Build and Learn
CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz
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A podcast about software development and developing ourselves as software engineers. Hosted by CJ Avilla and Colin Loretz.
Available episodes
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1 day ago
webhooks-fyi
In this episode about webhooks.fyi, we're joined by Keith Casey from ngrok. You'll hear about webhooks.fyi an information-rich resource for learning how to build and consume webhooks. webhooks.fyi is an open source knowledge base and directory listing and analyzing different webhook providers. We discuss webhook security, signature verification, forward compatibility, and more.
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Mar 6, 2023
Chelsea Otakan: Design and build systems, not just features
This week we are joined by Chelsea Otakan, infamously also known as @chexee on most of the internet. Chelsea is a product designer and front-end developer, currently working at Lattice.
In this episode, we learn more about Chelsea's design origin story, her philosophies on product design, and why you should "build a skateboard, not a wheel".
Chelsea's design philosophies
- Ship quickly, ship for the user
- Design is continuous
- Design and build systems, not just features
- Don't be afraid to dig deep
- Critique early, often, and with everyone
Other Links from the Show
- Shopify article on creating a "quality elevator" from Kyle Peatt: The system always kicks back
- Chelsea's portfolio and work at Chexee.me
Build and Learn around the web
- Twitter: @buildandlearn_
- Colin: @colinloretz
- CJ: @cjav_dev
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Feb 20, 2023
Custom codegen for SDKs
In this episode of Build and Learn, we discuss code generation (codegen) and how Stripe uses it to generate SDKs for its APIs automatically. We talk about how a declarative shape of an API (such as Open API spec or GraphQL schema) can be fed into a tool to generate an SDK in a specific programming language. This process helps ensure that the SDKs are always in sync with the API and that any changes to the API are automatically reflected in the SDKs.
Most SDKs today are still hand-written, but automatic generation is becoming more popular.
We'll touch on the tradeoff between readable code and automatically generated code, which can be quite long and complex.
You'll also hear how the Ruby clients for Orbit were likely written by hand and may not be up-to-date.
Resources:
* Richard Marmorstein's Strangeloop talk about codegen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgRreyw-Nlg
* CJ's RubyConf 2022 talk about codegen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm0fgIqfsO8
* Stainless API company: https://stainlessapi.com/
* Open API Spec: https://swagger.io/specification/
* Stripe API Spec: https://github.com/stripe/openapi
* Swagger codegen: https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-codegen/
* Orbit Ruby Activities gem: https://github.com/orbit-love/ruby-orbit-activities
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Feb 6, 2023
Building Developer Relations Teams with Trag
In this podcast episode, we are diving into the world of developer advocacy and developer relations with Chris Traganos, aka "Trag."
While Chris and CJ originally met working together in developer advocacy at Stripe, Trag talks to us about his new role leading the Developer & Appstore Evangelism program at Amazon.
* How DevRel strategies change depending on the type and size of company
* Tradeoffs that come with "where" a DevRel team is situated on in an organization
* Sales & Marketing
* Engineering
* The ever-evolving role of DevRel within a company
* DevRel as "on-screen talent"
* As a DevRel manager, how to advocate for advocates
* How to help dev advocates reach their personal goals
* Choosing tracks in your career
* Dev Advocacy & Engineering paths
* Individual Contributor & Manager paths
Resources:
- @chris_trag on Twitter
- @AmazonAppDev on Twitter
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Jan 23, 2023
Building things that excite you with Charlie Gerard
In this podcast episode, the we discuss a range of topics related to learning and building cool projects. We begin by discussing the recent snow day and share some funny tips and tricks kids use to create a snow day.
Charlie Gerard, a senior dev advocate at Stripe, introduces herself and talks about her role as a creative technologist, primarily working in JavaScript. She shares her love for solo traveling, reading, tinkering, and building. We also discuss Charlie's previous projects and how she comes up with project ideas. She rarely starts from scratch but builds on something she has built before, adding a new sensor or trying a different technology or interaction. We also discuss the challenges of working with sensors and how to connect them to a computer and figure out the different protocols.
