DevEd: Recent Episodes
DevChat.tv
A weekly podcast about the world of programming and all things related to developer education within the various communities of web development. All levels from beginner to advanced welcome.
This episode of the DevEd podcast is joined by special guest Thomas Desmond. Thomas is a software engineer currently working with .NET and Angular, has been a university instructor for three years and has a course coming up on Thinkster.io - Creating an API with ASP.NET Core. He defines ASP.NET, and describes its relation to ASP.NET Core. He explains the process of working with .NET on a Mac, differences between Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio Mac 2019, and the learning curve involved in C# and types languages such as TypeScript.
The panelists share their learning transition from .NET to other languages and frameworks such as Angular, React and vice versa. They talk about the hurdles as well as effective strategies in learning ASP.NET, why is .NET considered to be Microsoft-specific, how does it compare to technologies such as Rails or Node, cloud development, and discuss reasons why bootcamps don't generally focus on learning ASP.NET. They end the show with picks.
Panel * Brooke Avery * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane * Jesse Sanders * Lukas Ruebbelke
Joined by special guest: Thomas Desmond
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Ruby Rogues * CacheFly
____________________________________________________________
"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today!
____________________________________________________________ Links * Thomas's Twitter * Creating a C# ASP.Net Core API - Introduction
Picks Thomas Desmond:
- The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
Luis Hernandez:
- Visual Studio Dev Essentials
- ASP.NET
Mike Dane:
- Alta 21 Pack
Jesse Sanders:
- Taxi Driver
- Bike Helmet
- Garmin watches
Lukas Ruebbelke:
- Ed Motta
- Kurt Elling
Brooke Avery:
- Noah Kahan - Busyhead
- Biteable
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
Question #1: What is ASP.NET?
Open source web application framework used to develop and build web apps using .NET.
Question #2: How to use .NET on a Mac?
Use Visual Studio for Mac, good support available.
Question #3: What are some hurdles in learning ASP.NET?
Understanding and reinforcing the idea that there is an API between the application and the server.
Question #4: What are some effective tips while learning .NET?
Do a lot of examples, repetitions, discuss questions with other students.
In this episode of the DevEd podcast, the panel discusses Testing and Test Driven Development. They start the conversation by talking about automated testing with the help of unit tests using various tools available. Luis explains the terms regression testing, refactoring, mocking, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Everyone shares their experience with testing, mainly how and when they started learning automated testing and their journey with it so far. They then dive into the learning aspect of testing including some of the best ways to learn unit testing and give great tips and tools along the way. The next topic discussed is Test Driven Development - the definition, division of the development community into those support the methodology and those who do not, and more importantly, how effective it can be, it's benefits and drawbacks and the comparison between TDD and BDD (Behaviour Driven Development).
They also talk about mocking, how testing can improve the quality of applications, and visual testing. In the end, they each mention their most favourite and least favorite testing tools.
Panel * Joe Eames * Luis Hernandez * Jesse Sanders * Mike Dane * Sam Julien
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in Angular
____________________________________________________________
"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today!
____________________________________________________________ Links * Uncle Bob - TDD * The Magic Tricks of Testing by Sandi Metz * Code Kata * TDD Kata 1 - Roy Osherove * cypress * Jest * SuperTest * Testable
Picks Mike Dane:
- YouTube Music
Luis Hernandez:
- Microsoft Whiteboard
Jesse Sanders:
- Tile for Keys
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - Final Trailer Easter Eggs
Sam Julien:
- Strange Planet - Nathan W. Pyle
Joe Eames:
- Stackbit
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
Question #1: What is regression and refactoring?
Regression is handling new changes that affect or break legacy code, refactoring is changing the way code is written without changing the functionality.
Question #2: What are ways to learn unit-testing?
Learning by example, practicing using open source codes, studying existing tests from a large codebase, trying to increase code-coverage, writing simple math based tests and Code Katas.
Question #3: What is TDD?
Writing tests before designing the implementation code, red-green-refactor approach - write a test and make it fail (red), write code to make it pass (green) and eventually refactor the code.
Question #4: What is a mock?
Artificially created responses that can be used and controlled by tests.
"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is available on Amazon. Get your copy here today only for $2.99!
In this episode of the DevEd podcast, David Graham - founder and CEO of Code Ninjas, introduces himself, gives a background of how he got into software development, briefly describes his vision that led to the creation of Code Ninjas and the interesting work that goes on there. The company essentially consists of coding centres for kids in multiple locations throughout the US, with cool learning programs catering to several age groups, its main purpose being teaching hands on software development combined with a lot of fun.
The panelists share their views about the current state of programming education in schools, if it is adequate, and what can be done to supplement it. They discuss that it is important to teach kids how to think and how to solve problems rather than relying on memory based learning. They mention ways to get students excited about programming, different learning tools and platforms, and similarities and differences in learning patterns between kids and adult learners.They talk on why should everyone care about coding education for kids, even those who do not have them, and how people can help out in getting youth involved in software development. They also discuss if there is anything they wish had existed to aid learning for young individuals also how it would help them in return. In the end, David explains how can people volunteer for Code Ninjas.
Panel * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Mike Dane * Preston Lamb
Joined by speacial guest: David Graham
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * iPhreaks - Devchat.tv * Views on Vue - Devchat.tv
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $1.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Links * Code Ninjas * Code.org * CodeCombat
Picks Mike Dane:
- JBL Clip 3
David Graham:
- The Wheel of Time
Preston Lamb:
- Disney+
Brooke Avery:
- Harry Potter Kano Coding Kit
Sam Julien:
- Create Your Own Hacker Nebula with Angular Blockly by Jeff Whelpley & Madelyn Whelpley
- Blockly
- ng-club
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
In this episode of the DevEd podcast, Brooke interviews Sam on Gatsby, and Sam's new course on Thinkster.io. Sam works in Developer Relations at Auth0, is a Google Developer Expert for Angular and Web Technologies, and is very passionate about teaching. Sam starts by explaining in detail what Gatsby is and what it is used for. He talks on the performance benefits of Gatsby, its comparison to React in terms of tooling and usage as well as learning, and if there are any tools or technologies needed as prerequisites to use Gatsby. He elaborates on what made him learn Gatsby, how it helped him advance his programming career, and both his favorite and not so favorite aspects of Gatsby. He then talks at length about his course - Up and Running with Gatsby, reasons he chose this topic specifically, the course design, and compelling reasons why people should go for it. In the end, he shares his thoughts on how Gatsby is getting popular and can help speed up development in enterprise companies and large organizations.
Panel * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien
Sponsors * Thinkster.io
Links * Up and Running with Gatsby: Introduction
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
In this week's episode of the DevEd podcast, the panelists talk on comments in programming. To give a context of the chosen topic, Joe mentions that he sends out regular newsletters to Thinkser.io subscribers related to a variety of concepts, and has recently been sending out some on code smells, in one of which he talks about commenting. He gives an idea of what code smells are, and shares his opinion on using comments. His point of view is that a comment can be looked at as a failure or an inability to express the code functionality or even the technology involved, or is needed to make the code completely readable to other programmers. Comments can become out of date or get replaced.
