Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: A.J. O’Neal This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles talks with A.J. O’Neal who is a panelist on My JavaScript Jabber usually, but today he is a guest! The guys talk about AJ’s background and past/current projects. Today’s topics include: JavaScript, Ruby, jQuery, Rails, Node, Python, and more. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:23 – Chuck: Introduce yourself, please. 1:27 – AJ: I brief introduction: I am a quirky guy who is ADD and I love to figure out why/how things work. I like self-hosting or owning things in technology. 2:00 – Chuck: Where do you work now? 2:02 – AJ: I work in UTAH at Big Squid! 3:29 – AJ: I have my own company, too! 3:41 – Chuck: Yeah we’ve talked about that before. Where can we go? 3:54: AJ: We have 2 products that are both Node. Greenlock for Node.js is one of them! The other one is Telebit. 5:44 – Chuck: This interview is all about your background. How did you get into programming? 6:04 – AJ: I was in middle school but before that my grandmother was a secretary at the Pentagon. She worked on getting people paid and she wrote a program to assist these paychecks to be printed with fewer errors. Because of that she had a computer at home. I remember playing games on her computer. The guest talks about his background in more detail. 15:21 – Chuck: No it’s interesting! I’ve done a couple hundred interviews and they all say either: I went to school for it OR I did it for my free time. It’s interesting to see the similarities! 16:00 – AJ: Yep that’s pretty much how I got into it! I went on a church service mission to Albania and really didn’t do any computer work during those 2 years. 19:39 – Chuck: You went to BYU and your mission trip. A lot of that stuff I can relate to and identify with b/c I went to BYU and went on missions trip, too! And then you got into Ruby and that’s how we met was through Ruby! 20:25 – AJ: Yep that’s it. Then that’s when I learned about Node, too. There was a guy with a funny hate – do you remember that? (No.) 21:03 – Chuck: Maybe? 21:07 – AJ continues. 27:53 – Chuck: What made you make the transition? People come into and out of different technologies all the time. 28:18 – AJ: Yeah it started with me with jQuery! Rails has layers upon layers upon layers. AJ talks about different technologies their similarities/differences and mentions: JavaScript, Rails, Python, Node, Ruby, and much more. 31:05 – Chuck: Node went out of their way on certain platforms that Rails didn’t prioritize. 31:11 – AJ continues to talk about different technologies and platforms. 33:00 – Chuck: You get into Node and then at what point does this idea of a home-server and Node and everything start to come together? How much of this do you want to talk bout? At one point did they start to gel? 33:33 – AJ: It’s been a very long process and started back in high school. It started with me trying to think: How do I get this picture on my phone to my mom? I thought of uploading it to Flickr or could I do this or that? What about sending it to someone in China? 39:57 – Chuck. 40:01 – AJ continues and talks about libraries and certificate standards. 42:00 – AJ continues with the topic: certificates. 42:44 – Chuck: I am going to go to PICKS! Where can people find you? 42:55 – AJ:

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Gareth McCumskey This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles talks with Gareth McCumskey who is a senior web developer for RunwaySale! They talk about Gareth’s background, current projects and his family. Check out today’s episode to hear all about it and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:53 – Chuck: Hey everyone! Welcome! We are talking today with Gareth McCumseky! 1:05 – Gareth: Hi! 1:22 – Chuck: Are you from Cape Town, Africa? (Guest: Yes!) 1:35 – Gareth and Chuck talk about his name, Gareth, and why it’s popular.  1:49 – Chuck: I am in my late 40’s. You were here for JSJ’s Episode 291! It’s still a hot topic and probably should revisit that topic. 2:20 – Guest: Yes! 2:30 – Chuck: It’s interesting. We had a long talk about it and people should go listen to it! 2:45 – Guest: I am a backend developer for the most part. 3:03 – Chuck: Yeah I started off as an ops guy. It probably hurt me. 3:21 – Guest: Yeah, if you poke it a certain way. 3:29 – Chuck: Let’s talk about YOU! How did you get into programming? 3:39 – Guest: South Africa is a different culture to grow-up in vs. U.S. and other places. I remember the computer that my father had back in the day. He led me drive his car about 1km away and I was about 11 years old. We would take home the computer from his office – played around with it during the weekend – and put it back into his office Monday morning. This was way before the Internet. I was fiddling with it for sure. The guest talks about BASIC. 6:20 – Chuck: How did you transfer from building BASIC apps to JavaScript apps? 6:30 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good story. When I was 19 years old...I went to college and studied geology and tried to run an IT business on the side. I started to build things for HTML and CSS and build things for the Web. The guest goes into-detail about his background! 9:26 – Chuck: Yeah, jQuery was so awesome! 9:34 – Guest: Yeah today I am working on an app that uses jQuery! You get used to it, and it’s pretty powerful (jQuery) for what it is/what it does! It has neat tricks. 10:11 – Chuck: I’ve started a site with it b/c it was easy. 10:19 – Guest: Sometimes you don’t need the full out thing. Maybe you just need to load a page here and there, and that’s it. 10:39 – Chuck: It’s a different world – definitely! 10:48 – Guest: Yeah in 2015/2016 is when I picked up JavaScript again. It was b/c around that time we were expecting our first child and that’s where we wanted to be to raise her. Guest: We use webpack.js now. It opened my eyes to see how powerful JavaScript is! 12:10 – Chuck talks about Node.js. 12:21 – Guest: Even today, I got into