ThoughtWorks, a company with a tool called the Radar, helps developers navigate new technologies and decide which to adopt.
We discussed the importance of starting small when learning to code and using games to learn programming. We chat about using ChatGPT for games like D&D, expressing that these games are meant to be fun and not automated.
Charlie can be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/devdevcharlie), Mastodon (@devdevcharlie@hachyderm.io), and her website https://charliegerard.dev/, and regularly shares cool projects on GitHub under the username charliegerard.
Resources:
- Thoughtworks Radar - https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar
- Charlie's projects - https://charliegerard.dev/projects
- Richard's blog post about energy - https://twitchard.github.io/posts/2023-01-18-unicycles.html
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Jan 10, 2023
IC to Lead: Building Confidence In Your Skills with Lindsay Barrett
In this episode, you'll hear Lindsay's path from graphic designer to support engineer and how she now manages a team of support engineers. We discuss what this transition has looked like for her as well as the training and learnings she undertook along the way.
In the second half of the episode, we dig into more specific tactics that her and her team have encountered like supporting customers through API version migrations, authentication issues and squashing bugs with their product engineering team.
Resources
* Lindsay Barrett on LinkedIn
* LeadDev
* Support Driven Slack, Podcast, Blog, Job Board, Events
* Growth Space
* Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner
* William Vincent's Django Books
Questions or feedback for the show? You can DM us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/buildandlearn_
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Dec 26, 2022
AWS Amplify and Front-end Frameworks with Erik Hanchett
In this episode, you'll hear Erik's developer journey and learn about AWS Amplify. We discuss some ƒront-end trends and continue reiterating the value of rolling up your sleeves and building small things to learn new programming languages and frameworks.
We compare and contrast working with Vue and React. We touch briefly on trends seen at Vercel with server-side generation and rendering. Shopify's acquisition of Remix and the dilemma of choice. The advent of code style challenges to build more small projects to learn from.
In the second half of the episode, Erik teaches Colin and CJ all about AWS Amplify's various components that can be used to build full-stack applications.
Resources:
AWS Amplify documentation
Program With Erik YouTube Channel
@erikch on Twitter
adventofcode.com
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Dec 12, 2022
Mike Bifulco: Building a Developer Brand
We talk about some of the keys to building a personal brand as a software developer.
• Authenticity
• Consistency
• Why you should (or shouldn't) think about developing your brand
This Episode's Links
•Twitter and the Perils of Obedience
• Coolors: the super fast color palette generator
• BuildSpace
Creator Linked List
• Monica Lent: building profitable indie products
• Paul Jarvis: Fathom Analytics and Company of One
• Scott Hanselman: blogger, dev, speaker, author, teacher
Thanks again to Mike for joining us, you can find all things Mike Bifulco at https://mikebifulco.com
You can find the show on Twitter and at buildandlearn.dev.
@buildandlearn_
@colinloretz
@cjav_dev
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Nov 25, 2022
Getting hired as a developer
* Sourcing where you want to apply
* Make a list of the tools/apps/companies you like to use
* Outbound (Make a top 10 list)
* Inbound (review inbound recruiter outreach from the past 3 months or more)
* Networking (who do you know, try to do some coffee chats to see if they like their company and team)
* Cold outreach is tough (numbers game)
* Timing - interviewing such that offers come in around the same time
* Resume & cover letter & LinkedIn & Social
* Have these reviewed by your peers and iterate on feedback
* Make sure you communicate the things you’ve done that add value, ideally how much value you’ve added. Situation Behavior Impact (SBI) is a good framework for bullets
* Omit anything unrelated to the job you’re going for (hot take?)
