How do you get started as a programmer? And how do experienced programmers help them as they start their journey?

This week's guest is a developer-turned-teacher, James Q. Quick. A former coder and developer advocate, he's s been been working on tutorials, courses and bootcamps to teach aspiring developers how to get started with JavaScript. We talk about why people get into programming as a new career, what they need to succeed, and what James thinks is the best indicator of success.

We also discuss what's new and exciting in JavaScript, James' favourite up & coming libraries, and dive into the JavaScript vs. TypeScript debate.

James’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/jamesqquick
James’s website: https://www.jamesqquick.com/
Astro website builder: https://astro.build/
James’ Astro course: https://astrocourse.dev/
Svelte framework: https://svelte.dev/
Vite build tool: https://vitejs.dev/

James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesqquick
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Sooner or later, every programmer will have to cross the gap between their programming language and their database. It feels like it should be easy, but in practice it’s always a much wider chasm than it seems, and every tool that bridges that gaps comes with its own strengths, weaknesses and opinions.

This week we take a look at a relatively new library for database access—jOOQ—by chatting with its author, Lukas Eder. This episode takes in the simple questions like syntax, the thornier ones like supporting multiple databases, and the deeply philosophical ones like how we even think about data and data-processing.

If you’re a Java (or JVM) programmer, there’s a new tool to learn here, and even if you're not there’s food for thought and ideas to borrow for the next time you need to SELECT…

jOOQ: https://www.jooq.org/
YesQL: https://github.com/krisajenkins/yesql
Datomic: https://www.datomic.com/
XTDB: https://www.xtdb.com/
The Elm Architecture: https://guide.elm-lang.org/architecture/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Whether you’re trying to ace the coding interview, sharpen your programming skills or just have some fun learning new things, the world of competitive coding has something to offer you. Some people join with dreams of hitting the podium, and plenty of others are just competing to be their better selves.

Either way, Mathis Hammel is a veteran of the competitive coding scene and he’s going to give us a view into that world, tell a few war stories and share some tips how you can play better, faster and stronger…

ICPC: https://icpc.global/
Advent of Code: https://adventofcode.com/
Advent of Code, Day 18, 2022: https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/18
Clash of Code: https://www.codingame.com/multiplayer/clashofcode
CodeForces: https://codeforces.com/
CodeWars: https://www.codewars.com/
HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/

Mathis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathishammel
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

“Software development has not caught up with the internet age.” So says this week’s guest, Rúnar Bjarnason. But what does that mean? What would a programming language for the internet age look like?

Rúnar’s answer is Unison. A language that completely rethinks the way distributing computing can work, from the source code up. Borrowing some key ideas from git, it challenges the way we think about code-sharing, compilation, versioning and more. 

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Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/
Rúnar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/runarorama
Rúnar’s book, Function Programming in Scala: https://amzn.to/46I9jew
Unison website: https://unison-lang.org

Complete and Easy Bidirectional Typechecking for Higher-Rank Polymorphism (pdf): https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nk480/bidir.pdf
Do Be Do Be Do (pdf): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.09259.pdf
Rúnar’s Øredev conference talk: https://youtu.be/EgIVzOobD48

Cloud icons created by Freepik - Flaticon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/cloud
Computer icons created by xnimrodx - Flaticon: https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/computer

Have you ever been overwhelmed by the number of databases on offer? This week we welcome database expert Ben Stopford as a guide to help us map the database landscape and make sense of it all!

Join us as we embark on a journey through the history of databases, tracing the path from Edgar Codd to the multitude cloud-era of options available today. Discover the strengths of various database styles and explore the tradeoffs between general-purpose databases like #PostgreSQL and highly customised ones like #Cassandra or #Snowflake.

We delve into the realm of the cloud and the opportunities it brings, both for users and the database vendors themselves. And then we examine the challenges that arise when you're forced to connect multiple databases across an organisation. Should you look at Event Sourcing? Or Event Streaming, and how exactly do they differ?

Finally, we look towards the future, discussing Ben's vision of an ideal database and which programming language he would choose to build it in.

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/
Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

LLMs like ChatGPT are not just fascinating, they're becoming increasing useful in our working lives. They've graduated from novelty to valuable tool. But building those tools is still in the hands of huge companies. Or is it?

In this week's episode of Developer Voices, we're learning how you can run LLMs on your own laptop, and how you can customize the system to make a tailored research assistant, a better documentation-searcher, and much more. All you need is a guide on which pieces you need, and how they fit together, and that's exactly what this week's guest—Tobi Fankhänel—is here to take us through.

A leaked memo from Google recently outlined how the Big Company Advantage has almost completely eroded, and how the next wave of LLM development is going to come from the open source community. So hackers rise up - the open source AI revolution begins now!

