Lindsey Kopacz, web-developer and accessibility blogger, joins us today to discuss:The positives that being authentic and public with your emotional state provides.Her blog and the excellent dev.to communityThe business value of accessibilityAccessibility in a sense that isn't limited to people with physical disabilitiesTranscript"Championing a11y and Being Authentic - with Lindsey Kopacz" TranscriptResources:dev.toLindsey Kopacz:Twittera11ywithlindsey.comJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Tae'lur Alexis, self taught programmer and founder of CodeEveryday, talks to us about:Figuring out that software was what she wanted to doLearning to code from scratch on the modern web.How front-end development was appealing as a beginner due to visual feedback and opportunity to be creativeHow social media was key to her success in landing a job as a self-taught developerThe CodeNewbie and 100DaysOfCode communities on twitter and the roles they play in supporting developersSetting up realistic habits and goals to prevent burnoutWhat the interview process was like for a new-commer to the industryTranscript"Learning to Code from Scratch on the Modern Web with Tae'lur Alexis" TranscriptResources:freeCodeCampColt Steele on UdemyCodeNewbie100DaysOfCode ChallengeTae'lur Alexis:TwitterCodeEveryday TwitterJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Josh Doody, the author of Fearless Salary Negotiation, joins us today to discuss:What you need to look out for to stay ahead in the industryHow to find leverage despite the information asymmetry between the employer and the job candidateWhy questions on what your current salary is or what you'd like it to be boxes you out of opportunitiesThe best way to put in the work towards a promotion.Tradeoffs of working for a startup versus a big tech companyEquity in the salary negotiation, and how it weighs in.Transcript"Negotiating Your Salary and Advancing Your Career with Josh Doody" TranscriptResources:Fearless Salary Negotiation CoachingFearless Salary Negotiation BookThe Dreaded Salary QuestionSoftware Developers: How to get a RaiseSalary Negotiation GuideSalary Negotiation for Software Developers egghead TalkJosh Doody:TwitterLinkedInWebsiteJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Tania Rascia works as a web developer full time. However, just a few years ago she was working as a professional chef. How and why did she make such a dramatic career switch? It isn't uncommon for culinary professionals to realize that they don't want to spend the rest of their life doing it. It is a very demanding job and isn't sustainable if passion isn't there.So, having always been interested in computers and making websites, Tania decided to make the transition into programming as a profession. Starting with one-off small odd jobs on Craigslist, then an internship, and then a full-time web developer! There were a lot of skills and concepts that had to be learned in those three years, especially starting from near zero.Sharing what she learned publically played an essential role in Tania's development. It's like writing documentation for herself, but everyone who read her posts got to benefit from it too. Tania also places a lot of importance in creating your own version of something to fully understand it. For instance, she didn't understand how bootstrap worked, so she experimented and worked on creating her own dynamic CSS grid framework to achieve that more in-depth understanding.Transcript"Switching Careers and Learning in Public with Tania Rascia" TranscriptResources:Getting Started with ReactDerek SiversA Smarter Way to Learn JavaScriptYou Don't Know JavaScriptTania Rascia:TwitterWebsiteGithubJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Today Angie Jones, a master inventor and automated testing engineer, speaks with us about what a master inventor is and what it took to receive that title, what testing automation is, having parallel between testers and developers, what developers can be doing to build more testable apps, and finally how modern web development has complicated automated testing.Angie talks about some common problems when it comes to testing. The test team is often separate from the developer team, and it leads to communication problems. Testers should be working in parallel with the dev team to ensure that from the get-go they are writing a testable app!Another common problem is that 100% test coverage gets pushed. However, that's the wrong idea. Automated testing is expensive to implement, so Angie talks about how she figures out what'll give the most "bang for your buck" when deciding what tests get automated.Apps aren't as simple as they used to be, and thicker client-side UIs have made it much harder to implement automated tests. Automated Engineer is a fully fledged development position requiring skill across platforms, which is why Angie says that developers shouldn't be leading automated testing. There is a lot that automated testers have to do and separate skills that they need to develop. There's only so much a person can keep up on at once.Transcript"Incorporating Testers with Every Development Phase with Angie Jones" TranscriptResources:Level up: playing the automation gameBartle taxonomy of player typesWhy Developers Should Not Lead Your Automation EffortsWhich Tests Should We AutomateAngie Jones:TwitterGithubWebsiteYouTubeJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Diana Rodriguez, Worldwide Community Organizer for the Vue Vixens Initiative, joins us today to talk about her early experiences with development as a child, her transition into a becoming a full-time professional and her work with getting women from communities all over the world involved with programming!In the days of yore, gathering programming knowledge wasn't easy, the community was exclusive, and the books were expensive. The only ways to learn were through college, expensive books, or a cool friend willing to give you some information. Despite these difficulties Diana managed to be involved with the Java community, she also had the support of her parents who bought her books. Eventually, Diana's skills grew, and she would put herself out there taking programming gigs. However, it wasn't until six years ago that she decided to go full time.Eventually, she became jaded with backend work and was craving something new, that's when she discovered Vue and its excellent and welcoming community. This community was much unlike the Java community back in the day, and Diana is working to be a part of that push for inclusivity full-force through Vue Vixens. Diana works to open and grow chapters all over the world.Diana talks about her recent work in South America and how the dev community was exploding, it was almost overwhelming! There were women from ages 13-72 at the meetup that the Vue Vixens organized in Argentina, the event even had to be split up over two days because there were so many people. Being careful of tunnel vision and thinking about these communities of people from foreign countries, women, and other underrepresented people in the tech and welcoming them can have a substantial positive impact.Transcript"Opening Programming's Gates to Women's