role at Amazon.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
re:MARS
Algorithmic bias
Facial recognition
Hex bolt
Central processing unit (CPU)
Caffe
Graphics processing unit (GPU)
Shazam
Cocktail party effect
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Machine learning
Partpic
CodeNewbie Survey
New York Times: As Cameras Track Detroit’s Residents, a Debate Ensues Over Racial Bias
Part Finder
Carriage bolt
NVIDIA
Apache MXNet
TensorFlow
Computer Vision
Music information retrieval
Digital signal processing

Nashlie Sephus

Dr. Nashlie Sephus is currently an Applied Science Manager at Amazon AI in Atlanta where she was formerly the CTO of startup Partpic (acquired by Amazon in 2016). She focusses on computer vision, machine learning, fairness and biases in AI, and is founder of Mississippi-based non-profit The Bean Path (https://thebeanpath.org), having received her B.S. in computer engineering at Mississippi State University (2007) and Master's/Ph.D. at Georgia Tech (2014).

S9:E6 - What is Java good for and why is it still one of the most popular coding languages (Peggy Fisher)

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400

GitHub cited Java as one of the most popular coding languages in 2018, and there is a reason why this language has stood the test of time. We chat with Peggy Fisher, content manager at Linkedin Learning Solutions, and author of the book Get Programming with Java, about why Java is still so popular, what it’s good for, and how to get started.

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Peggy Fisher

Peggy Fisher is a content strategist and author of the book "Get Programming With Java." She love to teach and thrives on finding new ways of teaching.

S9:E5 - Why you should understand user interface and design (Mina Markham)

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0400

No matter how good of an idea you have for a product, if the design isn't executed well and people don't like the interface, the product might as well not even exist. To talk about the importance of good user interfaces and design, we brought in Mina Markham, senior engineer at Slack and creator of the Pantsuit User Interface for Hilary Clinton's 2016 campaign

Mina Markham

Mina is actively involved in the tech community, teaching for Black Girls Code and founding the Dallas chapter of Girl Develop It and DFW Sass. In addition, she has presented at various conferences, including Front-End Design Conference, Midwest.io and Distill. Lastly, she's co-organizer of Front Porch, a conference on front-end web technologies for developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and managers.

S9:E4 - What is workplace burnout and how can you stop it (Jeffrey Liebert)

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400

It's been an open secret in the tech world for a long time that workplace burnout is a real issue. One of the reasons why it persists is the general stigma around mental health and not having open discussions about it. And only just this year, in May 2019, the World Health Organization finally made it an official medical diagnosis. We chat with Jeffery Liebert, a psychologist who specializes in workplace burnout in Silicon Valley, to give us some resources and tools to help with workplace burnout.

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Jeffrey Liebert

Jeffery Liebert works with people in the technology industry struggling with issues related to anxiety, depression, and motivation in the workplace. He helps clients increase productivity, while decreasing anxiety and feelings of burnout. www.jeffreyliebert.com

S9:E3 - How do you develop yourself and your code while fighting off trolls (Ali Spittel)

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We chat with Ali Spittel, a software engineer and developer advocate at DEV, an online community where programmers share ideas and help each other grow. Ali talks about the beginnings of her popular coding blog, strategies for dealing with online abuse, as well as some coding advice for beginners, such as what non-programming skills can help programmers, how to get past the cycle of just using online tutorials, and what makes a great website.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Django Girls Tutorial
Gatsby JS
Flexbox Froggy
JavaScript
CSS
Moving Past Tutorials: a course on problem solving for programmers
New York Times SET
codewars
A Complete Beginner's Guide to React
Codeacademy
General Assembly
DEV
Python
Django
CSS Diner
CSS Grid Garden
HTML
Rails
Preact

Ali Spittel

Ali is a software engineer and teacher who loves writing and teaching Python and JavaScript.

S9:E2 - What is data journalism and how do you tell stories through your code (Sandeep Junnarkar)

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode, we chat with Sandeep Junnarkar, Director of Interactive Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He tells us about his journey into code launching the New York Times on the web, what data journalism is and how to do it, and why it’s important to tell stories through code.

Sandeep Junnarkar

Sandeep Junnarkar is an associate professor and the director of Interactive Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The program’s goal is to train students to use coding to gather and analyze data that can be visualized in unique ways, allowing audiences to explore that content. He previously worked for The New York Times on a team that first brought the publication onto the Internet and Web.

S9:E1 - How do you go from hackathons to building a hurricane relief business (Nick Feuer)

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400

In this episode we chat with one of the winner of IBM's 2018 Call for Code virtual hackathon, which focuses on challenging developers to find ways to reduce the impact of natural disasters through technology. The winners of Project OWL, a deployable mesh network for bringing connectivity to survivors of natural disasters (don't worry, we explain what that it), were part of 100,000 developers to compete. You can join this year's Call for Code 2019 at callforcode.org.

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Nick Feuer

Nick Feuer got his start in coding by participating in over 60 hackathons in the US and abroad. He and a team of developers won IBM's 2018 Call for Code virtual hackathon with their idea of a deployable mesh network for brining connectivity to survivors of natural disasters so that they can get the help they need from first responders.

S9:E0 - Season 9 trailer (Jeffrey Liebert, Ali Spittel, Mina Markham, Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas)

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We're gearing up to launch season 9 on July 8th, and we couldn't be more excited for you to listen. We got a ton of great guests to talk about a bunch of awesome topics including workplace burnout, why you should learn user interface and design, and dealing with online trolls.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)

Jeffrey Liebert

Jeffrey Liebert works with people in the technology industry struggling with issues related to anxiety, depression, and motivation in the workplace. He works on increasing their productivity, while decreasing anxiety and feelings of burnout. http://jeffreyliebert.com/

Ali Spittel

Ali Spittel is a software engineer and teacher who loves writing and teaching Python and JavaScript.

Mina Markham

Andy Hunt

Dave Thomas

Dave Thomas likes to code.

S8:E8 - What it's like to be in a computer science class (David Malan)

Mon, 27 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

CS50 is the largest class at Harvard, with 800 students, but you can also find these engaging lectures online. We chat with the professor of this popular and unconventional class, David Malan, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science.

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David Malan

David J. Malan is Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a Member of the Faculty of Education in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

S8:E7 - How do you transform your career? (Kanika Tolver)

Mon, 20 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Deciding to start over again and begin a new career path can be overwhelming and stressful. We chat with Kanika Tolver, founder of Career Rehab and senior project manager for the US Department of the Treasury, about some of the most important things to consider and some of the best resources to use to help you along with your career shift.

Kanika Tolver

Kanika Tolver is a highly decorated information technology Federal Government professional, rebel entrepreneur and Certified Professional Coach.

S8:E6 - How to make the workplace more inclusive (Nicole Sanchez)

Mon, 13 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

We chat with Nicole Sanchez, founder and managing partner at Vaya Consulting, a D&I consulting firm, about living by your company's values and making diversity and inclusion a founding priority.

Nicole Sanchez

For more than 20 years, Nicole has served as a leading expert on workplace culture with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. Previously, Nicole served as VP of Social Impact at GitHub and Managing Partner for the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Nicole earned a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business where she is a lecturer on workplace diversity. Nicole serves on the Board of CODE2040, and has received numerous awards for her work.

S8:E5 - UX in healthcare (Danielle Smith)

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Danielle Smith, director of user experience research and accessibility at Express Scripts, gives us a look inside the world of UX in healthcare.

Danielle Smith

Danielle Smith is a User Experience professional based out of Austin, TX. She is a trained social scientist with over 15 years of experience in technology research and design across a variety of industries spanning from spaceflight at NASA/Lockheed Martin, to enterprise systems at Dell, the payments and credit industry at PayPal, and most recently, healthcare.

S8:E4 - How to get hired (Kevin Lozandier)

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400

In this week’s episode, Saron chats with Google user experience engineer, Kevin Lozandier about how he spent years building his resume and after failing the first time, finally got in to Google.

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Kevin Lozandier

Kevin Lozandier is a UX engineer who loves solving engineering problems requiring the appreciation of design, accessibility, and engineering. He also loves to make sure designers and engineers are on the same page and constantly learn new things.

S8:E3 - Coding without code (Joanna Smith)

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400

How do you code without actually coding? What tools can you use to build apps and automate workflows without using any code? Joanna shares the power for these non-coding tools and how you can build amazing solutions with tools like GSuite.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Codeland 2019

Joanna Smith

Joanna Smith works for Google in Austin, Texas. As a Developer Advocate, her job is to help get G Suite to work for you. She’s trying to bring an end to tedium at work through clever workflow automation.

S8:E2 - How to build a community (Michael Berhane)

Mon, 15 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400

What does it take to build a community? And once you've built one, how do you sustain it? Michael shares his story of how he built the People of Color in Tech community and how he balances community and entrepreneurship.

Michael Berhane

A JavaScript developer by training, Michael is now the co-founder and CEO of peopleofcolorintech.com, a media and recruitment platform for people of color in the tech industry. He is also the co-host of Techish, a tech and pop culture podcast!

S8:E1 - From police recruit to developer (Tim Heuer)

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 00:00:00 -0400

Tim Heuer really wanted to be a police officer, so he started down that track and became a police recruit. But after facing the reality that police recruits don't get paid much and wanting to settle down with a lady he was seeing, he decided to look for other ways to make money. He got a temp job doing basic data entry, and that kicked off his long winding path to the world of coding. He tells us how he eventually became a principal at Microsoft, and what helped him navigate his career.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Codeland 2019

Tim Heuer

Tim works as an advocate for developer experiences using Microsoft technologies. Prior to working in cloud development, Tim spent years developing UI framework technologies for desktop and mobile applications. He is always a champion for simplicity and ease for the developer and loves developer tooling more than anything!

S7:E8 - How do you build a great product? (Ryan Hoover)

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Ryan took his love of products and created Product Hunt, a place to share and discover new products, which sold to Angel List for a rumored $20M. Ryan shares what makes a great product, what he looks for in products as an investor, and how you can get started in product management.

Ryan Hoover

Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt, the place to discover the latest in tech. He is also an investor in early stage startups, investing out of a fund he started in 2013 called Weekend Fund.

S7:E7 - When things go wrong at work (Jaime-Alexis Fowler)

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 00:00:00 -0500

You've got a new job at a new company in a new industry. It's been a few weeks, and things feel a bit off. Maybe you were excluded from a meeting, or your boss isn't being supportive, or maybe you're worried about keeping that new job. What do you do? Who do you call for help? Jaime-Alexis started a non-profit to solve this problem. She created a hotline where you can reach professionals to help you strategize how to tackle workplace challenges. She digs into some of common issues that folks run into, how the hotline works, and what the unique challenges are for those going into the tech industry.

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Jaime-Alexis Fowler

Jaime-Alexis Fowler is the founder of Empower Work, a nonprofit that provides confidential support for tough work issues via text or webchat. She's passionate about making work work for everyone.

S7:E6 - What are progressive web apps? (Frances Coronel)

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 00:00:00 -0500

What are progressive web apps? And why are they so important? Frances breaks down what they are, how they work, and how they make technology more accessible. We also have our sixth episode of "Tales from the Command Line" where Scotts gives us a tour of the infrastructure needed to make mobile happen.

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Frances Coronel

Frances Coronel is a Latina woman who engineers solutions at Slack. She has been working professionally as a developer since 2015 and has both a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science.

S7:E5 - What does it mean to be offline-first? (Carmen Bourlon)

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Not everyone has fast internet, or access to internet at all. It might be because it's too expensive, or simply that the infrastructure isn't there. Whatever the reason, high-speed internet isn't as universal as we might think. But what does that mean for developers? How do we build products that work even without fast internet? Carmen breaks it down and tells us all about the offline-first movement. We've also got an episode of Tales from the Command Line that's all about what offline-first means at the infrastructure level.

Carmen Bourlon

Carmen is a fullstack Javascript developer living in Oklahoma City. She is very excited about offline tech, especially service workers. In her spare time, Carmen builds MargieMap, a map visualizing income to library access.

S7:E4 - What's a compiler? (Thorsten Ball)

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 -0500

So what exactly is a compiler? And how is it different from an interpreter? And do you even need to know any of this stuff as a developer? Thorsten Ball has all the answers. He's written two books on the topic and he gives us a newbie-friendly introduction to the world of compilers and interpreters. We've also got our fourth episode of Tales from the Command Line, where Scott tells us about the computer science professor who failed the entire class.

Thorsten Ball

Thorsten Ball is a software developer and writer. He is the author of Writing An Interpreter In Go and Writing A Compiler In Go.

S7:E3 - Can you do open source full-time? (Jessie Frazelle, Bryan Liles)

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

What does open source look like when you do it at a big company? Is it even possible to work on open source full-time? In this special episode, we talk to Jessie Frazelle and Bryan Liles about their experiences and perspectives on open source. We also feature our third episode of Tales from the Command Line, which is all about going from a really small startup to coding at a huge company.

Jessie Frazelle

Jess Frazelle works at GitHub on open source and community. She has been a maintainer of Docker, contributor to RunC, Kubernetes, and Golang, as well as other projects.

Bryan Liles

Bryan is a developer, open source contributor, and international speaker.

S7:E2 - How do I level up? (Ben Orenstein)

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

You've been coding for a little while. Maybe you just finished a bootcamp, maybe you're in your first job or your second. But at what point do you get to level up? And what does leveling up even look like for a developer? We talk to Ben Orenstein, one of the creators of Upcase, a learning platform designed specifically to "take the junior out of your title." He shares what technical topics you should learn when trying to level up, and what steps a newbie might take to start that leveling up process. We also feature our second installment of Tales from the Command Line, where Scott McCarty share stories on how he built up his confidence as a coder and how you can too.

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Ben Orenstein

Ben is a programmer and entrepreneur. He's one of the creators of Upcase, a learning platform that takes the "junior" out of your title. He's also CEO of Tuple, a remote pair programming tool.

S7:E1 - Moms who code (Bekah Hawrot Weigel)

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0500

Bekah is a mother of four who’s learning to code. But what’s incredible about her story isn’t just that she’s raising young children while finding 2-4 hours every day to code, it’s that she used coding as a form of therapy to get through a very tough time in her life. We’re also introducing a new segment called Tales from the Command Line, and in our first episode, we dig into coding and mental health.

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Bekah Hawrot Weigel

Bekah is a mom of four kids under 10, and learning to code after ten years as an adjunct English instructor.

S6:E8 - What do you need to know about security? (Kyla Guru)

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Kyla's really passionate about cybersecurity. She's so passionate that she started a company that produces events and content to help people better understand security and how to protect themselves. She's worked with IBM and Facebook, created open source curriculum that's being used in other countries, and she's also sixteen. She shares why she's so passionate about security, what we as consumers and developers should pay attention to, and how we can build security into all the things we code.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Bits n Bytes Cybersecurity
GenCyber Camp
WannaCry ransomware attack
GDPR
Naked Security
NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology)
Lean In
Bumble
GirlCon Conference
TEDx Talk "Hacking a Solution to Global Cybercrime" of Kyla Guru
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Kyla Guru

Kyla is 16 years old and built a national nonprofit that now sustains 25+ national partnerships with school districts, corporations like IBM and Facebook, and education platforms including Discovery Ed, all in order to increase awareness for cybersecurity. Kyla also leads a high-school team in organizing the GirlCon Chicago conference annually. She enjoys cookies, change-making, and coding in her free-time.

S6:E7 - From nanny to developer (Sudie Roweton)

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

It was late at night when Sudie ran to her bus stop after a long day at work, just in time to see the bus pull away. And then it started raining. She took this moment to reflect on her life, and ask herself questions about her goals and her dreams, questions that led to her moving to Utah, getting a computer science degree, and working as a developer for the Air Force. She tells us how she made the career change and what she learned along the way.

Sudie Roweton

Sudie Roweton works as a software engineer at Hill Air Force Base and is a graduate student at the University of Utah. Her journey into computer science started with a quarter-life crisis and a simple question: "Have you considered coding?".

S6:E6 - How do I learn design? (Laura Elizabeth)

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

You have an idea for an app. You manage to get the basic features working, but it doesn't look great. After all, you're a coder, not a designer, so what do you do? Laura Elizabeth spent years learning design, and, now, she's helping developers up their design game. She shares some helpful design tips, explains what it really takes to get better at design, and tells us why coders can make the best designers.

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Laura Elizabeth

Laura Elizabeth is a designer with a hankering for cross stitch and rockets. She runs Design Academy which aims to help developers conquer their fear of design. She's also launched her first product called Client Portal— a client-friendly way to keep your projects organised.