The other panelists join in the discussion on whether comments are good or bad, and they state that for beginners they can be very useful while not so much for experienced programmers. Too many comments can cause a mess, so they ideally should be used for large complex functions. They are mostly used to specify if refactoring is needed at a later stage, they should explain the "why" instead of "how", and in general the code should ideally be self-sufficient.
They talk about when do they actually like to use comments. If a certain piece of code is doing something unusual or non-obvious or might break the consistency with the rest of the code, then it is imperative to explain why it is written that way. It can also be a good idea to document things for new or junior developers in the team in order to explain what is going on or what should not be done, and also to pair program with them in case things are not clear. Commit messages could be a replacement for comments as well. Comments are also useful when static values and constants such as URLs or UIDs are used in the code, and for explaining specific error mechanisms.
They share great practical advice for programmers who are in the earlier stages of their software development career and have generally been taught to use comments by their professors or mentors. The tips they give include taking time to look through the codebase, checking how and where comments are being used by other developers, refactoring the code to write more readable functions wherever things are unclear, using good naming conventions, trying to write self-documenting code, asking a lot of questions to whoever has written the code including asking the reasons why it is written a certain way, and not being afraid to add comments of your own.
They then discuss some replies to the newsletter sent by Joe about code smells related to the importance of comments in the messy reality of engineering, pros and cons of their usefulness, tradeoff between maintaining self-documented vs heavily documented code. They end the show with picks.
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
Panel * Joe Eames * Jesse Sanders * Luis Hernandez * Preston Lamb * Mike Dane
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * The Freelancers' Show * React Round Up * CacheFly
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- Sourcetree
Mike Dane:
- Google Fi
Preston Lamb:
- Office Ladies podcast
Jesse Sanders:
- Tesla cars
Joe Eames:
- Gaslands
Question #1: What are code smells?
A pattern that indicates that there may be a problem in the code with a possibility of improvement.
Question #2: When should comments be used?
Comments could be useful for beginners, not so much for experienced folk. Too many comments can cause a mess, so they ideally should be used only for large complex functions. They can be used to specify if refactoring is needed at a later stage, and for explaining the "why" instead of "how".
Question #3: What are some good reasons to use comments?
- If a certain piece of code is doing something unusual/non-obvious/might break the consistency with the rest of the code. 2. For new or junior developers on the team in order to explain what is going on or what should not be done. 3. When using static values and constants.
Question #4: Tips for new developers regarding comments?
- Taking time to look through the codebase. 2. Checking how and where comments are being used by other developers. 3. Refactoring the code to write more readable functions wherever things are unclear, using good naming conventions. 4. Trying to write self-documenting code, asking a lot of questions to whoever has written the code including the reasons why it is written a certain way. 5. Not being afraid to add comments of your own.
In this episode of the DevEd podcast, Brooke and Preston mainly talk about Netlify, JAMStack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) and Preston's new course - Deploying Apps to Netlify. Preston starts with explaining what JAMStack is, why is it popular right now and it's numerous benefits. He talks about the difference between single-page applications and JAM, and how Netlify comes into the whole picture. He answers questions on how to do authentication with Netlify, what is CMS (content management system) in the context of JAMStack, CMS alternatives to Netlify, how Netlify handles dynamic data, serverless functions, Netlify pricing, possible substitutes for it and finally what makes it stand out from the others.
He then talks about what made him choose Netlify as the topic for his course, the authoring process, what the course is all about, and why should developers resort to the courses on Thinkster.io in general.
Panel * Brooke Avery * Preston Lamb
Sponsors * Thinkster.io
Links * Deploying Apps to Netlify
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
This week's episode of the DevEd podcast is joined by Hudson Baker. Hudson has been a developer for five years now, specializing in Angular, and is currently working at BrieBug Software.
The panel kickstarts the episode by answering the basic question - What is Gatsby? Sam explains that it is a static site generator which means that it takes in data and converts that into static files that can be hosted on any server. It has a lot of tooling and build process stuff built-in, and uses modern javascript concepts along with GraphQL to build fast-performance static sites. It is also a part of JAMStack.
Speaking on what languages and technologies it is based on, Sam elaborates that Gatsby is built with React, the build process is webpack, the content can be written in markdown or any outside sources, and data querying is done using GraphQL. The next topic of discussion is static sites. They talk at length about what static sites are, if they can be written without a static site generator, the difference between Gatsby and other frameworks such as Angular and React, what makes the sites static, how to identify them, and how to make a clear distinction between static and dynamic sites.
Next, they discuss that Gatsby can be a good starting point for people interested in learning React because it has a plethora of cool inbuilt tools, plugins and pre-packaged templates which can make the learning process easier, rather than starting to learn React from scratch. From a teaching perspective, React is a better choice if the goal is to teach web applications, whereas Gatsby is good for teaching how to build websites.
They talk about the difference between Gatsby and server-side rendering frameworks such as Next.js. Luis explains that in server-side rendering, there is data on one side and template on the other, and each time a request is made to the server, the data and template are assembled on the fly and not at build time. On the contrary, in case of Gatsby, this is done at build time, so everything that is sent from the server is basically pre-calculated. Talking about performance considerations, he says that in server-side rendering there is a price to pay in terms of just-in-time calculations. Sam also chimes in with his views on the comparison and mentions that they are really close performance-wise and feature-wise.
They then move on to discussing the learning aspect of Gatsby. Sam explains that if developers possess some knowledge about things like React, GraphQL, CSS in JS, etc., it can be easy to get fast results with Gatsby, however, it is still possible to secure some quick wins by using a simple starter project as a template and building on it. He then talks about the best use of Gatsby being in content-based sites, portfolios, product sales pages and so on.
Joe asks how does Gatsby deal with adding other aspects on top of it, to which Sam answers that there may be some tweaking needed to get things done, but overall it works well given that there are a ton of plugins available to get things from external resources. Joe talks about learning GraphQL, and Sam explains how much of it is used in Gatsby. He talks about the positives of Gatsby documentation and the developer community. They end the show with picks.
The DevEd podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Jesse Sanders * Mike Dane * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Hudson Baker
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in .NET - Devchat.tv * Elixir Mix * CacheFly
Links * Hudson's Twitter * Comparison of Gatsby vs Next.js
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- Focused and Diffuse: Two Modes of Thinking
Mike Dane:
- Splitwise
Jesse Sanders:
- Grumpy Cat :(
- DuckDuckGo
Hudson Baker:
- Storybook
- Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Brooke Avery:
- Star Wars Pinball
Sam Julien:
- Overcooked!
Joe Eames:
- Claudia.js
What is Gatsby?
It is a static site generator that takes in data and converts it into static files that can be hosted on any server. It has a lot of tooling and build process stuff built-in, and uses modern javascript concepts along with GraphQL to build fast-performance static sites.
What languages and technologies is Gatsby based on?
Gatsby is built with React, the build process is webpack, the content can be written in markdown or any outside sources, and data querying is done with GraphQL.
What is the difference between Gatsby and server-side rendering frameworks such as Next.js?
In server-side rendering, there is data on one side and template on the other, and each time a request is made to the server, the data and template are assembled on the fly and not at build time. On the contrary, in case of Gatsby, this is done at build time, so everything that is sent from the server is pre-calculated.
How does Gatsby deal with adding extra aspects on top of the basic functionality?
There may be some tweaking required to get things done, but overall it works well given that there are a ton of plugins available to get things from external resources.