Panel: https://twitter.com/cmaxw?lang=en Guest: Nicholas Zakas This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles talks with Nicholas Zakas who is a blogger, author, and software engineer. Nicholas’ website is titled, https://humanwhocodes.com – check it out! You can find him on https://twitter.com/slicknet https://github.com/nzakas/, and https://www.linkedin.com/in/nzakas among other social media platforms. Today, Nicholas and Chuck talk about Nicholas’ background, https://www.javascript.com, and current projects. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – https://devchat.tv/get-a-coder-job/ 1:00 – Chuck: Welcome! Give us a background, please, Nicholas! 1:14 – Guest: I am probably best known for making https://eslint.org and I have written a bunch of books, too! (See links below.) 1:36 – Chuck: https://player.fm/series/all-javascript-podcasts-by-devchattv/jsj-336-the-origin-of-eslint-with-nicholas-zakas and https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/075-jsj-maintainable-javascript-with-nicholas-zakas/ episodes are the two past episodes we’ve had you on! (See links below.) Let’s go back and how did you get into programming? 1:58 – Guest: I think the first was written in BASIC, which was on a Laser computer. It was a cheaper knockoff version. I think I was into middle school when I got into BASIC. Then when I got into high school I did this computer project, which was the first time someone else used one of my programs. 4:02 – Chuck: Was it all in BASIC or something else? 4:13 – Guest: Just BASIC, but then transferred to something else when we got our first PC. 5:13 – Chuck: How did you get to use https://www.javascript.com 5:18 – Guest: 1996 was my freshman year in college. Netscape 3 got into popularity around this time. I had decided that I wanted to setup a webpage to stay in-touch with high school friends who were going into different directions. I got annoyed with how static the [web] pages were. At the time, there was no CSS and the only thing you could change was the source of an image (on webpages). On the you could do... 8:35 – Chuck: You get into https://www.javascript.com and at what point did you become a prolific operator and author? 8:52 – Guest: It was not an overnight thing. It definitely was fueled by my own curiosity. The web was so new (when I was in college) that I had to explore on my own. I probably killed a few trees when I was in college. Printing off anything and everything I could to learn about this stuff! 10:03 – Guest (continues): Professors would ask ME how to do this or that on the departmental website. When I was graduating from college I knew that I was excited about the WEB. I got a first job w/o having to interview. 12:32 – Guest (continues): I got so deep into https://www.javascript.com 13:30 – Guest (continued): They couldn’t figure out what I had done. That’s when I got more into designing JavaScript APIs. About 8 months after graduating from college I was unemployed. I had extra time on my hands. I was worried that I was going to forget the cool stuff that I just developed there. I went over the code and writing for myself how I had constructed it. My goal was...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: https://twitter.com/eisenbergeffect?lang=en This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with https://twitter.com/eisenbergeffect?lang=en who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is https://twitter.com/EisenbergEffect?lang=en. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (https://devchat.tv/adv-in-angular/009-aia-ng-2-0-with-rob-eisenberg/ and https://devchat.tv/adv-in-angular/080-aia-aurelia-with-rob-eisenberg/), JavaScript Jabber, and others like https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/203-jsj-aurelia-with-rob-eisenberg/ 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on http://www.cplusplus.com and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: James Adams This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with James Adams who is a web and a full stack developer who currently resides in Melbourne, Australia. Chuck and James talk about James’ background, current projects, JavaScript, Ruby, Meetups, and much more! Check out today’s episode to hear all of the details. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 0:55 – Chuck: Welcome to My Java Script story! You are the 4th person I have talk to today. I have only talked to one person in the U.S. Other people were from Denmark, Tennessee (USA), and Bulgaria. 1:39 – Guest: I am in Australia! 1:48 – Chuck: I try to open it up for different times and different locations. I started making my own program. I want one tool to manage my podcast company. 2:20 – Guest. 2:26 – Chuck: Introduce yourself, please! 