CodeNewbie

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 29 - A Children's Makerspace (Gokul Krishnan) Mar 30, 2015

Show notes

Gokul Krishnan started the first makerspace in a children's hospital. Working with kids who have chronic illnesses like cystic fibrosis, he created a way for them to be makers. We talk about the benefits of making in the context of being in a hospital, how he approaches learning, and what kinds of tech projects these kids have made.

Gokul Krishnan

Gokul Krishnan is a Phd Student in the Learning Sciences at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education in Nashville, TN. In his research, he focuses on the learning of preteen children who must repeatedly spend periods of several days or weeks in a hospital setting because they require treatment for Cystic Fibrosis, a chronic disease.

Ep. 28 - Coding Printers (Kate Donahue) Mar 23, 2015

Show notes

She was trained to be a web developer. But months after graduating from bootcamp, she's at Makerbot, helping build the software that their 3D printers need to do their job. It's an interesting change -- she's using python instead of ruby, and learned C++ too. We talk about what it's like to be a software developer in a world of hardware, how the two jobs compare, and what some of the challenges are.

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Kate Donahue

Kate is a software developer at MakerBot and bootcamp grad.

Ep. 27 - Intro to Raspberry Pi (Matt Richardson) Mar 16, 2015

Show notes

Matt Richardson, evangelist for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, talks to us about the little computer that's making hardware accessible to more people. We talk about what the Raspberry Pi is, discuss some beginner friendly projects, and chat about a cool bike-based hardware project he made. If you've been thinking about getting started with the Raspberry Pi, this episode is for you.

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Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson is a hardware enthusiast, spreading the maker spirit as an evangelist at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Ep. 26 - The Hardware Marketplace (Julia Grace) Mar 09, 2015

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Julia Grace talks to us about Tindie, the hardware marketplace where creators and hardware enthusiasts can come together to share their goods. We talk about the challenges of building a hardware platform, the different problems these makers are solving, and how software and hardware compare when it comes to accessibility.

Julia Grace

Julia is the CTO at Tindie (tindie.com) where she built the engineering team and still writes Python (and the occasional JavaScript) every day. In her spare time she messes around with hardware, runs the occasional half marathon and enjoys a great cup of coffee.

Ep. 25 - From Software To Hardware (Sara Chipps) Mar 02, 2015

Show notes

It started at a conference. When Sara Chipps sat in the audience and watched a speaker use JavaScript to interact with a smoke detector, she was entranced. She left with a bag of LEDs, and a new love for hardware that led to her ultimately starting her hardware company Jewliebots. She talks to us about her transition from software developer to hardware CEO, the differences she's seen between building software and hardware, and what it's like to build a product for teenage girls.

Sara Chipps

Sara Chipps is CEO of Jewliebots and lover of JavaScript

Ep. 24 - Monsters And Code (Sarah Frisk) Feb 23, 2015

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Developer Sarah Frisk uses her incredible drawing skills to teach coding tools and concepts like git through her comic, Monster Markup Manual. We talk about her love of drawing, how art and code come together, and how monsters can do a great job of learning to code.

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Sarah Frisk

Sarah is a software developer, comic artist, Project Lead for jQuery Foundation’s Chassis project, and indie game dev enthusiast. She has two comics, Monster Markup Manual and Tavern Wenches.

Ep. 23 - Ask CodeNewbie (Scott Hanselman, Tiffany Peon) Feb 16, 2015

Show notes

In our first live broadcast of the podcast, we brought on developers Scott Hanselman and Tiffany Peon to chat about hot topics in the CodeNewbie community. We talked about finding a dev job, code mentorship, and our thoughts on Zed Shaw’s critiques of programming bootcamps. We recorded live on http://twitch.tv/codenewbie, and we loved having you in the chatroom to ask questions, comment, and join us in the conversation. And we’ll definitely do another live edition of Ask CodeNewbie soon. Hope you can join us then!

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Scott Hanselman

Scott is a web developer who has been blogging at http://hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, Oregon.

Tiffany Peon

Tiffany is a Flatiron School grad turned Ruby developer at Constant Contact in NYC. She'll talk your ear off about testing API integrations, southern food, and TV sitcoms.

Ep. 22 - Intro to UX (Catt Small) Feb 09, 2015

Show notes

Catt Small gives us a great intro to UX (user experience) design, including insight on her design process, how she works with users to create great digital experiences, and how code newbies can get started in UX design. She also tells us how she used Leap Motion to design a music instrument you can play using gestures. Lots of great stuff in this episode.

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Catt Small

Catt is a game maker, product designer, and developer. She is currently making awesome things at SoundCloud and teaching game development via The Code Liberation Foundation.

Ep. 21 - Teaching Kids To Code (Rebecca Garcia) Feb 02, 2015

Show notes

Developer Rebecca Garcia had always loved computers. At a young age, she went to MIT's two-week computer science camp. She was surrounded by kids who love to build and make, just like her. But at over $1K a week, it wasn't a very accessible way for kids to learn to code. So when she learned about Coder Dojo many years later, an organization that creates free coding workshops for youth, she wanted in. So she started CoderDojo NYC two years ago, and has been helping kids from ages 7-17 learn to code. We talk about the incredible things these kids have been able to accomplish in these workshops, her thoughts on teaching code in public school, and how she found her own way as a self-taught developer to her current role as a developer evangelist at Squarespace.

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Rebecca Garcia

Rebecca Garcia is a Developer Evangelist at Squarespace, former CTO and self-taught developer. Her background is in non-profits, community development and technology education.

Ep. 20 - Accessibility (Joseph McLarty) Jan 26, 2015

Show notes

Joseph McLarty, developer and accessibility advocate, talks to us about issues of accessibility and how we can create, and remove, invisible barriers that keep people from accessing the web. We talk about tools like screen readers, and how as developers, we can do simple things like use semantic tags that would help many people. We also touch on the legal issues on accessibility, and how we can learn more about the topic and ways we can create a more accessible web for all.

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Joseph McLarty

Joseph is a front end web developer at the City of Toronto with a passion for web standards & accessibility. When not playing video games he’s focused on creating accessible web content, applications and sharing accessibility knowledge.