S6:E5 - Should you start freelancing? (Devon Campbell)

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Devon didn't mean to be a freelancer. But when he applied to developer jobs and didn't hear back, he started freelancing to bring in some money temporarily. Five years later, he's still freelancing and loving it. He shares how he got his first client, how he sets his rate, and why he thinks freelancing is a great first job for a new coder.

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Devon Campbell

Devon is a full-time, freelance web developer who helps other people become web developers.

S6:E4 - Why do I need to test my code? (Jonas Nicklas)

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 -0500

If you're new to testing, the idea of writing tests for code that you wrote might sound strange. You just wrote it, so, theoretically, you should know what it does, right? But with a growing codebase and lots of people touching the code, implementing your piece of software might come with some unexpected side effects! Jonas explains why testing is so important, how to get started, and what it was like to write Capybara, the very popular testing framework.

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Jonas Nicklas

Jonas is a freelance developer from Gothenburg, Sweden, and the author of several well-known open source projects, including the acceptance testing framework Capybara.

S6:E3 - What’s it like to code for NASA? (Jesslyn Tannady)

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Jesslyn worked with NASA to build an app for astronauts. She and a small team used augmented reality to create a navigation tool, much like Google Maps for space. Building it meant learning new tools, even traveling to a volcano to test it out. But most of what she built, she learned on the job. She tells us how she did it, what she's learned about leveling up in a short amount of time, and how she got started on her coding journey.

Jesslyn Tannady

Jesslyn works at Ctrl-labs on technology that allows you to control computers and robots using your brain. In a past life, she organised hackathons (wellesleyhacks.org) and developed augmented reality navigation tools for Mars astronauts at NASA BASALT.

S6:E2 - From librarian to developer (Hayley Swimelar)

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Hayley works with storage software. But before that job, she had no idea what storage software even was. In fact, at the time, she was a librarian working towards becoming a web developer. Then one day, she visited a booth at OSCON, a huge conference on open source, where she met the company that would end up hiring her for her first technical role in storage software. She talks about what it was like to transition from librarian to developer, and gives us an intro to the world of storage software.

Hayley Swimelar

Hayley is a software engineer living in sunny Portland, Oregon. Originally trained as a librarian, she found new opportunities by learning how to code.

S6:E1 - How do you build a database? (Jeff Nelson)

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Jeff is an executive at two very different tech companies, but data is at the heart of both. He describes how he uses data to make apps better and smarter, how he got started in the world of data, and how he built a database of his own.

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Jeff Nelson

Jeff is the founder and CEO of Cinchapi, a data discovery and analytics platform. He is also Co-Founder and CTO at Blavity, a tech media company that has a global community of diverse content creators.

S5:E8 - From musician to developer (Chad Fowler)

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Chad Fowler is an author, developer, speaker, and investor. He's been a CTO, he founded Ruby Central, the non-profit behind RubyConf and RailsConf, and is a recognizable tech figure, particularly in the Ruby community. But before he knew what code was, he was a professional musician. He shares how he switched careers without a computer science degree and how he's ended up with such an incredible tech career. He also shares how he's managed his bipolar disorder over the years, and how mental health has affected him and his career.

Chad Fowler

Chad Fowler leads Developer Advocacy at Microsoft. He is also an author, speaker and has started and co-organized a couple of Ruby-related conferences including The International Ruby Conference and RailsConf.

S5:E7 - What's an Indie Hacker? (Courtland Allen)

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Courtland Allen has built up a community of Indie Hackers, people who want to make money by selling products they build themselves. But how do you become an Indie Hacker? And how good of a coder do you need to be to become an Indie Hacker full time? Courtland shares lessons he's gathered over the years on what it takes to live off of your own product and how you can do it too. He also gives us his take on some popular tech business topics.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
MicroConf
Indie Hackers
Indie Hackers Podcast
Making $125,000 a Month as a Solo Founder with Mike Carson of Park.io (podcast episode)
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Courtland Allen

Courtland Allen is a software engineer, designer, podcast host, MIT graduate, and Y Combinator alum. In 2016, he created IndieHackers.com, a community of developers who've come together to help each other build successful businesses.

S5:E6 - How do you build a robot in JavaScript? (Rachel White)

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Rachel spends her free time building robots, creating hardware art, and making silicone molds of her friends' faces. She got her start with NodeBots, a beginner-friendly way of creating hardware projects using JavaScript. Rachel shares how she was first introduced to the hardware world, breaks down what a simple hardware project looks like, and tells us what it was like to be one of the first beta users of Twitch.tv, back when it was called Justin.tv.

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Rachel White

Rachel White is a technologist, artist, and pretend-cyborg who is currently the Developer Experience Lead at American Express, member of the Node.js Community Committee, and co-host of the Changelog podcast JSParty.

S5:E5 - How to figure out what’s next in your coding career (Jarvis Johnson)

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Jarvis recently went from engineer to engineering manager, taking his career down a whole new path. He talks about how he thinks about his career, what different tech career paths look like, and why, although being a developer can be wonderful, it may not be everything you think it'll be.

Jarvis Johnson

Jarvis is an Engineering Manager at Patreon, Youtuber, and co-host of the comedy podcast about feelings, Sad Boyz.

S5:E4 - Learning to code with technical books (Katel LeDû)

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

With so many different ways to learn to code, how do you pick? And where do technical books fit into your learning curriculum? Katel LeDû is the CEO of A Book Apart, a company that produces short technical books. She shares how to get the most out of a coding book, the benefits of reading technical books, and how she went from a career in photography to running a technical publishing house.

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Katel LeDû

Katel LeDû is the CEO of A Book Apart, where she helps passionate tech community members become successful authors. She also cohosts No, You Go, a podcast about being ambitious and giving—and getting—support along the way.

S5:E3 - From teacher to developer (Dan Piston)

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Dan decided he wanted to get into tech, so he looked for a new job. And he found one! But it wasn't exactly the coding job he was hoping for. In fact, it would be about five years before Dan landed that dream coding job. He shares how he navigated the many ups and downs of becoming a developer, and what helped him persevere.

Dan Piston

Dan Piston is a Software Developer at Kroll Bond Rating Agency. He loves all things Linux and soccer related. In his spare time he is raising two amazing boys or trying to pick up some new skills to help him further down his tech journey.

S5:E2 - What is quality engineering? (Rocio Montes)

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

You may have heard of quality assurance and testing, but what's quality engineering? Intuit engineer, Rocio Montes, guides us through the world of quality, and shares why she's so passionate about this piece of the product development process. She also shares her own journey of being a quality engineer and how you can get started on the same career path.

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Rocio Montes

Rocio Montes is a Staff Software Engineer at Intuit. She leads the automation and quality strategy for the consumer open platform team. Outside of Intuit, she is on the leadership team of San Diego's “Girl Develop It” and the Co-founder of “Emar”, a small business whose mission is to connect small businesses in the US who have tech needs with software engineering interns in Peru.

S5:E1 - What is open source hardware? (Suz Hinton)

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Suz Hinton introduces us to the world of open source hardware. She shares interesting projects, both artistic and functional, and breaks down the steps it takes to create a hardware product. She also tells us what it's like to livestream her coding projects on her Twitch channel, and why she keeps doing it even though it can be scary and uncomfortable.

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Suz Hinton

Suz Hinton is an open source maintainer of several popular JavaScript hardware libraries. She works on open source live every Sunday morning, streaming her work via the website Twitch. Suz is passionate about developer education, accessibility, IoT, and the NYC subway.

S4:E8 - What’s it like to be the CTO of Microsoft? (Kevin Scott)

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Kevin Scott is the first CTO of Microsoft in almost twenty years. But what does the chief technology officer at such a large tech company do? He tells us all about his day-to-day, how he ended up at Microsoft, and shares his thoughts on the value of computer science degrees.

Kevin Scott

Kevin Scott is executive vice president and the chief technology officer for Microsoft. His 20-year career in technology spans both academia and industry as researcher, engineer and leader at companies such as LinkedIn, AdMob and Google.

S4:E7 - How to teach when you’re not an expert (Angela Andrews)

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Angela Andrews hosted her first coding workshop at her dining room table. Since then, she's hosted a number of coding workshops, sharing her technical skills and introducing other codenewbies to new tech topics. She shares how she puts on these workshops and how being a newbie herself has helped her be a better teacher.

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Angela Andrews

Angela Andrews is a systems administrator where she specializes in Linux, Windows, and VMware. She's active in her local coding community where she dabbles in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, PHP, SQL, AWS and WordPress development. In her spare time she's always learning new technologies, blogs, and teaches group fitness.

S4:E6 - From glass blower to developer (Michael Pimentel)

Mon, 28 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Michael started his career as a glass blower, creating lighting for movies and tv shows. But after cutbacks at work, he decided it was time to look into other careers, and revisited his childhood love of computers. He shares how he taught himself to code, and the one-year job search that landed him the developer job he has today.

Michael Pimentel

Michael is a self taught software developer that is passionate about learning and teaching all things software.

S4:E5 - Are you ready for a hackathon? (Kathryn Hodge)

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Kathryn's participated in dozens of hackathons as a student, and even when things didn't go well, she kept going back. Kathryn shares all the ways hackathons have helped her in her professional coding career, what the real benefits are (spoiler alert: it's not the thing you're hacking on), and how you can get the benefits of a hackathon even if you're not a student.

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Kathryn Hodge

Kathryn Hodge works as a software developer at a large media company. Some of her most recent projects include building virtual and augmented reality experiences using C# and Unity as well as creating applications for the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in Node.js and JavaScript. She also runs the blondiebytes YouTube channel, where she posts programming tutorials every Wednesday.

S4:E4 - What happens in a technical interview? (Parker Phinney)

Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Whether you're a new developer or an experienced developer, you probably don't enjoy the technical interview process. It's long, hard, and, often times, not even related to the actual job you're interviewing for. So how do you make the most of this notoriously difficult process? We talk to Parker Phinney, creator of Interview Cake, on what to expect in an interview and what to do when you feel like you don't know what you're doing.

Parker Phinney

Parker thinks data structures and algorithms seem much more complicated than they are, because people are bad at explaining them. That's why he started Interview Cake, a coding interview prep tool that makes this stuff easy.

S4:E3 - What’s it like to be a coding apprentice? (Kasey Oglesby , Chris Bay)

Tue, 08 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Launch Code is a non-profit that helps you launch your tech career through apprenticeships. But what's it like to be a coding apprentice? Kasey, one of their graduates, shares her experiences as an apprentice and how she successfully navigated the tech industry and landed her first job. Chris, their VP of Education, talks about what companies are looking for when hiring a code newbie and how you can increase your chances of getting your first tech job even without a traditional CS background.

Kasey Oglesby

Kasey is a software developer based in St Louis, MO. After 20 years of job-hopping, she found LaunchCode's education and job placement programs, which helped propel her into her dream job in development.

Chris Bay

Chris Bay is Vice President of Education at LaunchCode, where he helps build and run LaunchCode’s education programs. He holds an MA in Math, and has worked in the tech and nonprofit sectors for 10 years.

S4:E2 - What's a quiet developer? (Seán Hanson)

Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 -0400

A big part of the developer culture is sharing knowledge, writing blog posts, and posting code. You show your passion for coding by putting your work out there, but how do you show that passion if you can't publish your work? What if your job requires you to keep your work private? What if being quiet is part of being safe online? We talk to Seán Hanson about what it means to be a quiet developer and how passion doesn't always have to be loud.

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Seán Hanson

Seán is a queer neurodivergent Brooklyn-based developer with an incredibly underwhelming history of open source contributions. Outside of work, he's likely to be seen playing Javanese Gamelan, helping out in support groups, and baking fancy cakes.

S4:E1 - How do you build an iOS app? (Amir Rajan)

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Amir Rajan is CEO of RubyMotion, a tool that helps you turn your ruby code base into an iOS app. He shares his own app building experience, and what developers should know when turning their project into a mobile app.

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Amir Rajan

Indie game developer and stewart of RubyMotion.

S3:E8 - How to learn to code when you have no time and money (Colleen Schnettler)

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Colleen is a military spouse, mother of three, and taught herself how to code over a number of years. She learned to code and became a freelance developer with little time, little money, and a lot of patience. She tells us how she did it, and how you can do it too.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Operation Code
Reshma Saujani's TED Talk "Teach girls bravery, not perfection"
Saron's "Punch Your Feelings In The Face" talk
#100DaysOfCode
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Colleen Schnettler

Colleen Schnettler is a former corporate systems engineer enthusiastically pursuing a new career as a software developer. She is a military spouse, stay at home mother of 3 young children, and a self taught programmer. She is active in the open source community and a freelance developer.

S3:E7 - From tech blogger to Fog Creek CEO (Anil Dash)

Sun, 11 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Anil Dash has been in tech for a long time. He’s a vocal advocate for inclusion and humane tech, writes amazing blog posts (and tweets!), and is now the CEO of Fog Creek. He shares how he navigated his impressive career in tech and how he builds kindness and community into his company's products.

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Anil Dash

Anil Dash is an entrepreneur, activist and writer recognized as one of the most prominent voices advocating for a more humane, inclusive and ethical technology industry. He is the CEO of Fog Creek Software, the renowned independent tech company behind Glitch, the friendly new community that helps anyone make the app of their dreams, as well as its past landmark products like Trello and Stack Overflow.

S3:E6 - How does the internet work? (Julia Evans)

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0500

You type in a url and you get a website. But how did you get that website? What are all the little steps that happen when you request a page and (hopefully) see that page in your browser? Julia Evans breaks down how the internet works and gives us an amazing introduction to computer networking.

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Julia Evans

Julia is a software developer who lives in Montreal. She works on infrastructure at Stripe, gives talks and has published a collection of awesome free programming zines.

S3:E5 - Which javascript framework should you learn? (Sarah Drasner)

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

If you’ve been trying to figure out what JavaScript framework you should learn, Sarah is here to help. She explores the differences (and similarities!) between JavaScript frameworks like Vue.js, React, and jQuery, and what new developers should think about when deciding which tool to learn. She also shares how she got into coding, a journey she started as a science illustrator.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Vue.js
Evan You (creator of Vue.js)
jQuery
Replacing jQuery With Vue.js: No Build Step Necessary (Smashing magazine article)
React
CSS Tricks
Coding Like A Boss (CodeNewbie Podcast episode with Brian Douglas)
Women, Fire and Dangerous Things
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Sarah Drasner

Sarah Drasner is an award-winning Speaker, Senior Developer Advocate at Microsoft, and Staff Writer at CSS-Tricks. Sarah is also the co-founder of Web Animation Workshops, with Val Head. She’s the author of SVG Animations from O’Reilly and has given Frontend Masters workshops on Vue.js and Advanced SVG Animations. Sarah is formerly Manager of UX Design & Engineering at Trulia (Zillow).

S3:E4 - What should developers know about online privacy? (Laura Kalbag)

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Many companies use cookies, tracking, and behavioral ads to help them sell more things. But it also means they collect a lot of data on what we do and who we are, raising online privacy concerns. What does that mean for developers? Laura Kalbag explains how those tools work and what we as developers should think about when building our own products.

Laura Kalbag

Laura Kalbag is a designer from the UK, and author of Accessibility For Everyone from A Book Apart. She’s one third of Ind.ie, a tiny two-person-and-one-husky social enterprise working for social justice in the digital age.

S3:E3 - What is cryptocurrency? (Preethi Kasireddy)

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

What is bitcoin? How do cryptocurrencies work? What is the blockchain? Preethi Kasireddy, a blockchain engineer, gives us a gentle introduction to the world of digital currencies. She walks us through how it all works, what developers should care about, and how she transitioned from a career in finance to being a blockchain engineer.

Preethi Kasireddy

Preethi Kasireddy is a Blockchain Engineer who recently made her way from San Francisco to Los Angeles. She was previously a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a banker at Goldman Sachs, and most recently a software engineer at Coinbase. She is currently the Founder & CEO of Schelling, a new blockchain startup.

S3:E2 - What's a container? (Kelsey Hightower)

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

If you've heard of containers and this thing called Kubernetes, but you're not sure exactly how they work and what they are, this episode is for you. Kelsey Hightower of Google gives us a newbie friendly tour of the world of containers. We talk about what problems they solve, and what new developers should know about them.

Kelsey Hightower

Kelsey is an open source advocate and toolsmith and spends most of his time working with people and solving their problems.