* Clean up social
* Preparing for Interviews
* Practice Interviews with friends/mentors
* Pairing
* Research the company
* Algorithms
* HackerRank
* LeetCode
* Exercism
* Communities
* Rands Leadership Slack
* Reverse Job Boards
* https://railsdevs.com/
* RemoteOK.com
* WeWorkRemotely.com
* HN Who’s Hiring - first of each month
* Resources
* interview cake https://www.interviewcake.com/
* Cracking the coding interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell https://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com/
* Atomic Habits - James Clear https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
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Nov 14, 2022
CFPs! Submitting talks to conferences
Some Links
* Laravel Bootcamp
* Rails Hackathon
* Ruby Archaeology by Nick Schwaderer
* "Build vs Buy" on Rails by Colin Loretz
* Content Creation for Software Developers
* CFP Land
Why speak at a conference?
* Share your hard-won learnings
* Meet other people
* Grow an audience
* Build your talent brand to hire people
What makes a conference worth speaking at?
Do you need to be very senior to speak at a conference?
* No!
Picking a topic
* What are you interested in?
* What are you excited about?
* What do you know a lot about?
Components of a CFP
* Abstract
* Description
* Outlines
Usually a blind selection process
Other Tips
* Watch past talks from the conference you are applying to on YouTube if they are available.
* Check out speakerline.io for examples of CFPs
* On writing well - William https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548
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Oct 31, 2022
Content creation for developers
Types of Content
* Tweet
* Blog Posts / newsletter
* Live Streaming (Twitch, etc)
* YouTube & YT Shorts
* TikTok & Instagram
Resources
* Rubyists who tweet useful and helpful stuff
* https://twitter.com/websebdev
* https://twitter.com/siaw23
* https://twitter.com/ShinoKouda
* Niche blogs
* Blended Edge on building integrations: https://www.blendededge.com/blog
* Newsletters
* Ruby Radar: https://rubyradar.dev/
* Ruby Weekly: https://rubyweekly.com/
* Short Ruby: https://newsletter.shortruby.com/
* rendezvous with cassidoo: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/
* Podcasts
* Syntax.fm https://syntax.fm/
* ChangeLog https://changelog.com/podcast
* Maintainable https://www.maintainable.fm/
* Art of Product https://artofproductpodcast.com/
* Planet Argon’s top 10 Ruby podcasts: https://blog.planetargon.com/entries/10-best-tech-podcasts-in-2022-as-chosen-by-the-rails-community
* Twitch and YouTube channels
* Mastermind.io https://www.twitch.tv/mastermndio
* Coding Garden https://www.twitch.tv/codinggarden
* Fireship https://www.youtube.com/c/Fireship
* CJ Avilla https://www.youtube.com/c/CJAvilla
* Course platforms
* GoRails https://gorails.com/
* EggHead https://egghead.io/
* Pluralsight https://www.pluralsight.com/
* CBT Nuggets https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/cisco
* Tailwind UI - https://tailwindui.com/
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Oct 17, 2022
Code Reviews: Giving and Receiving Feedback
Disclaimer: The episode on Creating Pull Requests got lost so Episode 6 ended up being our Build vs Buy episode.
Upcoming Conferences Of Note
* Rails SaaS - Oct 6-7, 2022 (already happened)
* Ruby Conf Mini - Nov 15-17
* RubyConf - Nov 29-Dec 1
* Chirp - Nov 16th
Pull Request Guide from Thoughtbot
Other Tips for giving a nice PR review
Remember the person on the other end of your review is a human. As devs it’s easy to mix our identity with the code we write and any criticism of that code can be challenging to absorb.
* Timeliness
* Respond quickly if you are a reviewer
* This can be especially challenging when dealing with major differences in timezone
* Checklists
* Does this code belong somewhere else?
* Is this code tested?
* Do I understand this code?
* PRs can be a way to do knowledge transfer to other folks on the team
* Are there any glaring security concerns?
* Should someone else also review this change?