In this week's episode of the DevEd podcast, the panelists talk to Tara Z. Manicsic. Tara is an Angular Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, a blogger, and loves to work in her community educating and learning from other developers. The topic for this episode is work-life balance with an emphasis on balancing learning as a programmer.
The first thing they discuss is if programmers are good at balancing work-life. The general consensus is that they aren't, but mostly because they love their job, and it is also always fun to learn newer technologies and concepts. They talk about hackations and coding in beautiful environments away from their regular desks.
They talk about some strategies to maintain a good work-life balance especially in high-pressure scenarios where the work seems to never get over. They suggest time management, blocking off hours and segregating them into strictly work and non-work periods. Tara mentions working non-traditional hours while having an infant at home, while Brooke explains how to schedule things beforehand so that knowing the tasks ahead of time helps in managing them effectively. Others chip in with their suggestions as well. Tara also speaks on the importance of having a good manager with realistic expectations.
They then touch on work-life balance from the perspective of managers too, where they advise them to make sure that their employees work reasonable hours, check in with them regularly and encourage them to take personal time off for their own mental health. They share their experiences related to death marches and the stress associated with it. They mention that while working as a junior developer in a high pressure environment that is hard to keep up with, it can be hard to change jobs. To deal with these kind of situations, they talk about how important it is to like the work being done, and if it is not something enjoyable, it is time to start looking for something completely different or take some time to unwind. Trying to do interesting things such as reading books, listening to music or podcasts at work during lunchtime, or while commuting, can also help in thriving in such environments.
The next point discussed is how to deal with the need to learn along with working at a regular job and still manage to maintain a balance. Consuming relevant content in the background while going about our day-to-day chores, not underestimating the learning done on the job, carving out time for self development during work hours, writing regular blog posts of things learned which can eventually lead to an awesome portfolio, are some great recommendations.
The last thing the panelists talk about is organizational tools for an awesome work-learn-life balance. They suggest Toggle, Asana, OmniFocus and Calendar. Luis mentions that given that we are constantly bombarded with information, it can be beneficial to sift through that, remove the unnecessary noise and concentrate on what is needed to free up significant amount of time. Joe recommends using a bullet journal, being physical and tactile while organising rather than digital, and Mike suggests switching the airplane mode on, among other things. Tara and Sam talk about meditation and mindfulness. They end the show with picks.
The Dev Ed podcast is produced by Thinkster.io and published by DevChat.TV.
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane
Joined by special guest: Tara Z. Manicsic
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv * The Freelancers Show * CacheFly
Links * Tara's Twitter
Picks Joe Eames:
- Beginner's Guide to Bullet Journaling | How to Start a Bullet Journal
- Boho Berry Bullet Journal introduction
Tara Z. Manicsic:
- Check out the local children's museums
- JAMstack conf
Mike Dane:
- LingQ
Brooke Avery:
- Sporcle
- Star Wars Myths & Fables
Luis Hernandez:
- Rework
- Getting Things Done
Sam Julien:
- The Great British Bake Off
How to maintain a great work-life balance, as an employee?
Good time management, blocking off hours and segregating them into strictly work and non-work periods, scheduling tasks ahead of time.
How to maintain a great work-life balance, as a manager?
Making sure that employees work reasonable hours, checking in with them regularly and encouraging them to take personal time off for their own mental health.
How to maintain a great work-learn-life balance?
Consuming relevant content in the background while going about our day-to-day chores, not underestimating the learning done on the job, carving out time for self development during work hours, writing blog posts of things learned eventually leading to an awesome portfolio.
What are some organizational tools to maintain work-life balance?
Toggle, Asana, OmniFocus, Calendar, Bullet journals, Meditation
Dillon Kearns is an Elm consultant who provides coaching and training to help people accelerate the way they write Elm to keep their codebases maintainable as they grow. He's the author of elm-graphql, and recently announced a new static site framework, elm-pages.
Today the panel is discussing how building libraries and frameworks can aide with the learning process. Dillon talks about how building frameworks and working with languages has helped him. He uses them as a laboratory to learn new techniques. When working on a library or framework, he always tries to bring his best programming self to that project.He believes that libraries and frameworks are a low risk way to practice your skills because they’re unlikely to get adopted when you’re starting out.
The panel defines what libraries and frameworks are and how they differ from one another. Libraries and frameworks are a type of project, with a library solving a specific class of problems. A framework is plugable and can be extended to solve problems that a framework author may not have imagined, though it does a set of core things. A library is something you put into your existing code base, a framework is the core you’re building on top of. They talk about an article, The Difference Between a Library and a Framework, that compares a library to a trip to Ikea when you already have a home, but you need to fill it with furniture, and a framework to building a home.
Next they talk about how libraries and frameworks are built and who builds them. Both are often built in open source, and some are funded by big companies while some are passion projects. They talk about the libraries that they’ve created and how it helped them to become a better developer. When Preston Lamb builds libraries, he learns how to do things he’s never done before. He doesn’t have a huge user base, but he finds it fun to sit down and have an idea, figure out how to do it, and make it reusable. Jesse Sanders talks about the company Rebug, and how somebody gave him the idea to write it as a schematic. Making libraries and frameworks is a continual way for developers to take a look at situations they don’t come across a lot and put them in a different mindset to make things truly reusable so that it can be adopted by others in the community. Dillon has found that making Elm GraphQL has given him the chance to be involved in very interesting conversations in the community. Creating a library or framework gives you the opportunity to be considered an expert in something and see they types of questions people are asking, problems they’re solving, and their interesting approaches.
The panel talks about the difference between fluency and understanding, and agree that one of the best ways to learn is by teaching. By being involved in creating a library, you’re seen as an expert in that library, so people come to you with their questions and you have to figure out how to answer them. One of the most valuable things about building a library or framework is learning the core basic concepts of the language.
They agree that it is best to start this kind of project as soon as you find something that interests you, and assure listeners that even if you mess it up and it’s never used, the learning experience is the true value. Often times, you’ll surprise yourself and make something that’s actually useful. Building or contributing to frameworks takes away the mystery and magic of programming, makes problems seem more approachable, and helps you understand the fundamentals. To find a project to contribute to, they suggest checking Twitter, Slack channels, and Github. If you find a library you like on Github, they’ll often have a #goodfirstissue, and you can tackle that problem to get started. Listeners are encouraged to be curious and look up source code on Github if you ever have a question to see how different libraries tackle this problem.
Finally, they talk about how to decide what requires a small exercise and what requires a library or framework. If the goal is short term, it only requires a small focused exercise. If the goal is long term or you find yourself doing the same thing repeatedly, consider a library or framework to make that code reusable and publishing it for others to use. Their closing thoughts are don’t focus on making something popular, just make something useful to you and maybe someone else will find it useful, and a reminder that there’s something to learn from everybody. Always have an open mind and try to get clarity on what someone is saying, even if it sounds like a bad idea at first.
