JSJ 270 The Complete Software Developers Career Guide with John Sonmez

This episode features a panel of Joe Eames, AJ O’Neal, as well as host Charles Maxwell. Special guest John Sonmez runs the website SimpleProgrammer.com that is focused on personal development for software developers. He works on career development and improving the non-technical life aspects of software developers. Today’s episode focuses on John’s new book The Complete Software Developers Career Guide.

Did the book start out being 700 pages?

No. My goal was 200,000 words. During the editing process a lot of questions came up, so pages were added. There were side sections called “Hey John” to answer questions that added 150 pages.

Is this book aimed at beginners?

It should be valuable for three types of software developers: beginner, intermediate, and senior developers looking to advance their career. The book is broken up into five sections, which build upon each other. These sections are: - How to get started as a software developer - How to get a job and negotiate salary - The technical skills needed to know to be a software developer - How to work as a software developer - How to advance in career

Is it more a reference book, not intended to read front to back?

The book could be read either way. It is written in small chapters. Most people will read it start to finish, but it is written so that you can pick what you’re interested in and each chapter still makes sense by itself.

Where did you come up with the idea for the book?

It was a combination of things. At the time I wanted new blog posts, a new product, and a new book. So I thought, “What if I wrote a book that could release chapters as blog posts and could be a product later on?” I also wanted to capture everything I learned about software development and put it on paper so that didn’t lose it.

What did people feel like they were missing (from Soft Skills) that you made sure went into this book?

All the questions that people would ask were about career advice. People would ask things regarding: - How do I learn programming? - What programming language should I learn? - Problems with co-workers and boss - Dress code

What do you think is the most practical advice from the book for someone just getting started?

John thinks that the most important thing to tell people is to come up with a plan on how you’re going to become educated in software development. And then to decide what you’re going to pursue. People need to define what they want to be. After that is done, go backwards and come up with a plan in order to get there. If you set a plan, you’ll learn faster and become a valuable asset to a team. Charles agrees that this is how to stay current in the job force.

What skills do you actually need to have as a developer?

Section 3 of the book answers this question. There was some frustration when beginning as a software developer, so put this list together in the book. - Programming language that you know - Source control understanding - Basic testing - Continuous integration and build systems - What kinds of development (web, mobile, back end) - Databases - Sequel

Were any of those surprises to you?

Maybe DevOps because today’s software developers need to, but I didn’t need to starting out. We weren’t involved in production. Today’s software developers need to understand it because they will be involved in those steps.

What do you think is the importance of learning build tools and frameworks, etc. verses learning the basics?

Build tools and frameworks need to be understood in order to understand how your piece fits into the bigger picture. It is important to understand as much as you can of what’s out there. The basics aren’t going to change so you should have an in depth knowledge of them. Problems will always be solved the same way. John wants people to have as few “unknown unknowns” as possible. That way they won’t be lost and can focus on more timeless things.

What do you think about the virtues of self-taught verses boot camp verses University?

This is the first question many developers have so it is addressed it in the book. If you can find a good coding boot camp, John personally thinks that’s the best way. He would spend money on boot camp because it is a full immersion. But while there, you need to work as hard as possible to soak up knowledge. After a boot camp, then you can go back and fill in your computer science knowledge. This could be through part time college classes or even by self-teaching.

Is the classic computer science stuff important?

John was mostly self-taught; he only went to college for a year. He realized that he needed to go back and learn computer science stuff. Doesn’t think that there is a need to have background in computer science, but that it can be a time saver.

A lot of people get into web development and learn React or Angular but don’t learn fundamentals of JavaScript. Is that a big mistake?

John believes that it is a mistake to not fully understand what you’re doing. Knowing the function first, knowing React, is a good approach. Then you can go back and learn JavaScript and understand more. He states that if you don’t learn the basics, you will be stunted and possibly solve things wrong. Joe agrees with JavaScript, but not so much with things algorithms. He states that it never helped him once he went back and learned it. John suggests the book Algorithms to Live By – teaches how to apply algorithms to real life.

