Developer's Journey

Guillermo first took us through his very early steps in the software world... as a child. He then explained how he discovered he could make a living out of it, and how it shaped his perception. We then discussed how he grew learning and teaching in online communities and how he finally decided to move to the Silicon Valley. We finally touched on moving away and stepping into a new life.Guillermo is a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of ZEIT, socket.io and MongooseJS. He is also the co-creator of Now, Next.js, LearnBoost and Cloudup. Finally, Guillermo is a former mentor and the author of the book "Smashing Node.js".Note: for technical reasons, we could not use the tools I usually use to record this great interview. I had thus less flexibility to edit the podcast in the end. There are a couple distortions that I couldn't remove in the end.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/rauchghttps://zeit.coCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-N

Stephanie first told us about the detours that led her from math, art and political science to computer science. We then discussed her first jobs and her first mentor. We then touched on how she joined Oculus and Unity and their respective interview processes before switching gears and talking about entrepreneurship and her creating her own business. Stephanie was then very open about her technical burn out and explained how she feels it coming back.Stephanie Hurlburt is a graphics engineer and co-founder of Binomial, a software company based in Seattle that makes Basis, a popular image/texture compression product. Among other things, she previously worked on graphics engineering and engine programming at Oculus and Unity.Here are the links of the show:https://stephaniehurlburt.comhttps://twitter.com/sehurlburtGiving Back: The Role of Ethics in Open Source and Online Communities video with Scott Hanselman (@shanselman): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BNSwKNadx4Book recommendations (affiliate links):"Bo

Llevellyn took us way back to the point where he discovered his first computer and FORTRAN. We brushed over his studies and drifted toward MobProgramming after talking about dancing. Llewellyn told us about how he discovered "strong style pair programming" and how it brought the joy of programming back in his life.Llewellyn Falco is an independent agile coach who spends most of his time programming in Java and C# specializing in improving legacy code. He is creator of the open source testing tool ApprovalTests, he discovered strong-style pair programming, he is the co-founder of TeachingKidsProgramming.org and finally co-author of the "Mob Programming Guidebook".Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/llewellynfalcohttps://llewellynfalco.blogspot.com/p/sparrow-decks.htmlhttp://teachingkidsprogramming.orgCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.Your hostSoftware Developer‘s Journey is hosted and produc

Elissa first spoke about her political sciences, activism background and then her love for IT. We then discussed getting into Security, Mentoring, people surrounding you and creating a business. We finally delved on failures, growth and being a role model. Elissa Shevinsky is CEO at Faster Than Light, where she is building super fast tools for static analysis testing. She previously helped launch Geekcorps, Everyday Health and Brave. But you might also know Elissa for her work promoting best practices in cybersecurity.Here are the links of the show:https://www.twitter.com/elissabethhttps://fasterthanlight.devCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.Your hostSoftware Developer‘s Journey is hosted and produced by Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon, a crazy frenchman living in Germany who dedicated his life to helping others learn & grow. More about him at timbourguignon.fr.Want to be next?Do you know anyone who should be on the podcast?

Trisha took us from her first years at school, being an outsider, all the way to taking advantage of it as a developer advocate for JetBrains. During this fantastic discussion, we brushed over the people that helped and even pushed her. We spoke about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. We discussed taking a leap of faith, not burning bridges, taking control of your career, working on your brand, important developer skills and building on people.Trisha has developed Java applications for a range of industries and non-profits of all sizes. She has expertise in Java high performance systems, is passionate about enabling developer productivity, and dabbles with Open Source development. Trisha is a leader of the Sevilla Java User Group, a Java Champion and a true believer in healthy communities. As a Developer Advocate for JetBrains, she gets to share all the interesting things she’s constantly discovering.Note:My audio feed was very low, my questions will be a bit hard to hear at some point. But I manage