Panelists * Brooke Avery * Jesse Sanders * Preston Lamb * Sam Julien * Mike Dane * Luis Hernandez
With special guest: Dillon Kearns
Sponsors
- Thinkster.io
- Sustain Our Software
- React Native Radio
Links
- Elm
- The Difference Between a Framework and a Library
- Angular
- Elm GraphQL
Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter
Picks Dillon Kearns:
- Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg
- Incremental Elm Consulting
- Follow Dillon on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium
Preston Lamb:
- One Second Every Day
Jessie Sanders:
- Crashlands
Mike Dane:
- FUNCL bluetooth headphones
Luis Hernandez:
- Svelte framework
Brooke Avery:
- Star Wars Drones (check Costco first)
Today’s episode of the Dev Ed podcast is joined by Tyler Legget, a structural engineering major working in the construction field primarily, and also on a number of side projects including property development, designing and building homes, co-founder of a company that made software for cycling race management. He also worked as a Product Manager on a platform that managed complex inventory of wood products. He then got involved in ng-conf, which spawned into an event management company called Zero Slope Events which he manages currently. Zero Slope Events provides event planning for conferences such as ng-conf, React conf and so on.
After listening to Tyler’s diverse background where coding had been only a partial activity, Joe asks what made him not go into full-fledged software development. Tyler answers that while he enjoyed different aspects and the variety of it, he never felt like making a career out of it. To determine if software development may not be a good career, it needs to be tried first, one has to see if it fits their skillset and work ethic. The panelists also share that it is very important to enjoy the task at hand, be able to fully immerse into the work and not keep waiting for the day to get over. Even though the public notion is that developers get paid really well, salary should not be the only criteria for a career switch, it is basically like setting yourself up for a lifelong disappointment or even failure. The good news, however, is that you can always go back to what you were doing if you do not enjoy it. Job shadowing is a good idea to closely see the day-to-day workings of the job and make an informed decision.
They then discuss if there are any situations where programming languages have proved to be extremely beneficial to the job. They give examples of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access where they were able to do awesome things and automate stuff, which piqued their interest in programming in general, and was also helpful to other team members as well, which can eventually foray into development. Teaching can also lead up to becoming a developer, through situations such as involving the search for good materials. Problem-solving is a great way to get into it as well, as are hobbies involving building or customizing things.
The panelists discuss tools that help in programming, automate or organizing things while working. They recommend some great ones like the Office suite, Glitch, CMS systems, Webflow, If This Then That (IFTTT), Zapier, StackBlitz, Google docs, YouTube, Airtable and Stack Overflow.
They then move onto talking about techniques to help out developers when they get stuck on something on the job and there is no one to turn to, during which they suggest a basic google search, YouTube videos, Stack Overflow, and Twitter channels. When trying to get better at programming, not just for fun but in a task-focused manner, some effective resources can be reading books including but not limited to the Dummies series, YouTube tutorials and Meetup groups.
Speaking on finding platforms to work with custom applications, Shopify, WordPress, Google pages, can be of great help if working on your own. As the applications get more complex, it can be advantageous to hire a professional. Finally, in terms of hiring expenses, do not compromise on quality, make sure the requirements are clear and really know what the person can offer.
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Jesse Sanders * Preston Lamb * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Tyler Leggett
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in .NET - Devchat.tv * Adventures in Angular - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Links * Zero Slope Events * Glitch * Webflow * IFTTT * Zapier * StackBlitz * Airtable * Stack Overflow
Picks Jesse Sanders:
- Nebo
Preston Lamb:
- Our Fake History podcast
Luis Hernandez:
- unDraw
Brooke Avery:
- Webflow
- Star Wars: Galaxy Edge - Disney Parks
Tyler Leggett:
- Reply All
In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Joe Skeen. Joe is a Developer and a Mentor, who started tinkering with computers since childhood and later taught himself web languages. After getting into University, he started working with strongly typed languages as well. He gives a brief background of himself and his work and shares his Angular journey.
The panel discusses the most effective steps involved in mentoring a brand new developer who is just starting out. The first thing that can be done is to hone any skills the developers already possess through their previous line of work or education so as to ensure a smooth transition into a new environment. Another idea is giving them relevant and meaningful things to practice which are needed for the job or the project rather than something vague or generic. They need to feel motivated and connected to the things they are learning. Another piece of advice is, as a mentor, make sure to be there for them, keep the commitment strong, don’t leave things unfinished and do not quit in the middle. As they are putting in a lot of effort into being a good developer, it is very important that the mentor puts in consistent effort as well. Give them constructive feedback.
Practicing is the best way to learn something extremely well. Building apps and personal projects is a great way to put things into practice, leading to more and more learning in the process, so recommending beginner developers to create something based on the theoretical knowledge gained can be an effective suggestion. From the beginning, bringing them to meetings even though things are going above their head, keeping them actively involved thereby creating a feeling of belonging and being included, and making sure that they are aware that the team works interdependently, are crucial to boosting their motivation and self-confidence as well.
They then discuss the differences between mentoring someone in a work environment versus mentoring a friend. In the professional sense, there tends to be more motivation since they are getting paid for learning or doing the job. But on a personal level, this gets harder as it is easy to give up and thus the responsibility of continuing falls on the mentors. Pair programming is a great technique to understand things through the process of working with someone.
In the context of dealing with people who carry the attitude that they know more than the mentors, the panelists state that there is no need for mentoring as it simply cannot be done. It is important to have a conversation to make things clear and understand what is required from everyone involved. It helps to get to know the person better in this case, and respect and humility should be both ways. Making them comfortable, having open discussions on any mistakes and failures faced along the way, removing embarrassment around these topics and stressing on the fact that it is ok to not know something, giving them opportunities to share what they have learned before, are some of the remedial actions that can be taken while dealing with seemingly difficult individuals.
Shedding light on the other side of things, they talk about dealing with developers who feel discouraged and helpless given that they are new to the workplace and everyone else seems to know more than them. They discuss giving them confidence so that they are capable of handling stuff on their own, accepting them as major contributors from the get-go, believing in them, repeating things if they don’t understand something, making sure to not overwhelm them, and giving positive feedback and achievable goals, making yourself vulnerable to them so that they can relate to it. The bottom line is no one is an expert and everyone is learning just like them.
While talking about dealing with developers who write bad code, panelists mention pair programming, learning how to do things the right way from industry experts, teaching by example, having formal code reviews, and maintaining a balance between criticism and appreciation. They end the show on the note that the relationship between the mentor and mentee is the most important part of mentoring.
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Joe Skeen
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv * My Angular Story - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Links * Joe’s Twitter * Joe on Medium
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition
Brooke Avery:
- Magic Jigsaw Puzzles
Joe Eames:
- Netlify
- Deploying Apps to Netlify
Joe Skeen:
- Dominion Companion
- Dominion Companion Randomizer
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Nell Shamrell-Harrington, Principal Engineer at Chef Software. Nell introduces herself and gives a brief background about her software development journey so far and talks about how she started working with DevOps. She is also a co-host of the Adventures in DevOps podcast on Devchat.tv.
The meaning of the term DevOps can be quite cloudy, so before discussing learning DevOps, they talk about what it actually means and how it differs from traditional development. Nell breaks down the term and describes in detail the approach of merging developers and operational professionals. Joe highlights the cultural aspect of DevOps and how it plays into the way of working. Nell explains the right way of organizing teams, the internal interactions among them, accountability, and some of the dos and don'ts involved.
Other panelists chime in with their views on the DevOps culture as well. They discuss the best practices, challenges faced, eliminating silo and sharing responsibility. They tackle the question of how to encourage seamless communication among teams and avoid conflicts. Nell explains that what works well in these cases instead of getting everyone together leading to chaos and blame games, is selecting representatives from both development and operations and ironing out the miscommunication.
