A Question of Code

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 core competencies can be invaluable. So why should you focus on languages rather than frameworks? And what's wrong with copy/paste development (spoiler alert: _nothing!_). Where can you go to learn the things you need to learn? And why should you avoid specializing too early? Find out all this and more in this week's rehashed instalment of A Question of Code.

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-than-obvious benefits of leaving a paper-trail of your explorations in the world of code? Find out all this and more in this week's rehashed instalment of A Question of Code.

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 rehashed instalment of A Question of Code.

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 starting. By doing a thing, you really start to learn the thing. There's a gulf of distance between knowing something "in the head" and knowing that same thing "in the hand". So should you start coding straight away? And what are the best ways to jump in at the deep end? Find out all this and more in this week's rehashed instalment of A Question of Code.

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 every stage of your career). So who thought this was advice worth sharing? Find out all this and more in this week's rehashed instalment of A Question of Code.

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 is required? Do you know them all?

One of the most effective ways to get "unstuck" it to rubber duck. That is to say, to talk about your problem to someone (or something). Explaining an idea helps clarify it in your own mind, and if you can't explain something clearly then there's a good chance that you don't really know it. So what are the benefits of sharing often and early? What is "The Curse of the Demo"? And why can pair-programming be a super power? Find out all this and more in this week's talky instalment of A Question of Code.

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 we get to "hello, world!" and beyond, and explain how we normally approach the process of learning a new framework.

What are "ah ha!" moments, and how often do they come along? What does npm install even mean?! What have we learned about Svelte, and what would our next steps be? Find out all this and more in this week's risky instalment of A Question of Code.

Mentioned in this episode:

• svelte.dev
• Up and running with Svelte 3 (Egghead.io video course)

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.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Lynx, the terminal-based web browser

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? And when should you take the time to learn APIs? Find out all this and more in this week's application-interfacing instalment of A Question of Code.

Mentioned in this episode:

• SWAPI (the Star Wars API)
• httpstatuses.com
• Postman

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 we use to record the show? And how much time does it take to edit? Find out all this and more in this week's introverted instalment of A Question of Code.