CodeNewbie

It took years for CSS Tricks to become the popular front-end and design resource it is today. Creator Chris Coyier talks about starting the website in 2007 and how it’s grown to be the incredible front end community it is now. He also talks about his other project, CodePen, and how building community has been an integral part of the tool. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) A L...

Programmer Earl Bey has always been a hip hop fan. He’s been rapping since he was ten, and even had his own manager. When he was later introduced to tech, he dove into coding full time. Now, he blends his new passion for code with his love for hip hop. He talks about how he uses rap to retain new programming concepts, and gives us a taste of his lyrical skills in a performance of code-infused rhym...

Sandi Metz describes herself as an "accidental author." Accident or not, her book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) is beloved in the ruby community, and she's used her ability to break down complex coding topics to build the second phase of her programming career, one focused on teaching and speaking. In part II of this two-part interview, she talks to us about speaking, how she pr...

Sandi Metz describes herself as an "accidental author." Accident or not, her book Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) is beloved in the ruby community, and she's used her ability to break down complex coding topics to build the second phase of her programming career, one focused on teaching and speaking. In part I of this two-part interview, she talks to us about life pre- and post-PO...

Angel Jose went from selling cars to a working as a developer in under eight months. He talks to us about making that transition, how he found his job, and how he deals with self doubt as a new programmer. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) The Firehose Project Sensay Codeland Conf Codeland 2019

He knew how to code, but when he graduated school, Andrew Chen decided to go into venture capital. Since then, he’s used his technical background to become an advisor and investor in many tech startups, including Dropbox, Product Hunt, and AngelList. He talks with us about how he leveraged his coding skills to being a tech advisor, how he’s maintained a solid blog for over eight years, and why you...

When developer Aidan Feldman had a line of people waiting for their turn to get coding help from him, he decided to try a different format. Instead of one-on-one tutoring, how about open office hours for anyone coding to come together and work on their skills? And that was the beginning of Hacker Hours. Aidan tells us how he’s built Hacker Hours over the past few years, and how he manages to keep...

She used to be a professional figure skater. And a few years ago, she decided to hang up her skates and trade them in for some code. Software developer Aimee Knight tells us what it was like to transition into tech, how she got her first dev job, and how being a professional athlete has affected her coding journey. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Nashville Software School T...

John Resig, creator of jQuery, talks about what it was like to build the most popular javascript library and then walk away from it five years later to follow his passion for education. We unpack what it’s like to maintain such a popular toolkit, how he feels about books, how he takes on his own learning, and why he made the Women Who Code twitter list. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie...

David Mazières, Chief Scientist at Stellar, talks to us about his work at the Stellar foundation building software to expand financial access. We also talk about how he uses temporary email addresses to ward off spammers, how he started coding in the fourth grade, and why he doesn’t think you need a computer science degree to make an impact in tech. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (s...

For our first Newbie Story, we talk to LaToya Allen, junior software engineer at Avant, a fast-growing Chicago startup. She tells us how she went from bartending to becoming an apprentice, and got her first full-time engineering job in just three weeks. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) 1871 Chicago Women Developers 8th Light Sue Kim Doug Bradbarry Minimax algorithm Repositor...

When developer Tiffani Bell first heard about the water crisis in Detroit from a news article in the Atlantic, she was shocked. So she rolled up her developer sleeves and put up a page to help people who’s water had been shut off. Now, that page has become a full Y Combinator backed non-profit, and she’s the executive director. We talk about civic hacking, the technical challenges she had to overc...

You probably know her as rockbot, the username that captures her passion for robotics. In this episode, developer Raquel Velez shares that passion with us, telling us all about competing in the DARPA Grand Challenge, how she feels about self-driving cars, and gives us a beginner-friendly walkthrough of how a robot works. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) DARPA Grand Challenge...

Corinne Warnshuis sat in a Girl Develop It workshop to learn to code. Her love for the community and her community-building skills propelled her from coding newbie to Executive Director of Girl Develop It. She talks to us about her mission to make coding more accessible to women, how to be a good ally, and how the diversity movement in tech has impacted her work. Show Links Partner with Dev &...

At a time when people are lining up to get accepted by a programming bootcamp, Jeff Casimir decided to start one that is non-profit. But he doesn't like the term bootcamp -- he prefers "program." We talk about why he decided to make the Turing School non-profit, the complications of quantifying students' skills, and how Turing School approaches its programming curriculum. Show Links Partner with D...

Gokul Krishnan started the first makerspace in a children's hospital. Working with kids who have chronic illnesses like cystic fibrosis, he created a way for them to be makers. We talk about the benefits of making in the context of being in a hospital, how he approaches learning, and what kinds of tech projects these kids have made. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Project M...

She was trained to be a web developer. But months after graduating from bootcamp, she's at Makerbot, helping build the software that their 3D printers need to do their job. It's an interesting change -- she's using python instead of ruby, and learned C++ too. We talk about what it's like to be a software developer in a world of hardware, how the two jobs compare, and what some of the challenges ar...

Matt Richardson, evangelist for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, talks to us about the little computer that's making hardware accessible to more people. We talk about what the Raspberry Pi is, discuss some beginner friendly projects, and chat about a cool bike-based hardware project he made. If you've been thinking about getting started with the Raspberry Pi, this episode is for you. Show Links Partne...

Julia Grace talks to us about Tindie, the hardware marketplace where creators and hardware enthusiasts can come together to share their goods. We talk about the challenges of building a hardware platform, the different problems these makers are solving, and how software and hardware compare when it comes to accessibility. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Tindie Etsy Jason Hu...

It started at a conference. When Sara Chipps sat in the audience and watched a speaker use JavaScript to interact with a smoke detector, she was entranced. She left with a bag of LEDs, and a new love for hardware that led to her ultimately starting her hardware company Jewliebots. She talks to us about her transition from software developer to hardware CEO, the differences she's seen between build...

Developer Sarah Frisk uses her incredible drawing skills to teach coding tools and concepts like git through her comic, Monster Markup Manual. We talk about her love of drawing, how art and code come together, and how monsters can do a great job of learning to code. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Monster Markup Manual Tavern Wenches jQuery Foundation Chassis Framework CSS...

In our first live broadcast of the podcast, we brought on developers Scott Hanselman and Tiffany Peon to chat about hot topics in the CodeNewbie community. We talked about finding a dev job, code mentorship, and our thoughts on Zed Shaw’s critiques of programming bootcamps. We recorded live on http://twitch.tv/codenewbie, and we loved having you in the chatroom to ask questions, comment, and join...

Catt Small gives us a great intro to UX (user experience) design, including insight on her design process, how she works with users to create great digital experiences, and how code newbies can get started in UX design. She also tells us how she used Leap Motion to design a music instrument you can play using gestures. Lots of great stuff in this episode. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewb...

Developer Rebecca Garcia had always loved computers. At a young age, she went to MIT's two-week computer science camp. She was surrounded by kids who love to build and make, just like her. But at over $1K a week, it wasn't a very accessible way for kids to learn to code. So when she learned about Coder Dojo many years later, an organization that creates free coding workshops for youth, she wanted...

Joseph McLarty, developer and accessibility advocate, talks to us about issues of accessibility and how we can create, and remove, invisible barriers that keep people from accessing the web. We talk about tools like screen readers, and how as developers, we can do simple things like use semantic tags that would help many people. We also touch on the legal issues on accessibility, and how we can le...