Is there one question you get asked more than anything else you have the answer to in the book?

The most interesting question is regarding contract verses salary employment and how to compare them. It should all be evaluated based on monetary value. Salary jobs look good because of benefits. But when looking at pay divided by the hours of work, usually a salary job is lower paid. This is because people usually work longer hours at salary jobs without being paid for it.

What’s the best place for people to pick up the book?

simpleprogrammer.com/careerguide and it will be sold on Amazon. The book will be 99 cents on kindle – want it to be the best selling software development book ever.

Picks

Joe

Wonder Woman

AJ

The Alchemist

Charles

Artificial Intelligence with Python

John

Algorithms to Live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions Apple Airpods

Links

Simple Programmer Youtube

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Tracy Lee

This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Tracy Lee. Tracy is the co-founder This Dot and her goal with it is to bring the JavaScript community together. She first got into programming when she tried to build websites for people and then was interested in learning JavaScript and really fell in love with the community. She really stayed with Angular because of the community she found there, the size of the community, and the fact that it gave her the ability to have a voice.

In particular, We dive pretty deep on:

• This Dot
• ContributorDays.com
• How did you first get into programming?
• Really loves community
• Angular community being so welcoming
• What made you pick the Angular community?
• Ember originally
• Loves how big the Angular community is
• Business background
• Loves the challenge of trying to create things
• On the RxJS Core team
• This Dot Media
• This Dot Labs
• Loves to builds brands and consult
• The importance of mentors
• Starting an apprentice program
• She loves being able to help others
• People underestimate the impact they have on the world
• AngularAir and JavaScript Air
• And much, much more!

Links:

• This Dot
• ContributorDays.com
• JavaScript
• Angular
• Ember
• RxJS Core Team
• This Dot Media
• This Dot Labs
• AngularAir
• JavaScriptAir
• Tracy’s Medium
• @LadyLeet
• LadyLeet.com
• DevChat.tv Youtube
• This Dot Media Youtube

Picks:

Charles

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Bad Lip Reading YouTube

Tracy

• Mermaid Tail Makeup Brushes
• Beauty Fix Box

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Joe Eames

Special Guests: AJ O'Neal

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panel talks to AJ O'Neal about Greenlock and LetsEncrypt. LetsEncrypt is a brand name and is the first of its kind in automated SSL and Greenlock does what Certbot does in a more simplified form. They talk about what led him to create Greenlock, compare Greenlock to Certbot, and what it’s like to use Greenlock. They also touch on Greenlock-express, how they make Greenlock better, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Greenlock and LetsEncrypt overview
• LetsEncrypt is free to get your certificate
• Why Charles uses LetsEncrypt
• Wildcard domains
• Certbot
• Why he originally created Greenlock
• Working towards home servers
• Wanted to get HTTP on small devices
• Manages a certificate directory
• Greenlock VS Certbot
• Greenlock can work stand alone
• The best use case for Greenlock
• Excited about how people are using his tool
• What is it like to use Greenlock?
• Working on a desktop client
• Greenlock-express
• Acme servers
• CAA record
• Making Greenlock better by knowing how people are using it
• Using Greenlock-express
• Let's Encrypt v2 Step by Step by AJ
• And much, much more!

Links:

• LetsEncrypt
• Greenlock
• Certbot
• Greenlock-express
• Acme servers
• Let's Encrypt v2 Step by Step by AJ
• @coolaj86
• coolaj86.com
• AJ’s Git
• Greenlock.js Screencast Series
• Greenlock.js Patreon

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean

Picks:

Charles

• Take some time off

AJ

• OverClocked Records

Panel:

• Aimee Knight
• Joe Eames
• Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: Ethan Brown

In this episode, the panel talks with Ethan Brown who is a technological director at a small company. They write software to facilitate large public organizations and help make projects more effective, such as: rehabilitation of large construction projects, among others. There is a lot of government work through the endeavors they encounter. Today, the panel talks about his article he wrote, and other topics such as Flex, Redux, Ruby, Vue.js, Automerge, block chain, and Elm. Enjoy!

