Deved

This episode of the DevEd podcast is joined by special guest Thomas Desmond. Thomas is a software engineer currently working with .NET and Angular, has been a university instructor for three years and has a course coming up on Thinkster.io - Creating an API with ASP.NET Core. He defines ASP.NET, and describes its relation to ASP.NET Core. He explains the process of working with .NET on a Mac, differences between Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio Mac 2019, and the learning curve involved in C# and types languages such as TypeScript. The panelists share their learning transition from .NET to other languages and frameworks such as Angular, React and vice versa. They talk about the hurdles as well as effective strategies in learning ASP.NET, why is .NET considered to be Microsoft-specific, how does it compare to technologies such as Rails or Node, cloud development, and discuss reasons why bootcamps don't generally focus on learning ASP.NET. They end the show with picks. Panel Brooke Avery Luis Herna

In this episode of the DevEd podcast, the panel discusses Testing and Test Driven Development. They start the conversation by talking about automated testing with the help of unit tests using various tools available. Luis explains the terms regression testing, refactoring, mocking, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Everyone shares their experience with testing, mainly how and when they started learning automated testing and their journey with it so far. They then dive into the learning aspect of testing including some of the best ways to learn unit testing and give great tips and tools along the way. The next topic discussed is Test Driven Development - the definition, division of the development community into those support the methodology and those who do not, and more importantly, how effective it can be, it's benefits and drawbacks and the comparison between TDD and BDD (Behaviour Driven Development). They also talk about mocking, how testing can improve the quality of applicat

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In this episode of the DevEd podcast, David Graham - founder and CEO of Code Ninjas, introduces himself, gives a background of how he got into software development, briefly describes his vision that led to the creation of Code Ninjas and the interesting work that goes on there. The company essentially consists of coding centres for kids in multiple locations throughout the US, with cool learning programs catering to several age groups, its main purpose being teaching hands on software development combined with a lot of fun.  The panelists share their views about the current state of programming education in schools, if it is adequate, and what can be done to supplement it. They discuss that it is important to teach kids how to think and how to solve problems rather than relying on memory based learning. They mention ways to get students excited about programming, different learning tools and platforms, and similarities and differences in learning patterns between kids and adult learne

In this episode of the DevEd podcast, Brooke interviews Sam on Gatsby, and Sam's new course on Thinkster.io. Sam works in Developer Relations at Auth0, is a Google Developer Expert for Angular and Web Technologies, and is very passionate about teaching. Sam starts by explaining in detail what Gatsby is and what it is used for. He talks on the performance benefits of Gatsby, its comparison to React in terms of tooling and usage as well as learning, and if there are any tools or technologies needed as prerequisites to use Gatsby. He elaborates on what made him learn Gatsby, how it helped him advance his programming career, and both his favorite and not so favorite aspects of Gatsby. He then talks at length about his course - Up and Running with Gatsby, reasons he chose this topic specifically, the course design, and compelling reasons why people should go for it. In the end, he shares his thoughts on how Gatsby is getting popular and can help speed up development in enterprise companies and large organizati

In this week's episode of the DevEd podcast, the panelists talk on comments in programming. To give a context of the chosen topic, Joe mentions that he sends out regular newsletters to Thinkser.io subscribers related to a variety of concepts, and has recently been sending out some on code smells, in one of which he talks about commenting. He gives an idea of what code smells are, and shares his opinion on using comments. His point of view is that a comment can be looked at as a failure or an inability to express the code functionality or even the technology involved, or is needed to make the code completely readable to other programmers. Comments can become out of date or get replaced. The other panelists join in the discussion on whether comments are good or bad, and they state that for beginners they can be very useful while not so much for experienced programmers. Too many comments can cause a mess, so they ideally should be used for large complex functions. They are mostly used to specify if refactor

In this episode of the DevEd podcast, Brooke and Preston mainly talk about Netlify, JAMStack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) and Preston's new course - Deploying Apps to Netlify. Preston starts with explaining what JAMStack is, why is it popular right now and it's numerous benefits. He talks about the difference between single-page applications and JAM, and how Netlify comes into the whole picture. He answers questions on how to do authentication with Netlify, what is CMS (content management system) in the context of JAMStack, CMS alternatives to Netlify, how Netlify handles dynamic data, serverless functions, Netlify pricing, possible substitutes for it and finally what makes it stand out from the others. He then talks about what made him choose Netlify as the topic for his course, the authoring process, what the course is all about, and why should developers resort to the courses on Thinkster.io in general. Panel Brooke Avery Preston Lamb Sponsors Thinkster.io Links Deploying Apps to

