Mentoring Developers

“Shady Selim is the first Android Software Advocate in the Middle East. He is a Leading Mobile Developer of Android. He is a Google Speaker and AngelHack Ambassador. He is a Group Member of Flutter Egypt. He is a Leader of GDG & Kotlin Programming Languages”

YouTube: https://youtu.be/qZY-LEzWfMI

Shady Selim’s career background includes mobile development, project management, and development advocate experience, with a history of successfully leading global teams on high-profile projects for industry giants such as IBM and Facebook. I am highly skilled as a team lead, development manager, and CTO, and I hold an M.Sc. in Business Information Technology from Middlesex University and an MBA from Cairo University. I am knowledgeable in many industry technologies including Android, Windows Phone 8x, iOS, Java, Kotlin, ASP .NET, Swift, jQuery, Angular JS, and JavaScript to develop application and design concepts.

00:00 – Introduction

Important Links

Github: https://shady-selim.github.io/

YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/ShadySelimTube

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xmSi1ytopsssR1i3kKveg

Do you have some feedback or some advice for us or our audience? Please give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher and share your thoughts.

If you found this episode useful, please go ahead and share it with your friends and family. You can also listen directly and give your feedback on the website.

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Guy Royse is a software developer with more than 25 years of programming experience and has been a part of a government program to teach computer programming to prisoners to enable them to live a normal and happy life after their prison terms. Now he goes out into developer communities and helps others build great software through cutting-edge technology solutions. He has much wisdom to share and we’re privileged to have him as our guest in this episode. Here we go

YouTube: https://youtu.be/PGKIda7uZsA

Guy works for Redis Labs as a Developer Advocate. Combining his decades of experience in writing software with a passion for sharing what he has learned, Guy goes out into developer communities and helps others build great software.

0:38 -Went to prison to teach programming and software development.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/guyroyse

YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/guyroyse

Website: http://guyroyse.com/

Redis: https://redis.io/

Redis commands: https://redis.io/commands

RediSearch: https://oss.redislabs.com/redisearch/

Redis Cloud: https://redislabs.com/try-free/

Redis University Videos: https://www.youtube.com/redisuniversity

Free courses: https://university.redislabs.comYouTube Channel: https://www.

Youtube.com/channel/UC4xmSi1ytopsssR1i3kKveg

Do you have some feedback or some advice for us or our audience? Please give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher and share your thoughts.

If you found this episode useful, please go ahead and share it with your friends and family. You can also listen directly and give your feedback on the website.

You can subscribe to Mentoring Developers via iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google Podcasts. 

Greg started his career in data science after not getting a proper job with his Ph.D. degree in physics. He joined a Data Science bootcamp and then got a job as a Data Scientist. Watch this interesting interview as he describes his experience.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/vbSbKGwCUcA

Greg Damico is a Lecturer in Data Science at the Flatiron School and has been working there since March 2019. He hails originally from Columbus, OH, but has been in Seattle since 2013. He has an extensive background in academia and has taught and studied various subjects in addition to data science at a number of schools both in the Midwest and on the West Coast. He turned to data science for good in 2016. He is passionate about data science because of its ever-growing role in our daily lives, and he is passionate about education because of the way it empowers people to change their lives.

You’re listening to Mentoring Developers, Episode 91, Let’s go. 

Welcome to Mentoring Developers, the podcast for new and aspiring software developers, where we discuss your struggles, anxieties, and career choices. And now, here’s your host, Arsalan Ahmed.

In this episode of Mentoring Developers, I’ll be talking to Greg D’Amico. Greg is a lecturer in data science at the Flatiron School, and he’s been there for a long time. This interview was recorded in 2021. He’s originally from the Midwest in Ohio. He’s been settled out West in Seattle. So he has experience in both the Midwest and the West Coast.He’s taught everywhere.His passion is data science. And today we’ll be talking to him about data science, about.Flat Iron.School and other boot camps, and what it’s like to be in a boot camp as a mentor, as.A teacher. Also as a student. I think that this is a great little interview for people who are interested in boot camps, who are interested in data science, and who’s interested to see. what it’s like to be in a boot camp and learning data science.Especially from the point of view of a person that’s on the other side of the aisle.I Think you’re going to enjoy this. Let’s get ready and get started.

How are you doing, Greg?

I’m doing well, Arslan. Thanks for having me on the show.

How did you decide to become a data scientist?