The next topic of discussion is why should a beginner developer care about DevOps at all. As applications become more complex, the need arises to think about their underlying infrastructure in order to optimize them and it is beneficial to have an idea of where they might be deployed. As a developer progresses from the beginning stages to advanced ones, it is natural to know about the deployment environment, data centres, and DevOps concepts in general. Due to advancements in technology, these areas have become very accessible as well.
They steer the discussion towards what parts of DevOps should one focus on while getting started, given that there are a plethora of tools and technologies involved. Nell advises listeners to pick any major cloud provider and learn the basics by working with it, which can later be applied to any other cloud provider. She also recommends learning programming languages to get a good software development foundation. Sam shares his own experience with Digital Ocean and highly recommends their learning materials. Mike and Jesse suggest understanding how Continuous Integration works and mention that it is a great starting point. Mike points out that knowing that there are multiple environments at play - staging, production, testing and so on, helps a great deal.
Speaking about Docker, Nell says that while it is an amazing technology which made containers extremely usable on a large scale, it is not a good idea to run the entire infrastructure on just containers, given that containers can be very ephemeral and there is a risk of losing data. For learning purposes though, she recommends Docker as it runs well on local environments. She explains what Chef is and the difference between Docker and Chef.
The panelists then describe what Netlify is, how it works, and how good it is from the learning perspective. They then talk about some great resources for beginners to start with, Nell recommends Kubernetes, and explains what it means to orchestrate containers. Sam talks about Bruno Krebs' Kubernetes tutorial and Thinkster's Docker courses as awesome learning materials. They end the show with picks.
Panel * Joe Eames * Sam Julien * Jesse Sanders * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane
Joined by special guest: Nell Shamrell-Harrington
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Sustain Our Software - Devchat.tv * My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Links * Nell's Twitter * Adventures in DevOps * The Phoenix Project * Digital Ocean * The Illustrated Children’s Guide to Kubernetes * Kubernetes Tutorial * Docker Courses - Thinkster.io
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- Markdown
Mike Dane:
- Day One
Sam Julien:
- Ulysses app
Nell Shamrell-Harrington:
- Round Health
Jesse Sanders:
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to recurring guest Aspen Payton, who is currently working as a Lead Analyst Programmer at Mayo Clinic, has been in the software industry for about 20 years, and has over 32 granted patents to her name. Joe starts the discussion by giving a background on why he chose to talk about the essential developer skills. He divides the topic into different categories of skills and poses the first question to the panel - what fundamental technical skills should every developer have.
Brooke shares her boot camp experience and stresses the importance of learning basic command-line operations. Sam mentions debugging with console.log in any language in any environment and explains how it can be a savior while troubleshooting all kinds of situations. Luis says that it is important to know how to efficiently use the editor, understand related tools and know how to type faster. Joe agrees and shares a funny anecdote from his initial days as a fast typist. Aspen mentions coding efficiently, reducing duplication and writing reusable code as some of the most essential skills.
The panelists then discuss the pros and cons of AHA (Avoid Hasty Abstractions), the gist of which is to prefer abstraction over duplication and, to remove duplication when it is seen happening more than once. Brooke talks about learning how to solve problems and knowing what resources to use. Luis suggests that while working on different frameworks, it is important to learn the language associated with those frameworks and gives examples to further elaborate his point.
The topic then shifts to languages and if there are any specific languages that developers need to learn. Aspen answers in the negative, saying that logic is the most crucial aspect of programming. Sam agrees, and talks about learning the basics and experimenting with various languages based on developers' requirements and comfort levels. Brooke advises listeners to go for the languages they are passionate about and mentions that they need to focus on learning the right way of thinking more than anything else.
They discuss programming paradigms essential to be a good developer, which are mainly a mix of functional and object-oriented programming concepts. Talking about good software engineering practices, they list problem-solving, debugging, testing, reading documentation and understanding source code written by other developers, effective pair programming, code reviews, software patterns in the later stages of development, and version control systems such as git, as important strengths to have.
The next category spoken about is educational skills. Some of the necessary ones being effective communication, ability to teach others well and convey ideas constructively, ability to pick up new languages and having a smooth transition from the old ones, not giving up and working on problems relentlessly (banging head on the wall!), tenacity, diligence and also, asking for help.
They then list essential personal skills including the ability to work in a team while listening to others' ideas, giving them feedback and taking in criticism as well, time management, people skills, good writing, managing personal time and setting boundaries, humility, and empathy.
They wrap up the episode by discussing organizational skills - organizing code, managing time across the team, being organized while learning something new, and task organization and move on to picks.
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Aspen Payton
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Sustain Our Software - Devchat.tv * My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Links * Aspen Payton - Twitter * AHA Programming * The Wrong Abstraction
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- Chrome DevTools: Copy and extract all the CSS for an element on the page
Brooke Avery:
- Robocode
Sam Julien:
- Toggl
- Learn Identity - Auth0
Aspen Payton:
- The Nightingale - Audiobook
Joe Eames:
- Roll for Adventure
- Sign up for Thinkster.io
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in Blockchain - Devchat.tv * My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Jesse Sanders * Mike Dane * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Dylan Israel
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Dylan Israel. Dylan is a self-taught software engineer working as a developer and a content creator. His YouTube channel has over 60k subscribers where he aims to help people trying to learn programming on their own. He teaches a course on Thinkster.io called "100 Algorithms Challenge", aimed at developers preparing for technical whiteboard interviews or those wanting regular challenges to improve their skills, and has a collection of the top most commonly asked interview questions on algorithms and data structures.
Joe starts the discussion by throwing the fundamental question to the panel - What is the meaning of the terms "data structures" and "algorithms". Dylan explains that these are fairly common concepts in software development, and traditionally data structures represent the way data is organized and algorithms define how to parse through them while maintaining optimum performance using fewer iterations and reduced time. Others chime in as well and explain these terms using the analogy of building blocks and recipes.
After the basics, they discuss why should one bother learning data structures and algorithms in the first place. The main reasons mentioned are cracking job interviews especially for high paying jobs at large companies, efficient computing, forcing one to think differently and out of the box, studying time and space complexity leading to a better understanding of the software.
Joe mentions that what we learn in a computer science class is rarely used at an actual job, and asks the panel to challenge his statement that learning data structures and algorithms except for clearing job interviews, is inherently a waste of time. Brooke explains that learning about them helps in getting into the right mindset, whereas Dylan says that he has had a chance to use them in certain significant applications on his e-commerce platform, and Jesse adds that they help in honing developer skills to a large extent. Thinking on a level higher than what is expected in order to create efficient solutions, and understanding things well through problem-solving are some of the important takeaways from learning these concepts.
The panelists then discuss some great ways to learn data structures and algorithms. They share their own interesting interview experiences offering insight into what worked for each of them, and suggest books, online resources including courses, and emphasize that practicing a ton of problem-solving on a whiteboard/paper is one of the best ways to go about it. They also mention that recognizing repetitive patterns in problems is a good approach, and using a different language to solve can be beneficial too. They also advise listeners to take into consideration the opportunity cost involved in spending a significant amount of time learning data structures and algorithms, so that they can take an informed decision.