Show Topics:

2:38 – Chuck: We are here to talk about the software side of things.

Let’s dive into what you are looking at mid-year what we need to know for 2018. You wrote this.

3:25 – Ethan: I start off saying that doing this podcast now, how quickly things change. One thing I didn’t think people needed to know was symbols, and now that’s changed. I had a hard time with bundling and other things. I didn’t think the troubles were worth it. And now a couple of moths ago (an open source project) someone submitted a PR and said: maybe we should be using symbols? I told them I’ve had problems in the past. They said: are you crazy?!

It’s funny to see how I things have changed.

4:47 – Panel: Could you talk about symbols?

4:58 – Aimee: Are they comparable to Ruby?

5:05 – Ethan talks about what symbols are and what they do!

5:52 – Chuck: That’s pretty close to how that’s used in Ruby, too.

6:04 – Aimee: I haven’t used them in JavaScript, yet. When have you used them recently?

6:15 – Ethan answers the question.

7:17 – Panelist chimes in.

7:27 – Ethan continues his answer. The topic of “symbols” continues. Ethan talks about Automerge.

11:18 – Chuck: I want to dive-into what you SHOULD know in 2018 – does this come from your experience? Or how did you drive this list?

11:40 – Ethan: I realize that this is a local business, and I try to hear what people are and are not using. I read blogs. I think I am staying on top of these topics being discussed.

12:25 – Chuck: Most of these things are what people are talking.

12:47 – Aimee: Web Assembly. Why is this on the list?

12:58 – Ethan: I put on the list, because I heard lots of people talk about this. What I was hearing the echoes of the JavaScript haters. They have gone through a renaissance. Along with Node, and React (among others) people did get on board. There are a lot of people that are poisoned by that. I think the excitement has died down. If I were to tell a story today – I would

14:23 – Would you put block chain on there? And AI?

14:34 – Panel: I think it’s something you should be aware of in regards to web assembly. I think it will be aware of. I don’t know if there is anything functional that I could use it with.

15:18 – Chuck: I haven’t really played with it...

15:27 – Panel: If you wrote this today would you put machine learning on there?

15:37 – Ethan: Machine Learning...

16:44 – Chuck: Back to Web Assembly. I don’t think you were wrong, I think you were early. Web Assembly isn’t design just to be a ... It’s designed to be highly optimized for...

17:45 – Ethan: Well-said. Most of the work I do today we are hardly taxing the devices we are using on.

18:18 – Chuck and panel chime in.

18:39 – Chuck: I did think the next two you have on here makes sense.

18:54 – Panel: Functional programming?

19:02 – Ethan: I have a lot of thoughts on functional programming and they are mixed. I was exposed to this in the late 90’s. It was around by 20-30 years. These aren’t new. I do credit JavaScript to bring these to the masses. It’s the first language I see the masses clinging to. 10 years ago you didn’t see that. I think that’s great for the programming community in general. I would liken it to a way that Ruby on Rails really changed the way we do web developing with strong tooling. It was never really my favorite language but I can appreciate what it did for web programming. With that said...(Ethan continues the conversation.)

Ethan: I love Elm.

21:49 – Panelists talks about Elm.

*The topic diverts slightly.

22:23 – Panel: Here’s a counter-argument. Want to stir the pot a little bit.

I want to take the side of someone who does NOT like functional programming.

24:08 – Ethan: I don’t disagree with you. There are some things I agree with and things I do disagree with. Let’s talk about Data Structures. I feel like I use this everyday. Maybe it’s the common ones. The computer science background definitely helps out.

If there was one data structure, it would be TREES. I think STACKS and QUEUES are important, too. Don’t use 200-300 hours, but here are the most important ones. For algorithms that maybe you should know and bust out by heart.

27:48 – Advertisement for Chuck’s E-book Course: Get A Coder Job

28:30 – Chuck: Functional programming – people talk bout why they hate it, and people go all the way down and they say: You have to do it this way....