It turned out to be a very significant letter for me. I was in philosophy graduate school. I did finish my PhD, but I wasn’t finding the work that I wanted after that was done. It’s very difficult in academia to get the high power job that a lot of people are looking for. I moved to Seattle and after I got to Seattle, I decided that I wanted to go back to school. I did have an old physics degree rusting on my shelf somewhere. I thought, Well, I’ve got some math skills. I think I could go do this applied mathematics program at the University of Washington. Shortly after I started that, an old friend of mine from philosophy grad school, Mike, said, Hey, have you studied any R? I started looking into it and I thought, Wow, this R language looks really cool. I don’t have a lot of programming background. I’ve done a little bit here and there. But I started looking into R. I took a course on R. I realized immediately its potential for data analysis and data science. That was my entry. I started reading a bunch of things about data science. I jumped into a boot camp for data science.Before long, I had finished a boot camp and I was able to land a job teaching at flight iron school in data science. That was my entry into the tech world. It’s never too late to start. It’s never too late to jump into tech. I think sometimes people are scared to make that transition. Obviously, I meet a lot of people teaching a boot camp in data science who are scared. They’re making these large career changes. They’ve been doing one thing and they’re thinking, Well, data science seems like something I could do. Maybe my background is quite different and I’m scared to do it, but I feel like I’ve got a chance. They really do. There’s a lot you can learn in a short time. There are lots of resources about R, lots of resources about Python. Python is actually the language of choice at Flat Iron, so I work mostly in Python these days. But it’s one step at a time. There’s always a lot to learn, but you don’t have to learn a lot to be able to make some cool things, to be able to start on some cool projects. Once you can do that, well, then you can get in touch with other people who are working on things.You can share ideas, you can share your own work, and then you’re right there in the community.

A question that a lot of our listeners would have right now is, is it really that useful, data science? Why should I learn it?How did you decide to become a data scientist?

I think data science has arisen largely because of lots of technological improvements to do with data. We are now incredibly good at storing data, at producing data, at having accurate data recordings. You can look online and find stats about exactly how much data is produced every day. I think it’s on the order of quintillions of bytes or something like that, just huge amounts of data. Lots of companies have their own data these days to worry about. Amazon, for example, part of the reason that Amazon is successful is they have lots and lots and lots of data about their customers, about the things that they’ve bought, about other things that they’ve bought, about Here’s a bunch of things that people just like you have bought. Maybe you’re interested in that, too. If you have access to a bunch of data about your customers and you can access it quickly, then that proves its business value pretty quickly. I think of data science as having an immediate business angel, but there’s also this technological aspect to it. It’s just as all of these technologies have gotten better, it’s natural that we have a lot of data. We have to have some understanding of how we can store that data, how we can access it, how we can share it, all that stuff.Data science itself as a discipline, certainly, it helps to have some understanding of things like databases and where data lives and how to access it and so on. But it’s also a bit of coding, it’s a bit of mathematics, it’s a bit of statistics. When we do our boot camps, we try to cover all those bases, at least a little bit.

What does it take to be a data scientist? Can anyone be a data scientist? Do you need some certain skills, certain aptitudes? What do you think?

I think data science has arisen largely because of lots of technological improvements to do with data. We are now incredibly good at storing data, at producing data, at having accurate data recordings. You can look online and find stats about exactly how much data is produced every day. I think it’s on the order of quintillions of bytes or something like that, just huge amounts of data. Lots of companies have their own data these days to worry about. Amazon, for example, part of the reason that Amazon is successful is they have lots and lots and lots of data about their customers, about the things that they’ve bought, about other things that they’ve bought, about Here’s a bunch of things that people just like you have bought. Maybe you’re interested in that, too. If you have access to a bunch of data about your customers and you can access it quickly, then that proves its business value pretty quickly. I think of data science as having an immediate business angel, but there’s also this technological aspect to it. It’s just as all of these technologies have gotten better, it’s natural that we have a lot of data. We have to have some understanding of how we can store that data, how we can access it, how we can share it, all that stuff.Data science itself as a discipline, certainly, it helps to have some understanding of things like databases and where data lives and how to access it and so on. But it’s also a bit of coding, it’s a bit of mathematics, it’s a bit of statistics. When we do our boot camps, we try to cover all those bases, at least a little bit.

What I want to know about Data science is that data science is a separate discipline in its own right. And you’re talking about using data to get some results, get some meaningful results out of the data. So if, for instance, you’re a university and you have data about your students, the students themselves, the courses that they register for, how frequently they do it, and which semester, which course is more popular. If you wanted to say, I want to predict next fall, what are the courses that might actually exceed capacity, where I may need to have an extra teacher to teach this course because there’s so much demand, but I need to know ahead of time so I could schedule it. That’s a thing. So your data goes into some data warehouse where it’s stored in some structure, maybe tables that are probably not normalized would mean I would expect them to be lots and lots of columns and everything in there so you don’t have to do lots of joins because that’s faster to read. And then you would be able to actually ask your system some intelligent questions and it answers it. That’s one aspect that I can think of. The other one is, Hey, Mr.Data Scientist, I have these 100 terabytes of data. Go give me some insights. I don’t know what I’m looking for.Which way is it falling here, this data science?

I think it’s both things I think very often you know I think about data science very often as trying to solve problems with data you know and those problems can take lots of forms often they’re you know sometimes they’re just straightforwardly Financial things like how can our business make more money you know um and sometimes they’re really more investigative things like you know I’ve got a bunch of customers and I want to do some sort of customer segmentation because I want to you know have a sort of targeted marketing campaign I want you know some ads to go to some people who are likely to pay attention to those ads from other ads to go to other people who are likelier to pay attention to that sort of advertising you know so there are lots of different problems but very often what’s happening is the data scientists will build some sort of model some sort of predictor and you’re right very often the data that you start with has some sort of tabular form right maybe I’ve got a bunch of columns of data and a bunch of rows rows will represent one record one observation you know One customer maybe or one house up for sale Maybe and you know each of the columns will be some feature about each of those records you know so if I’ve got a bunch of houses for sale maybe I’ve got a column that represents number of bedrooms or a feature of my rows is you know students at a college then maybe one of my columns is you know grades for a particular quarter or something like that so the general idea is I’ve got all phase columns and one of my columns is sort of privileged one of my columns is the thing that I’m trying to predict the thing that I’m trying to model right and I’m going to use all my other columns all the information that I have there to try to make accurate predictions about what’s in the the column of Interest if I’ve got thousands of rows or millions of rows then it’s very difficult for a human being to sort of you know pick up on the patterns that might be there but a computer is really fast right if I just show a computer well here are the values that I get for these rows in these particular columns and here are the values that I get for the column of Interest and then I say okay now here are some rows that you haven’t seen before and they have these values in these columns what do you think it’s likely to have in the column of interest you know and the computer sort of builds a model and then is able to use that model to make predictions on the Unseen data that that is new and then you can sort of evaluate that model is it good is it accurate and so on that sort of thing is is very often what’s at the heart of a lot of data science problems okay 

So if I have to build that model so some piece of software has to do that so are you as a data scientist are you writing custom code just start from scratch and just start building a model or do you use a tool and maybe script.

It a little bit there are lots of tools I think you know I think really python is as is probably the number one language right now for data science and much of the reason for that has to do with the fact that there are lots of well first of all it’s open source so it’s open source project lots of people contributing  and there are lots of tools lots of libraries that you can just import into your own workspace that already do lots of really cool data science things right so if I want to build a you know a random forest model well there are random Forest tools that I can just import right into my own workspace introduce them to my own particular data and they’ll build predictions for me you know straight out of the box and I don’t have to sort of create the model from scratch and so because of all these different libraries that are available on python really powerful flexible tool and you can get models up and running with really just a few lines of code because of all the work that’s already been done. 

That’s great yeah python is is a great language for beginners but also for for people who are doing data science but I wonder why python because I don’t know what python is doing that is so different than say Ruby or Java there must be something maybe there’s there’s some built-in libraries that do certain things I’m assuming some some math functions that others don’t. 

Yeah I think that’s right um so for example there are certain libraries of python that we introduced to our students in the first week because they will use them all the time um so for example there’s a package called numpy numerical python right and it’s basically a tool for scientific computer it’s a tool for doing you know sophisticated mathematics but it’s really fast right you can do sort of these vectorized operations you can add arrays together lightning quick you can multiply them you can do if you want to you can do scientific notation if you want to you can do complex numbers you can do trigonometry you can do all sorts of stuff another tool is pandas and pandas is the name I think comes from something like panel data and it used to be this sort of object type kind of called a panel it’s not really used much anymore but anyway really powerful tool for manipulating tables of data the sort of technical term in pandas is a data Frame data frame is just a basically just a big table of data and lots of really powerful tools for manipulating them quickly adding columns is you know just a line multiplying a column by a number is just a line of code adding columns together whatever you want to do filtering your data you know I’m only interested in you know rows that have this value and so on just really fast through adorable.