S3:E1 - Should you get a computer science degree? (Dave Thomas, Ashley Fong)

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0500

What's the value of a computer science degree? Is it worth going back to school for? We talk to a computer science student and professor to help us answer these questions. Ashley Fong is a history major who's going back to school to get her CS degree online. She shares how she made that decision and what her experience has been like. Dave Thomas is a programmer who recently became a professor. He shares why he had doubts about the value of the CS degree and how his experience teaching has influenced his opinion.

Dave Thomas

Dave is a programmer and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University

Ashley Fong

Ashley Fong is a former middle school history teacher and was most recently part of a fundraising team at an art museum. She is currently a student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science through Oregon State University's Ecampus Post-Baccalaureate Program.

S2:E8 - Getting started on open source when you don't know where to start (Richard Schneeman)

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

You want to get started in open source, but where do you start? How do you pick a repo? And once you do, what's the best way to help out, especially if it's your first time? Richard Schneeman is here to help. He's the creator of Code Triage, where you can sign up for repos and get an open issue sent to your inbox. He talks about different ways first-timers can get started, and how small contributions can be incredibly impactful. He also shares some hilarious stories from his own coding adventures.

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Richard Schneeman

Richard Schneeman is a lead engineer at Heroku. He loves Open Source and maintains 50+ libraries with over 556 million downloads. Richard is the creator of CodeTriage.com a web app to help developers get started contributing to Open Source.

S2:E7 - How to get started in Augmented Reality (Molmol Kuo, Zach Lieberman)

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

You've heard of augmented reality, but you're not sure how to get started. Molmol and Zach, the wife and husband coding team, give us a solid intro to AR and how they've built powerful experiences and beautiful stories using AR tools.

Molmol Kuo

Molmol spends most of her time working with machines and computers. She works out of a studio space shared with a group of artists and enjoys to be up in the mix.

Zach Lieberman

Zachary Lieberman is an artist and developer. Zach is one of the co-founders of openFrameworks, a C++ library for creative coding. He taught at Parsons School of Design for over 10 years before helping start the School for Poetic Computation.

S2:E6 - Who decides the future of CSS? (Jen Simmons)

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Working with CSS can be frustrating, and sometimes just plain painful. But if you listen to Jen Simmons talk about CSS, her passion for it might rub off on you. She gives tips on how to make your next CSS adventure more enjoyable, explains how the CSS working group determines new features, and shares the honest ups and downs of her own coding journey.

Jen Simmons

Jen is a Designer and Developer Advocate at Mozilla, where she advocates for web standards and researches the coming revolution in graphic design on the web. She’s spoken at events including SXSW, An Event Apart, Fluent, Generate, Future of Web Design, and Respond. Her talk, Modern Layouts: Getting Out of Our Ruts, was awarded Best Conference Presentation at CSS Dev Conf 2014.

S2:E5 - How to create an afro-futuristic virtual reality beauty salon (Carmen Aguilar y Wedge)

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0500

You put on a headset in a real life beauty salon in real life, and, in seconds, you’re transported to a virtual one. It’s full of colors, shapes, music, and the soothing voice of a narrator. She explains that you’re in a different world now, and you’re about to contribute to the “synaptic lineage.” The setting is intriguing and futuristic, the story is unique, and every detail so carefully laid out. We talk to Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, one of the creators of the NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism, a virtual reality experience that’s appeared at Sundance, Tribeca, and a number of other film festivals. She shares how she and her team at Hyphen Labs created this artistic and deeply technical exhibit.

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Carmen Aguilar y Wedge

Aguilar y Wedge is a Latinx engineer, artist and researcher. In 2014, she co-founded Hyphen-Labs, an international team of women with backgrounds in engineering, science, architecture, turned designers synthesizing art and technology to create meaningful experiences. Emphasizing experimentation through worldbuilding, the team finds creative solutions and applications to complex problems using new media, emerging technology, robotics, and computation.

S2:E4 - What makes a good speaker? (Lara Hogan, Kelsey Hightower)

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0500

This is the last week to submit a talk to Codeland, our annual tech conference, so we wanted to give you some insight on what makes a good talk, a good speaker, and a good proposal. You'll hear from Lara Hogan, who literally wrote the book on public speaking, and Kelsey Hightower, speaker and chair of many tech conferences. They share their personal speaking stories (and nightmares!), how they prepare their talks, and the common mistakes they see first-time speakers make.

Lara Hogan

Lara is the former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, co-founder of Wherewithall, a company that coaches and levels up managers, and author of the new bestselling book, Resilient Management.

Kelsey Hightower

Kelsey is an open source advocate and toolsmith and spends most of his time working with people and solving their problems.

S2:E3 - How do tech companies read your resume? (Eddie Washington)

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Applying to your first technical role (or your second!) can be a long and intimidating process, especially when you're not sure how to stand out. What do tech companies really care about? What should you put on your resume? What should you leave out? We talk to in-house recruiter, Eddie Washington, to give you the scoop on how companies evaluate your application and what you can do to increase your chances of getting that first interview.

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Eddie Washington

Eddie Washington is the recruiting lead at Genius.

S2:E2 - How do browsers work? (Lin Clark)

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0500

You use the browser all the time, but how much do you really know about it? Lin Clark walks us through all the steps a browser takes to translate your html into pixels on the screen. She also makes these wonderful coding cartoons. She shares her techniques and her process, and how you can apply them to your next technical blog post.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Code Cartoons
Building the DOM faster: speculative parsing, async, defer and preload
Inside a super fast CSS engine: Quantum CSS (aka Stylo)
The whole web at maximum FPS: How WebRender gets rid of jank
Code Cartoon Articles on Mozilla
Base.cs Podcast
Quincy's Codeland talk on technical blogging
Quincy's Codeland talk podcast episode
Web Performance episode with Lara Hogan
What WebAssembly means for React (video)
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Lin Clark

Lin makes coding cartoons, and works on the Emerging Technologies group at Mozilla.

S2:E1 - How she built a mobile app to help victims of domestic violence (Alicia Carr)

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Alicia Carr grew up surrounded by domestic violence. So when she learned about coding, she decided to build a mobile app to help women escape domestic abuse. Her app, Pevo, got the attention of Apple, who featured her in their WWDC promo video. She shares the technical challenges of building this app, the personal challenge of learning to believe in herself, and how she learned the skills to bring this app to life.

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Alicia Carr

Alicia V. Carr, is director of Women Who Code and a self taught mobile developer that create a domestic violence app dedicated to helping victims escape abuse. She knew she had to utilize her acquired skills as a developer to make a difference.

S1:E8 - What and why is web animation? (Rachel Nabors)

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Web animation can be creative and fun, but what does it have to do with building a website? How do you use it in a form or a basic landing page in a way that's actually helpful and not just cute? Rachel Nabors helps us understand what web animation looks like and how to use it to create powerful user experiences. She also shares her own inspiring journey of going from cartoonist to coder.

Show Links

TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Don’t Do What You Love
React Motion
Foundation
Bootstrap
Animation At Work Slack
Web Animation Weekly
Animation At Work from A List Apart (Rachel's book) - use promo code NEWBIE
Firefox Dev Tools Challenger
Animista
Airbnb's Lottie
Rachel Nabor's blog post on storyboarding
Frontend Masters
Rachel Nabor's Courses
GreenSock
Barba.js
AJAX
Rachel Nabor's site
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Rachel Nabors

Rachel Nabors has been cultivating the web animation community for years. She has worked with the W3C and Mozilla on the Web Animations API, founded the Animation at Work community and wrote an A Book Apart book of the same name.

S1:E7 - Why is my website slow? (Lara Hogan)

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0400

You've got an amazing website. It's beautiful, functional, but it takes forever to load. What do you do? Where do you even begin to debug that? Lara Hogan, VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and author of the book, Designing for Performance, breaks down common web performance issues, tools you can use to diagnose the problem, and how to use AB testing to measure your results. We also have another episode of the Coding Corner, where we unpack three common mistakes newbies make when trying to speed things up!

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Lara Hogan

Lara is the former VP of Engineering at Kickstarter, co-founder of Wherewithall, a company that coaches and levels up managers, and author of the new bestselling book, Resilient Management.

S1:E6 - How to ace a technical interview (Tiffany Peon, La Vesha Parker)

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Technical interviews are the worst. They’re hard, they’re scary, and they often feel like they’re designed to make you feel stupid. But no worries! We’re here to help. We take a behind-the-scenes look at the interview process at two very prestigious companies, Etsy and the New York Times. Developers La Vesha Parker and Tiffany Peon break down each part of the interview process, giving you examples and explanations of exactly what they’re looking for, and share their own stories of how they got their roles. We also have a second edition of our Coding Corner where we share more interview tips and dissect how to solve a popular interview question, FizzBuzz.

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Tiffany Peon

Tiffany is a Software Engineer for cooking.nytimes.com. She lives in Manhattan with her fiancé and guinea pig, Zardulu.

La Vesha Parker

La Vesha (she/her) is a NYC-based engineer at Etsy and an organizer of Progressive HackNight. When not at work, she splits her time between her two passions: tech activism and pottery.

S1:E5 - How to learn React and React Native on a deadline (Brent Vatne, Kim Goulbourne)

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Kim’s a designer and developer who’s always had a side project. But her latest project was a bit different. Not only did she have to learn a new framework (React), she had to learn it and build her app in a few weeks to make her very public deadline. She shares her process for learning a new javascript framework, and the frustrations she experienced even as a seasoned developer. We also hear from Brent Vatne on how to get started with React and React Native. And for a mini technical deep dive, we unpack the virtual dom, a key feature in React, in our new segment, the Coding Corner.

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Brent Vatne

Brent is a developer at Expo, core contributor to React Native.

Kim Goulbourne

Kim Goulbourne is a Jamaican, award-winning designer and chronic creator, creating a variety of projects under her alias Bourn. She's worked as a design consultant at thoughtbot helping small and big companies create and validate digital products. Throughout her tenure at previous agencies, Ogilvy, Wondersauce and R/GA, she worked on various brand projects from large companies such as IBM, Verizon and Foursquare to newer startups like Vialoure, Master & Dynamic and treStique.

S1:E4 - The JavaScript First Responder (Wes Bos)

Tue, 05 Sep 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Wes Bos is pretty popular in the JavaScript and learn-to-code community. He produces tons of tutorials, blog posts, videos, many of them free, for people to learn and grown as developers. He takes us behind-the-scenes, sharing how he learns, how he works, and how he slowly, eventually got over his hatred for JavaScript to become a beloved JavaScript teacher.

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Wes Bos

Wes Bos is a Full Stack Developer, Speaker and Teacher from Canada. He works as an independent web developer and teaches as a lead instructor with HackerYou. Wes has taught over 500 students in 200+ classes and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world. He is the author of React For Beginners, ES6 for Everyone and Sublime Text Power User which together have sold over 25,000 copies. He is also the author of JavaScript30.com, LearnRedux.com, Flexbox.io and Command Line Power User, a set of free video series. 145,000 people have taken at least one of Wes' free video courses.

S1:E3 - How to teach yourself computer science (Vaidehi Joshi)

Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Vaidehi decided to take on a year-long challenge. She'd pick a computer science topic every week, do tons of research and write a technical blog post explaining it in simple terms and beautiful illustrations. And then she actually did it. She tells us about her project, basecs, how it's changed her as a developer, and how she handles the trolls and negativity from people who don't appreciate her work.

Vaidehi Joshi

Vaidehi is a writer and an engineer at Tilde, where she works on Skylight. She enjoys building and breaking code, but loves creating empathetic engineering teams a whole lot more. In her spare time, she runs basecs, a weekly writing series that explores the fundamentals of computer science.

S1:E2 - Building community in a virtual world: Moderation tools in VR (Cameron Brown)

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Rec Room is the most popular virtual reality game. It's a social space where you can play dodgeball, ping pong, darts and more with people from all over the world. But when you're inviting everyone to play, how do you make sure that everyone is safe? What happens when a player attacks someone? What does an attack even look like in a virtual world? Cameron Brown, Chief Creative Officer at Against Gravity, the creators of Rec Room, takes us through the world of social virtual reality and shows how they've designed a system to make their game a welcoming place for all.

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Cameron Brown

Cameron Brown is co-founder and CCO of Against Gravity, makers of the popular social VR app Rec Room. Cam has worked in video games for over twenty years, and was also a creative director on the Microsoft HoloLens program. He believes the future of computing is social, physical, and very exciting!

S1:E1 - Intro to Accessibility (Stephanie Slattery)

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

We kick off the first episode of our official first season with Stephanie Slattery, a front-end engineer who specializes in accessibility. She breaks down the world of accessibility, giving you the perfect introduction to this topic. She explains the five categories of disabilities, shows us how to implement suggestions from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and shares why she’s so passionate about helping more people experience tech.

Stephanie Slattery

Stephanie Slattery is a web developer who specializes in front end, accessibility, and user interface design. Stephanie develops web apps for a variety of gaming groups in the Chicago area and comes to the world of programming via Dev Bootcamp from a psychology and physics background.

Ep. 146 - Codeland - Mentorship, Technical Blogging, and Open Source Talks from Katrina Owen, Quincy Larson, and Nell Shamrell-Harrington (Katrina Owen, Quincy Larson, Nell Shamrell-Harrington)

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

In our final episode of our Codeland mini-series, Katrina Owen shares what it really takes to get that mentor you've always wanted, Quincy Larson gives us his best practices for writing technical blog posts people will actually read, and Nell Shamrell-Harrington explores what it really takes for an open source project to be successful and what you should know as a future contributor.

Katrina Owen

Katrina is an open source advocate at GitHub. She accidentally became a developer while pursuing a degree in molecular biology. When programming, her focus is on automation, workflow optimization, and refactoring. She works primarily in Go and Ruby, contributes to several open source projects, and is the creator of exercism.io, a platform for leveling up your programming skills.

Quincy Larson

Quincy is a teacher at freeCodeCamp.com. Editor of Medium's largest technical publication.

Nell Shamrell-Harrington

Nell Shamrell-Harrington is a theatre student turned Sr. Software Engineer by way of Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Chef, regular expressions, and DevOps technologies. She has governed multiple open source projects, which have taken the collaboration skills she learned in the theatre to new heights. She is also the scholarship chair of and a mentor with Operation Code - a non-profit which teaches coding skills to active duty military personnel, their dependents, and veterans transitioning into civilian life.

Ep. 145 - Codeland - NYPL and Khan Academy talks from Courteney Ervin and Celia La (Courteney Ervin, Celia La)

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Courteney Ervin shares the ups and downs of building a product for one of the largest library systems in the world. Celia La walks us through the technical challenges (and solutions) of bringing Khan Academy's high quality content to people all over the world.

Courteney Ervin

Courteney Ervin codes in the space where open source meets social good. She’s a developer at the New York Public Library, where she supports accessible literacy in NYC and beyond.

Celia La

Celia La is a software engineer at Khan Academy, board member for Write/Speak/Code and BigApplePy, and organizer for NYC PyLadies and PyGotham. In her free time, Celia enjoys cooking, biking, and spending time with her husband, daughter and curmudgeonly cat.

Ep. 144 - Codeland - Accessibility and Education talks from Sterling Walker and Maurice Rogers (Sterling Walker, Maurice Rogers)

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400

We wrap up our community talks with Sterling’s story of her very first project at her first dev job: making the app accessible for two blind students. Maurice kicks off our education talks with the story of Abacus, his side project that became the learning system used by thousands of students in his country of Belize.

Sterling Walker

Sterling Walker graduated with an advanced degree in medical sciences right around the same time the brain factories stopped hiring. She earned a scholarship to the Flatiron School and transitioned her career to web development. She is now a Director of Engineering at 2U where she makes tools for web-native educational interactions.

Maurice Rogers

Maurice is a Belize-based software consultant with experience working with clients from all over the world.

Ep. 143 - Codeland - Community Talks from Valerie Woolard Srinivasan and Rapi Castillo (Valerie Woolard Srinivasan, Rapi Castillo)

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Valerie explores the importance of security in creating powerful and engaged communities, and breaks down three ways your code might be vulnerable. Rapi shares his story of creating a toy coding project in D3.js that sparked a movement and helped thousands of people become more politically engaged. Checkout the videos of these talks on the CodeNewbie YouTube channel.

Valerie Woolard Srinivasan

Valerie Woolard Srinivasan is a software engineer who loves musical theater, podcasts, running, and technology. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and works at Panoply, where she builds technology for podcasters.

Rapi Castillo

Executive Director of Progressive Coders Network, movement building are my passion, focusing on creating platforms for people to become engaged, empowered, and excited, about a cause, campaign, or product. Passionate about knowing how to create a bottom-up movement that creates a new means of distribution and organizing, and how technology affects it. Mark Granovetter, Jon Kleinberg, and Malcom Gladwell are his heroes.