What pay things will pay off for me, and which things won’t pay off for me? For a lot of the easy wins it has already been discussed. I can’t remember all the principles behind it. You are looking at real tradeoffs.  You have to approach it in another way. I like the IDEA that you should know in 2018, get to know X, Y, or Z, this year. You are helping the person guide them through the process.

30:18 – Ethan: Having the right tools in your toolbox.

30:45 – Panel: I agree with everything you said, I was on board, until you said: Get Merge Conflicts.

I think as developers we are being dragged in...

33:55 – Panelist: Is this the RIGHT tool to use in this situation?

34:06 – Aimee: If you are ever feeling super imposed about something then make sure you give it a fair shot, first.

34:28 – That’s the only reason why I keep watching DC movies.

34:41 – Chuck: Functional programming and...

I see people react because of the hype cycle. It doesn’t fit into my current paradigm. Is it super popular for a few months or...?

35:10 – Aimee: I would love for someone to point out a way those pure functions that wouldn’t make their code more testable.

35:42 – Ethan: Give things a fair shake. This is going back a few years when React was starting to gain popularity. I had young programmers all about React. I tried it and mixing it with JavaScript and...I thought it was gross. Everyone went on board and I had to make technically decisions. A Friend told me that you have to try it 3 times and give up 3 times for you to get it. That was exactly it – don’t know if that was prophecy or something. This was one of my bigger professional mistakes because team wanted to use it and I didn’t at first. At the time we went with Vue (old dog like me). I cost us 80,000 lines of code and how many man hours because I wasn’t keeping an open-mind?

37:54 – Chuck: We can all say that with someone we’ve done.

38:04 – Panel shares a personal story.

38:32 – Panel: I sympathize because I had the same feeling as automated testing. That first time, that automated test saved me 3 hours. Oh My Gosh! What have I been missing!

39:12 – Ethan: Why should you do automated testing? Here is why...

You have to not be afraid of testing. Not afraid of breaking things and getting messy.

39:51 – Panel: Immutability?

40:00 – Ethan talks about this topic.

42:58 – Chuck: You have summed up my experience with it.

43:10 – Panel: Yep. I agree. This is stupid why would I make a copy of a huge structure, when...

44:03 – Chuck: To Joe’s point – but it wasn’t just “this was a dumb way” – it was also trivial, too. I am doing all of these operations and look my memory doesn’t go through the roof. They you see it pay off. If you don’t see how it’s saving you effort, at first, then you really understand later.

44:58 – Aimee: Going back to it being a functional concept and making things more testable and let it being clearly separate things makes working in code a better experience.

As I am working in a system that is NOT a pleasure.

45:31 – Chuck: It’s called legacy code...

45:38 – What is the code year? What constitutes a legacy application?

45:55 – Panel: 7 times – good rule.

46:10 – Aimee: I am not trolling. Serious conversation I was having with them this year.

46:27 – Just like cars.

46:34 – Chuck chimes in with his rule of thumb.

46:244 – Panel and Chuck go back-and-forth with this topic.

47:14 – Dilbert cartoons – check it out.

47:55 – GREAT QUOTE about life lessons.

48:09 – Chuck: I wish I knew then what I know now.

Data binding. Flux and Redux. Lots of this came out of stuff around both data stores and shadow domes. How do you tease this out with the stuff that came out around the same time?

48:51 – Ethan answers question.

51:17 – Panel chimes in.

52:01 – Picks!

