CodeNewbie

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. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) YouTube Gaming TED...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev...

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, an...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Liz Bailie YAGNI EmberJS John Resig's Interview on CodeNewbie jQuery FrontPage Visual Basi...

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...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev &...

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. Show Links Partner...

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...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Twitter Fail Whale Redis Alan Turing Turing Completeness neo4j Titan (distributed graph database)...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) CodePen Bugzilla Smashing Magazine A List Apart Write The Do...

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....

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. Sho...

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-co...

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...

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 art...

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...

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...

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 achievement...

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 hand...

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...

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...

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...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev &...

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 p...

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. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) G...