We've had some great guests on our podcast, and we've asked each of them for their "Three Top Tips" for new developers. All their advice has been amazing, and a lot of the same concepts have come up time and time again. In this miniseries we're looking back at those top tips, and linking the themes together. This week our theme is "pragmatic learning". There are lots of routes into this industry, and an overwhelming number of things to start learning. Taking a step back to focus on some of the c...
Nov 16, 2020•12 min
We've had some great guests on our podcast, and we've asked each of them for their "Three Top Tips" for new developers. All their advice has been amazing, and a lot of the same concepts have come up time and time again. In this miniseries we're looking back at those top tips, and linking the themes together. This week our theme is "documenting what you've learnt". Who benefits when you write about your career progress? Strangers, peers, yourself? (Spoiler: all of the above). What are the less-th...
Nov 09, 2020•13 min
We've had some great guests on our podcast, and we've asked each of them for their "Three Top Tips" for new developers. All their advice has been amazing, and a lot of the same concepts have come up time and time again. In this miniseries we're looking back at those top tips, and linking the themes together. This week our theme is "enjoyment". How do you work out what parts of the job you enjoy most? And how should that knowledge steer your next steps? Find out all this and more in this week's r...
Nov 02, 2020•14 min
We've had some great guests on our podcast, and we've asked each of them for their "Three Top Tips" for new developers. All their advice has been amazing, and a lot of the same concepts have come up time and time again. In this miniseries we're looking back at those top tips, and linking the themes together. This week our theme is "getting things done": that is to say, just start already! There's a lot to be said for doing research and preparing thoroughly, but there's even more power in just st...
Oct 26, 2020•9 min
We've had some great guests on our podcast, and we've asked each of them for their "Three Top Tips" for new developers. All their advice has been amazing, and a lot of the same concepts have come up time and time again. In this miniseries we're looking back at those top tips, and linking the themes together. This week our theme is "Just Build Websites". Having a project to guide your learning and apply your knowledge is really useful, especially when you're just starting out (but also useful at ...
Oct 19, 2020•11 min
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any developer in possession of a bug must be in need of a rubber duck to talk to. There are lots of ways to get "stuck" when programming. It can often be because of something simple, like a syntax error or typo, or maybe a fundamental lack of knowledge or experience with the system you're using (be it an API, framework, or whatever...). It could even be an "architectural" issue, or a bizarre language quirk. Perhaps it's a situation where a weird hack i...
Oct 12, 2020•25 min
We're trying something new this week. Live-coding is famously risky when giving a talk or presentation, but we figured it might be fun to make things even harder by removing all the visual elements. That's right; we're live coding on a podcast! There are a lot of frontend frameworks out there, so being comfortable picking up a new framework is a useful skill to have. To demonstrate and demystify this process, we've picked a framework neither of us have ever used before: Svelte. In this episode w...
Oct 05, 2020•25 min
This week we get deep into the weeds of HTML. What tags do we use (and are they the same as the tags we should use)? And who are we wring our markup for? Just browsers, surely?! But what about search-engine crawlers and accessibility tools? So how can we structure our web pages so that they do a great job in all scenarios? How much do we care about the distinction between links and buttons? Find out all this and more in this week's semantically meaningful instalment of A Question of Code. Mentio...
Sep 28, 2020•26 min
Development (and web-dev in particular) is a field full of initialisms and acronyms. We often take them for granted without thinking too much about these things that we use every day. This week we dive into one of the most common TLIs (Three Letter Initialisms) that all web developers will encounter sooner or later: APIs (also known as Application Programming Interfaces). How well do we know our TLIs? How (and why) might you scrape data from a web page? And why would using an API be preferable? ...
Sep 21, 2020•28 min
To celebrate our eightieth full episode, we pull back the curtain to show you how the sausage gets made. When we were starting out, "meta" episodes like these were a great way to learn how our podcasting heroes ran their shows. Now, we're not calling ourselves "heroes" just yet, but we've been doing this long enough to have some tidbits of advice for anyone looking at starting their own show. How much preparation do we do for each episode? (Spoiler alert: very little) What gear and software do w...
