Build and Learn

Types of Content

• Tweet
• Blog Posts / newsletter
• Live Streaming (Twitch, etc)
• YouTube & YT Shorts
• TikTok & Instagram

Resources

• Rubyists who tweet useful and helpful stuff 
  • https://twitter.com/websebdev
  • https://twitter.com/siaw23
  • https://twitter.com/ShinoKouda
• Niche blogs
  • Blended Edge on building integrations: https://www.blendededge.com/blog
• Newsletters 
  • Ruby Radar: https://rubyradar.dev/
  • Ruby Weekly: https://rubyweekly.com/
  • Short Ruby: https://newsletter.shortruby.com/
  • rendezvous with cassidoo: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/
• Podcasts 
  • Syntax.fm https://syntax.fm/
  • ChangeLog https://changelog.com/podcast
  • Maintainable https://www.maintainable.fm/
  • Art of Product https://artofproductpodcast.com/
  • Planet Argon’s top 10 Ruby podcasts: https://blog.planetargon.com/entries/10-best-tech-podcasts-in-2022-as-chosen-by-the-rails-community
• Twitch and YouTube channels 
  • Mastermind.io https://www.twitch.tv/mastermndio
  • Coding Garden https://www.twitch.tv/codinggarden
  • Fireship https://www.youtube.com/c/Fireship
  • CJ Avilla https://www.youtube.com/c/CJAvilla
• Course platforms 
  • GoRails https://gorails.com/
  • EggHead https://egghead.io/
  • Pluralsight https://www.pluralsight.com/
  • CBT Nuggets https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/cisco
• Tailwind UI - https://tailwindui.com/  

Disclaimer: The episode on Creating Pull Requests got lost so Episode 6 ended up being our Build vs Buy episode. 

Upcoming Conferences Of Note

• Rails SaaS - Oct 6-7, 2022 (already happened)
• Ruby Conf Mini - Nov 15-17
• RubyConf - Nov 29-Dec 1
• Chirp - Nov 16th

Pull Request Guide from Thoughtbot

Other Tips for giving a nice PR review

Remember the person on the other end of your review is a human. As devs it’s easy to mix our identity with the code we write and any criticism of that code can be challenging to absorb.

• Timeliness 
  • Respond quickly if you are a reviewer
  • This can be especially challenging when dealing with major differences in timezone
• Checklists 
  • Does this code belong somewhere else?
  • Is this code tested?
  • Do I understand this code? 
    • PRs can be a way to do knowledge transfer to other folks on the team
  • Are there any glaring security concerns?
  • Should someone else also review this change?
  • What might go wrong when this is deployed? 
    • Is there observability in place?
    • Is there a large migration that needs special treatment?
• Other things: 
  • I try to group all of my replies into one big response rather than lots of individual comments, that way the

Tools Mentioned

• Graphite.dev

Colin's RailsConf 2022 Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-GDhlBTHoo 

Innovation tokens blog post - Choose Boring Technology

ReadMe jobs - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/readme/jobs

- PTO & Taking Time Off
  - Self-care
  - Accrual caps
  - Burnout
  
- Unlimited time off - good or bad?
  - Trap of not taking enough, personal guilt, fear of letting team down
  - Brad Feld’s 1 week a quarter - completely off grid, no work (= 4 weeks a year)
  
- Why taking time off is good for your team / company
  - Marathon / not a sprint, you need to be able to take time off
  - Ensures you are not the blocker for things
  - Encourages better docs, better socializing of concepts and ownership of the code

- Tips for taking time off
  - Github Away Feature
  - Delete or disable Slack
  - Create a list of things that you are responsible for and who will help cover those things

- Other Time Off
  - Parental Leave
  - Sick Leave
  - Company-wide holidays: Refuel Week

Send an Open Source Developer on Vacation 
Voting is over but you can check out the winners at https://tuple.app/sends-you-on-vacation/

Share your time off habits and feedback with us on Twitter:
@buildandlearn_
@colinloretz
@cjav_dev

Paths

• Educational paths toward programming 
  • Self-taught - blogs, articles, tutorials, online platforms like Udemy, code academy
  • 4-year computer science degree
  • 2-year “web design” degree
  • 12-week full-time boot camp
  • 6-month part-time bootcamps
  • Bootcamps that specialize in a discipline like data science, graphics design
  • Bootcamps that serve underrepresented groups - resilient coders, shecodes.io, 
    • time, attention, resources
  • Master in computer science
• Side door and back door entryways to tech 
  • Product management 
    • The mom test
    • product school
  • Project management
  • Support, then technical support
  • Solution architects
  • Developer marketing

Advice for people thinking about getting into programming

• Learn hello world
• Go through a codeacademy or similar interactive course
• Try to build something on replit or glitch where you don't need an actual environment set up
• Connect with other new devs on Twitter
• Use https://exercism.io/ to get feedback about your code, don’t work in a silo
• https://roadmap.sh/

