Working with CSS can be frustrating, and sometimes just plain painful. But if you listen to Jen Simmons talk about CSS, her passion for it might rub off on you. She gives tips on how to make your next CSS adventure more enjoyable, explains how the CSS working group determines new features, and shares the honest ups and downs of her own coding journey. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Peter Griffin CSS gif CSS Working Group The Web Ahead UC Browser for Android Designing wit...
Dec 04, 2017•41 min
You put on a headset in a real life beauty salon in real life, and, in seconds, you’re transported to a virtual one. It’s full of colors, shapes, music, and the soothing voice of a narrator. She explains that you’re in a different world now, and you’re about to contribute to the “synaptic lineage.” The setting is intriguing and futuristic, the story is unique, and every detail so carefully laid out. We talk to Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, one of the creators of the NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism, a vi...
Nov 27, 2017•45 min
This is the last week to submit a talk to Codeland, our annual tech conference, so we wanted to give you some insight on what makes a good talk, a good speaker, and a good proposal. You'll hear from Lara Hogan, who literally wrote the book on public speaking, and Kelsey Hightower, speaker and chair of many tech conferences. They share their personal speaking stories (and nightmares!), how they prepare their talks, and the common mistakes they see first-time speakers make. Show Links Partner with...
Nov 20, 2017•42 min
Applying to your first technical role (or your second!) can be a long and intimidating process, especially when you're not sure how to stand out. What do tech companies really care about? What should you put on your resume? What should you leave out? We talk to in-house recruiter, Eddie Washington, to give you the scoop on how companies evaluate your application and what you can do to increase your chances of getting that first interview. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) G...
Nov 13, 2017•46 min
You use the browser all the time, but how much do you really know about it? Lin Clark walks us through all the steps a browser takes to translate your html into pixels on the screen. She also makes these wonderful coding cartoons. She shares her techniques and her process, and how you can apply them to your next technical blog post. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Code Cartoons Building the DOM faster: speculative parsing, async, defer and preload Inside a super fast CSS ...
Nov 06, 2017•46 min
Alicia Carr grew up surrounded by domestic violence. So when she learned about coding, she decided to build a mobile app to help women escape domestic abuse. Her app, Pevo, got the attention of Apple, who featured her in their WWDC promo video. She shares the technical challenges of building this app, the personal challenge of learning to believe in herself, and how she learned the skills to bring this app to life. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Pevo Alicia Carr in Apple...
Oct 30, 2017•43 min
Web animation can be creative and fun, but what does it have to do with building a website? How do you use it in a form or a basic landing page in a way that's actually helpful and not just cute? Rachel Nabors helps us understand what web animation looks like and how to use it to create powerful user experiences. She also shares her own inspiring journey of going from cartoonist to coder. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Don’t Do What You Love React Motion Foundation Boots...
Oct 04, 2017•1 hr 4 min
You've got an amazing website. It's beautiful, functional, but it takes forever to load. What do you do? Where do you even begin to debug that? Lara Hogan, VP of Engineering at Kickstarter and author of the book, Designing for Performance, breaks down common web performance issues, tools you can use to diagnose the problem, and how to use AB testing to measure your results. We also have another episode of the Coding Corner, where we unpack three common mistakes newbies make when trying to speed ...
Sep 27, 2017•53 min
Technical interviews are the worst. They’re hard, they’re scary, and they often feel like they’re designed to make you feel stupid. But no worries! We’re here to help. We take a behind-the-scenes look at the interview process at two very prestigious companies, Etsy and the New York Times. Developers La Vesha Parker and Tiffany Peon break down each part of the interview process, giving you examples and explanations of exactly what they’re looking for, and share their own stories of how they got t...
Sep 20, 2017•1 hr 1 min
Kim’s a designer and developer who’s always had a side project. But her latest project was a bit different. Not only did she have to learn a new framework (React), she had to learn it and build her app in a few weeks to make her very public deadline. She shares her process for learning a new javascript framework, and the frustrations she experienced even as a seasoned developer. We also hear from Brent Vatne on how to get started with React and React Native. And for a mini technical deep dive, w...