Ep. 142 - Codeland - Mental Health talks from Michelle Morales and Greg Baugues (Michelle Morales, Greg Baugues)

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400

This episode features two talks on mental health that explore two very different sides of this important topic. Michelle’s talk is a technical showcase of how her research project uses open source tools to better diagnose depression. Greg shares his personal struggles with ADHD and bipolar disorder, and how important it is for us to openly talk about mental health.

Michelle Morales

Michelle is a Ph.D. Candidate in Computational Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also a researcher and web developer at the Futures Initiative. Her main research interests are Natural Language Processing for mental health applications and open source technologies.

Greg Baugues

Greg serves on the Developer Community team at Twilio and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter, and dog. He occasionally sneaks out during lunch to play chess in the park.

Ep. 141 - Codeland - Interview with NYC's first CTO (Minerva Tantoco)

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400

When Minerva Tantoco was first offered the CTO position for New York City, she thought it was a prank. But in 2014, she became the city’s first Chief Technology Officer. She sits down with Codeland’s emcee, Nikhil Paul, to talk about how she started her long, impressive tech career, what programming looked like back her coding days, and how she hopes tech will transform cities for the better.

Minerva Tantoco

From tech start-ups to large enterprises to government, Ms. Minerva Tantoco holds four US patents on intelligent workflow, and is focused on applied innovation, creating tech strategies to build great businesses. Ms. Tantoco is passionate about humanizing tech and equal opportunity in the tech ecosystem. Minerva Tantoco most recently served as New York City’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Tantoco launched groundbreaking initiatives in smart city policy and government tech, such as LinkNYC, CSforAll, Neighborhoods.NYC, the first-ever IoT Guidelines for New York City, and NYC’s Smart+Equitable City Strategy.

Ep. 140 - Codeland - Gaming and City Talks from Chris Algoo, Kate Rabinowitz, Eric Brelsford (Chris Algoo, Kate Rabinowitz, Eric Brelsford)

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Chris Algoo shares how he co-created “Breakup Squad,” the game where you have to keep two exes from getting back together. Kate Rabinowitz shows us how open data can help build powerful, insightful tools to better understand and improve your city. Eric Brelsford shares how he used mapping tools to help community members turn vacant lots into beautiful neighborhood spaces.

Chris Algoo

Chris Algoo is a game developer, event organizer, speaker, and educator from Brooklyn. His events and games have a strong focus on diversity and inclusion. He's currently working on Breakup Squad, a party game displayed internationally in museums, festivals, and other venues.

Kate Rabinowitz

Kate Rabinowitz is the founder of DataLensDC, an organization dedicated to understanding cities through data. She co-organizes Code for DC and Tech Lady Hackathon. Kate is passionate about open data and civic tech, diversity and inclusion, healthy skepticism, and board games.

Eric Brelsford

Ep. 139 - Codeland - Gaming Talks from Jessica Rudder and Opher Vishnia (Jessica Rudder, Opher Vishnia)

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0400

In our second episode of our Codeland miniseries, we dig into our talks on gaming and code. Jessica shows us how we can use failure to become better developers with lessons learned from the video gaming industry. Opher shows us a number of ways to use video game principles to make our web apps more exciting. To watch the videos of these talks, checkout our channel on YouTube.

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Jessica Rudder

Jessica Rudder is a recovering perfectionist that learns to code through a combination of reading, asking colleagues and banging her head against a wall. When she's not helping to build Flatiron School's Learn platform, she can be found training for ultra marathons on the streets of NYC or creating code-related videos on YouTube for CompChomp. She is an avid squirrel photographer and loves the color green. Opher is a multidisciplinary creator, invested in many fields like computer science, art, music, design and game development. For the past three years, he has worked at Eko as lead creative developer and the go-to authority on client-side web technologies.

Opher Vishnia

Opher is a multidisciplinary creator, invested in many fields like computer science, art, music, design and game development. For the past three years, he has worked at Eko as lead creative developer and the go-to authority on client-side web technologies.

Ep. 138 - Codeland - Art and Code Talks from Stephanie Nemeth and Dan Shiffman (Dan Shiffman, Stephanie Nemeth)

Tue, 30 May 2017 00:00:00 -0400

In episode 1 of our Codeland miniseries, you get to hear two amazing talks on art and code. Stephanie's a first-time speaker from Amsterdam and shares her inspiring story of building her first hardware project. Dan shows us how creative coding can be with his amazing art and code showcase, featuring artists and installations of all shapes, sizes, and platforms.

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Dan Shiffman

Daniel Shiffman is an Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He is also a co-founder of the Processing Foundation works on developing tutorials, examples, and libraries for both Processing and the new p5.js framework.

Stephanie Nemeth

Stephanie is a self-taught developer living in Amsterdam. She enjoys making interesting, but useless, things with code in her free time.

Ep. 137 - Intro to Data Science (Briana Vecchione)

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

If you've heard of open data, big data, and data science and never quite knew what it was all about, this episode is for you. Briana helps us explore the different steps it takes to answer a complex data question with code, giving us a tour of the data science world along the way. We talk about the importance and difficulty of cleaning data, the role of ethics in data collection and analysis, and how a codenewbie can dig into this fascinating topic.

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Briana Vecchione

Briana Vecchione is a data scientist specializing in civic tech and a strong advocate for fairness, transparency, and inclusion in technology. Previously, Briana’s worked on various projects through Microsoft Research, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, ABB, Square, & Wogrammer NY. She’s an award-winning scholar with organizations like the National Science Foundation, the Association of Computing Machinery, and the Anita Borg Institute.

Ep. 136 - Welcome to WordPress (Ptah Dunbar)

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

WordPress powers 27% of the web, with sites big and small leveraging the popular platform. Developer Ptah Dunbar, also known as “Pirate”, gives us a tour of the platform, its thriving community, and the realities of being employed as a WordPress developer.

Ptah Dunbar

WordPress, BuddyPress and bbPress core contributor and web strategy consultant.

Ep. 135 - The Michael Jordan of Tech Talks (Kim Crayton)

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

In just over a year, Kim’s spoken at eight meetups, ten conferences, had talks accepted at three more, and has four upcoming talks already lined up. And she’s just getting started. She shares how presenting at meetups became an accidental launchpad for her speaking career at conferences, how she uses her past career in education to create unique tech talks, and how speaking has provided her incredible opportunities, like traveling the world for free.

Kim Crayton

Kim, a Community Engineer, has years of experience working with learners of all ages, skill level, and abilities. She is now using her knowledge to develop technical people, ideas, organizations, and communities.

Ep. 134 - Getting Into Hardware (Elecia White)

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400

This week, we followed up our conversation about embedded systems with a focus on getting into hardware as a whole. Elecia White gave us a tour of her hardware world, complete with stories of gadgets catching fire, the responsibility of creating life-saving ICU technology, and having fun with poopy robots.

Elecia White

Author of O'Reilly's Making Embedded Systems and host of the Embedded podcast, Elecia White is an embedded software engineer who has worked on DNA scanners, inertial measurement units for airplanes and race cars, toys for preschoolers, a gunshot location system for catching criminals, and assorted other medical and consumer devices. She founded and currently runs Logical Elegance, a small consulting firm in California.

Ep. 133 - Building Robot Vacuum Cleaners: An Intro to Embedded Systems (Chris Svec)

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Chris’s job sounds impressive. After over a decade working in tech, he’s designed microprocessors and now helps build robot vacuum cleaners. He’s at the intersection of hardware and software in a space called embedded systems. We explore this field, get a solid intro to working with chips, and discuss the many ways a codenewbie can start learning more about the fascinating world of embedded systems.

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Chris Svec

Chris Svec is an embedded software engineer at iRobot where he works on the Roomba vacuuming robot and other robots. He started his career designing x86 chips and later moved up the hardware/software stack into embedded software. He knows that bugs always show up at interfaces, which is why he thinks about things like empathy and people as well as bytes and protocols. Chris has a BS in Electrical Engineering and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University.

Ep. 132 - The Business of Open Source (Safia Abdalla)

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0400

When we talk about open source, we focus mostly on the code and contributions. But as a crucial element of the developer ecosystem, it’s important to think about the business side of things. How does it sustain itself? Is there money in open source? If there is, who gets it? Developer and open source maintainer Safia Abdalla helps us tackle these questions to better understand how open source really works.

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Safia Abdalla

Safia is an open source developer and writer with a passion for data science and machine learning for social good and STEM education. When she is not on her computer, she can be found running, exercising, drinking tea, or watching films.

Ep. 131 - Take My Money (Noel Rappin)

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0400

If you plan on getting a job as a developer, chances are, you’ll deal with the technical side of accepting online payments. It might be as easy as plugging in a tool like Stripe or Braintree, but it can quickly get complicated. In this more technical episode, Noel takes us through some of those thorny situations and how a newbie can navigate the complex world of money.

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Noel Rappin

Noel Rappin is the Director of Talent and a Senior Developer at Table XI (tablexi.com). He is the author of multiple technical books including “Rails 4 Test Prescriptions”, “Trust-Driven Development”, and “Master Space and Time With JavaScript”.

Ep. 130 - 30 Million Downloads (Jo Overline)

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Jo Overline’s created 30 apps, totally 30 million downloads over the past ten years. He’s taken his success as an app creator and built a business around it, launching a consultancy that helps individuals and businesses build successful products. He shares his lessons learned in created successful apps, his thoughts on how apps have evolved over the years, and whether or not there’s still room for the independent app maker.

Jo Overline

Jo Overline has been a successful iOS app creator for over ten years. He’s built over 30 apps in various categories, and over 30 million downloads under his belt holding the #1 spot in 94 countries. He's the founder of SwingDev, which specializes in web and mobile app development

Ep. 129 - Getting My First Developer Job (Paola Mata)

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

The dream is to learn to code for a few months and get a job right away. But reality comes with a few more twists and turns, as Paola discovered on her way to landing her current software engineering position at BuzzFeed. She was an assitant looking for a better career when she rediscovered code. But getting that better careeer involved attending two bootcamps, doing an internship, and job searching for a year before landing her full-time iOS role. She shares the ups and downs of becoming a developer, the emotional and financial stressess of looking for a job, and the resources that helped her reach her goal.

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Paola Mata

Paola is currently building awesome apps at BuzzFeed, where she was part of the team that launched the highly acclaimed BuzzFeed News app. She's also actively involved in the tech community as co-founder of NYC Tech Latinas and regularly volunteers her time to promoting diversity in tech and supporting the next wave of new programmers.

Ep. 128 - Progressive Coders Network (Rapi Castillo)

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Rapi wasn’t very politically engaged until his husband told him about Bernie Sanders, and soon after, Rapi was hooked. He joined the Coders for Sanders group and created the Bernie Map, an open source project that would become valuable for future movements. Rapi shares how he transferred the energy from the Coders for Sanders community to create the Progressive Coders Network, how he thinks about open source contributors as members instead of sources of free labor, and why open source is a powerful tool for activism.

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Rapi Castillo

Executive Director of Progressive Coders Network, passionate about building movements and creating platforms for people to become engaged, empowered, and excited, about a cause, campaign, or product.

Ep. 127 - Creating a Game for Vets (Evan Sanderson)

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

When Evan read an article about the rate of suicide among veterans returning from war, it broke his heart. So he decided to turn that heart break into advocacy. He read about and researched the experiences of vets and created a game designed to share theirs stories with the world. Evan tells us about his process, why games have a special power to create empathy and activate, and what he hopes for the future of games with a purpose.

Evan Sanderson

Developer and creative nerd working at the intersection of arts & technology.

Ep. 126 - The Mechanic (Ray Acevedo)

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Ray Acevedo was a mechanic, a full-time job he held while he learned to code part-time at the Coalition for Queens. In this specially produced segment, Ray shares his coding journey, how he came close to quitting altogether, how his brother got him through, and how being a mechanic helped him learned to code.

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Ray Acevedo

Mechanic turned Android Developer. Interested in making the world a better place through technology.

Ep. 125 - Learning to Code in the 1960s (Mary L Gorden)

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Mary became a programmer in the late 1960s, back when coding was “barbaric,” as she put it. She takes us through her nearly 40 years of working with computers, starting with the era of punch cards. She shares the joy of using a terminal for the first time, her determination to stay technical even as she climbed the corporate ladder, and how the tools of coding have shifted the programmer’s job description.

Mary L Gorden

Mary L Gorden's first career was in computers. She began as a programmer in 1966 and retired in 2001 as a chief systems architect. Gorden's second career is as an author. Her memoir, published by Green Hat Press in November 2016, is Life Without Ceilings: A Woman Career in Computers.

Ep. 124 - Open Source Newbie (Shubheksha Jalan )

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Shubheksha shares her experience contributing to open source, why it took her two years to contribute in a meaningful way, and how working on open source has boosted her confidence and sharpened her skills.

Shubheksha Jalan

Shubheksha is a Computer Science major from India, currently in her final year of college and is also an Outreachy intern at Mozilla.

Ep. 123 - Rails Girls Summer of Code (Laura Gaetano)

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Before becoming a developer, Laura had a number of job titles, including music blogger, DJ, and maid. But it was a Rails Girls workshop that brought her back to the world of web that she fell in love with many years ago. Now, as a manger at the Travis Foundation, she gets to help introduce other women to tech through the Rails Girls Summer of Code, one of the many initiatives she runs. She tells us more about what it’s like to be a scholar in the program, the power of doing meaningful work on open source projects, and how she reconnected with the web and became a developer.

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Laura Gaetano

Laura Gaetano is a web developer, designer and artist from Italy. She runs the Ruby Usergroup and Pyladies chapter in Vienna, Austria as well as Rails Girls Summer of Code, a global initiative to bring more women into tech by offering them paid scholarships to work on Open Source projects.

Ep. 122 - The Ethics of Coding (Bill Sourour)

Mon, 09 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Bill Sourour was twenty-one when he was asked to build a website for a pharmaceutical company. It was a quiz that asked users to select symptoms so that it could recommend a drug as a possible solution. But for almost every option the user selected, the quiz would recommend the same drug. It didn’t feel right, but when Bill later heard that a side effect of the drug was depression and a young woman who had taken that drug had committed suicide, it felt very, very wrong. Bill tells us the story of his first code-related ethical conflict, his thoughts on the role of ethics in coding, and how the incident affects how he approaches code today.

Bill Sourour

Bill is the founder of DevMastery.com. A 20 year veteran programmer, architect, consultant, and teacher, he helps individual developers and billion dollar organizations become more successful every day.

Ep. 121 - TechHire (Tess Posner)

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0500

If you’re hoping to get your first tech job and you haven’t heard of TechHire, this episode is for you. We talk to Tess, the managing director of TechHire, about working with employer and learning partners to place 100K people in tech jobs by 2020. She talks about the realities of finding a job in tech at the salary you want, what technology’s increasing demand for talent means for job seekers, and what every codenewbie can do to maximize their chances of launching their tech career.

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Tess Posner

Tess is a social entrepreneur focused on increasing equity and economic opportunity in the education system and economy. Currently, she is managing director of TechHire at Opportunity@Work. TechHire is a national initiative in 70+ communities increasing opportunity for overlooked and underrepresented Americans to connect to technology careers.

Ep. 120 - 100 Days of Code (Alexander Kallaway)

Mon, 26 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Alex Kallaway was working as a full-time developer, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted a way to try new technologies and grow his coding skills outside of work. So he created #100DaysofCode, the hashtag-based challenge that’s helped him incorporate coding into his daily routine. He talks about how he designed the challenge, the number of people who’ve joined him, and the updates he’s making for 2017.

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Alexander Kallaway

Self-taught web developer, started #100DaysOfCode, interested in the practical aspects of habit formation and change. Enjoys learning foreign languages.

Ep. 119 - Indie iOS Developer (Ish Shabazz)

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Ish Shabazz recently released Stamp Pack, the iOS app that gave him his biggest launch yet. He talks about the iterative process of building and selling an app, what’s it’s like to create a whole app category in the App Store, and why being an independent iOS developer is getting harder and harder.

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Ish Shabazz

Ish is an indie app developer who loves the Apple Ecosystem. He’s been an iOS App Developer since 2010.

Ep. 118 - Truck Driver (George Moore)

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

George Moore drove trucks for years. But he knew he wanted to do more with his life, and his wife encouraged him to go back to school, finish his degree, and pursue the tech career he’d started long ago. So he did. He started at help desk, and slowly climbed his way up to his current role, as master software engineer. He shares his incredible journey filled with uncertainties and perseverance, and how it’s shaped him as a developer and a person.