Communities with Diana Rodriguez" TranscriptResources:Vue VixensDiana Rodriguez:TwitterWebsiteJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Julia Evans, is a zine author and software engineer at Stripe. She joins us to talk about teaching specifics as opposed to high-level overviews, using zines to show that things that sound hard aren't hard in practice, the longevity of Julia's zine empire, and the impact that monetizing her zines had on her audience and the way she approaches working on them.Julia writes zines, short tutorials in comic form for software developers. She recently starting monetizing them, it had an impact on her audience but not as much as you would think. Monetizing even had the unforeseen side effect of her zines getting taken more seriously, a college professor even made then required reading in his class.She tries to keep the zines focused, with the topics breaking down something very particular. High levels talks often have the problem of not imparting anything useful. The specificity respects people's time and also can give greater context than a high-level overview. It's also much easier to be motivated to start a twenty-page zine as opposed to a three-hundred-page book.Julia has many ideas for her zine empire. She wants to continue to collaborate with other developers so she can deliver content that isn't entirely in her wheelhouse. She also wants to start getting into some non-programming concepts, statistics in particular at some point. The possibilities with the medium are pretty much endless.Transcript"Exploring Concepts and Teaching Using Focused Zines with Julia Evans" TranscriptResources:Wizard ZinesJulia Evans:TwitterGithubWebsiteJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Joel and Brian Lonsdorf discuss the pain and growth of learning, math as a source of truth, dispelling that idea that you need to be a wizard to enter the functional programming space, and finally how you can start including functional concepts in your day to day work.There's a reason that mathematicians tend to be the best functional programmers. The theories and patterns directly apply, it has truth and purity. It's powerful, almost powerful enough to describe everything, so what makes people turn away from it?Traditionally, math gets taught in a dry manner from a young age, tables are memorized, and facts get drilled. It isn't until much later that interesting concepts like set theory get introduced, and at that point, it's too late for many people.Material that's "dry" doesn't have to be taught that way. It's been three and a half years since Brian first put Professor's Frisby's guide up on Github and it brought light and friendly perspective to heavy material. It showed that the functional programming paradigm was learnable without requiring a deep dive into Haskell.The deep dive doesn't work for everyone. There's merit in starting with something like Gatsby and just getting something out there that you can play with immediately, and then later learn the fundamentals of Javascript. The same thing applies to learning functional programming. You can start composing with Lodash and ease into the deeper patterns and concepts.Transcript"Math and Functional Programming Aren't Exclusive to Wizards with Brian Lonsdorf" TranscriptResources:Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional ProgrammingProfessor Frisby Introduces Composable Functional JavaScriptFunctional Composition with LodashState Monad in JavaScriptBrian Lonsdorf:GithubTwitterMediumJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Today we are joined by Jem Young, a senior software engineer over at Netflix. Jem is here to discuss his programming philosophy and how it is an extension of himself, how engineers should have the freedom to have ideas and veto things, the difference passion makes, and being informed about the libraries that you include in your code and if they are actually needed.Netflix's homepage got 50% faster when Today Edwards had the idea of not shipping React to the client. All event handling was done with vanilla javascript and React remained on the server side. Finding this balance of developer productivity and performance is important. Jem talks about how you should really examine the reasons why you are including a library in your codebase, and to ask yourself if it could be implemented in a simpler way with what you already have.Jem discusses what it means to love the work you do and to have a real passion for creating software. Passion makes a difference in a developer's career path, the devs who are just looking to make a paycheck and don't really care don't end up in the same place that those who really care about their work do. Jem is curious, he experiments with software on his weekends, he'll sometimes wake up at 1am with the solution to a bug he's been thinking about all day, software is an integral part of his life beyond it just being how he puts food on the table.Transcript"Being a Passionate and Deliberate Engineer with Jem Young" TranscriptTopics:Trusting your engineers to know what they are doingWeighing the performance costs of included librariesThe difference that real passion for software makesHow programming is like solving a puzzleHow the code you write represents youJem Young:GithubTwitterWebsiteJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

Keith Peters joins us today to talk about his experiences with experimenting with code and math, the transition from Flash to Go, woodworking and blacksmithing, and getting books published.Keith talks to us a bit about multi trochoids; they're what happens when you take a circle and roll it around something, like a spirograph. He was inspired to do this project by Sodaplay, a site back in the flash days that had stuff you could hook up to various engines.What language did Keith use to write his multi trochoid experiments? Initially, Keith wrote it in Go, but he wanted to put it out on the web and make it interactive, so he ported it to Javascript.Back in the 90s Keith worked with Flash, when Flash left he moved over to Javascript and using the html5 canvas. Javascript is great if you want it live on the web but for still images and animations it was a pain in the neck, so Keith tried out Rust, Python, and finally settling on Go.Keith is into some non-coding hobbies like woodworking and knife making, Joel has even bought some of his knives. It started when Keith wanted to build an arcade cabinet, he bought tools and got into learning how to use them. Keith has found a lot of crossover with working with his hands and building things with code, both of them can be boiled down to learning a technology to create things and solve problems.Finally, Keith explains the pros and cons of going through a publisher to get your book out. He says that self-publishing is easier than ever, but a publisher provides you with a lot of assistance with editing, marketing, artwork, and a healthy dose of pressure.Transcript"Learning and Experimenting with Physical and Digital Mediums with Keith Peters" TranscriptResources:Trochoid Experimentsplayingwithchaos.netKeith Peters:TwitterGithubWebsiteJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite