Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Kyle Simpson This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Kyle Simpson. Kyle is most well-known for being the writer of You Don’t Know JS. He first got into programming because his friend’s dad was a programmer and he was hooked by the software side of computers. He grew up writing games with QBasic and Turbo Pascal and then in his teens did some client projects. He was very much a self-taught programmer and ended up sticking with it into his career today. They talk about what led him to JavaScript and what he is doing currently. In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Kyle intro
• You Don’t Know JS
• How did you first get into programming?
• Dad’s friend was a programmer
• Dad built computers
• Wrote games with QBasic and Turbo Pascal
• Some client projects in teen years
• Very much self-taught programmer
• CS degree in college
• First professional job at a biotech company
• Do you feel people need to get a CS degree these days?
• Grateful for his degree
• What engineering taught him
• Striving to understand why and how things work
• Don’t need a CS degree but you do need a certain mindset
• Valuable but not necessary
• What led you to JavaScript?
• Web Portal at his college
• What made you want to deepen your knowledge of JS?
• What are you working on now?
• And much, much more!

Links:

• You Don’t Know JS
• JavaScript
• Kyle’s GitHub
• Functional-Light JavaScript
• @getify
• Kyle on Front-end masters

Picks Charles

• Template Weeks
• Working Out

Kyle

• Fluent Conf
• Node RSA