They talk about how much the knowledge of these concepts affects their hiring decisions and what exactly do they look for in candidates. They wrap up the show by each giving one piece of advice to someone preparing for a job - comparing solutions with others and learning from them, consistent attitude, test-driven development, interviewing a lot and researching about the interview as well as the interviewing panel. They end the episode with picks.
Links * Dylan Israel - YouTube * 100 Algorithms Challenge * Cracking the Coding Interview
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- The Imposter's Handbook Combo
Brooke Avery:
- 10 Day Algorithm Challenge
- The Art of Racing in the Rain
Dylan Israel:
- Pramp
Mike Dane:
- Google Fi
Sam Julien:
- Base CS podcast
- You need a budget
Jesse Sanders:
- CSS Tricks
- Hawaii
Joe Eames:
- Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * React Native Radio - Devchat.tv * Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Mike Dane * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Erik Hanchett
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Erik Hanchett, a software developer focusing on Vue and Angular, author of Vue.js in Action and Ember.js Cookbook, educator and YouTuber. Erik starts the discussion by stating the benefits of working remotely and others join in with their inputs.They list several important advantages including work freedom, not having to commute, utilizing time well, privacy, less distractions, increased productivity and flexible schedules. They then discuss the downsides of it as well - less social interaction, no particular end time leading to long hours and difficulty in setting boundaries, feeling of being left out and managing different time zones. They also talk about techniques such as resorting to physical activity and proactive networking to combat these downsides.
They then discuss the benefits and drawbacks of remote education. Learning from coworkers easily, productive interactions, collaboration and physical pair-programming could be some of the best parts of being on-site. On the other hand, being forced to solve problems independently and becoming self-reliant can prove to be beneficial when working remotely. They talk about how human contact is essential for learning and how classroom sessions are much more effective and increase retention of information. While speaking from the teachers' perspective, they point out that in case of classroom courses, teachers can customize the topics based on what students want, also, the decreased teacher-student ratio helps to build a good rapport between them leading to a better learning experience. They wrap up the episode by each sharing one tool/tip that has proven to be effective for remote work.
Links * Erik's Twitter * Vue.js Fundamentals * Program with Erik
Picks Mike Dane:
- We Work Remotely
Luis Hernandez:
- Visual Studio Live Share
Sam Julien
- Zoom for Slack
Erik Hanchett:
- Tuple
Joe Eames:
- StackBlitz
Brooke Avery:
- Loom
Sponsors * Thinkster.io * Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv * My Angular Story - Devchat.tv * CacheFly
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Jesse Sanders * Sam Julien * Mike Dane * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Preston Lamb
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to recurring special guest Preston Lamb who is a software developer at MotivHealth. They start the discussion by each explaining how and when the imposter syndrome has affected them in their work. They talk about it being more frequent than generally thought of and how it impacts their confidence and leads to self-doubt. They share their experiences where switching career paths and learning something new tends to become intimidating and hard at times, causing anxiety and resulting in the feeling of not knowing things, especially on stage or while doing something like consulting where you are expected to be an expert.
They discuss which activities are more likely to cause the imposter syndrome - teaching, being around other developers, conferences, getting new jobs and promotions, and also cases where they don't encounter it. They then describe useful strategies to combat it during each of the above mentioned activities and offer great tips for listeners along the way. They end the episode on a hopeful and encouraging note and mention one thing they would like to learn in the near future.
Links * Preston's Twitter * Preston Lamb - Angular in Depth * Things I Don't Know as of 2018 - Dan Abramov
Picks Joe Eames:
- Jest
Mike Dane:
- Webpack
Sam Julien, Brooke Avery, Jesse Sanders:
- CSS
Preston Lamb:
- Understanding how the web works
Luis Hernandez:
- Regular expressions
Sponsors * CacheFly
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez
Joined by special guest: Mike Brocchi
Episode Summary This episode of the Dev Ed podcast is joined by Mike Brocchi, who is currently working as a Front-End Developer for Ultimate Software, and has done significant work on the Angular CLI in the past. Joe begins the show by asking the panel what reinventing oneself means to them, starting off an interesting discussion. They each talk about some triggers that made them think about changing course in their ongoing professional path or even starting over again. They share their own experiences where they reconsidered their life choices due to certain roadblocks and took necessary actions, ultimately resulting in a fulfilling and happy career. They discuss how comfort works against all of this, and how reinventing does not necessarily have to be a better job or higher salary, it can simply mean choosing something satisfying and challenging.
In the end, the panelists help listeners understand how to comprehend and recognize the need of reinventing themselves, how to go about the process, and different ways and resources that can be used to do so.
Links * Mike's Twitter
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- How It Actually Works
Sam Julien:
- Standing Desk
Mike Brocchi:
- The Umbrella Academy
Brooke Avery:
- Star Wars: Jedi Challenges
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Jesse Sanders * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane
Joined by special guest: Mike Ryan
Episode Summary In this episode, the panelists talk to Mike Ryan, Software Architect at Synapse, Google Developer Expert, and a core team member of the NgRx team. Joe starts the discussion by elaborating on the topic chosen and explains what constitutes a "problem" in a developer's life. He asks the panel how often do they use classical algorithms in their everyday work. They then steer the discussion from implementing classical algorithms to logical ones, and discuss how they tackle and overcome complex computing challenges that can be very taxing. They talk about a technique called "Rubber Duck programming", how to go about creating a conducive environment for problem solving, and explain the concept of "flow" in software development along with its importance while dealing with issues. They discuss if pair-programming and mob-programming help in problem solving and their benefits.
After discussing problem solving in computing, the panelists change the direction of the conversation towards solving team and process pitfalls. They talk about how important friendships and emotional investments can be, especially when there are challenges at work and Jesse explains a methodology called the Quadrant System. In the end, they speak on handling personal problems as an engineer and offer helpful tips to listeners.
Links * Mike on Twitter * Mike Ryan - Angular in Depth * Svelte * Rubber Duck Debugging * Rework * Radical Candor * The viral tweet and response!
Picks Mike Dane:
- Pomodoro Technique
Brooke Avery:
- Pomelo Travel
Sam Julien:
- Rocket emoji app
Luis Hernandez:
- GitHub projects
Mike Ryan:
- React for CLIs
Joe Eames:
- Stormboard
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Sam Julien * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane
Joined by special guests: Bonnie Brennan, Samantha Brennan
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to the mother-daughter duo, Bonnie and Samantha Brennan, who have been working on teaching web development to people with learning difficulties and bringing about an awareness in the community. While talking about her background, Samantha explains that she has been programming since she was 8, and realized that she was dyslexic while learning Angular, as it is an abstract framework where a bunch of things happen at the backend. Keeping in mind the struggles faced by dyslexic learners, she, along with her mother Bonnie, decided to start the course — Angular for the Visual Learner, where they use visual methods such as pictures and 3D animation in order to overcome the learning challenges. Further in the show, they discuss how to detect if a person is dyslexic and also do an interesting demonstration of the “Cake test” on Joe, a test which helps in the identification of dyslexia.