2:33 – Guest: I have been working in JavaScript for 2 years now, and I just FOUND it. I could have been put anywhere but working with a large company. I discovered React.js. I went to study Math and Chemistry originally. 3:24 – Chuck: What was it – why did you change from mathematics to programming? 3:38 – Guest: I like solving problems and that has been true my whole life. 4:25 – Chuck: I identify with that – you’re right – for me, it’s more tangible and it’s neat to see something being built. White line on a black floor is mentioned. 5:30 – Guest: I had a great education, but seems like the education in the U.S. is more fun. We didn’t get to program and stuff like that. 5:51 – Chuck: My experience was that I got to do really interesting things in High School. 6:20 – Guest: I think you reap benefits by diving into one topic. 6:36 – Chuck: We were building little circuits that were turning on/off LED. We then went to building robots and then computer chips. How did you get into JavaScript? 7:01 – Guest: We didn’t touch JavaScript until my 3rd year. I went to a school in Jerusalem for a while. 9:05 – Chuck: How did you get your first programming job? 9:10 – Guest: I wasn’t really applying – I thought I would travel for a year or so. It was weird I didn’t think I had to apply to jobs right away. I applied to a few jobs, and my friend started sharing my resume around and I ended up doing some contract work for that company. I used RUBY for that team. 10:18 – Chuck: First few jobs I got were through the “spray-and-pray” method. The best jobs I got are because I KNEW somebody. 10:30 – Guest and Chuck go back-and-forth. 11:31 – Guest mentions networking. 11:41 – Chuck: What have you done with JavaScript that you are especially proud of? 11:45 – Guest. 13:43 – Chuck: I didn’t know that honestly. I never really thought of integrating React Native into a native app. 14:00 – Guest: Yeah, it’s really cool. I didn’t think about it before either! 14:24 – Chuck: What are you working on now? 14:28 – Guest: Actually, I am working on some integration with different parties. Now we are routing everything back to the backend. 15:46 – Chuck: I think I have heard of Pro... 15:52 – Guest: Yeah, they are located in the U.S. 16:01 – Chuck: Every community/country is different, but what is it like to be a programmer in Melbourne, Australia? 16:16 – Guest: It’s cool and I think it has a way to go. We have a React Meetup. 16:55 – Chuck: Sounds like you have a healthy community down there. So in Denmark if you get away from the bigger cities then you have a harder time finding a community in the rural areas. 17:30 – Guest: Do you spend more time online? 17:50 – Chuck: Yeah, I don’t know. I live in...

Panel: https://twitter.com/cmaxw?lang=en Guest: https://github.com/cmckni3?from=2014-12-01&tab=overview&to=2014-12-31 This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with https://github.com/cmckni3?from=2014-12-01&tab=overview&to=2014-12-31 who is a software developer who knows Angular, Ruby, Node.js, and iOS. He went to college at Louisiana State University and graduated with a computer science degree from LSU. They talk about Chris’ background, past/current projects, among other things. Check out today’s episode to hear the panel talk about JavaScript, Angular, C and C++, Node, React, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – https://devchat.tv/get-a-coder-job/ 1:12 – Chuck: Hello! Introduce yourself, please! 1:15 – Guest: I am a software engineer outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I work for a medium consultancy company. I know https://www.javascript.com, https://angular.io, https://www.nativescript.org, and JS, too. 1:41 – Chuck: Cool! Tell us your story and how you got into programming? 2:00 – Guest: I was a really big nerd in high school and grew up in Louisiana, USA. There was one other person in the school that knew what I was talking about. I was learning C++ and Visual Studio in 2003. That was really back in the day and Microsoft Foundation class was a thing. I moved onto PHP and started working for a company in Baton Rouge after graduating college. I have a computer science degree with a secondary discipline in mathematics. I graduated from LSU and got a job offer before I graduated. Doing some part-time work for them b/c they were swamped. I was writing PHP and they said that they used jQuery a lot. 4:47 – Chuck: You got started and you said you used C and C++, why those languages? 5:05 – Guest: I did a little bit of Java, but it was the “new kid on the block.” I wanted to get into a program that was user-friendlier. 6:21 – Chuck: I took C and C++ classes in college. Eventually I did Ruby on Rails. I totally understand why you went that way. 6:44 – Guest: I picked-up Rails, because a company (that I worked for at the time) used it. I usually reached for jQuery among other options. 7:31 – Chuck: When did you start taking JavaScript seriously? 7:40 – Guest: 2012-2013. Frustrations of not using JavaScript as good as I could. For jQuery you have to call when you have an issue. Then you run into all of these bugs, and... 9:18 – Chuck: It sounds like it was more out of necessity. 