Julie first told us how she met Christopher Allen, the co-author of her Book "Haskell programming from first principles", why learning in general is hard and why they wanted to approach learning Haskell from a different angle. We then drifted into Julie's own learning of Haskell and how she came into the programming world. We then digged further into the Haskell echosystem and the world of academia. And finally, we touched on TypeClass, Julie's own company, dedicated to teaching Haskell.Julie Moronuki went to college for philosophy and linguistics, and once believed she would spend her adult life doing morphological analysis of Native American languages and writing papers about generative syntax. But instead her real passion is teaching. And as such she took on the challenge to learn Haskell and co-author a book called "Haskell Programming from First Principles" in order to teach the Haskell language to people with no prior programming experience.Julie is a co-founder of the Hask

Robby first told us how the selfless scratching of his own itch lead to the success of his tool "Oh my Zsh". We then backtracked to his early years and how he got into development. Step by step, Robby took us through the creation and growth of his consultancy ; which is deeply intertwined with Ruby on Rails, scratching his own itch(es) again, and helping others along the way.Robby co-founded Planet Argon in 2002, which is a a software consultancy based out of Portland, Oregon USA. Planet Argon helps companies with existing Ruby on Rails applications make them better and more maintainable. Robby was an early-adopter of the Rails and was known for his blog, Robby on Rails. In 2009, he created Oh My Z-shell, which is a productivity tool for software developers. It accidentally became success in the open source community. Nowadays, Robby spends his time helping lead his company's development team and is the host of the Maintainable software podcast.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com

Adam took us through his journey at Microsoft. From the first (failed) interviews, to his long career writing code, helping teams and teaching developers. We spoke about the key learnings that encouraged him to write two of his books and finished by talking about the state of software development and where our industry could grow in the future.Adam Barr worked with and for Microsoft for more than two decades. There he worked on various versions of Windows, Powershell and Office as well as in the Engineering Excellence team. In 2018, Adam started working as a consultant at Crosslake, a company doing technical due diligence for acquisitions. Adam is the author of “Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters”, “Find the Bug” and his new book “The Problem with Software”.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/adamdavidbarrhttps://mitpress.mit.edu/books/problem-softwarePeople mentioned:https://twitter.com/nathandotzhttps://twitter.com/searlshttps://twitter.com/hoodjaCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed u

Magnus started by telling us the story of his first steps, tinkering on a Commodore64 devising on what attracted him toward computers in the first place. Then we discussed his first apps using Borland TurboPascal and how this hobby evolved into a job. We talked polyglot-ism, craftsmanship, re-reading books, apprenticeship programs and code katas.Forged of iron and walrus blood, Magnus Staahre comes from an ancient line of nordic code smiths. His technology engineering heritage was primarily responsible for preventing the narwahl invasions of Sweden in both 1683 and 1915. As a craftsman of such pedigree, Magnus knows from generation of experience meticulously hand-crafting code, what is needed to produce exquisite results, even when using some of the worst raw-material out there.After Magnus succeeded in crossing the great sea and reaching the new world, he settled in the kingdom of Pillar Technologies. Since since time, he has been solving ever more difficult code-smithing problems, while teaching the upcomin

After brushing over his "false starts" at being a developer, Yehuda slowly took us into a deep, deep dive. We talked about framework design, design philosophy, the importance of communities and being part of a core team.Yehuda is one of the creators of Ember.js, and a retired member of the Rust, Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Teams. His 9-to-5 home is at the startup he founded, Tilde Inc.. There he works on Skylight, the smart profiler for Rails, and does Ember.js consulting. He's best known for his open source work and his work traveling the world doing open source evangelism and web standards work.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/wycatshttps://www.tilde.iohttps://emberjs.comhttps://rubyonrails.orghttps://jquery.comhttp://script.aculo.ushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merbhttp://sinatrarb.comhttps://emberjs.com/editions/octaneCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.Your hostSoftware Developer‘s Journ