The panelists discuss what it actually means to have dyslexia while dispelling some common myths associated with it. Samantha and Bonnie explain what a trigger word means and give details about ng-club, a fun initiative for kids to learn programming, and Blockly, a library for adding drag and drop block coding to an application. They also talk about using these visual tools from the perspective of non-dyslexic people, different learning techniques prevalent today, and the current education system. The panelists then mention some of their own learning challenges, how they overcame those and move on to weekly recommendations.
Links * Bonnie Brennan - Twitter * Angular for the Visual Learner * Claymation * The Gift of Dyslexia: Why Some of the Smartest People Can't Read...and How They Can Learn * ng-club * Blockly
Picks Bonnie Brennan:
- ng-club
- Blockly - YouTube
Mike Dane:
- p5.js
- The Coding Train - p5.js
Samantha Brennan:
- Angular Denver Conference
Brooke Avery:
- Kahoot!
Luis Hernandez:
- Code Radio
Sam Julien:
- Magic Move in Keynote
Joe Eames:
- Yesterday - movie
Panel * Brooke Avery * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane * Sam Julien
Joined by special guest: Aspen Payton
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Aspen Payton, who is currently working as a Lead Analyst Programmer at Mayo Clinic, has been in the software industry for about 20 years, and has over 32 granted patents to her name. She gives a background on her work, and talks about her ng-conf journey in detail, including what led her to become a technical speaker at the conference, the preparation involved, the things she learned along the way, and her experience in general. Brooke asks the panel their thoughts on why should one decide or even think about speaking at technical events/conferences rather than just being an attendee which has tons of benefits in itself. The panelists then offer tips and resources on how to prepare thoroughly in order to speak and present well without having a designated coach.
Aspen gives a run-through of her procedure of creating slides for her talk at ng-conf, including content and styling, and everyone else chips in with great suggestions as well. They then discuss how to choose a good topic for speaking, what other factors to consider while giving an effective presentation, combating stage fright which can be a challenge for many, how to detect if things are not going well and what to do to improve, how to increase self-confidence and increase audience engagement. Finally, they talk about making the whole process a happy and fulfilling experience, and encourage listeners to give technical speaking a chance while promising that it would definitely be worthwhile.
Links * Aspen Payton - Twitter * Crash Course: Angular and ngRx - Aspen Payton * How to Prepare a Talk - Gary Bernhardt * Convince Your Boss to Upgrade in 5 Minutes - Sam Julien * Subjecting State to Good Behavior - Kim Maida
Picks Aspen Payton:
- NPR - Throughline
Luis Hernandez:
- Teach Like a Champion - Doug Lemov
Sam Julien:
- Transistor
Brooke Avery:
- Alphabet Squadron
Mike Dane:
- Sapper
Panel * Joe Eames * Jesse Sanders * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane * Sam Julien * Brooke Avery
Joined by special guest: Emma Mulqueeny
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panel is joined by a distinguished guest, Emma Mulqueeny, digital transformation strategist and an eminent technologist, founder of the Rewired State and Young Rewired State organizations, the goal of which was to bring together young developers to contribute to government services in the UK, Commissioner for the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy and a Google Fellow. She has been awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) honour in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours list for her significant contribution to the fields of digital democracy and education. She has been included in the 166th annual edition of Who’s Who, voted onto the Wired 100 list, Tech City 100, BIMA Hot 100 and has been voted one of the top ten women in technology by The Guardian. She is currently working with the NHS (National Health Service), UK, in the area of mental health for young people.
Emma begins the show by giving a background about herself and her work and explains the concept of digital democracy to listeners.The panelists then dive into the topic of storytelling based learning and cite examples to explain their impressions of the materials that are used in the process. They explain how this kind of learning helps in making topics more engaging and interesting, and at the same time stress on the fact that there has to be a good balance between the fun and the actual content. They discuss, if as adults it holds any merit to resort to learning through stories and games compared to its usage in kids’ education, and how it helps in making dry technical material less boring and more relatable. In the end, they each talk about their own experiences where storytelling has played a major part in their role as programmers as well as content creators.
Links * Emma Mulqueeny * Emma Mulqueeny - Wikipedia * Emma’s Twitter * Emma on Medium * Young Rewired State * Screeps * CodeCombat
Picks Luis Hernandez:
- Minecraft
Sam Julien:
- Siri shortcuts for calendar, note-taking, writing
Brooke Avery:
- Get Coding! Books
- Alice learning platform
Emma Mulqueeny:
- Ian Livingstone’s books
- The Importance of Being Hoffnung
Jesse Sanders:
- Tut - Notes from the Universe
- Momentum Dash
Mike Dane:
- Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin’s course
Joe Eames:
- Holey Moley TV Show
Panel * Joe Eames * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane * Sam Julien
Joined by special guest: Shai Reznik
Episode Summary In this episode, the panelists talk to Shai Reznik, web developer, educator, consultant, and Angular Google Developer Expert, who teaches courses mainly on Angular and React, and makes sure that they are topped with some humor and fun! Joe kickstarts the show by asking Shai the reasons why he considers humor to be a consistent part of his personality as well as his teaching methods. Shai explains in detail how that makes learning interesting and effective by citing his own experiences. Joe opens up the discussion to the panel and asks their thoughts about using humor in learning, teaching and their opinions on it, in general.
They then talk about the techniques they employ or those that others use, in order to make learning fun and memorable. Shai elaborates on what strategies he utilizes to keep a good balance between the technical content, and the jokes and entertainment he resorts to while teaching. In the end, the panel discusses resources and methods to help make the learning process fun and they wrap up the show by each stating one thing they would like to recommend to a friend.
Links * HiRez.io * Angular Testing * Shai’s Twitter
Picks Mike Dane:
- Please don’t mock me - Justin Searls
Luis Hernandez:
- GatsbyJS
Sam Julien:
- Luna Display
Shai Reznik:
- What we talk about when we talk about software - Nat Pryce
Joe Eames:
- FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Luis Hernandez * Sam Julien
Joined by special guests: Preston Lamb, Aaron Frost
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, special guests Preston Lamb, software developer at MotivHealth, and Aaron Frost, web programmer and organizer of several meetups and conferences, along with the regular panelists, discuss the concept of learning by teaching. They talk about what it means for each one of them and in what way does teaching lead to a positive impact on the learning process. They then elaborate on the differences between gaining expertise in a topic through application and usage versus teaching it, followed by an interesting discussion on if it is acceptable to teach something without having any relevant production or real-world experience, as well as the ethical aspect of it.
They talk about ways to tackle not knowing something when asked about it, and whether any useful learning takes place in cases where things are learnt just for the purpose of teaching. In the end, the panelists explain how they pick topics to teach, especially when the intent is to educate themselves, and how do they go about maximizing the learning involved in it.
Links * Preston’s Twitter * Aaron’s Twitter * RxJS Conference
Picks Aaron Frost:
- Ice Fishing
Preston Lamb:
- Plex Media Server
Brooke Avery:
- Spider-Man by Sphero
Sam Julien:
- OmniFocus
Luis Hernandez:
- Pi-hole
Joe Eames:
- Tip - Attend Board Game conventions
Panel * Joe Eames * Luis Hernandez * Mike Dane * Sam Julien
Joined by special guest: Tommy Williams
Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panel is joined by special guest Tommy Williams, who is currently a Software Manager at Playware Media, and has a strong background in web development. He starts off the discussion by explaining what the term performance tuning really means, and the other panelists join in with their own definitions and give examples to elaborate on it. They talk at length about the tradeoff between performance tuning and maintainability while each sharing their valuable experiences. They then steer the discussion towards learning performance tuning, what resources and tools to use, recommend some good courses to listeners and discuss how to go about learning it in general.