9:30 – Guest: Yep, exactly. Those pain points have been reduced b/c I have been using Type Script and Angular and now version 6 and version 7. You try to call a number method on a string and vice versa, and app development time. 10:03 – Chuck: ...it has a process running with it. 10:13 – Guest: Catching a lot of those easy mistakes (bugs) and it’s a 5-10 minute fix. It takes a lot of that away. Sometimes you can say: I want to ignore it. Or it doesn’t give you runtime guarantees. Some other libraries out there have been on the forefront of fixing those problems. REST TYPE is an example of that. 11:39 – Chuck: When I talk to people about JavaScript a lot of times I get basically that they are saying: I started doing more things in https://nodejs.org/en/ or React – I fell in love with the language. Your reasons for starting JavaScript are because “I hated running into these problems.” Did you start loving to work in JavaScript? 12:11 – Guest:...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Henry Zhu This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Henry Zhu who is working full-time on Babel! They discuss Henry’s background, past/current projects, Babel, and Henry’s new podcast. Check-out today’s episode to hear more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 1:00 – Chuck: Today we are talking with Henry Zhu! You are the maintainer of Babel – and we have had you on the show before. Anything else? 1:25 – Henry: I used to work with Adobe and now live in NY. 1:44 – Chuck: Episode 321 we talked to you and you released Babel 7. Tell us about Babel, please. 2:01 – Henry: It’s a translator for programming languages and it’s a compiler. It only translates JavaScript to JavaScript. You would do this because you don’t know what your users’ are using. It’s an accessibility thing as well. 3:08 – Chuck: Later, we will dive into this some more. Let’s back-up: how did you get into programming? 3:22 – Henry: I think I was in middle school and I partnered with a friend for science class and we made a flash animation about earthquakes. Both of my parents worked in the field, too. They never really encouraged me to do it, but here I am. 4:07 – Chuck: How did you get into Java? 4:11 – Henry: I made some games and made a Chinese card game. Then in college I went to a bunch of Hackathons. In college I didn’t major into computer science, but I took a bunch of classes for fun. I learned about Bootstrap and did a bunch of things with that. 5:12 – Chuck: How did you settle on JavaScript? 5:28 – Henry: It was my experience – you don’t have to download anything. You can just open things up in the console and it’s easy to share. I think I like the visual part of it and their UI. 6;07 – Chuck: At some point you ran across Babel – how did you get into that? 6:17 – Henry: After college I wanted to do software. I threw out my degree of industrial engineering. I tried to apply to Google and other top companies. I applied to various places and picked something that was local. I met Jonathan Neal and he got me into open source. Through that, I wanted to contribute to Angular, but it was hard for me. Then I found a small issue with a linting error. After that I made 30 commits to Angular. I added a space here and there. JSES is the next thing I got involved with. There is one file for the rule itself and one for the test and another for the docs. I contributed there and it was easy. I am from Georgia and a year in I get an email through Adobe. They asked if I wanted to work through Enhance in Adobe. I moved to NY and started working here. I found JS LINT, and found out about Babel JS LINT. And that’s how I found about Babel. 9:24 – Chuck: Was Sebastian still running the project at the time? 9:33 – Henry. 10:53 – Chuck: It seems like when I talk with people that you are the LEAD on Babel? 11:07 – Henry: I guess so, because I am spending the most time on it. I also quit the job to work on it. However, I want people to know that there are other people out there to give you help, too. 11:45 – Chuck: Sebastian didn’t say: this is the guy that is the lead now. But how did that crystalize? 12:12 – Henry: I think it happened by accident. I stumbled across it. By people stepping down they stepped down a while ago and others were helping and making changes. It...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Christine Legge This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Christine Legge who is a computer software engineer who works for Google in New York. Previous employment includes Axiom Zen, and Vizzion, Inc. She and Chuck talk about her background, past and current projects, and her future goals. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:07 – Hello! 1:10 – Chuck: You were on Episode 328 in the past. Tell us about yourself! 1:24 – Christine: I started working with Google about 2 weeks ago. In the past I worked in Vancouver, Canada. 2:05 – Chuck: Let’s start with how you got into programming? 2:14 – Christine: When I was in HS I wasn’t interested at all into computers. I wanted to do applied math in Toronto Canada for college. For engineering you have to take an introduction to programming in the 1st year. I had a 4-hour computer science course in the morning and I dreaded it. I dropped out 3 months later b/c I didn’t like the program. Surprisingly, enough, I did like the computer science course. I went back to Vancouver and I said to my parents that I wanted an office job. I went to the YMCA center and wanted to be hired. The man there asked if I had any interest in data entering, and I started working for him. I worked 4 hours a week with him where he taught me C+. I decided to go back to school for it. 5:37 – Chuck: What did you like about it? 5:43 – Christine: I liked the problem solving part of it. I like how you can break things down. The technology doesn’t interest me that much, but I like the problem-solving aspect. The guy wasn’t that up-to-date with the newest technologies either. 