CodeNewbie

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

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

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

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

Dan Shiffman doesn’t like titles. As an open source contributor, author, and professor, it might be because he has so many to pick from. In this conversation, we touch on all three, focusing on his work with Processing, a software sketchbook and language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts, why he loves working with beginners, and how code can be an expressive and powerf...

Rebecca Miller Webster created Write Speak Code for herself. She wanted a space that would encourage her to write more, speak more, and contribute to open source more. And in the process of creating that space for others, she grew herself, both as a person and a developer. In this interview, she talks about her experience putting on this conference and how it’s helped many others take bigger steps...

He’s only been coding for four years. But thirteen months ago, Quincy Larson launched one of the most beloved learn-to-code resources in the CodeNewbie community, Free Code Camp. We deep dive into his own learning journey, what he’s learned from helping hundreds of thousands of campers learn to code, and why Free Code Camp will forever be free. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponso...

Linda Liukas identifies more with being a children’s author than a developer. That might be because she’s spent a good amount of time helping others learn to code than actually coding herself. She used to work for Codecademy, started Rails Girls, and most recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for a book introducing programming to children. The campaign blew past it’s $10K goal, and reached over...

When she goes to events, she no longer writes her own name on her name tag. Instead, she writes “Brianna’s Mother”. Ronique, the proud single-mother of a coder talks to us about how she supports and advocates for her daughter, and what it’s been like to see her only child take advantage of the many tech opportunities she’s come by. Brianna tells us how she switched from being pre-med to computer s...

Software Engineer Alicia Liu has thought a lot about Impostor Syndrome. In fact, she’s written three blog posts, one each year for the past three years, that have illustrated her own relationship with the term and its relevance in the tech community. We dissect those three blog posts and discuss the role of Impostor Syndrome in different parts of a programmer’s journey. Show Links Partner with Dev...

For now, home is Lisbon, Portugal. But as a full-time nomad, who knows where developer John Britton will be a few months from now. John tell us what it’s like to work remotely from various countries while being GitHub’s Education Liaison, a fascinating role that involves coding, marketing, and lots of GitHub tutorials. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Angelfire Pro Git Googl...

Amy Simmons spent six years working as a journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC of Australia. As an online journalism, she thought it was a good idea to learn how to code and use that to tell her stories in a new way. So with ABC’s support, she enrolled in a bootcamp, only to find out half way through that she no longer wanted to do journalism at all. Amy tells us how she m...

Developer Adam Stacoviak started Changelog seven years ago, and in that time has built a community and a media company, with the podcast taking center stage. He and his co-host Jerod Santo talk to us about what it's been like building the show over the years, how they escaped podfade, and how they moved from podcast into video. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Changelog Ep....

She got into tech by doing temporary data entry at the then little-known startup, Yammer. But she saw the opportunities available to those who could code, so she taught herself, taking on more responsibilities to finally become a designer and developer. Julie Ann Horvath opens up about her humble beginnings, what she learned from her controversial exit at Github last year, and the role she plays a...

The first open source project Steve Klabnik got involved with was a pretty big one - he took on Hackety Hack, the beloved application that helped kids learn to code. He only meant to help out, but when no else joined, he ended up running the show, and diving headfirst into the open source world. Now, many years and pull requests later, Klabnik shares how he went from Hackety Hack to contributing t...

Jonathan hacks away on his search engine at Harvard’s Innovation Lab, fine tuning it for the fashion queries his startup handles. He doesn’t have a computer science degree. He doesn’t have a degree at all. But at 21, he’s been able to hack together a tech education that involves reading academic papers, implementing solutions he finds, and lots and lots of searching. He shares his process for hack...

Andrea Del Rio talks about her role as a Mozilla Open Web fellow, how she’s using her technical skills to help civil society organizations, and what it’s like to build products for the Association for Progressive Communications. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) HackerYou Civil society organization APC (Association for Progressive Communications) Mozilla-Knight Open Web Fello...

Ayori Selassie talks to us about how she navigated her career at Salesforce, moving seamlessly across different roles developing her technical and management skills. She also tells us about her work and time spent in different countries working in the tech space, and how her participation in the State Department’s TechWomen Program helped her better understand the international tech landscape. Sho...

In part two of our interview with Dave Thomas, we dive into some of his other contributions to the community, including coining the phrase “DRY” (Don’t Repeat Yourself), popularizing the code kata, and signing the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. We explore the impacts of these contributions, particularly to code newbie community. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Co...

Dave Thomas has done a lot for the programming community. He coined the phrase “DRY” (Don’t Repeat Yourself). He popularized the idea of code katas. He was one of the signers of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, and he's the founder of the Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company. But despite all that, he refers to himself as simply a programmer. In this episode, he shares his own coding...

Suzan Bond calls herself a band manager, the title that captures the wide range of activities she does in her work helping developers grow their careers. Her marketing, negotiating, and career management advice is filled with solemn, reflective thoughts on how to think through your first programming job, and the steps you can take to better navigate your career. Show Links Partner with Dev & C...

Nicole Dominguez taught herself to code at a pretty young age, and by the time she was in high school, she had paying freelance clients. At 21, she reflects on her freelance days, what she’s learned as a teacher helping others learn coding concepts, and how she was able to teach herself enough to get to her current role as product designer and front-end developer. Show Links Partner with Dev &...

Una Kravets found her love of design at a young age, publishing homemade magazines complete with polls and special color editions and handing them out to her classmates. Now, she translates that love of design to code, building prototypes and design systems at IBM Design. She talks to us about her love of design and dev, how she open sourced her personal goals, and how CodeNewbies can better manag...

Courteney Ervin taught herself to code. She did it in her spare time, finding hours late at night and on weekends to grow her skills. And in that time, she went to her first hackathon, made her first open source contribution, taught others to code, and finally found herself in a full-time role as a developer. She tells us about her journey, and the key moments that helped her advance her tech care...

When you ask Kristy Tillman about design, she doesn’t just talk about designing for a screen. She touches on space, rooms, fliers, products, both physical and digital. Her fluid, all-encompassing concept of design might be new to our CodeNewbie community, but it’s crucial for her role as Design Director for the Society of Grownups. In this episode, we talk about her design process, how she hires f...