Sep 14, 2020•26 min
What's this? Another of our heroes joining us for a chat!? You betcha! This week we're joined by the immensely talented and infectiously friendly Vaidehi Joshi. You'll know Vaidehi from her work on the Base.cs blog series and podcast (a must-listen show; it's awesome). How did Vaidehi get into the world of computer science in the first place? And is it something she thinks everyone else should do, too? Are technical interviews that lean heavily on core CS skills useful in a world where most deve...
Sep 07, 2020•46 min
If you're a developer you should absolutely know a little bit about design. You don't need to be an expert, but knowing some of the fundamentals of good layout and "usability" will be a massive force multiplier for your work. It's also a general "life hack" that will improve your career in many, many ways. So what should you do if you're a developer who doesn't know anything about design? How does design fit into a normal project's workflow? Can you get 80% of the benefit by just learning a few ...
Aug 31, 2020•26 min
Boilerplate code is code that you import into your project to give you a scaffold to build on. It helps get you to the fun stuff faster. Or does it? This week we discuss why you might (or might not) want to use boilerplate, and dig into what parts of our own stacks we think of as being "boilerplate". Does Ed think that CSS "frameworks" are true boilerplate? And what old-school boilerplate tool rustles Tom's jimmies? What should you use at the start of every project? And where do you draw the lin...
Aug 24, 2020•25 min
It's another rapid-fire multi-question show this week. Ed has some more questions about CSS, and (hopefully) Tom has some answers. Join us as we dive into the intricacies of the box model, and learn why the dev tools are your friend. Remember: if in doubt, inspect the element! How do you break up different css files? What do we mean when we talk about "Critical Path" CSS? What is the "cascade", and how does it impact "specificity"? What are css custom properties and `calc()`? Find out all this a...
Aug 17, 2020•32 min
It's fan-boy o'clock again this week, as one of Tom's web-heroes joins us for a chat. CSS Trickster and ShopTalkin' podcaster Chris Coyier stopped by for a chat about working as a developer. Chris is full of all sorts of useful advice for aspiring developers. For example, you need some experience before you can know what you want from a job. Learn how to be picky after your first job, but get into the industry as quickly as you can. That way you'll learn so much more that you would if you were w...
Aug 10, 2020•51 min
We're joined this week by testing expert (and long-time friend of the show) Brian Okken. Brian literally wrote the book on testing with Python ( Python Testing with pytest ) and has a lot of strong opinions about the value of testing and testing methodologies in general. Thankfully he's as friendly as he is smart, and was happy to lead us through the sometimes-murky waters of software testing. How did Brian first get into testing, and what advice does he have for those of us just getting started...
Aug 03, 2020•50 min
This week we're joined by Python expert (and super-star podcaster) Michael Kennedy to talk about why Python is such a great language to get started coding with. So why is coding in Python such fun? And why is it so good for beginners and experts alike? Why might Python give you tangible results faster than JavaScript? And once you've learnt some Python, what are your career options? Find out all this and more in this week's pythonic instalment of A Question of Code. Mentioned in this episode: Mi...
Jul 27, 2020•44 min
In a tweak to the usual format, this week's show is a frontend-focused rapid-fire question bonanza. Ed's been doing some CSS work this week, and has a lot of questions for Tom (a self-styled CSS expert, whatever that means). What's wrong with `innerHTML`? And for that matter, why is `eval()` so evil? Should you use `px`, `pt`, `em`, or `rem` (or something else) when setting sixes in CSS? What's the deal with browser prefixes (`-moz-`, `-webkit-` etc.)? Are you a bad programmer if you use a z-ind...
Jul 20, 2020•34 min
This week we're joined by Shawn Wang, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS and author of the excellent Coding Career Handbook. Shawn is a career-switcher; he transitioned into tech in his early thirties after a career in finance. He has written a lot about how aspiring devs can better accelerate their careers, and his views are nuanced and full of wisdom that's very relevant to all aQoC listeners (no matter what stage you're at in your career). What does a "developer advocate" actually do, and how d...
Jul 13, 2020•55 min
Down on your luck? Become a developer! Don't know what to do for a career? Become a developer! Want to earn the big bucks? "Simply" become a developer... We hear this advice all the time, but how much truth is there to it? Can anyone become a developer, and is it a good choice for everyone? And more importantly, is now a good time to transition to a career in programming? We touch a lot of bases in this episode. We ask (again!) if there is a benefit to having a computer science degree, and touch...