6:53 – Chuck: You have a 4-year degree in computer science. 7:05 – Yes that and statistics, too. 7:13 – Chuck: I was going to say “nerd.” How do you go from desktop applications to web apps? 7:25 – Christine: I worked with a company part-time and fulltime depending on the year/season. I didn’t know what web development was but I thought that THAT was computer science. I thought that if I knew how to do web development then I was going to be good to go. This company asked: What do you want to do? And I answered that I wanted to do web development b/c I thought that’s what I was lacking. I basically got thrown into it. I didn’t understand anything at all. It took me to write one line of CSS and it took 4 hours. 10:35 – Why did JavaScript attract you more so than C# or other languages that you’ve used? 10:43 – It’s simpler and you don’t need a lot of setup; from top to bottom. I am working in typescript, I like it even more, but I like how Java is more free to do what you want. I like functional programming in JavaScript. I like the big community for Java, and there are tons of applications for it. I really like how flexible the language is. You can do functional and oriented or you can combine the two. You aren’t constrained. 12:00 – Chuck: You get in, you work through JavaScript, were you only doing backend? 12:14 – Christine: Yep, backend. 13:00 –Chuck: I know you talked at the conference, and what are you most proud of? 13:14 – Christine: To be honest, no. My mentor (Pablo) at the last company – he wrote a book about D3. He started learning and writing the book. To me that I had thought that all these people are experts from the get go. I realized that everyone has to start somewhere to eventually become an expert. I do want to make an impact even outside of my job. I don’t have anything new that I’ve been working on. It’s a goal for me within the next...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Benjamin Hong This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior UI Developer at Politico where he lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He has worked with other companies including Treehouse, Element 84, and Udacity. Charles and Benjamin talk about his past and current projects, and how it’s different working for the government vs. working for a business. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:06 – Chuck: Tell us a brief introduction, please. 1:23 – Ben: I am a lead frontend developer at Politico. 1:43 – Chuck: It’s an area that can affect everyone. How did you get into developing? 1:52: Ben: I had everything you can think of to develop at first. 2:10 – Chuck: For me it was a TI90 calculator! 2:18 – Chuck: Was it somebody or something that pushed you towards this area? 2:32 – Ben: I wanted to change something with the theme, Googled it, and it went from there, and the Marquis Tag. 2:51 – Chuck: And the Blink Tag! The goodies. So you got the he HTML book – and what website did you build that was your first big project? 3:07 – Ben: It was fiddling around, but it was fortune cookie universe. 3:20 – Chuck: You will have to recreate it! 3:27 – Ben: I think this was 1993/1995 timeframe. 3:40 – Chuck: Yep, me too same time frame. If you had something move on your website it was so cool. You went to building... 4:02 – Ben: JavaScript was a roadblock for me. There was nobody to correct me. I had a JavaScript book and it was a massive failure. 4:33 – Chuck: You took a break and you came back? 4:40 – Ben: Oh – people will PAY you to do this?! 4:54 – Chuck: Did you go to college? 5:01 – Ben: Yes, I have a Master’s in a different field. I was always a tech junkie. I just wanted to put things together. 5:20 – Chuck: Take us through your journey through JS? 5:30 – Ben: I started off with the jQuery piece of it. I needed Java, and it took me awhile to wrap my head around it at first. Through the trial and process of trying to get into Angular and React, too. 6:19 – Chuck: Did you play with Backbone, Knockout, or Ember? 6:32 – Ben: I did do SOME Ember and some Knockout. Those were my first interactions. 6:49 – Chuck: What got you into the profession? How did you get from your Master’s to being a tech guy? 7:14 – Ben: From the Master’s field I learned a lot about human experience, and anted to breed the two together. Also, consulting and helping to build things, too. 7:44 – Charles: What was the career change like? 7:53 – Ben: I went to the federal government at first around the recession – it was good having a stable job. I was bored, though. While I was working for the government I was trying to get my foot in the door. From there I have been building my way up. 8:30 – Ben: I was working on Medicare.gov and then later... 8:46 – Charles: We won’t use the word “disaster”! What is it like to work for the government? 9:20 – Ben: Yep. The federal government is a different area because they are stake holders. They were about WHO owned the content, and who do we have to talk to get something approved. It was not product oriented like a business. I made my transition to Politico, because I wanted to find solutions and diversify the problems I was having. 10:31 – Chuck: Have you been there from the beginning? 10:39 – Ben answers the question. Ben: They were looking for...