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George Moore

George Moore is a master software engineer at Capital One, with experience in help desk, QA, automation, and mobile development.

Ep. 117 - Diversity in Tech - Part II (Ashe Dryden)

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

In part II of our interview, Ashe Dryden talks about how the harassment she’s experienced has made her worry about the safety of people around her and influenced her decision to move to the woods. She tells us about the incident that made her angry enough to start working on diversity advocacy, how her work has changed her perception of the internet, and what we can all do to be advocates in the workplace.

Ashe Dryden

White House fellow, Programmer, Tech Diversity & Inclusion Consultant, @AlterConf, @FundBetterTech, @ResFestPDX, #selfieconf

Ep. 116 - Diversity in Tech - Part I (Ashe Dryden)

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Diversity in tech is a big topic. In our conversation with Ashe Dryden, programmer, organizer and diversity consultant, we unpack the many questions, misconceptions, and realities of diversity in our industry. In part I of our interview, Ashe gives us a diversity primer, explains why this topic is so important, and tells us how she’s crafted a conference based on inclusion called AlterConf.

Ashe Dryden

White House fellow, Programmer, Tech Diversity & Inclusion Consultant, @AlterConf, @FundBetterTech, @ResFestPDX, #selfieconf

Ep. 115 - Getting a Computer Science Degree (Terri Burns)

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Terri Burns didn’t start off as a computer science major, but she ended up not only graduating with a CS degree but running one of the largest student tech organizations in the country. She tells us what it’s like to be a computer science major, the projects and topics she’s covered in school, and the value of that degree in the real world. If you’ve been curious about the elusive CS degree, take a listen to this awesome, behind-the-scene conversation and see what it’s all about.

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Terri Burns

Terri Burns is an incoming Associate Product Manager at Twitter. She's currently the Chair of Tech@NYU, NYC’s largest student technology organization, as well as a podcast co-host and contributor for Forbes. Terri is interested in building products, programming, and diversifying the technology industry.

Ep. 114 - What's an Innovation Accountant? (Nick DePrey)

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Nick is an Innovation Accountant, a mash-up of data, analytics, coding, running experiments, and explaining to leadership how it’s all going. He talks about what it’s like to build NPR One, the listening app created by NPR, a decades-old, non-profit media company, what he’s learned from the data about the way people listen to podcasts, and what technical skills he uses on the job.

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Nick DePrey

Nick DePrey is the innovation accountant and analytics manager for NPR’s Digital Media division. His roles include evaluating audio experiments through the NPR One app, using big data to make product decisions and developing personalization algorithms. He specializes in content performance metrics and deep product analytics. In his spare time Nick works as a composer and producer of music that often ends up in podcasts produced by NPR and other major networks.

Ep. 113 - Hackathons (Leslie Hitchcock)

Mon, 07 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Leslie Hitchcock started her career writing white papers on information security. Now, she organizes some of the largest hackathons and tech events in the world for TechCrunch. She shares her tips on how new developers can make the most out of a hackathon, what types of coding projects people work on, and how she helps make hackathons more inclusive.

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Leslie Hitchcock

Leslie is a senior executive at TechCrunch, producing the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference and Hackathon. Leslie also writes for TechCrunch and maintains her own blog reviewing startups and tech products at Leslie Just Joined. She is very widely networked in tech, in Silicon Valley, Israel, and Europe, and has deep insight into startups, investment, and PR. TechCrunch is the leading publication about tech and startups, and building on this TechCrunch Disrupt is a leading global tech conference.

Ep. 112 - Comedy and Code - Part II (Baratunde Thurston)

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400

In part two of our interview with comedian Baratunde Thurston, we talk about how he brought together product development and comedy to create entertaining apps in his recent role at the Daily Show, how he uses coding and technology as tools in the many unique positions he’s held, and how we should balance our coding responsibility with the simple goal of having fun.

Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is a futurist comedian, writer, and activist who wrote the New York Times best-seller How To Be Black and has been an executive at both The Onion and The Daily Show. He currently operates as an independent rabble rouser, hosts the Comedy Hack Day event series and is a correspondent with NatGeo’s Explorer series. Photo courtesy of Stuart Tracte.

Ep. 111 - Comedy and Code - Part I (Baratunde Thurston)

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Baratunde Thurston’s made a career of combining tech, comedy, and politics. From launching Comedy Hack Day to his recent role as the Daily Show’s first Supervising Producer for Digital Expansion, he’s found innovative ways to use code as a tool for satire, entertainment, and activism. In part I of our interview, he tells us why he started as a computer science major but ended with a philosophy degree instead, how he sees satirical apps as technology’s art-form, and how projects like Comedy Hack Day bring people together for a unique, and highly entertaining, coding experience.

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Baratunde Thurston

Ep. 110 - Coding in Uganda (Emily Karungi)

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Emily Karungi went to university for software engineering, but when she walked into class and had no idea what the students were talking about, she started to doubt about whether or not she belonged. She tells us how she tackled that intimidation, what it’s like to build software in her country of Uganda, and how she uses her skills and love of mentorship to help others learn to code.

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Emily Karungi

Emily is a software Engineer, a mentor and a strong believer of women empowerment. She currently works as a Software Engineer at Fenix international and mentors at Thinkful, an online code school. She’s passionate about helping more women join the Technology scene which drove her to start and be apart of groups like Django Girls Kampala and the Women Passion program in Uganda. Because of her commitment and contribution to the Django community in Uganda, Emily was appointed as one of the Developer members of the Django Software Foundation. Emily is an avid traveler and loves to learn about new cultures; this has gone on to making her a very diverse person who tries to see the best in every person around her. She has a degree in Software Engineering and believes in lifelong learning

Ep. 108 - Tech Internships (Dara Oke)

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Dara Oke graduated with four tech internships under her belt. She’s worked at Intel, Microsoft, and Twitter building features in languages she hadn’t studied and on topics she hadn’t yet covered in school. But now as a program manager at Microsoft, she looks back at those internships as an essential part of her success and education. We talk about the day-to-day of a tech internship, how she found her place at these powerful tech companies, and how codenewbies everywhere can find their own opportunities to learn through real-world experience.

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Dara Oke

Software engineer, program manager, and full time creative.

Ep. 107 - Mom and Son Learn To Code (Lorraine Hutter, Bobby Hutter)

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Lorraine Hutter watched her son Bobby go to a bootcamp and learn to code. She saw him come home happy and excited, and she wanted to feel that same fire. So months later, she signed up for a coding program, and her son ended up as her teacher’s assistant. Lorraine and Bobby talk about what it’s like to watch each other grow as coders, how learning to code has affected their relationship, and what they’ve learned so far as junior developers.

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Lorraine Hutter

Ruby newbie looking to transition into DevOps after several years in Tech Support.

Bobby Hutter

Bobby is a junior level developer breaking out of the junior developer mindset.

Ep. 106 - Open Sourcing Mental Health - Part II (Julia Nguyen)

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

We continue our conversation with developer Julia Nguyen on her mental health journey, how it's affected her life as a programmer, and what unique product decisions she has to make for "if me," her mental health open source project.

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Julia Nguyen

Julia leads an open source project called "if me," a mental health community for people to open up to loved ones. She's also lead organizer of Southeast Asian Ladies in Tech, and a developer at Indiegogo.

Ep. 105 - Open Sourcing Mental Health - Part I (Julia Nguyen)

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Julia Nguyen was diagnosed with OCD when she was in high school. It took a long time for her to talk about it, but soon she was writing and giving talks on mental health. She’s even created an open source project to help those dealing with mental illness. In this incredibly open and honest interview, she talks about her own struggles with mental health and how she hopes to help others through her open source project, “if me.”

Julia Nguyen

Ep. 104 - Scrum Master (Anjuan Simmons)

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Have you ever heard of a scrum master and wondered what that was? Anjuan Simmons, certified scrum master and project manager, breaks it down for us in this highly informative interview. He explains the practical applications of agile, the different tools and processes used to apply its key principles, and how you can apply the agile philosophy to your learn-to-code journey.

Anjuan Simmons

Anjuan Simmons is a technologist with a successful track record of delivering technology solutions from the user interface to the database. He is an energetic and informative speaker who presents at conferences, seminars, schools, and community centers around the world on topics including Agile software development, diversity, and leadership. Anjuan has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Texas A&M University.

Ep. 103 - Algorithms (Carina C. Zona)

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Carina C. Zona helps us understand algorithms, both what they are and how they are used. She walks us through fascinating examples of how they've been used in technology over the years, exploring the benefits and unintended consequences they've had along the way, and how we as developers can boost those benefits and decrease those unintended consequences.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Consequences of an Insightful Algorithm
Schemas for the Real World
Cracking the Coding Interview (book)
How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
Google's Autotagging Feature
Flickr's Autotagging Feature
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Carina C. Zona

Carina C. Zona is a developer, advocate, and certified sex educator. She spends a lot of time thinking about the unexpected cultural effects of our decisions as programmers. Carina is the founder of CallbackWomen and co-organizer of the We So Crafty community of techies who craft.

Ep. 102 - My Very First App (Aurelian Sennett)

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

A lot can happen in a year. For high school biology teacher Aurelian Sennett, that time was spent writing his first program that launched his tech business to help schools solve scheduling problems. Long-time listener and codenewbie, Aurelian tells us how he started learning to code, how he built his education app, and what it's like to have thousands of people pay for and use the first product he's ever built.

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Aurelian Sennett

Teacher and co-owner of the Pace School Network. Self-taught programmer who created a product to solve a problem, and found that many others had that same problem.

Ep. 101 - Open Sourcerer of Django (Jacob Kaplan-Moss)

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Jacob Kaplan-Moss is often credited for co-creating Django, one of the most popular web frameworks written in python. But that’s not exactly true. He’s also given credit for being an amazing developer. But that’s not very accurate either. Jacob tells us the true story of Django’s creation, why he calls himself a mediocre programmer, and unpacks the concept of the talent myth.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss

I'm a core contributor to Django, co-owner of Revolution Systems, former Director of Security at Heroku, and currently on the Engineering team at 18F.

Ep. 100 - Creating CodeNewbie ()

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

For our special 100th episode, CodeNewbie founder gets interviewed by her husband, Rob Frelow, on creating CodeNewbie, her own coding journey, and shares info on upcoming projects for CodeNewbie.

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Saron Yitbarek

Saron is the founder of CodeNewbie and host of the CodeNewbie Podcast.

Ep. 99 - Creating Lifehacker - Part II (Gina Trapani)

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Last episode we talked to Gina Trapani about her Lifehacker days. In this episode, we look to the future and hear about her work at Postlight, what it’s like to work with Paul Ford (Episode 82), and what she looks for when she’s hiring an engineer.

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Gina Trapani

Gina Trapani is currently the director of engineering at Postlight and the founding and former editor of Lifehacker. She's also the founder and creator of Makerbase, an IMDb for web sites and apps and ThinkUp, an app that gives you insights into your social networks.

Ep. 98 - Creating Lifehacker - Part I (Gina Trapani)

Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Once upon a time, Gina Trapani started Lifehacker. It got big, really big, with the ups and downs of being the sole editor responsible for a website that millions of people read. But after awhile, she wanted to get back to coding. In part one of our two-part interview, Gina talks to us about her journey going from famous blogger to product creator, the risks of building an app based on APIs, and what it felt like to shut down her company.

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Gina Trapani

Ep. 97 - From Theater Technician to Programmer (Ashley Lewis)

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Ashley Lewis used to light stages. She worked as a theater technician working shows like Hamilton (when it was much smaller) and New York Fashion Week. But after some introspection, she realized that her passion wasn’t in light design, and she searched for other career options. She talks to us about the similarities between coding and her art background, what it’s like working as a theater technician, and how being introspective has helped her on her coding journey.

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Ashley Lewis

Ashley Michal Lewis started as a stubborn art student and over the course of the past five years discovered a passion for technical problem solving as a stage electrician and lighting designer, finally transitioning into a career as a stubborn web developer. She also has a deep interest in education, open source culture, and income inequality, and hopes to eventually weave these passions together to make a positive impact.

Ep. 96 - Developing Your Tech Talk Idea (Nickolas Means)

Mon, 11 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Nickolas Means talked about airplanes, and in doing so, he connected them with code in beautiful and interesting ways. In this interview, Nick explains how to take seemingly disconnected subjects and put them together in compelling talks, and how he uses his public speaking training to turn these talks into inspiring performances.

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Nickolas Means

Nick is the VP of Engineering at iTriage and Wellmatch Health, working with an incredibly talented team of engineers to bring transparency to healthcare pricing. He believes that software engineering is mostly human interaction and he’s passionate about building empathetic, compassionate teams.

Ep. 95 - Is The Website Down? (Stella Cotton)

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400

When one man decided to crowdfund a bailout for Greece on Indiegogo (a feat that required over a billion dollars), Stella Cotton and her team found themselves in trouble. The site went down, and they had to figure out what to do. Stella takes us through the journey of getting the Indiegogo site back up, shares what she’s learned about site availability and what CodeNewbies can do to be ready for their own heavy traffic.

Stella Cotton

Stella Cotton is a software engineer, Ruby enthusiast, conference speaker, and co-organizer of SF.rb & AndConf.

Ep. 94 - UX Design and Gaming (Lil Chen)

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Lil Chen has been in gaming for years. She started by playing video games, then become a competitive Super Smash Brothers player, and now works as a UX Designer at YouTube Gaming. We talk about how her long history in gaming affects her work as a designer and vice versa, and how she keeps up with her coding skills at night.

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Lil Chen

Lil Chen currently works for YouTube Gaming and resides in San Francisco. Prior to that, she spent three and a half years designing for TED Talks in New York City.

Ep. 93 - Storytelling with Code (Michael Rau)

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Michael Rau didn’t want to build an app, he wanted to create an experience. So he constructed a physical room, and with the help of a Rails app, created a theater show called “Temping.” He talks through his concept, how he used his new coding skills to make it happen, and the surprising emotional reactions he’s witnessed from audience members who’ve tried his creation.

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Michael Rau

Michael Rau is a professional director of theater, opera and a creator of new media experiences.

Ep. 92 - Afghan Women Coding (Fereshteh Forough )

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Fereshteh Forough wanted to help women in Afghanistan. She knew that attaining education was difficult, let alone technical training, and the cultural attitudes towards women didn’t help. But she tackled these issues head on by starting the first coding school for women in Afghanistan. She talks to us about how she started the program, how she took on the different challenges her students face, and how her training in computer science and her previous role as a computer science professor affected her decision to open Code To Inspire.

Fereshteh Forough

Fereshteh Forough is the Founder and President of Code to Inspire, the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan. Fereshteh was born as an Afghan refugee in Iran. One year after the fall of Taliban, she moved to Herat, Afghanistan with her family where she received her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Herat University and later a Master’s degree from Technical University of Berlin in Germany. She taught as a professor in the Computer Science Faculty of Herat University for three years. Fereshteh was a 2013 TED Talks speaker and a 2015 Clinton Global Initiative.

Ep. 91 - Creating EmberJS - Part II (Yehuda Katz)

Sun, 05 Jun 2016 00:00:00 -0400

In part two of our interview with Yehuda Katz, we talk about how he created EmberJS, and what it means to build a web framework. We also talk about what it means to be a beginner, and how growing up poor has influenced his perspectives as a coder today.

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Yehuda Katz

Yehuda Katz is one of the creators of Ember.js, a member of the Rust Core Team, and a retired Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Team member. His 9-to-5 home is at the startup he founded, Tilde Inc. where he works on Skylight, the smart profiler for Rails, and does Ember.js consulting.

Ep. 90 - Creating EmberJS - Part I (Yehuda Katz)

Mon, 30 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Yehuda Katz has done many, many code things. He co-created Ember.js, co-founded a tech startup Tilde, is a frequent contributor to open source projects including Handlebars, Bundler, and Thor, and is a member of the Rust Core Team. But it took years of playing with tech before he finally felt like coding was something he could do. In the first half of our two-part interview, he talks about what he looks for when he hires, how it took him years to feel like he could code, and why he doesn’t like the term “junior developer”.

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Yehuda Katz

Ep. 89 - Mobile Developer (Kaya Thomas)

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Kaya Thomas has done a lot in a short period of time. She’s met first lady Michelle Obama, she’s a mobile app developer, and she was selected as Glamour’s Top Ten College Women of the Year. She talks about how she’s managed to be so successful while still a college student, the role of luck and hard work, and her process for learning new coding skills so quickly.