This week's episode of the DevEd podcast is joined by Hudson Baker. Hudson has been a developer for five years now, specializing in Angular, and is currently working at BrieBug Software. The panel kickstarts the episode by answering the basic question - What is Gatsby? Sam explains that it is a static site generator which means that it takes in data and converts that into static files that can be hosted on any server. It has a lot of tooling and build process stuff built-in, and uses modern javascript concepts along with GraphQL to build fast-performance static sites. It is also a part of JAMStack. Speaking on what languages and technologies it is based on, Sam elaborates that Gatsby is built with React, the build process is webpack, the content can be written in markdown or any outside sources, and data querying is done using GraphQL. The next topic of discussion is static sites. They talk at length about what static sites are, if they can be written without a static site generator, the difference

In this week's episode of the DevEd podcast, the panelists talk to Tara Z. Manicsic. Tara is an Angular Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, a blogger, and loves to work in her community educating and learning from other developers. The topic for this episode is work-life balance with an emphasis on balancing learning as a programmer. The first thing they discuss is if programmers are good at balancing work-life. The general consensus is that they aren't, but mostly because they love their job, and it is also always fun to learn newer technologies and concepts. They talk about hackations and coding in beautiful environments away from their regular desks. They talk about some strategies to maintain a good work-life balance especially in high-pressure scenarios where the work seems to never get over. They suggest time management, blocking off hours and segregating them into strictly work and non-work periods. Tara mentions working non-traditional hours while having an infant at home, while Brooke

Dillon Kearns is an Elm consultant who provides coaching and training to help people accelerate the way they write Elm to keep their codebases maintainable as they grow. He's the author of elm-graphql, and recently announced a new static site framework, elm-pages. Today the panel is discussing how building libraries and frameworks can aide with the learning process. Dillon talks about how building frameworks and working with languages has helped him. He uses them as a laboratory to learn new techniques. When working on a library or framework, he always tries to bring his best programming self to that project.He believes that libraries and frameworks are a low risk way to practice your skills because they’re unlikely to get adopted when you’re starting out. The panel defines what libraries and frameworks are and how they differ from one another. Libraries and frameworks are a type of project, with a library solving a specific class of problems. A framework is plugable and can be extended to s

Today’s episode of the Dev Ed podcast is joined by Tyler Legget, a structural engineering major working in the construction field primarily, and also on a number of side projects including property development, designing and building homes, co-founder of a company that made software for cycling race management. He also worked as a Product Manager on a platform that managed complex inventory of wood products. He then got involved in ng-conf, which spawned into an event management company called Zero Slope Events which he manages currently. Zero Slope Events provides event planning for conferences such as ng-conf, React conf and so on. After listening to Tyler’s diverse background where coding had been only a partial activity, Joe asks what made him not go into full-fledged software development. Tyler answers that while he enjoyed different aspects and the variety of it, he never felt like making a career out of it. To determine if software development may not be a good career, it needs to be tried

In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Joe Skeen. Joe is a Developer and a Mentor, who started tinkering with computers since childhood and later taught himself web languages. After getting into University, he started working with strongly typed languages as well. He gives a brief background of himself and his work and shares his Angular journey. The panel discusses the most effective steps involved in mentoring a brand new developer who is just starting out. The first thing that can be done is to hone any skills the developers already possess through their previous line of work or education so as to ensure a smooth transition into a new environment. Another idea is giving them relevant and meaningful things to practice which are needed for the job or the project rather than something vague or generic. They need to feel motivated and connected to the things they are learning. Another piece of advice is, as a mentor, make sure to be there for them, keep the commitment strong, don’t

Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Nell Shamrell-Harrington, Principal Engineer at Chef Software. Nell introduces herself and gives a brief background about her software development journey so far and talks about how she started working with DevOps. She is also a co-host of the Adventures in DevOps podcast on Devchat.tv. The meaning of the term DevOps can be quite cloudy, so before discussing learning DevOps, they talk about what it actually means and how it differs from traditional development. Nell breaks down the term and describes in detail the approach of merging developers and operational professionals. Joe highlights the cultural aspect of DevOps and how it plays into the way of working. Nell explains the right way of organizing teams, the internal interactions among them, accountability, and some of the dos and don'ts involved. Other panelists chime in with their views on the DevOps culture as well. They discuss the best practices, challenges faced, eli

Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to recurring guest Aspen Payton, who is currently working as a Lead Analyst Programmer at Mayo Clinic, has been in the software industry for about 20 years, and has over 32 granted patents to her name. Joe starts the discussion by giving a background on why he chose to talk about the essential developer skills. He divides the topic into different categories of skills and poses the first question to the panel - what fundamental technical skills should every developer have. Brooke shares her boot camp experience and stresses the importance of learning basic command-line operations. Sam mentions debugging with console.log in any language in any environment and explains how it can be a savior while troubleshooting all kinds of situations. Luis says that it is important to know how to efficiently use the editor, understand related tools and know how to type faster. Joe agrees and shares a funny anecdote from his initial days as a fast typi