Jul 06, 2020•24 min
Side projects (or "side hustles" if you're feeling more entrepreneurial) are a subject that comes up a lot with developers. It can seem like every programmer has seven or eight projects that they're working on in the wings, any one of which could become a world-beating business at any moment. But is there more to this than just hype? Are there more benefits to having a side project than mere bragging rights? What, in short, are the tangible reasons for having one? Do you need to have them? How m...
Jun 29, 2020•27 min
This week we're joined by Kirsty Simmonds, a developer who has successfully survived a coding bootcamp. We love hearing stories about people who have transitioned into tech from other careers, and Kirsty's tale is a good one. As well as giving us an honest and fair insight into the mechanics and specifics of taking a bootcamp, Kirsty also has a ton of actionable advice for other people in a similar situation. In fact, it's all good advice for all of us. What parts of the traditional coding job-a...
Jun 22, 2020•44 min
We're joined for this episode by Natalia Waniczek. Natalia is a web developer building hybrid mobile apps and websites at Elixel. With a passion for environment she's not afraid to voice her opinions and advocate for climate change. It's easy to assume that working as a web developer doesn't have much of an impact on climate change, but it there are second-order effects that most of us haven't considered. So how does our work impact the environment, and how serious is this impact? What can we do...
Jun 15, 2020•36 min
We were joined for this episode by Tom Sainsbury, a neuroscientist who has a wealth of experience in using programming to deal with data. We discuss the ins and outs of "data science" as a discipline, as well as how it intersects with the world of professional programming. How do you deal with your data when you're collecting 500GB per day? How do scientists interact with code in a lab setting? What uses are there for data science in the wider tech industry? How can you tell a story with data an...
Jun 08, 2020•39 min
It's an exciting show for Ed this week. If you've listened to almost any of our previous episodes, you'll have most likely already heard Ed spreading the Good News (TM) about Exercism.io - an education platform that combines coding exercises and online mentoring. Ed's used it for ages, and talks about it any chance he gets. In this episode we get to chat with one of Exercism's co-founders, Jeremy Walker. So what actually happens on Exercism? Who's it for, and what will they get out of it? What d...
Jun 01, 2020•1 hr 4 min
This week we were joined by Boris Paskhaver, a software developer, Agile consultant, online educator and author. Boris is based in New York City and has 240,000 students across 6 courses on the e-learning marketplace Udemy with over 1 million minutes of video content consumed monthly. In our discussion we talk about his upcoming book, *Pandas in Action* , as well as his own transition into coding. Boris was a data analyst before he was a software engineer, and found that Pandas was a great bridg...
May 25, 2020•34 min
This week we're joined by internationalisation (i18n) expert Eli Schutze. Originally from Nicaragua, Eli is a London-based web engineer and speaker currently making money work for everyone at Monzo Bank. In this episode she clears up some common misconceptions around the issue of translating apps and websites. It turns out that doing i18n properly often runs counter to a lot of the principles developers are taught when they learn programming. Why do we call it "i18n"? (Spoiler: because it's hard...
May 18, 2020•39 min
This week we got to speak with Amber Wilson. Amber is a front end engineer with 3 years experience and an interest in lots of things to do with the web. Right now she's especially interested in accessibility, security, and performance. And in this episode we were able to grill her about the specifics of having (and being) a mentor. We've spoken about the power of mentoring a lot on this show, and this episode is a fascinating look into the reality of tech mentoring. How did Amber find her mentor...
May 11, 2020•50 min
Let's set the scene. You've landed an interview for your dream job in tech. You've crushed it on the technical evaluation and wowed them at the whiteboard; everything's going your way. At that point, somewhere towards the end of the face-to-face segment, you'll be hit with the following challenge: do you have any questions for _us_ ? We _love_ questions here at A Question of Code (surprise, surprise), so of course we've got some advice for that inevitable scenario. There are some great questions...
May 04, 2020•24 min
This week we're joined by Jeremy Keith, a web developer and author who's had a massive influence on at least one of our hosts. Jeremy introduces us to the concept of "resilient" websites, and has loads of advice for developers new to the field. The web is for everyone, and websites should reflect that: if you're using some advanced fancy features, make sure that your core functionality is available to everyone. We delve into the thorny issues of progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. ...
Apr 27, 2020•48 min