Really good yeah no I can imagine there is a reason why everybody is gravitating towards python either you can do really good websites MVC websites in Python you could start off as your first programming language and it’s easy enough but it has these Advanced features like this numerical Library you’re referring to yeah that’s good and the good news is it’s all free if you want to get started it’s free to get started and the libraries are probably also free this is this is the beauty of this open source ecosystem okay that’s all good but what kind of jobs can I do because my because if I’m thinking if someone is listening right now and they’re thinking okay that sounds interesting but complicated and I don’t want to commit to something where I may not see the return so what’s the return here what kind of jobs are available in what kind of experience they need to have.

Yeah it’s a good question I so um you know because data science is still relatively young I think there are lots of job titles that might be relevant um so most obviously things like data analysts data scientists but maybe also business analysts maybe also data engineer maybe also you know quantitative researcher or something like that statistician applied statistician machine learning engineer right so there are lots of different titles that are available I think any boot camp that’s where the salt should at least prepare students for a data analyst role and if you’re tackling a data analyst role probably you’re looking at a healthy amount of data visualization a healthy amount of interacting with databases using SQL maybe some maybe some non-sql databases as well too if you have some unstructured data uh but you know all that stuff I think is really Within Reach it’s a matter of learning the fundamentals of some of these tools which you know I think you can do in  15 weeks you know If you’re sort of dedicated to the study of these things you know learning the fundamentals can go a long way and you can do it pretty fast 

Really good yeah no I can imagine there is a reason why everybody is gravitating towards python either you can do really good websites MVC websites in Python you could start off as your first programming language and it’s easy enough but it has these Advanced features like this numerical Library you’re referring to yeah that’s good and the good news is it’s all free if you want to get started it’s free to get...

 “Kim started her software engineering career during the pandemic from scratch. She lost her job and started learning code from a bootcamp. In 4 months she got a job as a software engineer. Watch as she describes her experience.

BIO:

My whole life’s purpose is to be helpful to other people. Originally, that desire led me to pursue a career in hospitality, where I could directly impact the one-to-one consumer experience through her attention to detail, clear communication, and forward thinking. After moving to the US, I regained touch with my innate curiosity. Through the perspectives of new friends I’ve made in the US, I realize that I had long ago shut off a valuable part of my mind – one that was more about seeking and exploring. But this led me to a career crossroads.

I started looking into other options, harkening back to her childhood self, when her desire for answers sent her on interesting rabbit trails that led to even more questions. I was always looking for things and asking questions and making things that were crafty. I started thinking, what can bring me that sort of excitement again?

A friend suggested me try coding but I brushed off the idea at first because I’d never worked with computers in any serious way.

Then one day, I decided to try it on a whim, taught myself some Javascript and enrolled to Hack Reactor’s immersive program. I realized that with software engineering, I can make an even bigger impact because the world is changing so fast, only software can keep up.

After the bootcamp, I landed her current job as a Software Engineer at Intellivision Entertainment, a company whose mission is to unite people through affordable, family-friendly entertainment. work on the infrastructure cloud team, doing backend work to build out services for consumers. I have a lot of autonomy on the job, but simultaneously feels like part of a passionate, supportive team with mentors and coworkers all working together toward common goals.

Guest Bio: I’ll be talking to Kim. Lou, I think you’re going to love listening to, and hearing her story because Kim embodies everything. We talked about everything we’re about on this platform mentoring developers. So, if you’re a new developer, you want to be a developer, or you are a girl, or if you’re an immigrant, or, if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any background in Tech and you don’t know, a lot of people That can guide you in sort of help, you should listen to this episode. Kim came from the hospitality industry and she was also not born in the US. But after she moved to America she decided that she needed to have a fresh start. She loved helping people. So She got into a code, bootcamp coding boot camp. Folks, he went in there for, I guess, a few months, maybe three or four months but within four months of joining in the middle of this covid pandemic she found a job. She found a job, it’s a struggle look obviously. All first jobs are going to be a struggle, but she made it and she learned enough to get her foot in the door, which is Really the most important thing until it’s the neck. The next most important thing is to get your second job and your third job. And finally, establishing yourself and getting the first job is the hardest part. She did it. And now she is a software engineer, in television entertainment, been the company’s amazing. It’s a startup company that is doing some amazing things. We’re gonna pick this conversation from the time that she just started her new job. I think it was a month into it. This is in 2020. And now it’s 2021. So she has been doing this for a while and I checked up on her and she’s still doing great. So this is going to be a great episode for you if you’re not sure if you got it, if you can make it then.