Sep 13, 2017•59 min
Wes Bos is pretty popular in the JavaScript and learn-to-code community. He produces tons of tutorials, blog posts, videos, many of them free, for people to learn and grown as developers. He takes us behind-the-scenes, sharing how he learns, how he works, and how he slowly, eventually got over his hatred for JavaScript to become a beloved JavaScript teacher. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) JavaScript 30 Technical Writer position at CodeNewbie Preact JS React JS CSS Tricks...
Sep 05, 2017•49 min
Vaidehi decided to take on a year-long challenge. She'd pick a computer science topic every week, do tons of research and write a technical blog post explaining it in simple terms and beautiful illustrations. And then she actually did it. She tells us about her project, basecs, how it's changed her as a developer, and how she handles the trolls and negativity from people who don't appreciate her work. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Bits, Bytes, Building With Binary (Vaid...
Aug 29, 2017•40 min
Rec Room is the most popular virtual reality game. It's a social space where you can play dodgeball, ping pong, darts and more with people from all over the world. But when you're inviting everyone to play, how do you make sure that everyone is safe? What happens when a player attacks someone? What does an attack even look like in a virtual world? Cameron Brown, Chief Creative Officer at Against Gravity, the creators of Rec Room, takes us through the world of social virtual reality and shows how...
Aug 24, 2017•56 min
We kick off the first episode of our official first season with Stephanie Slattery, a front-end engineer who specializes in accessibility. She breaks down the world of accessibility, giving you the perfect introduction to this topic. She explains the five categories of disabilities, shows us how to implement suggestions from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and shares why she’s so passionate about helping more people experience tech. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponso...
Aug 16, 2017•55 min
In our final episode of our Codeland mini-series, Katrina Owen shares what it really takes to get that mentor you've always wanted, Quincy Larson gives us his best practices for writing technical blog posts people will actually read, and Nell Shamrell-Harrington explores what it really takes for an open source project to be successful and what you should know as a future contributor. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Sample Testing Guide How to read Medium articles people w...
Aug 01, 2017•51 min
Courteney Ervin shares the ups and downs of building a product for one of the largest library systems in the world. Celia La walks us through the technical challenges (and solutions) of bringing Khan Academy's high quality content to people all over the world. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Integrated Library System Version Control System Memcached New York Public Library Git Khan Academy CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in N...
Jul 25, 2017•33 min
We wrap up our community talks with Sterling’s story of her very first project at her first dev job: making the app accessible for two blind students. Maurice kicks off our education talks with the story of Abacus, his side project that became the learning system used by thousands of students in his country of Belize. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) xkcd comic "Standards" Java Grails Abacus Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues Co...
Jul 18, 2017•46 min
Valerie explores the importance of security in creating powerful and engaged communities, and breaks down three ways your code might be vulnerable. Rapi shares his story of creating a toy coding project in D3.js that sparked a movement and helped thousands of people become more politically engaged. Checkout the videos of these talks on the CodeNewbie YouTube channel. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) strong parameters sanitizing inputs validating inputs SQL injection man in...
Jul 06, 2017•40 min
This episode features two talks on mental health that explore two very different sides of this important topic. Michelle’s talk is a technical showcase of how her research project uses open source tools to better diagnose depression. Greg shares his personal struggles with ADHD and bipolar disorder, and how important it is for us to openly talk about mental health. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) 718-312-8335 (Greg's mental health resource number) ZocDoc Automatic Speech ...
Jun 27, 2017•43 min
When Minerva Tantoco was first offered the CTO position for New York City, she thought it was a prank. But in 2014, she became the city’s first Chief Technology Officer. She sits down with Codeland’s emcee, Nikhil Paul, to talk about how she started her long, impressive tech career, what programming looked like back her coding days, and how she hopes tech will transform cities for the better. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Mayor de Blasio’s announcement CodeNewbie YouTub...