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Christiané Heiligers This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Dr. Christiané Heiligers who is new to the industry. Her background is in physics where she has her Ph.D. in the field. Listen to today’s episode to hear her background, experience with the different programs/languages, and much more! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: Beginning – Advertisement: Code Badges! 1:07 – Christiané: Hello! 1:17 – Chuck: I like hearing people’s stories from our community. Tell us where you come from and who you are? 1:33 – Christiané: I am from South Africa, and have been in the US for 2 years now. My formal training is in physics. I have been a researcher with lab coats and test tubes. Through immigration, which took 2 years. I couldn’t be still, and started learning code on my own. I enjoyed the art. I had to use Python, and then I was hooked. I enjoyed the functional programming and other things. I had some experience with Ruby on Rails. I enjoy development because its problem solving, methodically approach, and uses your creative side, too. My preference is a Mac, need the Internet and decided to go to camps and take courses. I snagged a job a week before I graduated! 4:36 – Chuck: your journey, thus far. You said that you couldn’t be idle – so why code? 4:53 – Guest: The UK is cold you don’t want to do anything outside! From South American I couldn’t stand the cold. I kept busy indoors – hint the code. You can’t get bored – frontend or backend. 5:28 – Chuck: Can you give us background on the Grace Hopper Academy. 5:40 – Guest: Sure! It’s based in NY City. 6:26 – Chuck: Did you move somewhere or was it remote? 6:30 – Guest: I had to live somewhere e 6:51 – Chuck: Where did you 6:55 – Guest: NY City. There were 16 of us in the course. 7:14 – Chuck: Why did you feel like you had to go to coding school? 7:25 – Guest: I am impatient with myself. The home-life you ask yourself: “Am I doing the right thing? Am I going in the right direction?” I wanted to go and pick up some skills. 7:56 – Chuck: You go through Grace Hopper – is this how you got into JavaScript? 8:11 – Guest: I didn’t know a line of JavaScript. I did my application code line in Ruby. My husband has been in software development my whole life. 9:16 – Chuck: What have you done with JavaScript since learning it? 9:24 – Guest: Some card playing games for my nieces in South Africa. 10:50 – Guest: Stack Overflow is wonderful. 11:05 – Chuck. 11:11 – Guest: I wasn’t actively contributing, but I did... 11:30 – Chuck: What is it like being a prof 11:37 – Guest: It’s addictive. When I am writing code in the frontend / backend side. It’s always learning. 12:11 – Chuck: What’s next for you? 12:18 – Guest: I would love to continue this journey. Maybe into the DevOps, but my passion happens with React. The Hapi Framework. 13:10 – Guest: The community is wonderful to work with – everyone is very helpful. 13:22 – Chuck: People are usually talking about Express and not Hapi.js. 13:35 – Guest: I have some contact names you can call. 13:43 – Guest: I am working on a few small projects right now. Some Angular sites that need assistance. Helping out where I can. It’s a small team that I am working with. There is only a few of us. 14:31 – Chuck: Usually people stick with one. What’s your experience using the different frameworks? 14:40 – Guest: It’s an eye-opener! React vs. Angular. 15:07 – Chuck: How can people find you? 15:14 – Guest: LinkedIn, Twitter,