CodeNewbie

Zed A. Shaw, developer and author of the Learn the Hard Way series, talks to us about how to learn to code, his own approach to learning a new programming language, and why he’s not a fan of programming bootcamps. He also answers a few questions from the CodeNewbie community, including what the A in his name stands for. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Zardoz Learn Python th...

Vanessa Hurst, founder of CodeMontage, has spent a lot of her career making tech an inclusive space for all people, particularly women. We talk about how she created that space through Girl Develop It, the non-profit she founded, her perspective on managing your career as a code newbie, and particularly about getting that first tech job. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Brea...

You may have heard of Scott Hanselman from his own podcasts and his very popular tech blog. We talk to him about how he creates all this helpful tech content, why it's important to be a social developer, and how we can evaluate our own coding abilities. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Keys Left Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Tech Guy Scott's Blog 7-Minute Workout JQuer...

Engineer and artist Jenn Schiffer talks to us about the Vart Institute, the side project that blends her love of art with her love of javascript. We dive into how she brings those two worlds together, what the difference is between teaching an eight-year old and an eighty-year old how to code (she’s taught both), and about her experience working on the academic side of computer science. Show Links...

There's more to coding than just your code. In this episode, we talk to developer Chris Webber about devops, and all of the infrastructure-related things that are also important in getting your app to work. We untangle some devops concepts, like feature flats and the different programming environments, and talk through what a code newbie should know about devops when working on their code projects...

You've probably heard of this idea of testing. Or maybe you've just heard of test driven development and you're not really sure what it is or whether or not you should learn about it. In this episode, Noel Rappin, developer and author of the new book "Rails 4 Test Prescriptions" gives us a newbie-friendly explanation of the world of testing. We talk about different types of tests, we walk through...

If you're looking for solid, newbie-friendly guides to tech, Lauren Orsini's got you covered. As a tech journalist for ReadWrite, she's written some CodeNewbie favorites, including a great explanation of git and GIthub. We talk about her writing process, how she tackles a new piece of technology and learns it well enough to write about it, and why she calls herself an "amateur" programmer and real...

When it was time for lunch, the other students ate and got to know each other while Tina Lee searched for a place to nurse her baby. The only one she found in that coding workshop was the cold, dark, filthy room where the company's developers slept - at least that's what it looked like. And she sat, frustrated that in a workshop that was meant to be inclusive, she still felt very much alone. So sh...

It was just a static webpage, telling you to get in the holiday spirit by making open source contributions. But 24 Pull Requests soon became its own open source project, with people adding features to make it fun and easy to make those contributions. We talk to creator Andrew Nestbitt about how code newbies can get started in making open source contributions, why getting involved in open source is...

She calls them nitpicks, her term for the code reviews people get on exercism.io. It's a platform that developer Katrina Owen created to help people get mentorship and feedback on their code. It started as a project for her own students, but grew into something much more. Katrina talks to us about building her platform to help people become better programmers, how she went from being a secretary t...

Building a web product was a lot harder in 2006 than it is now. Poornima Vijayashanker tells us what it was like to code back in those days as founding engineer at Mint, an app that later sold to Intuit for $170 million. Since then, she's been helping people better understand the product development process through her blog and company Femgineer. We talk about what code newbies should think about...

When William Jeffries had to think of a project to work on as a bootcamp student, he decided to build an app that could detect and report temperatures in apartments when they dropped below a certain degree. His mission was to help people find heat in the winter, and he called it Heat Seek. In a few months, his student project grew past the classroom walls, getting the attention of city officals, e...

When Ciara Burkett saw the movie 'Hackers' at age five, she told her mother she wanted to be just that - a hacker. But it wasn't until exploring liberal arts in college that she remembered her early fascination with tech. So she gave finally it a try. Now a Meteor developer and teacher, she tells us about organizing tech meetups, why she loves the beginner-friendly, javascript framework, and share...

Rachel Nabors started as a cartoonist. But when she needed jaw surgery and didn't have the health insurance to get it, she decided it was time to get more lucrative skills. Now a cartoonist, developer, and speaker, she tells us about her transition into programming, how to tell stories with code, and what it means to be an interaction developer. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (spons...

Marty Haught, director of Ruby Central, the non-profit that organizes Rails Conf and Ruby Conf has read and reviewed over 1,000 talk proposals, and organize several regional and national conferences for developers. We talk about how to write a great talk proposal, how to make conferences a welcome and inclusive space for all developers, and how to prepare for your next big talk. Show Links Partner...

Self-taught developer Kinsey Ann Durham didn't stop at learning to code. In two years, she's spoken at tech conferences around the world, started an organization in Kenya to help women entrepreneurs (and of course wrote the software it runs on), and organizes events focused on women in tech in her town in Colorado. We talk about what it was like to give her first tech talk, how to use your coding...