New updates about the style of the Podcast:

Kim Luu: Hi, I’m good. Thank you for having me.

Kim Luu: So the beginning of the bent pandemic, I lost my job because like all the hospitality and just to show employer-employee I was thinking about becoming a software engineer for a long time, but I didn’t have that encouragement to switch. Mike I just still feel like I will waste it on my own, for my effort, to what I already have pursued at the time. But my dependent happen and I lost my job. And I was thinking, I have to do my time to do something, and I was thinking, should I taught myself how to cope? And I was thinking, how can I do that? I could use Like, on my free platform, YouTube tutorials, or whatever to talk myself to take myself, but I feel like I’m looking better in a class environment. So we’re thinking, do I want to do a four-year degree in some University? And then I went to YouTube and I try to talk to myself. I try to teach myself a little bit and I found out that there’s something called bootcamp coding that you can learn how to code in three months and I found out there are a few of them that really good.So, I taught myself a little bit of squid to pass the interview into the boot camp. And then from there, I went into the program and thinnest it. And after two months after the boot camp, I got my first job.

Arsalan Ahmed: Wow, that’s an incredible story. Was it like going to a demanding coding boot? Well, we work really hard in the boot camp,

Kim Luu: We work sick days a week, 11 hours a day and we learn all those things to amend from compelling nothing. I didn’t even know what a parameter is, what a function is, or what a conditional statement is. I have nothing didn’t know anything and after three months, I can create a full stack application and that is just amazing to me during The Bootcamp, The Pack reactor really have a really good program but they don’t Hold Your Hand a lot. Do you have to learn a lot yourself and what they call it? They teach you to be a tournament and that is the most beneficial of a hack reactor to me. Because after that, I will have to learn things myself. But that is also the hardest thing is that from no background from know nothing about soft engineering. I have to cut a dick into the dig it out myself and learn myself based on whatever I was provided in the boot camp.

Arsalan Ahmed: Which Technologies were you taught in your boot camp?

Kim Luu: So, for the back end, And database, we learn SQL database or NoSQL database SQL database. We learn my SQL or post cacique or NoSQL in MongoDB. Mostly MongoDB for NoSQL from the server. We mostly Express server and in the front and we use React and I really like reaction in because it’s just really easy to work with and really They are two weeks in the cold for now. But in my job right now, I’m worth more in the back end, which creates servers and databases. Aw, F and that stuff. And I really miss working with React and the front end and seeing what the result came out. How the website looks like,

Arsalan Ahmed: How did you approach looking for your first job out of bootcamp?

Kim Luu: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, back to what you talk about, But the third job I plan on to be picky on my first job at all. I just want a job. Even if they don’t pay me, I was willing to work with for start-up which is share, that they gave me or whatever they gave me, but for the new boot camp grad or new people. Into entering into this software engineer Bill don’t be afraid and don’t be picky with your first job because if you learn something, if you want to learn something and learn from the guy and we can do whatever you want to work on their project I actually my first job is great and I love every bit of it. My company is in Astoria but I’m happy to start at work because I can learn. I can work on different parts of the project that taught those teeth me a lot and work with a lot of good, senior software engineers that you were really good at mentoring and great to work with at this company.

Arsalan Ahmed: What is the cost of going to a really good coding bootcamp like hack react?

Kim Luu: Yeah. hack reactor cough. I think about eighteen thousand dollars but do you can do they have a Financial option or can you do a share? They call an income share program where you only pay back the tuition after you get a job and they have to be a minimum payment of sixty thousand dollars a year. So, you have to know to Do a little bit of JavaScript before and you have to do the interview to play a technical interview with any company later to get a job. So, to get into a program, you have to do the technical interview and if they accept you, you can go between the Financial options that they provide

Arsalan Ahmed: Where the classes are virtual during the pandemic, or In person?