* What might go wrong when…
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Oct 3, 2022
Build vs. Buy
Colin's RailsConf 2022 Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-GDhlBTHoo
Innovation tokens blog post - Choose Boring Technology
ReadMe jobs - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/readme/jobs
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Sep 19, 2022
PTO and Taking Time Off
- PTO & Taking Time Off
- Self-care
- Accrual caps
- Burnout
- Unlimited time off - good or bad?
- Trap of not taking enough, personal guilt, fear of letting team down
- Brad Feld’s 1 week a quarter - completely off grid, no work (= 4 weeks a year)
- Why taking time off is good for your team / company
- Marathon / not a sprint, you need to be able to take time off
- Ensures you are not the blocker for things
- Encourages better docs, better socializing of concepts and ownership of the code
- Tips for taking time off
- Github Away Feature
- Delete or disable Slack
- Create a list of things that you are responsible for and who will help cover those things
- Other Time Off
- Parental Leave
- Sick Leave
- Company-wide holidays: Refuel Week
Send an Open Source Developer on Vacation
Voting is over but you can check out the winners at https://tuple.app/sends-you-on-vacation/
Share your time off habits and feedback with us on Twitter:
@buildandlearn_
@colinloretz
@cjav_de…
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Sep 5, 2022
Is there a “traditional background” for programmers anymore?
Paths
* Educational paths toward programming
* Self-taught - blogs, articles, tutorials, online platforms like Udemy, code academy
* 4-year computer science degree
* 2-year “web design” degree
* 12-week full-time boot camp
* 6-month part-time bootcamps
* Bootcamps that specialize in a discipline like data science, graphics design
* Bootcamps that serve underrepresented groups - resilient coders, shecodes.io,
* time, attention, resources
* Master in computer science
* Side door and back door entryways to tech
* Product management
* The mom test
* product school
* Project management
* Support, then technical support
* Solution architects
* Developer marketing
Advice for people thinking about getting into programming
* Learn hello world
* Go through a codeacademy or similar interactive course
* Try to build something on replit or glitch where you don't need an actual environment set up
* Connect with other new devs on Twitter
* Use…
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Aug 22, 2022
The 2022 Stack Overflow Survey
Welcome from Build & Learn!
* Learnings from our first full episode: The First Pancake
* Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022 In May 2022 over 70,000 developers told us how they learn and level up, which tools they’re using, and what they want.
* Developer Profile
* Education
* Learning to code
* Experience
* Roles
* Where
* Who
* Technologies
* Most loved
* Most dreaded
* Most wanted
* Worked with vs Want to work with
* Version Control
* Web3
* Work / Employment
* Community
* Professional Developers
Interesting Highlights
* Daily time spent searching for answers/solutions - 60% spend 30-120 minutes a day
* 88% of Professional Developers code outside of work, with 73% of them coding as a hobby.
* 66% of Professional Developers have at least some influence over their organization’s purchases of new technologies. This is up from 56% in 2020 when we last asked this question. Unsurprisingly, senior-level positions have the greatest amou…
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Aug 8, 2022
The First Pancake: Hello World
* Why a podcast?
* Fun to hang out
* We learn a lot from one another.
* Chance to share what we’re building and learning in public
* Chance to meet and elevate other folks in the community
* Set the stage for what to expect on the show
* We are figuring this out, so don’t hold us to it in these first few episodes ;)
* Building and learning from Software Development but also life
* Introduction and background - Our Origin Stories
* First web dev moments
* CJ
* TI89 games (2003)
* MySpace (2004?)
* Perl for seismology lab (2005)
* free 000webhost style domain with ads (2005)
* PHP pamphlet sites for air conditioning company
* UNR Student union ASP.NET
* Contract work building one-off apps - campaign management app that later rebuilt in Rails
* Joined the military, deployed in 2011 to Afghanistan, and learned a ton of Cisco networking and security
* Learned c++ in CS, but also did a lot of IS classes and started IS focused MBA after graduatin…
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Aug 5, 2022
Introducing Build & Learn
Welcome to Build & Learn, a podcast about software development and developing ourselves as software engineers. Hosted by CJ Avilla and Colin Loretz.
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