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Kaya Thomas

Kaya Thomas is a junior at Dartmouth College where she is majoring in Computer Science. In August 2014, she launched her own iOS application called We Read Too. We Read Too is a book resource application that showcases a directory of hundreds children's and young adult books written by authors of color. We Read Too has now grown to over 600 books and over 5,000 user downloads.

Ep. 88 - CodeNewbie Apprentice (Sharon Siegel)

Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

In December, CodeNewbie put out applications for the CodeNewbie Apprenticeship, and in 10 days received 322 applications from all over the world. Many interviews later, Sharon Siegel was chosen to be the first apprentice. She talks about her coding journey, her passion and active involvement in building coding communities, and her goal of moving into a full-time developer role.

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Sharon Siegel

Sharon is CodeNewbie's first apprentice developer. She is very passionate about tech and education and is involved with Girl Develop It, RailsBridge, and The Firehose Project. She also works for Skillcrush where she teaches newbies how to code. When she's not in front of a computer, you can find her reading a good book, playing board games with friends, or at the gym.

Ep. 87 - Vets Who Code (Jerome Hardaway)

Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Plenty of organizations work to help vets. But what vet Jerome Hardaway noticed about these organizations is that they were mostly reactive. While they responded to problems, few worked to prevent them. So Jerome decided to create a non-profit to teach vets how to code, making it easier for them to start a tech career and better adjust to life back at home. We talk about the program, the stigma of being a vet, and Jerome’s own journey to being a developer.

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Jerome Hardaway

Jerome is a developer and founder of Vets Who Code, a non-profit training vets to learn to code.

Ep. 86 - Intro to Databases (Mark Nadal)

Mon, 02 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Mark Nadal was a front end developer looking for a better database. So he built his own. He walks us through the different types of databases, the limitations you might run into as you use them, and why he decided to build his own graph database.

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Mark Nadal

Mark is a mathematician turned programmer. He runs a VC backed Open Source company and has traveled to over 25 countries. The diverse cultures he has experienced fuels his passion for learning, sharing, and creating open technology freely for all.

Ep. 85 - Technical Writing (Chris Mills)

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Chris loves writing tutorials for beginners, and he gets to do it for Mozilla. We talk about the different parts of good technical writing, how he manages to maintain that beginner mindset, and how he combines technical knowledge and solid, good writing to make code more accessible.

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Chris Mills

Chris Mills is a tech writer on the MDN project, where he writes docs and demos about Web APIs, web apps, web games, browser extensions, and basic web design skills. He plays drums in a prog metal band and loves going on walks in the countryside with his wonderful wife and fabulous kids. He is based just outside Manchester, UK.

Ep. 84 - From Research To Code (Anna Lee)

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Anna Lee spent years as a researcher. Going from a world of pharmaceutical science to being a front end web developer was definitely a leap, one she successfully made after quitting her job and doing an online course. Now she works at Society of Grownups. Anna talks to us about her coding journey, what that first day was like, and how her experience as a researcher has impacted her as a developer.

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Anna Lee

Anna Lee is a researcher turned developer. After taking a front-end web development course and teaching herself the basics, Anna is now a member of the Society of Grownups dev team and spends her days building financial tools in Ember.js. When she's not coding, Anna enjoys nature photography and spending time at the beach.

Ep. 83 - How To Get A Coding Job (Charles Max Wood)

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

As a podcaster of several very popular tech shows, Chuck gets questions from listeners all the time. One of the most popular questions he gets is one that you might also be asking, “How do you get a coding job?” In this episode, we dive into the journey of not just coding but landing a coding job, the pitfalls along the way, and how a code newbie can increase their chances of getting an offer.

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Charles Max Wood

Chuck is a developer and podcaster. He's host of popular tech podcasts including Javascript Jabber, Ruby Rogues, Adventures in Angular, and iPhreaks Show.

Ep. 82 - What Is Code? (Paul Ford)

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Paul Ford didn’t expect his article on coding to go big. But almost a year later, the Bloomberg issue dedicated to “What is code?” is still completely sold out. We dig into the major topics covered in that long and highly entertaining piece, like conferences, open source, and languages, and how Paul and the editors created a technical article that still managed to be accessible to coder and non-coders alike.

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Paul Ford

Paul Ford is the co-founder of Postlight, an agency that builds big beautiful technology things in NYC. He is also a writer and programmer. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, kids, cats, books, and Raspberry Pis.

Ep. 81 - Social Justice Warrior (Coraline Ada Ehmke)

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Coraline wears the Social Justice Warrior title proudly. She fights the battles, working tirelessly to create safer spaces for more people in tech. But noble as her cause may be, it is not without controversy. We talk to Coraline about what it means to be a social justice warrior, how she’s dealt with the trolling and harassment that comes with it, and how she stays above it and continues to fight.

Coraline Ada Ehmke

Coraline Ada Ehmke is a speaker, writer, teacher, open source advocate and technologist with 20 years of experience in developing apps for the web. As a founding member of OS4W.org and contributor-covenant.org, she works diligently to promote diversity and inclusivity in the tech industry. Her current interests include refactoring, code analytics and artificial intelligence.

Ep. 80 - Designing Makerspaces (Kristen Smith)

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Kristen Smith has spent a lot of time creating just the right spaces for making. In her years working on spaces with Kohl’s, FabCafe, and now littleBits, she’s crafted experiences to get people excited about hardware, and using their creativity in new and innovative ways. We talk about what makes a good makerspace, what the behind-the-scenes of one looks like, and how she leveraged her liberal arts degrees to make the tech world more accessible.

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Kristen Smith

Kristen Smith is with 4+ years of experience in the international maker community through her work for the Kohl's Design It! Lab, FabCafe Global Network, and littleBits. She is passionate about building networks and experiences help individuals make connections to foster collaboration.

Ep. 79 - Make Magazine (Mike Senese)

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0400

Mike Senese has always loved tech. He grew up around it, and his fascination and curiosity led him to not only make stuff, but share it with the world. He’s written for tech publications, like Wired and Make Magazine, and hosted a number of TV shows covering a range of science and tech topics. For our second episode of March Is For Makers, Mike talks to us about how he transforms complex technical information into accessible stories, how he got started making, and how the maker movement has changed over the years.

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Mike Senese

Mike Senese is the Executive Editor of Make: magazine. He is also a TV host, starring in various engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It. An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with remote-control aircraft, doing amateur woodworking, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza.

Ep. 78 - Hardware Newbie (Emily Xie)

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Emily Xie spends most of her time coding in PHP. But recently, she got a chance to do some making by organizing a laser-cutting class for her Girl Develop It chapter. In our first episode for March Is For Makers, our month-long celebration of everything making, we dig into the differences of software and hardware, and how Emily's software background gave her an interesting perspective on her laser-cutting experience. Make sure to check out marchisformakers.com for more maker content with our partner, Scott Hanselman of the Hanselminutes Podcast.

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Emily Xie

Emily is a software engineer at Wayfair. In her spare time, she organizes and teaches classes for the Boston branch of Girl Develop It

Ep. 77 - Technically Speaking (Chiu-Ki Chan)

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Chiu-Ki Chan believes in speaking. Best case scenario, speaking gives her a way to share her journey and accomplishments. Worst case scenario, it’s a way to help her make small talk with other conference goers. Either way, she wins. She talks to us about starting Technically Speaking, a digest highlighting talks and open calls for proposals, about how she successfully shares her career achievements without feeling too self-promoting, and how she helps others do the same.

Chiu-Ki Chan

Chiu-Ki is an independent Android developer with way too many side projects. She blogs, speaks, draws and makes videos about Android, and encourages everyone to give tech talks through her newsletter Technically Speaking.

Ep. 76 - Data Journalist (Matthew Mitchell)

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

When Matt Mitchell saw the news anchor mention his home country of Grenada, he sat up straight. But his excitement soon turned to confusion when this trusted tv newscaster mispronounced names and places in Grenada, and declared facts that conflicted with reports from his relatives back home. It made him think hard about where data comes from, who tells it, and how it can shift as it exchanges hands. That was the beginning of his passion for news and his work in data journalism. He tells us about his journey, what it’s like to work at the NY Times, and how he combines his love of code to his passion for the news.

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Matthew Mitchell

Matthew Mitchell is a data journalist & security researcher, he organizes a cryptoparty in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood.

Ep. 75 - Coding In Colombia (Juan Pablo Buriticá)

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Juan loves his home country, Colombia. But he was frustrated by the pervasive negative headlines describing the country as dangerous. He knew Colombia’s potential, and he wanted to show the world what it was capable of. So he started organizing tech conferences. We talk about how conferences have helped grow and strengthen the Latin America tech community, and how Juan manages to do this work from his home in New York.

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Juan Pablo Buriticá

Engineering manager and community builder at @colombia_dev, @jsconfco, @bogotaJS, @rubyconf_co. Striving to improve LatAm/Latino tech from and in NYC.

Ep. 74 - Startup Box (Majora Carter)

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Majora Carter grew up in the South Bronx, and has spent her life building up the community she loves. Recently, that work has become a bit more technical. She tells us how she created Startup Box, a company focused on providing training and jobs for in-demand roles in quality assurance. We talk about the importance of QA roles in dev, why this work is particularly meaningful to her, and how she’s able to bring her expertise in urban revitalization to the tech world.

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Majora Carter

Majora Carter is a real estate developer, Peabody Award winning broadcaster, and economic development consultant. Her work focuses on reducing brain-drain in low-status communities by creating quality of life improvements such as: parks, cafés & restaurants, unlikely employment opportunities for young adults, and investment opportunities for local residents who want to see their communities grow.

Ep. 73 - Coding Chef (Adrienne Lowe)

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

She spent over 12 years as a chef. But when Adrienne Lowe decided to invest in coding skills, she didn’t want to leave her culinary love behind. So she merged those two worlds in her blog, a mix of tech and food that got her invited to talk at conference and fall deeper into the coding world she’d discovered. Adrienne shares how she uses her cooking skills to be a better coder, how her love of the python community has made her a passionate community builder, and how a major life event got her started.

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Adrienne Lowe

A former personal chef, Adrienne Lowe is a self-taught Python programmer who is deeply involved in her community as co-organizer of her local meetups PyATL and PyATL, organizer of Django Girls Atlanta and the Your Django Story series for Django Girls. She is the tech editor for O'Reilly's Head First Python, 2nd edition; Director of Advancement for the Django Project; Chair of Corporate Sponsorship for Write the Docs conferences; and a technical support specialist at Emma, Inc.

Ep. 72 - Security Newbie (Chris Palmer)

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Chris Palmer spends his time thinking about how to make a browser more secure. But security is a broad concept that can mean different things to different people, and part of a developer’s job is balancing those needs. We talk to Chris about how he makes security decisions and what new developers should consider when thinking about security in the products they build.

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Chris Palmer

a software security engineer on Google Chrome. Previously, I worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and iSEC Partners. My educational background is in linguistics, French literature, and music.

Ep. 71 - Internet For All (Danilo Campos)

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Danilo lived in public housing until he was two. Now a self-taught iOS developer, he’s using his technical skills and personal journey to help bring the internet to the thousands living in public housing in the US. We talk to Danilo about the importance of the ConnectHome project, how he navigated his own coding journey, and how he wish he knew sooner that programming wasn’t something that other people did, and that he could do it too.

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Danilo Campos

Danilo is a self-taught software developer, interaction designer and technology educator. After a career including independent software development, leading mobile products at startups, and consulting in Silicon Valley, he helps the Social Impact team at GitHub with tech inclusion programs.

Ep. 70 - From Servers to Security (Christina Morillo)

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Christina started as a server administrator. But over the years, she found her way into information security, now serving as VP of Technology and Information Risk at Morgan Stanley. She talks to us about the vast world of security, why CodeNewbies should care about security even as developers, and how she’s navigated her own coding journey.

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Christina Morillo

An expert in Identity Access Management and currently at Morgan Stanley, Christina formally implemented and managed FitchRatings Access Management Program as their Information Security Architect.

Ep. 69 - Manager Newbie (Selena Deckelmann)

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500

Selena’s been in tech for twenty years. She got her first taste of open source software back in 1995, and since then, she’s been an open source contributor bringing more people into tech. She talks about her new role as manager of a dev team, how open source has changed over the years, and what she’s learned from working with beginners.

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Selena Deckelmann

Selena Deckelmann is a major contributor to PostgreSQL and TaskCluster Platform Manager at Mozilla. She founded PyLadiesPDX, a Portland, Ore. chapter of PyLadies and was a director of the Python Software Foundation. She founded Open Source Bridge, Postgres Open and speaks internationally about open source, databases and community.

Ep. 68 - Too Late To Be Awesome (Chanelle Henry)

Mon, 28 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Chanelle Henry wanted to be awesome. She saw people selling companies and building inspiring products and wondered if it was too late for her to be that awesome. That question inspired a Medium blog post that ended up getting a lot of attention, and getting her invites to speak on that very topic. She tells us how that post helped her reach her awesome, and the changes she made in her life to get there.

Chanelle Henry

Chanelle is a UX Architect by trade, but I also am a writer, a problem solver, designer, woodworker, jerky maker, and I love coming alive. I'm an alchemist and I seek to change the world one moment of clarity at a time.

Ep. 67 - Android Developer (Annyce Davis)

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Annyce Davis became an Android developer by building an Android app. She took some time to hack away at a prototype, showed it to her boss, and was put in charge of building The Washington Posts’s first Android app. She talks about how she went from Java to Android, what she thinks of iOS, and how important community has been to helping her level up and become a senior software engineer at The Washington Post.

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Annyce Davis

She has spent the past 4 years developing applications for the Android ecosystem across multiple form factors. She is also a national conference speaker, sharing her knowledge of Android development with others. In addition, Annyce is active in the Washington, DC tech scene and assists with running a local meetup focused on Android development and design.

Ep. 66 - Laboratoria (Mariana Costa)

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Mariana Costa started Laboratoria to help young women in Lima, Peru get coding skills and improve their lives. A year and a half in, she’s launched this five-month program serving low-income women in four cities, and she’s just getting started. She talks to us about the challenges of working with this demographic, how it feels to see them transform into developers, and how family support is a key part of their program’s success.

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Mariana Costa

Mariana is a social entrepreneur from Peru. She has co-founded Laboratoria, a tech social enterprise in Latin America that trains young women from low-income backgrounds as web developers and helps them kick-start a career in tech.

Ep. 65 - Art and Code (Dan Shiffman)

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Dan Shiffman doesn’t like titles. As an open source contributor, author, and professor, it might be because he has so many to pick from. In this conversation, we touch on all three, focusing on his work with Processing, a software sketchbook and language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts, why he loves working with beginners, and how code can be an expressive and powerful artistic medium.

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Dan Shiffman

Ep. 64 - Write Speak Code (Rebecca Miller Webster)

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Rebecca Miller Webster created Write Speak Code for herself. She wanted a space that would encourage her to write more, speak more, and contribute to open source more. And in the process of creating that space for others, she grew herself, both as a person and a developer. In this interview, she talks about her experience putting on this conference and how it’s helped many others take bigger steps in their coding journeys.

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Rebecca Miller Webster

Rebecca is the founder of Write Speak Code, and the VP of Engineering at Polymathic.

Ep. 63 - Free Code Camp (Quincy Larson)

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

He’s only been coding for four years. But thirteen months ago, Quincy Larson launched one of the most beloved learn-to-code resources in the CodeNewbie community, Free Code Camp. We deep dive into his own learning journey, what he’s learned from helping hundreds of thousands of campers learn to code, and why Free Code Camp will forever be free.

Quincy Larson

Quincy Larson is a JavaScript developer and a teacher at Free Code Camp. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.`

Ep. 62 - Hello Ruby (Linda Liukas)

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Linda Liukas identifies more with being a children’s author than a developer. That might be because she’s spent a good amount of time helping others learn to code than actually coding herself. She used to work for Codecademy, started Rails Girls, and most recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for a book introducing programming to children. The campaign blew past it’s $10K goal, and reached over $380K. Linda talks to us about drawing and writing the book, Hello Ruby, and what she’s learned about the coding journey as she helps kids start their own.

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Linda Liukas

Linda is the author and illustrator of Hello Ruby, a children’s picture book about the whimsical world of computers, as well as the founder of Rails Girls, a global movement to teach young women programming in over 260 cities. She loves Muji, Zelda Fitzgerald, software and sparkly things.