How to pick a language or stack to start with in 2022

• Programming languages are tools
• Some are more commonly used to build specific things 
  • JavaScript/TypeScript - web (started as front end, now is also backend, is what browsers run), iot, drones, most things support javascript (Airtable, lambdas, google sheets, etc.)
  • HTML/CSS - web (front end only, structure and style)
  • Python - web, data, machine learning
  • Ruby - web, small utilities
  • PHP - web
  • C#/F# - enterprise, windows, azure, games like X-Box
  • Go - CLI tools, scalable servers and large-scale programs
  • Elixir - web, event-driven systems, distributed systems
  • Java - enterprise tools
  • SQL - data only, not for building applications
  • R - data
  • Fortran, COBOL, VBA, objective-c, Perl - I would not invest much in learning these unless it was required for a job I was already hired at
• CJ says - learn javascript, but then I say learn ruby and ruby on rails
• Whatever you decide, stick with it until you feel comfortable building decent working applications

Cord management

• Braided cable managers https://www.amazon.com/CrocSee-25ft-Management-Protector-Self-Wrapping/dp/B08FJ2WDMK
• Conway Electric pretty extension cords https://www.amazon.com/s?k=conway+electric&gclid=CjwKCAjw3qGYBhBSEiwAcnTRLmh5ke7bwCi9XoBwyjybypGPUD-TeEmXgoa4Ge6FBDkyFNYkRSpe0hoC7EUQAvD_BwE&hvadid=616991286179&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9002297&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=16357591836090420375&hvtargid=kwd-3626162047&hydadcr=24660_13611807&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_27vjmz70n7_e
• Instagram desk setups -

Other mentions

Product school - https://productschool.com/

Black tech pipeline - https://blacktechpipeline.com/ 

wnb.rb - https://www.wnb-rb.dev/

codeacademy - https://www.codecademy.com/

Welcome from Build & Learn!

• Learnings from our first full episode: The First Pancake
• Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022

• Developer Profile 
  • Education
  • Learning to code
  • Experience
  • Roles
  • Where
  • Who
• Technologies 
  • Most loved
  • Most dreaded
  • Most wanted
  • Worked with vs Want to work with
  • Version Control
  • Web3
• Work / Employment
• Community
• Professional Developers

Interesting Highlights

• Daily time spent searching for answers/solutions - 60% spend 30-120 minutes a day
• 88% of Professional Developers code outside of work, with 73% of them coding as a hobby.
• 66% of Professional Developers have at least some influence over their organization’s purchases of new technologies. This is up from 56% in 2020 when we last asked this question. Unsurprisingly, senior-level positions have the greatest amount of influence when purchasing new technologies. But with the exception of students, at least 60% of all developer types have at least some influence on purchasing.
• 85% of developers say their organizations are at least partially remote.
• No other technology is as widely used as Git (93%). Especially among Professional Developers. But for those learning to code, 17% still do not use a version control system.
• With Professional Developers, we see some interest in wanting to use chat and video platforms other than they are using now.
• Ruby is 50/50 loved and dreaded

Links

• Why isn't the internet more fun and weird?
• 2022 StackOverflow Survey

Follow us on Twitter

• @buildandlearn_
• @cjav_dev
• @colinloretz

• Why a podcast? 
  • Fun to hang out
  • We learn a lot from one another.
  • Chance to share what we’re building and learning in public
  • Chance to meet and elevate other folks in the community
• Set the stage for what to expect on the show 
  • We are figuring this out, so don’t hold us to it in these first few episodes ;)
  • Building and learning from Software Development but also life
• Introduction and background - Our Origin Stories 
  • First web dev moments
  • CJ
    • TI89 games (2003)
    • MySpace (2004?)
    • Perl for seismology lab (2005)
    • free 000webhost style domain with ads (2005)
    • PHP pamphlet sites for air conditioning company
    • UNR Student union ASP.NET
    • Contract work building one-off apps - campaign management app that later rebuilt in Rails
    • Joined the military, deployed in 2011 to Afghanistan, and learned a ton of Cisco networking and security
    • Learned c++ in CS, but also did a lot of IS classes and started IS focused MBA after graduating
    • VB.NET at a finance company focused on insider trading
    • .NET c# for robots - wasn’t a fan of the company
    • “become a hacker” - App Academy fell in love with ruby
    • Small vacation rental startup where I learned - Django and python
    • Stripe
  • Colin
    • Library books on “VRML”, making games, “hacking” games locally to do different things https://store.steampowered.com/app/32380/STAR_WARS_Jedi_Knight_Dark_Forces_II/
    • Homestead, Geocities, Myspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities, https://myspace.com/
    • Photoshop Communities & Kirupa Forum - Layer Tennis
    • Writing code in Notepad, no syntax highlighting, no project folder
    • College - Started with Computer Sci but decided to take another path
    • College Newspaper - College Publisher 
      • Rails CMS for the newspaper
      • Realizing that I would graduate, I moved us to WordPress
    • Agency → Laid off in recession → Starting my own agency 
      • WordPress
      • APIs
      • Salesforce
    • Building tech community 
      • Reno Collective Coworking
      • Ignite Reno
      • hackathons, meetups
    • A few startups 
      • Founder, first-employee
    • More consulting
    • Now at Orbit - https://orbit.love/
  • Links
  • https://twitter.com/colinloretz
  • https://twitter.com/cjav_dev
  • https://github.com/cjavdev/vim-curriculum

https://abookapart.com/

https://www.aneventapart.com/

http://www.csszengarden.com/

https://www.zeldman.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelCanvas/ live pixel canvas

https://www.youtube.com/cjavilla