Tommy talks about the performance issues that can possibly come up while writing web applications and ways to practice performance tuning followed by the panelists’s tips on it as well. They conclude the show with picks.
Links * jsPerf * Chrome DevTools * Lighthouse * Modern DevTools * Umar Hansa * Tommy’s LinkedIn
Picks Mike Dane:
- Saint Thomas
Luis Hernandez:
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Sam Julien:
- Keyboard Maestro
Joe Eames:
- Zombicide
Tommy Williams:
- Dominican slang word -Vaina
Panel * Joe Eames * Brooke Avery * Mike Dane
Joined by Special guest Sam Julien
Sam Julien is a GDE for Angular and Web Technologies, the creator of UpgradingAngularJS.com, and a Content Engineer for Auth0. He’s also one of the organizers of Angular Portland. When he’s not coding or writing, you’ll find Sam camping or hiking like a good Oregonian.
Summary Joe Eames leads the panel through an in-depth discussion on boot camps. The panel starts by sharing their experience with boot camps. After discussing the finances that go into attending a boot camp, the panel answers the question, “Are boot camps worth it?”. They then discuss what one might look for in a boot camp and how to vet boot camps to get the best education for the right cost. The episode ends with many motivating tips from the panel about how to ensure success during boot camp.
Links * https://lambdaschool.com * Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions 6th Edition by Gayle Laakmann McDowell * https://www.careercup.com
Picks Joe Eames
- Lucky Duck Games Chronicles of Crime
Brooke Avery
- https://www.canva.com/
- Nintendo Switch
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Sam Julien
- LCR® Left Center Right™ Dice Game
Mike Dane
- https://codesignal.com/
Panel * Joe Eames * Kent C. Dodds * Mike Dane * Dani Sloan
Summary Joe Eames begins the panel in a fun discussion on whether or not there is a "programmer gene". Each of the panelists share life experiences and observations from their own lives, most of the panel agrees that there isn’t one specific programming gene. Different theories are explored, background, the way programming is taught, willingness to learn, a drive and interest, and fear of failure. The panel discusses the correlation of the love or talent for math and physics with computer programming; Kent C. Dodds and Mike Dane share their sorted history with math.
The discussion is directed to how many different types of programming and developing there are. The panel discusses the different skills and interests that go into the various jobs under the umbrella of programming. This leads to a discussion on what you might get out of the job, satisfaction and recognition. The panel answers a few questions such as, "Is there a way to tell if someone will easily grasp programming and is there a way to tell if someone will enjoy programming?" The panel finish by sharing advice on getting past "Impostor Syndrome".
Picks Mike Dane
- www.wix.com
Dani Sloan
- unroll.me
Kent C. Dodds
- https://webflow.com
- https://dev.to/
- https://kentcdodds.com/
Joe Eames
- https://refactoringui.com/book/
Panel * Joe Eames * Jesse Sanders * Mike Dane * Dani Sloan
Episode Summary Joe Eames leads the panel in a discussion of the path to a career in computer programming. The panel has a varied educational background, Mike and Dani share their experiences attending a university. Dani Sloan piques Joe Eames interest with her programming experience in school even though it was not the degree she set out to obtain. Mike Dane shares his appreciation for any school or program that has an alumni network. Jesse Sanders was self taught with a little formal education, he talks about the vast amounts of programming knowledge out there and how it can be hard to find a path and to remain well rounded and grounded in the fundamentals.
Using their individual knowledge and experience, the panel discuss the merits of various educational paths. The benefits and drawbacks of university, bootcamps, and teaching oneself are discussed. The panel also branches out into a few newer and hybrid types of education such as part-time school, Neumont University, Lambda School, and schools like University of Phoenix, which you can do from home. They discuss the finances and time that each may take and give recommendations for a few different situations that people may be coming from, such as, switching careers or starting fresh from high school.
Links * Neumont university * Lambda School * University of Phoenix
Picks Dani Sloan
- Google Keep
Mike Dane
- Freecodecamp.com
- Free code camp Youtube channel
Joe Eames
- Alita: Battle Angel
Panel
- Joe Eames
- Jesse Sanders
- Mike Dane
- Dani Sloan
- Brooke Avery
- Kent C. Dodds
Joined by guest panelist: Alyssa Nicoll
Episode Summary
In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk about the importance of staying up-to-date and learning continuously as a developer. They share their own experiences, and stress on the benefits of being a lifelong learner while finding a niche to build expertise in. They discuss the fact that companies should actively arrange learning resources for employees and give insight into ways for people to manage time in order to incorporate continuous education in their daily life, and handling stress in situations where answers/concepts are not known.
Joe asks the panelists to what extent they tend to go while learning something, in cases where they know they aren’t getting paid for it, to which they answer that passion and enjoyment are the major influencing factors. They also discuss how to identify what exactly should be learnt in order to advance careers, how to learn things when there is no interest or passion at all, and indicators to detect when one is falling behind and needs to get on track. Finally, they each mention one learning experience where they felt vulnerable and one thing they would like to share with everyone.
Links
- CodePen
- Kent C. Dodds website
Picks
Brooke Avery:
- Being in a Boot Camp
- Stance Socks
Joe Eames:
• Working with a really smart programmer
• Things I Don’t Know as of 2018 – Dan Abramov
Alyssa Nicoll:
- Answering questions
- Dev
Jesse Sanders:
- Going to conferences
- NestJS
Mike Dane:
- Doing CSS challenges
- We Work Remotely
Kent C. Dodds:
- Working on his website
- React Hooks
Dani Sloan:
- Reading academic journals
- Limiting notifications on communication channels such as Slack
Panel
- Joe Eames
- Jesse Sanders
- Jared Stein
- Mike Dane
- Dani Sloan
- Brooke Avery
- Kent C. Dodds
Episode Summary
In this first episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists start with giving brief introductions about themselves and their work, most of them being educators and trainers in software development. They then discuss some of the best ways for people to get into programming, focusing on the importance of motivation and passion, while narrating their own experiences. They talk about choosing the right learning resources and paths based on individual needs, effective tools and techniques for current programmers to stay up to date with ongoing developments and retaining learnt concepts.
They also discuss benefits of publishing work online thus making it available for the public, significance of teaching and how to get into it, and mention tips and hacks on effective time management so as to continue learning in spite of a busy schedule. They wrap up the episode by each stating what they wish to learn the most, and one thing they would like to share with friends.
Links
- ng-conf
- Mike Dane - YouTube
- Kent C. Dodds – YouTube
- Deciding What Not to Learn - Blog
Picks
Kent C. Dodds:
- GraphQL
- Novel in progress - Shurlan
Brooke Avery:
- Rails
- Lost Stars
Jesse Sanders:
- NestJS
- Having a good morning routine with mediation, reading and journaling
Joe Eames:
- NestJS
- Screen Rant Pitch Meetings
Mike Dane:
- CSS Animations
- The Coding Train
Jared Stein:
- What makes efficient and productive learning happen
Dani Sloan:
- Meditation
- Moodrise