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Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/
Tobias on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-fankh%C3%A4nel-749712180/
Tobias’ blog: https://blog.exxample.eu
LangChain: https://python.langchain.com/docs/get_started/introduction.html
Embeddings: https://weaviate.io/blog/vector-embeddings-explained
Vector Databases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_database
"We have no moat" – Google Employee on Open-source LLMs: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither
“Attention is all you need” - https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2017/file/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Paper.pdf
Timeline since Meta open-sourced their first-gen models: https://www.semianalysis.com/i/119223672/the-timeline
Run LLMs on CPU only or, since May, mix CPU and GPU usage: https://github.com/abetlen/llama-cpp-python
Samantha: https://erichartford.com/meet-samantha
Embedding model leaderboards: https://huggingface.co/spaces/mteb/leaderboard
Open-source LLMs: https://huggingface.co/spaces/HuggingFaceH4/open_llm_leaderboard
LLaMA: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/large-language-model-llama-meta-ai/
Blog post: Design-pattern ‘In-context learning’ https://a16z.com/2023/06/20/emerging-architectures-for-llm-applications/#section--2
Tobi's GitHub branch ‘In-context learning with LangChain’ https://github.com/aviav/turmbauten/blob/spaghetti-code/CHANGELOG.md
Prompt Syntax Cheat Sheet: https://github.com/oobabooga/text-generation-webui/tree/main/characters/instruction-following
Google Workspace Labs Sign-Up: https://workspace.google.com/labs-sign-up/
GMail Workspace Labs Demo Video, click ‘See it in action’: https://workspace.google.com/solutions/ai/#m10
Prediction trading on open-source LLMs vs GPT-4: https://manifold.markets/PeterWildeford/will-i-peter-wildeford-think-that-t-c95ff3c1b385

Time to put another new #programming language - and its creator - under the spotlight, as we talk to Robin Heggelund Hansen, the creator of Gren. Gren is a Norwegian word meaning 'branch', which is appropriate for a language that started as a fork from its roots in Elm.

With Gren, Robin's trying to create a safe, sane, #fullstack language that puts the power and elegance of functional programming working seamlessly on the server and the browser. But how and why do you do that? What design choices to do make, how much time do you spend on adding new features vs. improving the developer's experience of the existing ones? And most importantly...how do you pronounce Gren correctly? 😅

Gren Website: https://gren-lang.org
Gren Zulip: https://gren.zulipchat.com/
Gren package site: https://packages.gren-lang.org/
Example projects written in Gren: https://github.com/gren-lang/example-projects
Gren on Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@gren_lang
Gren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gren_lang
Gren language proposal on parameterized modules: https://github.com/gren-lang/compiler/issues/81
Elm Website: https://elm-lang.org/  

Robin on Mastodon: https://snabelen.no/@robinheghan
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/
Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

What's going on with Postgres? Joining us for his perspective is Raouf Chebri, a Developer Advocate for PostgreSQL and the cloud service Neon. We catch up on what's new and important in recent versions of Postgres, what Neon have been doing to make Postgres work well in the Cloud, and what Raouf's life is like as a professional singer of Postgres's virtues.

Neon: https://neon.tech/
Neon’s architecture: https://neon.tech/docs/introduction/architecture-overview
That CEO quote: https://twitter.com/nikitabase/status/1563913187862335489
Raouf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/raoufdevrel
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Are you trying to build the community around your software? And what does “building a community” really mean? What are we building communities for?

Join us on Developer Voices as host Kris Jenkins sits down with Ale Murray, a seasoned community manager with nearly a decade of experience, to discuss her tips for building a thriving tech community. 

Ale shares her insights on why community building is essential, how to identify your target audience, and how to approach community building with the right mindset. She also offers practical advice on how to handle challenging situations, such as dealing with negative feedback and managing conflicts within the community. 

Whether you're just starting out or looking to improve your existing community, this conversation offers valuable insights and actionable tips to help you succeed.

Ale on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ale_amurray
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins
Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

As a developer, it's crucial to understand the various types of databases available so you can choose the right tool for the job. In this episode, we're shining a spotlight on bitemporal databases with James Henderson, lead developer of of a new bitemporal database called XTDB.

You may have already created an ad-hoc bitemporal database without realizing it, but James and his team have been hard at work building a custom database that's tailor-made for situations where having two notions of time are essential. Join us to learn about the what and why of bitemporality and explore the process of designing and building a database in Clojure.

Ready to get started with XTDB? Visit https://www.xtdb.com/v2 to learn more.
Want to get involved with the XTDB community? Head over to https://discuss.xtdb.com.
Follow XTDB on Twitter at https://twitter.com/xtdb_com
 and Kris Jenkins at https://twitter.com/krisajenkins.
Connect with Kris on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/.