Sponsors Thinkster.io Adventures in Blockchain - Devchat.tv My Ruby Story - Devchat.tv CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Mike Dane Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Dylan Israel Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Dylan Israel. Dylan is a self-taught software engineer working as a developer and a content creator. His YouTube channel has over 60k subscribers where he aims to help people trying to learn programming on their own. He teaches a course on Thinkster.io called "100 Algorithms Challenge", aimed at developers preparing for technical whiteboard interviews or those wanting regular challenges to improve their skills, and has a collection of the top most commonly asked interview questions on algorithms and data structures. Joe starts the discussion by throwing the fundamental question to the panel - What is the meaning of the terms "data structures" and "algorithms". Dylan exp

Sponsors Thinkster.io React Native Radio - Devchat.tv Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Mike Dane Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Erik Hanchett Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to Erik Hanchett, a software developer focusing on Vue and Angular, author of Vue.js in Action and Ember.js Cookbook, educator and YouTuber. Erik starts the discussion by stating the benefits of working remotely and others join in with their inputs.They list several important advantages including work freedom, not having to commute, utilizing time well, privacy, less distractions, increased productivity and flexible schedules. They then discuss the downsides of it as well - less social interaction, no particular end time leading to long hours and difficulty in setting boundaries, feeling of being left out and managing different time zones. They also talk about techniques such as resorting to physical activ

Sponsors Thinkster.io Adventures in DevOps - Devchat.tv My Angular Story - Devchat.tv CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Sam Julien Mike Dane Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Preston Lamb Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to recurring special guest Preston Lamb who is a software developer at MotivHealth. They start the discussion by each explaining how and when the imposter syndrome has affected them in their work. They talk about it being more frequent than generally thought of and how it impacts their confidence and leads to self-doubt. They share their experiences where switching career paths and learning something new tends to become intimidating and hard at times, causing anxiety and resulting in the feeling of not knowing things, especially on stage or while doing something like consulting where you are expected to be an expert. They discuss which activities are more likely to cause the imposter syndrome - teaching, bei

Sponsors CacheFly Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Joined by special guest: Mike Brocchi Episode Summary This episode of the Dev Ed podcast is joined by Mike Brocchi, who is currently working as a Front-End Developer for Ultimate Software, and has done significant work on the Angular CLI in the past. Joe begins the show by asking the panel what reinventing oneself means to them, starting off an interesting discussion. They each talk about some triggers that made them think about changing course in their ongoing professional path or even starting over again. They share their own experiences where they reconsidered their life choices due to certain roadblocks and took necessary actions, ultimately resulting in a fulfilling and happy career. They discuss how comfort works against all of this, and how reinventing does not necessarily have to be a better job or higher salary, it can simply mean choosing something satisfying and challenging. In the end, the panelists help l

Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Jesse Sanders Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Mike Dane Joined by special guest: Mike Ryan Episode Summary In this episode, the panelists talk to Mike Ryan, Software Architect at Synapse, Google Developer Expert, and a core team member of the NgRx team. Joe starts the discussion by elaborating on the topic chosen and explains what constitutes a "problem" in a developer's life. He asks the panel how often do they use classical algorithms in their everyday work. They then steer the discussion from implementing classical algorithms to logical ones, and discuss how they tackle and overcome complex computing challenges that can be very taxing. They talk about a technique called "Rubber Duck programming", how to go about creating a conducive environment for problem solving, and explain the concept of "flow" in software development along with its importance while dealing with issues. They discuss if pair-programming and mob-programming help in prob

Panel Joe Eames Brooke Avery Sam Julien Luis Hernandez Mike Dane Joined by special guests: Bonnie Brennan, Samantha Brennan Episode Summary In this episode of the Dev Ed podcast, the panelists talk to the mother-daughter duo, Bonnie and Samantha Brennan, who have been working on teaching web development to people with learning difficulties and bringing about an awareness in the community. While talking about her background, Samantha explains that she has been programming since she was 8, and realized that she was dyslexic while learning Angular, as it is an abstract framework where a bunch of things happen at the backend. Keeping in mind the struggles faced by dyslexic learners, she, along with her mother Bonnie, decided to start the course — Angular for the Visual Learner, where they use visual methods such as pictures and 3D animation in order to overcome the learning challenges. Further in the show, they discuss how to detect if a person is dyslexic and also do an interesting demonstratio