Jun 21, 2017•35 min
Chris Algoo shares how he co-created “Breakup Squad,” the game where you have to keep two exes from getting back together. Kate Rabinowitz shows us how open data can help build powerful, insightful tools to better understand and improve your city. Eric Brelsford shares how he used mapping tools to help community members turn vacant lots into beautiful neighborhood spaces. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) API D3 Carto Tableau Python R Open Data NYCommons Living Lots NYC 596...
Jun 13, 2017•47 min
In our second episode of our Codeland miniseries, we dig into our talks on gaming and code. Jessica shows us how we can use failure to become better developers with lessons learned from the video gaming industry. Opher shows us a number of ways to use video game principles to make our web apps more exciting. To watch the videos of these talks, checkout our channel on YouTube. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Screen Shake Juice (video game concept) Eko Pop In Matter: JavaSc...
Jun 05, 2017•42 min
In episode 1 of our Codeland miniseries, you get to hear two amazing talks on art and code. Stephanie's a first-time speaker from Amsterdam and shares her inspiring story of building her first hardware project. Dan shows us how creative coding can be with his amazing art and code showcase, featuring artists and installations of all shapes, sizes, and platforms. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) The Coding Train NYU ITP p5.js Arduino Raspberry Pi Processing HAT (Hardware Att...
May 30, 2017•46 min
If you've heard of open data, big data, and data science and never quite knew what it was all about, this episode is for you. Briana helps us explore the different steps it takes to answer a complex data question with code, giving us a tour of the data science world along the way. We talk about the importance and difficulty of cleaning data, the role of ethics in data collection and analysis, and how a codenewbie can dig into this fascinating topic. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! ...
Apr 24, 2017•45 min
WordPress powers 27% of the web, with sites big and small leveraging the popular platform. Developer Ptah Dunbar, also known as “Pirate”, gives us a tour of the platform, its thriving community, and the realities of being employed as a WordPress developer. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Squarespace WordCamp Wix Codeland Conf Codeland 2019
Apr 17, 2017•1 hr 1 min
In just over a year, Kim’s spoken at eight meetups, ten conferences, had talks accepted at three more, and has four upcoming talks already lined up. And she’s just getting started. She shares how presenting at meetups became an accidental launchpad for her speaking career at conferences, how she uses her past career in education to create unique tech talks, and how speaking has provided her incredible opportunities, like traveling the world for free. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie!...
Apr 10, 2017•48 min
This week, we followed up our conversation about embedded systems with a focus on getting into hardware as a whole. Elecia White gave us a tour of her hardware world, complete with stories of gadgets catching fire, the responsibility of creating life-saving ICU technology, and having fun with poopy robots. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Python Twilio Arduino Making Embedded Systems book by Elecia NumPy voltmeter Threat Modeling Nest Chris Svec's Podcast Interview Embedde...
Apr 03, 2017•1 hr 9 min
Chris’s job sounds impressive. After over a decade working in tech, he’s designed microprocessors and now helps build robot vacuum cleaners. He’s at the intersection of hardware and software in a space called embedded systems. We explore this field, get a solid intro to working with chips, and discuss the many ways a codenewbie can start learning more about the fascinating world of embedded systems. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Arduino Raspberry Pi Hacker News Thermal ...
Mar 27, 2017•54 min
When we talk about open source, we focus mostly on the code and contributions. But as a crucial element of the developer ecosystem, it’s important to think about the business side of things. How does it sustain itself? Is there money in open source? If there is, who gets it? Developer and open source maintainer Safia Abdalla helps us tackle these questions to better understand how open source really works. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Jupyter Codeland - CodeNewbie Conf...
Mar 20, 2017•49 min
If you plan on getting a job as a developer, chances are, you’ll deal with the technical side of accepting online payments. It might be as easy as plugging in a tool like Stripe or Braintree, but it can quickly get complicated. In this more technical episode, Noel takes us through some of those thorny situations and how a newbie can navigate the complex world of money. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Code Complete Apple IIe Zork The Pragmatic Programmer The Money Gem Shop...
Mar 13, 2017•46 min