Ep. 61 - Brianna and Brianna's Mother (Brianna Fugate)

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

When she goes to events, she no longer writes her own name on her name tag. Instead, she writes “Brianna’s Mother”. Ronique, the proud single-mother of a coder talks to us about how she supports and advocates for her daughter, and what it’s been like to see her only child take advantage of the many tech opportunities she’s come by. Brianna tells us how she switched from being pre-med to computer science, and got over the intimidation of sitting next to kids who’d discovered coding long before she knew what programming was all about. She tells us her inspiring stories of working at the White House under US CTO Megan Smith, and coding alongside Googlers, all as a college undergrad.

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Brianna Fugate

Brianna is a computer science major at Spelman College.

Ep. 60 - Impostor Syndrome (Alicia Liu)

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Software Engineer Alicia Liu has thought a lot about Impostor Syndrome. In fact, she’s written three blog posts, one each year for the past three years, that have illustrated her own relationship with the term and its relevance in the tech community. We dissect those three blog posts and discuss the role of Impostor Syndrome in different parts of a programmer’s journey.

Alicia Liu

Alicia Liu is a full-stack software engineer who has been working in early-stage startups since co-founding her first company in 2007. She writes and speaks on topics ranging from best practices in front-end development to diversity and culture in the tech industry.

Ep. 59 - The GitHub Nomad (John Britton)

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

For now, home is Lisbon, Portugal. But as a full-time nomad, who knows where developer John Britton will be a few months from now. John tell us what it’s like to work remotely from various countries while being GitHub’s Education Liaison, a fascinating role that involves coding, marketing, and lots of GitHub tutorials.

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John Britton

John Britton is a nomadic software developer and Education Liaison at GitHub.

Ep. 58 - From Journalist to Developer (Amy Simmons)

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Amy Simmons spent six years working as a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC of Australia. As an online journalism, she thought it was a good idea to learn how to code and use that to tell her stories in a new way. So with ABC’s support, she enrolled in a bootcamp, only to find out half way through that she no longer wanted to do journalism at all. Amy tells us how she made the leap into full-time developer and how she found her job as a .NET and C# programmer.

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Amy Simmons

Amy Simmons is a full-stack web developer in Sydney, Australia. She recently changed careers after a six-year stint at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as an online journalist/digital producer.

Ep. 57 - Podcasting with Changelog (Adam Stacoviak, Jerod Santo)

Mon, 12 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Developer Adam Stacoviak started Changelog seven years ago, and in that time has built a community and a media company, with the podcast taking center stage. He and his co-host Jerod Santo talk to us about what it's been like building the show over the years, how they escaped podfade, and how they moved from podcast into video.

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TwilioQuest (sponsor)
DevDiscuss (sponsor)
DevNews (sponsor)
Ambassador Labs (sponsor)
Rudderstack (sponsor)
New Relic (sponsor)
Changelog Ep. 176: CodeNewbie and Community with Saron Yitbarek
Beyond Code
Codeland Conf
Codeland 2019

Adam Stacoviak

Adam Stacoviak is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Changelog.

Jerod Santo

Bio: Jerod Santo owns and operates a tiny dev shop from his home in Omaha, Nebraska. He co-hosts The Changelog, co-founded a web school, and co-wrangles four kids alongside his wife, Rachel.

Ep. 56 - From Temp to Head of Design (Julie Ann Horvath)

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

She got into tech by doing temporary data entry at the then little-known startup, Yammer. But she saw the opportunities available to those who could code, so she taught herself, taking on more responsibilities to finally become a designer and developer. Julie Ann Horvath opens up about her humble beginnings, what she learned from her controversial exit at Github last year, and the role she plays as an advocate for a more inclusive tech industry.

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Julie Ann Horvath

Julie Ann Horvath is the Head of Design at Clef, where she marries her passion for design and coding, and the creator of Passion Projects, a talk series designed to highlight women in the tech industry.

Ep. 55 - Open Source Contributor (Steve Klabnik)

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

The first open source project Steve Klabnik got involved with was a pretty big one - he took on Hackety Hack, the beloved application that helped kids learn to code. He only meant to help out, but when no else joined, he ended up running the show, and diving headfirst into the open source world. Now, many years and pull requests later, Klabnik shares how he went from Hackety Hack to contributing to Rails to working full-time on the Rust language, and gives us a beginner-friendly overview of the open source world and many lessons he’s learned along the way.

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Steve Klabnik

Prolific open source contributor, Rust core team, Author of "Rails 4 in Action," "Designing Hypermedia APIs", and "The Rust Programming Language".

Ep. 54 - The Hacker (Jonathan Barronville)

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Jonathan hacks away on his search engine at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, fine tuning it for the fashion queries his startup handles. He doesn’t have a computer science degree. He doesn’t have a degree at all. But at 21, he’s been able to hack together a tech education that involves reading academic papers, implementing solutions he finds, and lots and lots of searching. He shares his process for hacking and what he’s learned along the way.

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Jonathan Barronville

Jonathan Barronville is a 21-year-old Haitian hacker. He enjoys learning new things and then teaching them to you. Although most of his experience is in web development, Jonathan enjoys low-level systems hacking, database theory, and distributed systems problems. He tweets about apple juice on Twitter at @jonathanmarvens.

Ep. 53 - Peruvian Developer (Andrea Del Rio)

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Andrea Del Rio talks about her role as a Mozilla Open Web fellow, how she’s using her technical skills to help civil society organizations, and what it’s like to build products for the Association for Progressive Communications.

Andrea Del Rio

Andrea Del Rio is a Peruvian developer who is passionate about helping women and minorities become producers of technology. She is also an Open Web advocate.

Ep. 52 - International Dev (Ayori Selassie)

Mon, 07 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Ayori Selassie talks to us about how she navigated her career at Salesforce, moving seamlessly across different roles developing her technical and management skills. She also tells us about her work and time spent in different countries working in the tech space, and how her participation in the State Department’s TechWomen Program helped her better understand the international tech landscape.

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Ayori Selassie

Ayori is the author the The Selfpreneur’s Field Guide (soon to be published), and creator of the Selassie 4D Method, a personal development framework powered by machine learning. She is a self taught software developer since age 11 and has worked in tech sector for the last 17 years.

Ep. 51 - The Pragmatic Programmer - Part II (Dave Thomas)

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400

In part two of our interview with Dave Thomas, we dive into some of his other contributions to the community, including coining the phrase “DRY” (Don’t Repeat Yourself), popularizing the code kata, and signing the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. We explore the impacts of these contributions, particularly to code newbie community.

Dave Thomas

Dave is a programmer and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University

Ep. 50 - The Pragmatic Programmer Part I (Dave Thomas)

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Dave Thomas has done a lot for the programming community. He coined the phrase “DRY” (Don’t Repeat Yourself). He popularized the idea of code katas. He was one of the signers of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, and he's the founder of the Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company. But despite all that, he refers to himself as simply a programmer. In this episode, he shares his own coding journey, gives advice to new developers on how to navigate the mountain of information available, and how he ended up becoming a publisher.

Dave Thomas

Dave is a programmer and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University

Ep. 49 - Getting The Job (Suzan Bond)

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Suzan Bond calls herself a band manager, the title that captures the wide range of activities she does in her work helping developers grow their careers. Her marketing, negotiating, and career management advice is filled with solemn, reflective thoughts on how to think through your first programming job, and the steps you can take to better navigate your career.

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Suzan Bond

Suzan is a trained executive coach and a CMO-for-Hire for tech companies and software developers.

Ep. 48 - Freelance to Full-Time (Nicole Dominguez)

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Nicole Dominguez taught herself to code at a pretty young age, and by the time she was in high school, she had paying freelance clients. At 21, she reflects on her freelance days, what she’s learned as a teacher helping others learn coding concepts, and how she was able to teach herself enough to get to her current role as product designer and front-end developer.

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Nicole Dominguez

Nicole Dominguez is the Senior Product Designer and Front End Developer at Sawhorse Media. As a self-taught technologist, she is very passionate about art, design and development. She regularly participates in the New York tech community as a mentor, meetup organizer and instructor.

Ep. 47 - Design and Dev (Una Kravetz)

Mon, 03 Aug 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Una Kravets found her love of design at a young age, publishing homemade magazines complete with polls and special color editions and handing them out to her classmates. Now, she translates that love of design to code, building prototypes and design systems at IBM Design. She talks to us about her love of design and dev, how she open sourced her personal goals, and how CodeNewbies can better manage and achieve their coding goals.

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Una Kravetz

Una Kravets is a front end developer, architecting design systems and building software prototypes at IBM Design, Austin. She’s a core member of the Design Open Organization and founder of both the Sassy DC and ATX Sass Meetups.

Ep. 46 - Self Taught Programmer (Courteney Ervin)

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Courteney Ervin taught herself to code. She did it in her spare time, finding hours late at night and on weekends to grow her skills. And in that time, she went to her first hackathon, made her first open source contribution, taught others to code, and finally found herself in a full-time role as a developer. She tells us about her journey, and the key moments that helped her advance her tech career, and shares advice on how others can make the most of their self-taught journey.

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Courteney Ervin

Courteney Ervin codes in the space where open source meets social good. She’s a developer at the New York Public Library, where she supports accessible literacy in NYC and beyond.

Ep. 45 - Design Director (Kristy Tillman)

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400

When you ask Kristy Tillman about design, she doesn’t just talk about designing for a screen. She touches on space, rooms, fliers, products, both physical and digital. Her fluid, all-encompassing concept of design might be new to our CodeNewbie community, but it’s crucial for her role as Design Director for the Society of Grownups. In this episode, we talk about her design process, how she hires for design roles, and what CodeNewbies can do when designing their own products.

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Kristy Tillman

Kristy serves as the design director for Society of Grownups, a new venture that is changing the face of financial literacy for the young adult set. There she is dedicated to crafting and inspiring the brand across both the digital and physical experiences. Prior to Society of Grownups, Kristy was a designer at IDEO, an award winning global global design firm. There she worked on variety of projects ranging from brand to digital design.

Ep. 44 - CSS Tricks (Chris Coyier)

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400

It took years for CSS Tricks to become the popular front-end and design resource it is today. Creator Chris Coyier talks about starting the website in 2007 and how it’s grown to be the incredible front end community it is now. He also talks about his other project, CodePen, and how building community has been an integral part of the tool.

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Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier is the man behind the very popular CSS-Tricks website, which has helped new—and seasoned—developers sharpen their client-side, and sometimes server-side, skills for more than half a decade. Chris is the designer and co-founder for CodePen, co-authored a book, Digging into WordPress, co-hosts ShopTalk Show with Dave Ruppert, and speaks at international events.

Ep. 43 - Code and Hip Hop (Earl Bey)

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Programmer Earl Bey has always been a hip hop fan. He’s been rapping since he was ten, and even had his own manager. When he was later introduced to tech, he dove into coding full time. Now, he blends his new passion for code with his love for hip hop. He talks about how he uses rap to retain new programming concepts, and gives us a taste of his lyrical skills in a performance of code-infused rhymes on FizzBuzz and Rails.

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Earl Bey

I am a young man on a path of self mastery and enlightenment, using programming as my walking stick. Since I was young I’ve loved music and hip hop and it is part of my mission to bring these two worlds together.

Ep. 42 - POODR And Beyond - Part II (Sandi Metz)

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Sandi Metz describes herself as an "accidental author." Accident or not, her book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) is beloved in the ruby community, and she's used her ability to break down complex coding topics to build the second phase of her programming career, one focused on teaching and speaking. In part II of this two-part interview, she talks to us about speaking, how she prepares for her talks and her plans for her upcoming book.

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Sandi Metz

Sandi is a programmer. In the past 30+ years, she has written innumerable applications, many of which are still running today. Sandi is a master of practical solutions that produce working software that is easy to change. She focuses on simplicity via clear code and straightforward explanations, and strives for these in her software and her writing.

Ep. 41 - POODR And Beyond - Part I (Sandi Metz)

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Sandi Metz describes herself as an "accidental author." Accident or not, her book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) is beloved in the ruby community, and she's used her ability to break down complex coding topics to build the second phase of her programming career, one focused on teaching and speaking. In part I of this two-part interview, she talks to us about life pre- and post-POODR, what makes her a great teacher, and why she it took her four years to write POODR.

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Sandi Metz

Ep. 40 - From Cars To Code (Angel Jose)

Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Angel Jose went from selling cars to a working as a developer in under eight months. He talks to us about making that transition, how he found his job, and how he deals with self doubt as a new programmer.

Angel Jose

Angel learned to code at the FirehoseProject and made a jump from a prior life as a contractor and car dealer into on as a software developer. He currently works at Sensay.it in Venice Beach, CA and is a proud member of the CodeNewbie community. You can find him hosting Ruby-Mondays or at @ajose01 in twitter.

Ep. 39 - From Coding To Venture Capital (Andrew Chen)

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

He knew how to code, but when he graduated school, Andrew Chen decided to go into venture capital. Since then, he’s used his technical background to become an advisor and investor in many tech startups, including Dropbox, Product Hunt, and AngelList. He talks with us about how he leveraged his coding skills to being a tech advisor, how he’s maintained a solid blog for over eight years, and why you don’t have to be a great coder to build something great.

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Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen is a writer and entrepreneur focused on mobile products, metrics, and user growth. He is an advisor/investor for tech startups including AngelList, AppSumo, Barkbox, Cardpool (acq. by Safeway), Dropbox, Frankly (TSX.V:TLK), Gravity (acq. by AOL), Grovo, Kiva, Product Hunt, Qualaroo, Qik (acq. by Skype), Secret, Wanelo, and ZenPayroll.

Ep. 38 - Hacker Hours (Aidan Feldman)

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

When developer Aidan Feldman had a line of people waiting for their turn to get coding help from him, he decided to try a different format. Instead of one-on-one tutoring, how about open office hours for anyone coding to come together and work on their skills? And that was the beginning of Hacker Hours. Aidan tells us how he’s built Hacker Hours over the past few years, and how he manages to keep the community accessible and incredibly welcoming.

Aidan Feldman

Aidan Feldman is a programmer by day, modern dancer by night. When not building open source software in and for the federal government at 18F, Aidan organizes meetups and teaches at NYU.

Ep. 37 - From Skates To Code (Aimee Knight)

Mon, 25 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400

She used to be a professional figure skater. And a few years ago, she decided to hang up her skates and trade them in for some code. Software developer Aimee Knight tells us what it was like to transition into tech, how she got her first dev job, and how being a professional athlete has affected her coding journey.

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Aimee Knight

Aimee Knight is a figure skater turned software developer, and a panelist on the JavaScript Jabber, and Angular Air podcasts. After teaching herself the basics and attending a six month bootcamp, she now works at Message Systems in Baltimore Maryland building out email infrastructure in Node.js and Angular.js for companies like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Ep. 36 - Creating jQuery (John Resig)

Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400

John Resig, creator of jQuery, talks about what it was like to build the most popular javascript library and then walk away from it five years later to follow his passion for education. We unpack what it’s like to maintain such a popular toolkit, how he feels about books, how he takes on his own learning, and why he made the Women Who Code twitter list.

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John Resig

John Resig is a developer at Khan Academy and the creator of the jQuery JavaScript library. He’s also the author of the books Pro JavaScript Techniques and Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja.

Ep. 35 - Stellar (David Mazières)

Mon, 11 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400

David Mazières, Chief Scientist at Stellar, talks to us about his work at the Stellar foundation building software to expand financial access. We also talk about how he uses temporary email addresses to ward off spammers, how he started coding in the fourth grade, and why he doesn’t think you need a computer science degree to make an impact in tech.

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David Mazières

David Mazières is a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he leads the Secure Computer Systems research group. He also serves as the Chief Scientist of both Stellar Development Foundation and GitStar, Inc.

Ep. 34 - Newbie Story: LaToya Allen (LaToya Allen)

Mon, 04 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400

For our first Newbie Story, we talk to LaToya Allen, junior software engineer at Avant, a fast-growing Chicago startup. She tells us how she went from bartending to becoming an apprentice, and got her first full-time engineering job in just three weeks.

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LaToya Allen

LaToya is a junior software engineer at Avant where she helps to detect and deter fraud. She is also a co-organizer of Chicago Ruby Hack Night, Windy City Rails organizer, and Girl Develop It volunteer. If you meet her, you should offer her tacos.

Ep. 33 - Detroit Water Project (Tiffani Bell)

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

When developer Tiffani Bell first heard about the water crisis in Detroit from a news article in the Atlantic, she was shocked. So she rolled up her developer sleeves and put up a page to help people who’s water had been shut off. Now, that page has become a full Y Combinator backed non-profit, and she’s the executive director. We talk about civic hacking, the technical challenges she had to overcome to make it work, and the impact her project has made to the lives of many in Detroit.