Kim Luu: Yes, it’s all both Shelley to lose zoom and it’s actually better like that because if I was happy if I Have to admit to the boot camp campers then it will be like two hours of the day that I have to Camille on this on the arrow, but I can do that to our to get some rest. Or to thank God or to keep coding because I need a lot of time to learn that’s our thing because it’s only three months and we work from. So the class starts from 9:00 to 8:00 p.m. but we actually walked past that APM to whatever time that we can fix that bug. That we can pass that problem. So that wrap is really intense for three months but it will be worth it. It’s it, if you really want it, I really recommend going to boot camp to buy a hack, reactor. Because for me, I not only learned technical skills. I learned a lot of talk to you in there too like pair programming and after that, they have a really good job placement program for you also talk to You about like making material, like, resume cover letters. Give you a few programs, and a few projects that you can put on your resume as on your LinkedIn. But if you like to work in my room, I mean that you’ll be yourself exploring things and learning. when the new technology of all whatever framework that you like is not a problem either and just in this symmetry really is exploring things in addition to classes at Simon’s. Do boot camps, and offer guidance and mentoring. And if they do, what does it look like? Yes. So they have. Yeah. So they have the resident. The mental is there to help you if you get stuck, we usually do pair programming during the day.So like it’s not only me on this project but I work with somebody and we would go out brainstorming, options throughout our ideas. And what if we do this, what I would do that? And if we get stuck for too long, then we can submit a ticket for somebody to jump in to help and it’s always good to try to learn it yourself. First, try to think about it really carefully. Try to use whatever source at that, you can like the internet YouTube or whatever you can use for you to submit a ticket to somebody, coming to help you. And that is also, what would look like when you get a real job, you will have to figure out yourself first before you come in and ask some senior engineer to help you out.

Arsalan Ahmed: One of the things that I think is on the minds of a lot of listeners is, how hard is it to be accepted. Or is it hard at all to be accepted as a software engineer without many years of experience and education? Just going through a boot camp.

Kim Luu: Well, I don’t, I really don’t. They asked me a lot of questions about, why I wanted to be a software engineer. Why I switched my career and do I like it or whatever like that? And it’s not surprising to me because I am in my resume and my LinkedIn shows that I don’t have any. Any background in computer science. And I just started, like, six months ago, four months ago, actually, and then but it is not a problem for them, actually, because The matter that the thing that matters most is that I have the ability to learn, and I have the attitude of the right attitude to work with this company and to be a part of a team. So they didn’t really expect much. I don’t think they expect much of my technical skills. But they did think that I could be a good asset to the team wagon. I can learn and evolve in my career later.

Arsalan Ahmed: How did you prepare for your first interviews? Get your first job.

Arsalan Ahmed: Did you find it overwhelming? In your first job when you started right out of a coding bootcamp opposed to going to college and Rigorous training putting bootcamp is sort of a shortcut but it has some advantages and disadvantages. it was it overwhelming a job?

Kim Luu: It was really overwhelming. Well, this is during the pandemic. So we own work at home, work from home and it’s just a little bit different onboarding process because I didn’t go to work. And so we met up on zoom on a zoom call and my supervisor SI me to attack. I’m Gera the day before that, and I will looking at it and I was like, Oh my God. What is it? What? I freaked out and then they gave me a tour of the code base and I just said don’t I didn’t think I can do this. I was like, should I quit right now to save my face? And it’s a, it’s a really it’s a that my first size here is a server and my supervisor’s car showed me that he already will another server that was can look into it. And kind of learn and could copy something and then just need to modify some stuff. And at first, it just even though I know that they were already something that I  can start from. But first I should I have to like to read through that code Bay and understand everything that only cost me like. That one really took me like two days or three days to do that and now I’m done I have to put on that all my configuration for the court to what? Probably for the test? What properties? And that takes a little bit more and but after one weekI starts to take it in and start to get used to the code base and everything. And after a week and a half, I finished that project, that Tascam jela, and that feel, who that feels great.

Arsalan Ahmed: It is hard when you’re starting, especially, especially when you’re a new developer. You can through a coding bootcamp, but didn’t get easy after the first week or so as a new developer in your first job.

Kim Luu: No, actually. Well the second thing that I got it sighs, I was a little trickier because I don’t have any like format to follow anymore. I have to kind of buy it myself and still I feel like learning right now and it’s great to have a good team that always be willing to answer your question. And as a new software engineer, I feel like if you’re afraid, Sometimes, but, but I have to tell myself every day that is good to ask questions and don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you don’t ask questions then there’s no way that you can learn. And I’m so, yeah, I’m so grateful to work with a team where my senior engineer always be very helpful and always be willing to answer my questions.

