CodeNewbie

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 99 - Creating Lifehacker - Part II (Gina Trapani) Aug 01, 2016

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Last episode we talked to Gina Trapani about her Lifehacker days. In this episode, we look to the future and hear about her work at Postlight, what it’s like to work with Paul Ford (Episode 82), and what she looks for when she’s hiring an engineer.

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Gina Trapani

Gina Trapani is currently the director of engineering at Postlight and the founding and former editor of Lifehacker. She's also the founder and creator of Makerbase, an IMDb for web sites and apps and ThinkUp, an app that gives you insights into your social networks.

Ep. 98 - Creating Lifehacker - Part I (Gina Trapani) Jul 25, 2016

Show notes

Once upon a time, Gina Trapani started Lifehacker. It got big, really big, with the ups and downs of being the sole editor responsible for a website that millions of people read. But after awhile, she wanted to get back to coding. In part one of our two-part interview, Gina talks to us about her journey going from famous blogger to product creator, the risks of building an app based on APIs, and what it felt like to shut down her company.

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Gina Trapani

Ep. 97 - From Theater Technician to Programmer (Ashley Lewis) Jul 18, 2016

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Ashley Lewis used to light stages. She worked as a theater technician working shows like Hamilton (when it was much smaller) and New York Fashion Week. But after some introspection, she realized that her passion wasn’t in light design, and she searched for other career options. She talks to us about the similarities between coding and her art background, what it’s like working as a theater technician, and how being introspective has helped her on her coding journey.

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Ashley Lewis

Ashley Michal Lewis started as a stubborn art student and over the course of the past five years discovered a passion for technical problem solving as a stage electrician and lighting designer, finally transitioning into a career as a stubborn web developer. She also has a deep interest in education, open source culture, and income inequality, and hopes to eventually weave these passions together to make a positive impact.

Ep. 96 - Developing Your Tech Talk Idea (Nickolas Means) Jul 11, 2016

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Nickolas Means talked about airplanes, and in doing so, he connected them with code in beautiful and interesting ways. In this interview, Nick explains how to take seemingly disconnected subjects and put them together in compelling talks, and how he uses his public speaking training to turn these talks into inspiring performances.

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Nickolas Means

Nick is the VP of Engineering at iTriage and Wellmatch Health, working with an incredibly talented team of engineers to bring transparency to healthcare pricing. He believes that software engineering is mostly human interaction and he’s passionate about building empathetic, compassionate teams.

Ep. 95 - Is The Website Down? (Stella Cotton) Jul 04, 2016

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When one man decided to crowdfund a bailout for Greece on Indiegogo (a feat that required over a billion dollars), Stella Cotton and her team found themselves in trouble. The site went down, and they had to figure out what to do. Stella takes us through the journey of getting the Indiegogo site back up, shares what she’s learned about site availability and what CodeNewbies can do to be ready for their own heavy traffic.

Stella Cotton

Stella Cotton is a software engineer, Ruby enthusiast, conference speaker, and co-organizer of SF.rb & AndConf.

Ep. 94 - UX Design and Gaming (Lil Chen) Jun 27, 2016

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Lil Chen has been in gaming for years. She started by playing video games, then become a competitive Super Smash Brothers player, and now works as a UX Designer at YouTube Gaming. We talk about how her long history in gaming affects her work as a designer and vice versa, and how she keeps up with her coding skills at night.

Lil Chen

Lil Chen currently works for YouTube Gaming and resides in San Francisco. Prior to that, she spent three and a half years designing for TED Talks in New York City.

Ep. 93 - Storytelling with Code (Michael Rau) Jun 20, 2016

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Michael Rau didn’t want to build an app, he wanted to create an experience. So he constructed a physical room, and with the help of a Rails app, created a theater show called “Temping.” He talks through his concept, how he used his new coding skills to make it happen, and the surprising emotional reactions he’s witnessed from audience members who’ve tried his creation.

Michael Rau

Michael Rau is a professional director of theater, opera and a creator of new media experiences.

Ep. 92 - Afghan Women Coding (Fereshteh Forough ) Jun 13, 2016

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Fereshteh Forough wanted to help women in Afghanistan. She knew that attaining education was difficult, let alone technical training, and the cultural attitudes towards women didn’t help. But she tackled these issues head on by starting the first coding school for women in Afghanistan. She talks to us about how she started the program, how she took on the different challenges her students face, and how her training in computer science and her previous role as a computer science professor affected her decision to open Code To Inspire.

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Fereshteh Forough

Fereshteh Forough is the Founder and President of Code to Inspire, the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan. Fereshteh was born as an Afghan refugee in Iran. One year after the fall of Taliban, she moved to Herat, Afghanistan with her family where she received her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Herat University and later a Master’s degree from Technical University of Berlin in Germany. She taught as a professor in the Computer Science Faculty of Herat University for three years. Fereshteh was a 2013 TED Talks speaker and a 2015 Clinton Global Initiative.

Ep. 91 - Creating EmberJS - Part II (Yehuda Katz) Jun 05, 2016

Show notes

In part two of our interview with Yehuda Katz, we talk about how he created EmberJS, and what it means to build a web framework. We also talk about what it means to be a beginner, and how growing up poor has influenced his perspectives as a coder today.

Yehuda Katz

Yehuda Katz is one of the creators of Ember.js, a member of the Rust Core Team, and a retired Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Team member. His 9-to-5 home is at the startup he founded, Tilde Inc. where he works on Skylight, the smart profiler for Rails, and does Ember.js consulting.

Ep. 90 - Creating EmberJS - Part I (Yehuda Katz) May 30, 2016

Show notes

Yehuda Katz has done many, many code things. He co-created Ember.js, co-founded a tech startup Tilde, is a frequent contributor to open source projects including Handlebars, Bundler, and Thor, and is a member of the Rust Core Team. But it took years of playing with tech before he finally felt like coding was something he could do. In the first half of our two-part interview, he talks about what he looks for when he hires, how it took him years to feel like he could code, and why he doesn’t like the term “junior developer”.