Dave's first professional love was for teaching. He developed it while studying physics at university. But as the DotCom boom went by, he jumped on the coding bandwagon and was hooked. Dave took us through those first years, learning the ropes and climbing the ladder, going from one giant company to a small one where he could really have an impact. Finally, since Dave is the host of the "Developer on Fire" podcast, we discussed podcasting, why he got into it and what he learned from it along the way.As the host of the Developer On Fire podcast, Dave is pretty much a "colleagues" or an "arch-enemy" :P ? Dave is the father of three wonderful children, a husband, a podcaster, a software developer and an architect. And he delights in technical matters and in human interaction.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/raelyardhttps://developeronfire.comhttps://developeronfire.com/trainingshttps://blog.codinghorror.comhttps://www.pluralsight.comhttps://www.hanselman.comht

Brian first told us about his very first Apple E computer and his journey up to college when he learned electrical engineering before switching major to computer science. He spoke about his first startup and his learnings, being a software engineer during the "DotCom Era". Brian then told us about the job where he learned most about teamwork and then about scaling applications. And we completed this very logical buildup by talking about the companies he created.Brian studied computer engineering at the University of Colorado. After graduating, he solved complex technology challenges for companies like Orbitz, BEA, US Freightways, XOR and Texturemedia. Brian is a technology entrepreneur who  bootstrapped both his companies FusionAuth and CleanSpeak where he currently focuses on solving login, registration, and user management challenges.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/bpontarellihttps://fusionauth.iohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/voidmainhttps://fusionauth.iohttps://cleanspeak.comhttp

Charity first took us through the pain of being a CEO and explained us why she chose to focus on tech again after a while. She then explained how she felt into code instrumentalisation during her time at Parse and how this became her idea for Honeycomb.io. We then went back to her early years, how she felt into IT, SysAdministration and ended up working in the Silicon Valley. We talked about mentorship, learning and sharing. We dwelved on the public speaking skills as a leadership skill before talking about the private meetups that Charity organises. Finally, we talked about the technical-leader role and the necessity to move back and forth from management to tech to hone both skills and bring the two worlds together.Charity Majors is an ops engineer and accidental CEO at honeycomb.io. Before this she worked at Parse, Facebook, Linden Lab on operations and developer tools... and she always seems to wind up running the databases. Co-author of O'Reilly's 'database reliability engineering' bo

Ben Orenstein first talked about being able to create products. We spoke about Ben's early programs and his attempt at studying in college. We then spoke about his second attempt at entering the IT industry, through the backdoor this time. Ben told us about his discovery of Ruby and joining Thoughbot. He told us about why sharing knowledge is important to him. We then touched on public speaking and the two podcasts he hosted during his career. We finally switched gears and talked about product development.Ben spent the last years working at Thoughtbot in Boston, where he and his colleagues obsessed about code quality and keeping shipping-speed high. You might remember Thoughtbot from the last episode with Saron Yitbarek. This is where Saron did her apprenticeship. There, Ben co-created the Upcase course, one of many products Ben has created. Ben is the author ofthe "Refactoring Rails" course, the "CodeQualityChallenge", "Trailmix" and "Briefs" products. He currentl

Saron took us from the early years of career as a journalist, to her first coding steps. She explained us in details how her bootcamp and apprenticeship programs took her from a code newbie to a solid developer and avid learner. Saron explained us why she created the CodeNewbie community and how it slowly but surely evolved into her current business. We devised on the many faces of the CodeNewbie community, podcasts and conferences. Saron finally gave us the advice to focus and do things "one goal at a time".Saron Yitbarek is the CEO and founder of CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. She's also a developer, speaker and host of multiple podcaster among which the BaseCS Podcast, the Command_Line Heroes podcast and of course the CodeNewbie Podcast.Here are the links of the show:https://twitter.com/saronyitbarekhttp://codelandconf.comhttps://saron.iohttps://www.codenewbie.orghttps://www.codenewbie.org/podcasthttps://www.codenewbie.org/basecshttps://