Arsalan Ahmed: All right. So how long have you been working at your first job?

Kim Luu: It’s actually only a month. Yeah, one month.

Arsalan Ahmed: Is there anything at all? That you’re really passionate about

Arsalan Ahmed: All right, Kim. So if people want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Kim Luu: Oh, they can go to my LinkedIn can Kima h, l uu and yeah, if you need any advice, if you need, if you have any question, begin kid needs someone to talk to if you and the early stage of learning up switching careers. Yeah, hit me up and I’ll answer your question.

We discuss why UI design systems are important and how can they help you. Also, Burton gives us a demo of Kickstand UI – a design system he created. Watch the video to see how it can consistently help you make usable and accessible websites.

Burton Smith is a senior software engineer at Bunzl North America where he works with internal business stakeholders and external customers to build digital solutions.

He is the creator of the Clarion style framework for design systems (projectclarion.com) as well as Kickstand UI which is a design system based on web components that can be used everywhere (kickstand-ui.com).

In his free time, he loves spending time with his wife and three daughters, practicing martial arts, jamming on his ukulele, and learning new things (usually about software engineering).

Burton Smith’s Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stuffbreaker

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/burton-smith-48132a34/

E-Mailing: [email protected]

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xmSi1ytopsssR1i3kKveg

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How do you sneak into a career in software development? Surely, you need a Computer Science degree and certifications to land a great job? Not quite – according to Burton Smith.

Burton Smith is a senior software engineer at Bunzl North America where he works with internal business stakeholders and external customers to build digital solutions.

He is the creator of the Clarion style framework for design systems (projectclarion.com) as well as Kickstand UI which is a design system based on web components that can be used everywhere (kickstand-ui.com).

In his free time, he loves spending time with his wife and three daughters, practicing martial arts, jamming on his ukulele, and learning new things (usually about software engineering).

Burton Smith’s Links:

Do you have some feedback or some advice for us or our audience? Please give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher and share your thoughts.

If you found this episode useful, please go ahead and share it with your friends and family. You can also listen directly and give your feedback on the website.

You can subscribe to Mentoring Developers via iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google Podcasts. 

Discover how Rocky Lhotka got his start as a software developer without a computer and went on to become a tech CTO. In this amazing story of resilience, Rocky shows us the path for the rest of us to follow. What a remarkable story!

Rockford Lhotka is CTO at Cognizant Softvision and is the creator of the open-source CSLA .NET development framework. He is the author of numerous books and regularly speaks at major conferences around the world. Rockford is a member of the Microsoft Regional Director and MVP programs. Magenic (https://magenic.com) helps you deliver your digital products to market faster. For more information go to http://lhotka.net.

Rocky’s Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RockyLhotka

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rockylhotka

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rockfordlhotka

Website: https://lhotka.net/

Do you have some feedback or some advice for us or our audience? Please give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher and share your thoughts.

If you found this episode useful, please go ahead and share it with your friends and family. You can also listen directly and give your feedback on the website.

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Matt Eland, a Bootcamp instructor, gives new and aspiring software developers great career advice and shares his struggles and triumphs in his fascinating journey towards professional and personal fulfillment.

Matt Eland is committed to helping people achieve greater things through programming. After over three decades of coding Matt put away his mechanical keyboard and made teaching his primary job as he looks to help others grow through his role as an Instructor at Tech Elevator. Matt specializes in .NET and JavaScript technologies and has been working extensively with .NET since beta 2 back in 2001 and with JavaScript and TypeScript “since they were fun”. Matt currently helps lead the Central Ohio .NET Developer Group (CONDG) and is an active speaker in the community. Matt’s current side project, Side.dev, can be described as a free web-based social project management application for developers. Side.dev is intended as a way of encouraging new developers to gain momentum by sharing progress on their side projects, finding an encouraging community, and learn new technologies which may be beneficial to them. Side.dev is in active development and will hit closed alpha on December 18th. You can get in touch with Matt via Twitter at @IntegerMan, LinkedIn, or E-Mailing [email protected]

Matt’s Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/integerman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/MattEland

E-Mailing: [email protected]

YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/matteland

Do you have some feedback or some advice for us or our audience? Please give us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher and share your thoughts.

If you found this episode useful, please go ahead and share it with your friends and family. You can also listen directly and give your feedback on the website.

You can subscribe to Mentoring Developers via iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.