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Tiffani Bell

Tiffani Bell is the founder and executive director of the Detroit Water Project. She is also a developer and was a Code For America fellow.

Ep. 32 - Rockbot (Raquel Velez)

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

You probably know her as rockbot, the username that captures her passion for robotics. In this episode, developer Raquel Velez shares that passion with us, telling us all about competing in the DARPA Grand Challenge, how she feels about self-driving cars, and gives us a beginner-friendly walkthrough of how a robot works.

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Raquel Velez

Raquel Vélez is a Senior Software Developer at npm, Inc. in Oakland, CA. She is fairly certain that laughter and chocolate will cure everything, and uses robots as an excuse to get people excited about code and math.

Ep. 31 - Girl Develop It (Corinne Warnshuis)

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Corinne Warnshuis sat in a Girl Develop It workshop to learn to code. Her love for the community and her community-building skills propelled her from coding newbie to Executive Director of Girl Develop It. She talks to us about her mission to make coding more accessible to women, how to be a good ally, and how the diversity movement in tech has impacted her work.

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Corinne Warnshuis

Bio

Ep. 30 - The Not-Bootcamp (Jeff Casimir)

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

At a time when people are lining up to get accepted by a programming bootcamp, Jeff Casimir decided to start one that is non-profit. But he doesn't like the term bootcamp -- he prefers "program." We talk about why he decided to make the Turing School non-profit, the complications of quantifying students' skills, and how Turing School approaches its programming curriculum.

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Jeff Casimir

Bio

Ep. 29 - A Children's Makerspace (Gokul Krishnan)

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Gokul Krishnan started the first makerspace in a children's hospital. Working with kids who have chronic illnesses like cystic fibrosis, he created a way for them to be makers. We talk about the benefits of making in the context of being in a hospital, how he approaches learning, and what kinds of tech projects these kids have made.

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Gokul Krishnan

Gokul Krishnan is a Phd Student in the Learning Sciences at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education in Nashville, TN. In his research, he focuses on the learning of preteen children who must repeatedly spend periods of several days or weeks in a hospital setting because they require treatment for Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic disease.

Ep. 28 - Coding Printers (Kate Donahue)

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400

She was trained to be a web developer. But months after graduating from bootcamp, she's at Makerbot, helping build the software that their 3D printers need to do their job. It's an interesting change -- she's using python instead of ruby, and learned C++ too. We talk about what it's like to be a software developer in a world of hardware, how the two jobs compare, and what some of the challenges are.

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Kate Donahue

Kate is a software developer at MakerBot and bootcamp grad.

Ep. 27 - Intro to Raspberry Pi (Matt Richardson)

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Matt Richardson, evangelist for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, talks to us about the little computer that's making hardware accessible to more people. We talk about what the Raspberry Pi is, discuss some beginner friendly projects, and chat about a cool bike-based hardware project he made. If you've been thinking about getting started with the Raspberry Pi, this episode is for you.

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Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson is a hardware enthusiast, spreading the maker spirit as an evangelist at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Ep. 26 - The Hardware Marketplace (Julia Grace)

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Julia Grace talks to us about Tindie, the hardware marketplace where creators and hardware enthusiasts can come together to share their goods. We talk about the challenges of building a hardware platform, the different problems these makers are solving, and how software and hardware compare when it comes to accessibility.

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Julia Grace

Julia is the CTO at Tindie (tindie.com) where she built the engineering team and still writes Python (and the occasional JavaScript) every day. In her spare time she messes around with hardware, runs the occasional half marathon and enjoys a great cup of coffee.

Ep. 25 - From Software To Hardware (Sara Chipps)

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0500

It started at a conference. When Sara Chipps sat in the audience and watched a speaker use JavaScript to interact with a smoke detector, she was entranced. She left with a bag of LEDs, and a new love for hardware that led to her ultimately starting her hardware company Jewliebots. She talks to us about her transition from software developer to hardware CEO, the differences she's seen between building software and hardware, and what it's like to build a product for teenage girls.

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Sara Chipps

Sara Chipps is CEO of Jewliebots and lover of JavaScript

Ep. 24 - Monsters And Code (Sarah Frisk)

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Developer Sarah Frisk uses her incredible drawing skills to teach coding tools and concepts like git through her comic, Monster Markup Manual. We talk about her love of drawing, how art and code come together, and how monsters can do a great job of learning to code.

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Sarah Frisk

Sarah is a software developer, comic artist, Project Lead for jQuery Foundation’s Chassis project, and indie game dev enthusiast. She has two comics, Monster Markup Manual and Tavern Wenches.

Ep. 23 - Ask CodeNewbie (Scott Hanselman, Tiffany Peon)

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

In our first live broadcast of the podcast, we brought on developers Scott Hanselman and Tiffany Peon to chat about hot topics in the CodeNewbie community. We talked about finding a dev job, code mentorship, and our thoughts on Zed Shaw’s critiques of programming bootcamps. We recorded live on http://twitch.tv/codenewbie, and we loved having you in the chatroom to ask questions, comment, and join us in the conversation. And we’ll definitely do another live edition of Ask CodeNewbie soon. Hope you can join us then!

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Scott Hanselman

Scott is a web developer who has been blogging at http://hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, Oregon.

Tiffany Peon

Tiffany is a Flatiron School grad turned Ruby developer at Constant Contact in NYC. She'll talk your ear off about testing API integrations, southern food, and TV sitcoms.

Ep. 22 - Intro to UX (Catt Small)

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Catt Small gives us a great intro to UX (user experience) design, including insight on her design process, how she works with users to create great digital experiences, and how code newbies can get started in UX design. She also tells us how she used Leap Motion to design a music instrument you can play using gestures. Lots of great stuff in this episode.

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Catt Small

Catt is a game maker, product designer, and developer. She is currently making awesome things at SoundCloud and teaching game development via The Code Liberation Foundation.

Ep. 21 - Teaching Kids To Code (Rebecca Garcia)

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Developer Rebecca Garcia had always loved computers. At a young age, she went to MIT's two-week computer science camp. She was surrounded by kids who love to build and make, just like her. But at over $1K a week, it wasn't a very accessible way for kids to learn to code. So when she learned about Coder Dojo many years later, an organization that creates free coding workshops for youth, she wanted in. So she started CoderDojo NYC two years ago, and has been helping kids from ages 7-17 learn to code. We talk about the incredible things these kids have been able to accomplish in these workshops, her thoughts on teaching code in public school, and how she found her own way as a self-taught developer to her current role as a developer evangelist at Squarespace.

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Rebecca Garcia

Rebecca Garcia is a Developer Evangelist at Squarespace, former CTO and self-taught developer. Her background is in non-profits, community development and technology education.

Ep. 20 - Accessibility (Joseph McLarty)

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Joseph McLarty, developer and accessibility advocate, talks to us about issues of accessibility and how we can create, and remove, invisible barriers that keep people from accessing the web. We talk about tools like screen readers, and how as developers, we can do simple things like use semantic tags that would help many people. We also touch on the legal issues on accessibility, and how we can learn more about the topic and ways we can create a more accessible web for all.

Joseph McLarty

Joseph is a front end web developer at the City of Toronto with a passion for web standards & accessibility. When not playing video games he’s focused on creating accessible web content, applications and sharing accessibility knowledge.

Ep. 19 - The Hard Way (Zed A. Shaw)

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Zed A. Shaw, developer and author of the Learn the Hard Way series, talks to us about how to learn to code, his own approach to learning a new programming language, and why he’s not a fan of programming bootcamps. He also answers a few questions from the CodeNewbie community, including what the A in his name stands for.

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Zed A. Shaw

Zed A. Shaw is the author of The Hard Way Series of books Learn Python The Hard Way, Learn Ruby The Hard Way, and many more. He's a veteran programmer who has been coding for 20+ years and has written software used by many companies and other programmers. His books teaching programming are read all over the world by millions of people a year. He is a musician, builds guitars, and most recently a beginner painter.

Ep. 18 - Autotune, Inclusivity, and Getting A Job (Vanessa Hurst)

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Vanessa Hurst, founder of CodeMontage, has spent a lot of her career making tech an inclusive space for all people, particularly women. We talk about how she created that space through Girl Develop It, the non-profit she founded, her perspective on managing your career as a code newbie, and particularly about getting that first tech job.

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Vanessa Hurst

Vanessa Hurst is the Founder & CEO of CodeMontage, which empowers coders to improve their impact on the world. She co-founded and advises Girl Develop It and WriteSpeakCode, and previously worked as a database and analytics engineer. Vanessa loves stationery, gratitude, marshmallows, and really big ideas.

Ep. 17 - Getting Involved (Scott Hanselman)

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

You may have heard of Scott Hanselman from his own podcasts and his very popular tech blog. We talk to him about how he creates all this helpful tech content, why it's important to be a social developer, and how we can evaluate our own coding abilities.

Scott Hanselman

Ep. 16 - Code Ghost (Jenn Schiffer)

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Engineer and artist Jenn Schiffer talks to us about the Vart Institute, the side project that blends her love of art with her love of javascript. We dive into how she brings those two worlds together, what the difference is between teaching an eight-year old and an eighty-year old how to code (she’s taught both), and about her experience working on the academic side of computer science.

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Jenn Schiffer

Jenn Schiffer is an engineer, artist, and tech satirist who loves open web technology and open source, as well as 8-bit art and not taking the web development world so seriously

Ep. 15 - Intro to DevOps (Christopher Webber)

Sun, 21 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

There's more to coding than just your code. In this episode, we talk to developer Chris Webber about devops, and all of the infrastructure-related things that are also important in getting your app to work. We untangle some devops concepts, like feature flats and the different programming environments, and talk through what a code newbie should know about devops when working on their code projects.

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Christopher Webber

Christopher Webber is a Community Software Engineer at Chef Software and a lover of all things *Ops. Chris is an organizer of HangOps, LA DevOps, SysAdvent, and has a podcast called Ops All The Things.

Ep. 14 - On Testing (Noel Rappin)

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

You've probably heard of this idea of testing. Or maybe you've just heard of test driven development and you're not really sure what it is or whether or not you should learn about it. In this episode, Noel Rappin, developer and author of the new book "Rails 4 Test Prescriptions" gives us a newbie-friendly explanation of the world of testing. We talk about different types of tests, we walk through an example of how you can approach something with tests first, and why test driven development can be a great tool for planning and organizing your code, especially as a code newbie.

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Noel Rappin

Ep. 13 - The Not-So-Amateur Programmer (Lauren Orsini)

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

If you're looking for solid, newbie-friendly guides to tech, Lauren Orsini's got you covered. As a tech journalist for ReadWrite, she's written some CodeNewbie favorites, including a great explanation of git and GIthub. We talk about her writing process, how she tackles a new piece of technology and learns it well enough to write about it, and why she calls herself an "amateur" programmer and really needs to stop.

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Lauren Orsini

Lauren Orsini is a technology journalist and total geek. Her first book on Raspberry Pi hardware hacking comes out next month.

Ep. 12 - Mother Coders (Tina Lee)

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

When it was time for lunch, the other students ate and got to know each other while Tina Lee searched for a place to nurse her baby. The only one she found in that coding workshop was the cold, dark, filthy room where the company's developers slept - at least that's what it looked like. And she sat, frustrated that in a workshop that was meant to be inclusive, she still felt very much alone. So she started Mother Coders, the tech education program designed for mothers who want to gain technical skills. We talk about the challenges of being a mom learning to code, how organizers can make their tech events more mom-friendly, and how to make coding more accessible to all mothers.

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Tina Lee

Ep. 11 - 24 Pull Requests (Andrew Nesbitt)

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

It was just a static webpage, telling you to get in the holiday spirit by making open source contributions. But 24 Pull Requests soon became its own open source project, with people adding features to make it fun and easy to make those contributions. We talk to creator Andrew Nestbitt about how code newbies can get started in making open source contributions, why getting involved in open source is a great idea, and how to get over the intimidation you might feel at the prospect of making your first pull request.

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Andrew Nesbitt

Andrew is a freelance software developer, based in Bath, England. He spends most of his days programming in Ruby, playing with JavaScript, contributing to open source projects and organising local developer user groups.

Ep. 10 - Nitpicks and Devils (Katrina Owen)

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

She calls them nitpicks, her term for the code reviews people get on exercism.io. It's a platform that developer Katrina Owen created to help people get mentorship and feedback on their code. It started as a project for her own students, but grew into something much more. Katrina talks to us about building her platform to help people become better programmers, how she went from being a secretary to studying biology to being a programmer, and how code newbies can make the most of exercism.io.

Katrina Owen

Ep. 9 - How To Build A Product (Poornima Vijayashanker)

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

Building a web product was a lot harder in 2006 than it is now. Poornima Vijayashanker tells us what it was like to code back in those days as founding engineer at Mint, an app that later sold to Intuit for $170 million. Since then, she's been helping people better understand the product development process through her blog and company Femgineer. We talk about what code newbies should think about when building a new app, whether for fun or for profit, and how it takes more than code to make a great product.

Poornima Vijayashanker

Poornima Vijayashanker is currently the founder at Femgineer, an education startup that empowers engineers, founders, and product leads to transform their ideas into tangible, high-impact products. Poornima has also been a lecturer at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and an entrepreneur-in-residence at 500 Startups. She was the founding engineer at Mint.com, where she helped build, launch, and scale the product until its acquisition in 2009.

Ep. 8 - From Student Project to Big App (William Jeffries)

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0500

When William Jeffries had to think of a project to work on as a bootcamp student, he decided to build an app that could detect and report temperatures in apartments when they dropped below a certain degree. His mission was to help people find heat in the winter, and he called it Heat Seek. In a few months, his student project grew past the classroom walls, getting the attention of city officals, entrepreneurs, and citizens excited to help. William tells us how the technology works, how he built the app as he was learning to code himself, and about the mindset that helped him get through the doubts many newbies face.

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William Jeffries

William is a software consultant at Sungard Consulting Services. He is also a yogi, a civic hacker, and a lover of hammocks.

Ep. 7 - Meteor (Ciara Burkett)

Sun, 26 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

When Ciara Burkett saw the movie 'Hackers' at age five, she told her mother she wanted to be just that - a hacker. But it wasn't until exploring liberal arts in college that she remembered her early fascination with tech. So she gave finally it a try. Now a Meteor developer and teacher, she tells us about organizing tech meetups, why she loves the beginner-friendly, javascript framework, and shares some of her own struggles learning to code.

Ciara Burkett

Ciara Burkett is an ambitious Meteor developer and instructor constantly getting herself mixed up in all types of shenanigans. She's also in love with color psychology, typography, and browser gaming!

Ep. 6 - Comics and Code (Rachel Nabors)

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Rachel Nabors started as a cartoonist. But when she needed jaw surgery and didn't have the health insurance to get it, she decided it was time to get more lucrative skills. Now a cartoonist, developer, and speaker, she tells us about her transition into programming, how to tell stories with code, and what it means to be an interaction developer.

Rachel Nabors

Rachel Nabors is an interaction developer and award-winning cartoonist, who deftly blends the art of traditional storytelling with digital media to 'tell better stories through code' at her company Tin Magpie.

Ep. 5 - Speaking of Speaking (Marty Haught)

Sun, 12 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Marty Haught, director of Ruby Central, the non-profit that organizes Rails Conf and Ruby Conf has read and reviewed over 1,000 talk proposals, and organize several regional and national conferences for developers. We talk about how to write a great talk proposal, how to make conferences a welcome and inclusive space for all developers, and how to prepare for your next big talk.

Marty Haught

Entrepreneur, Software Architect/Engineer, Software Conference Organizer, Former Musician and Infantryman, Eagle Scout, Food and Drink Adventurer

Ep. 4 - Wearing All The Hats (Kinsey Ann Durham)

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Self-taught developer Kinsey Ann Durham didn't stop at learning to code. In two years, she's spoken at tech conferences around the world, started an organization in Kenya to help women entrepreneurs (and of course wrote the software it runs on), and organizes events focused on women in tech in her town in Colorado. We talk about what it was like to give her first tech talk, how to use your coding skills for social good causes, and how she handled someone telling her that she should be a secretary instead. Glad she didn't listen.

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Kinsey Ann Durham

Kinsey is a developer at GoSpotCheck and is actively involved with leading WomenWhoCode, Railsbridge. She speaks at conferences around the world, but loves being at home with her dog in Denver, Colorado.