Ali started by telling us how she got into software development, almost by accident, how she became an assistant professor and how she slowly but surely embraced this career. We talked about her time working for a startup and why her time there was invaluable. We talked at length about her move from develoment to teaching and what she learned along the way. We finally segwayed into her current role at the crossroads of development, teaching and community as a developer advocate.Ali is a software engineer at DEV. Before that, she was a lead instructor at General Assembly. She loves Python, JavaScript, and talking about code. She is most interested in the intersection of programming, art, and education. When Ali's not working, you can find her watching New England sports, competing on CodeWars, taking runs around Capitol Hill, rock climbing, or participating in DC coding community events. Ali also blogs at dev.to/aspittel where she talks about code and her life surrounding it. Her writing has gotten roughl

Shawn took us through the early days of his career and quicky pivoted toward his first mentor "Ron". He told us how Ron managed to infect him with the willingness to write good code. We then brushed over learning and what it takes to become a lifelong learner. We touched on being a role model and how Chris Sells played a central role in his live. We finally discussed decision making strategies and the interviewing game.Shawn Wildermuuuth has been tinkering with computers and software since he got a Vic-20 back in the early '80s. As a Microsoft MVP since 2002, he's also involved with Microsoft as an ASP.NET Insider and ClientDev Insider. He's authored eight books and innumerable articles on software development. You can also see him at one of the local and international conferences. He's spoken at including TechEd, Oredev, SDC, NDC, VSLive, DevIntersection, MIX, Devteach, DevConnections, and Dev Reach. He is one of the Wilder Minds.Here are the links of the show:@ShawnWildermuth h

Together we talked about Erik's first hacking feats and how he got his first job in the IT world. We then brushed over his learnings at Disney and Comcast before joining Microsoft to help other developers. Erik then encouraged us to question our perception of ourself, and compare ourselves only against our former self. We then touched on the definition of seniority. We discussed Erik's experience getting to know the Go language and organize the first GopherCon conference. And we finally talked about the ways we learn.Erik St. Martin has spent the last decade building and securing distributed systems for large enterprises such as cable providers, credit bureaus, and fraud detection companies. He now works for Microsoft as a Sr. Cloud Developer Advocate. He co-authored a book on the Go programming language, podcasts with GoTimeFM, and co-organizes GopherCon, the annual conference for the Go community.Here are the links of the show:Twitter: https://twitter.com/erikstmartinKatharina Owen Mind the gap ht

"Curmudgeon" (noun): a bad-tempered person, especially an old one.Barry first told us about his very first encounter with a computer... hooked to a TV back then. We then brushed over what attracted him toward computer sciences. We discussed security and all the things we expect... or hope people will do and setting them up for success. We rewinded back to how Barry furthered and then dropped out of his computer science studies and how he ended up working as a programmer anyway. Barry finally told us the story of his 7 candidacies for Microsoft before finally being hired and finally ending up as a program manager for security.Barry is the .NET security person at Microsoft. I've even read that you are the security curmudgeon, you'll have to tell us what that means. Barry has over 20 years of experience, specializing in C#, ASP.NET, and all aspects of .NET security. Barry has been involved in major website development, the production of numerous security related proof of concepts for Microsof

April is the founder of Compassionate Coding, a conscious business that helps technical teams cultivate sustainable, human-­centered software development practices built on a foundation of emotional intelligence. She has spent the past decade as a software engineer and technical leader at various startups in Silicon Valley. As an advocate for a more socially responsible tech industry, she also mentors technologists around the world and volunteers with organizations to teach coding to people from underrepresented groups. When she is not coding or speaking, she enjoys writing, running ultramarathons, and experimenting with vegan recipes.Together we started by talking about ultrarunning and how to start a career in IT. We then brused over April's story, from Sony to various Startups in the Silicon Valley. We then talked about hiring practices, looking for a growth mindset, avoiding biases, etc. April then described her company "Compassionate Coding", what it is and why she felt the need to create