Links:

• JavaScript
• jQuery
• React
• Elixir
• Elm
• Vue
• Automerge - GITHUB
• Functional – Light JavaScript
• Lego’s Massive Cloud City Star Wars
• Lego Shop
• The Traveler’s Gift – Book
• Jocks Rule, Nerds Drool by Jennifer Wright
• 2ality – JavaScript and more
• Cooper Press
• Book – Ethan Brown
• O’Reilly Community – Ethan Brown’s Bio
• Ethan Brown’s Twitter

Sponsors:

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean
• Cache Fly
•  

Picks:

Aimee

• Pettier

Joe

• Lego - Star Wars Betrayal at Cloud City
• Functional-Light JavaScript

Charles

• The Traveler’s Gift
• The Shack
• The Expanse

Ethan

• Jocks Rule, Nerd Drool
• JavaScipt Blog by Dr. Axel Rauschmayer
• Cooper Press

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Special Guest:  Lee Byron

Episode Summary

In this episode of My Ruby Story, Charles hosts Lee Byron, web engineering lead at Robinhood, a financial services company based in California.

Listen to Lee on the podcast JavaScript Jabber on this episode and on the podcast Ruby Rogues on this episode.

Links

• JavaScript Jabber 243: Immutable.js with Lee Byron
• Ruby Rogues 231: GraphQL with Lee Byron
• Lee’s Medium
• Lee’s Website
• Lee’s Twitter
• Lee’s GitHub
• https://devchat.tv/my-javascript-story/
• https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv

Picks

Lee Byron:

• The Arm Cortex-M4 processor

Charles Max Wood:

• allrecipes.com
• Walmart Grocery Pick Up

Sponsors

• Sentry- use the code “devchat” for $100 credit
• Netlify
• Clubhouse
• CacheFly

Episode Summary  

In this episode of JavaScript Jabber, the panelists talk with Tommy Hodgins who specializes in responsive web design. He starts with explaining to listeners what it means by a responsive web layout and goes on to discuss the techniques in using JavaScript in CSS in depth.

He elaborates on dynamic styling of components, event-driven stylesheet templating, performance and timing characteristics of these techniques and describes different kinds of observers – interception, resize and mutation, and their support for various browsers. He also talks about how to go about enabling certain features by extending CSS, comparison to tools such as the CSS preprocessor and Media Queries, pros and cons of having this approach while citing relevant examples, exciting new features coming up in CSS, ways of testing the methods, caffeinated stylesheets, along with Qaffeine and Deqaf tools.

Links

• JS in CSS – Event driven virtual stylesheet manager
• Qaffiene
• Deqaf
• Tommy’s Twitter
• Fizzbuzz

Picks

Joe

• The Captain Is Dead

Aimee

• Developer on Call
• Tip – Try to follow a low-sugar diet

Chris

• Tommy’s snippets on Twitter – JS in CSS
• All things frontend blog
• Gulp project

Charles

• Coaching by Charles in exchange of writing Show Notes or Tags

Tommy

• JS in CSS

Sponsors

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

• Triplebyte $1000 signing bonus

• Linode

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

• Aimee Knight

• Chris Ferdinandi

• AJ O’Neal

• Joe Eames

Episode Summary

Today the panel discusses the necessity of a front end framework. Overall, there is a consensus that frameworks are not necessary in all situations. They discuss the downsides of using frameworks, such as being restricted by the framework when doing edge development and the time required for learning a framework. They talk about the value of frameworks for learning patterns in programming.

The panel delves into the pros and cons of different frameworks available. Joe shares a story about teaching someone first without a framework and then introducing them to frameworks, and the way it helped with their learning. One of the pros of frameworks is that they are better documented than manual coding. They all agree that it is not enough to just know a framework, you must continue to learn JavaScript as well.

They talk about the necessity for new programmers to learn a framework to get a job, and the consensus is that a knowledge of vanilla JavaScript and a general knowledge of the framework for the job is important. New programmers are advised to not be crippled by the fear of not knowing enough and to have an attitude of continual learning. In the technology industry, it is easy to get overwhelmed by all the developments and feel that one cannot possibly learn it all. Charles gives advice on how to find your place in the development world. The show concludes with the panel agreeing that frameworks are overall a good thing and are valuable tools.

Links

• JWT

• Angular

• Vue

• Backbone

• GoLang

• Express

• React

• Redux

• Hyper HTML

• 4each

• Pascal

• JQuery

• Npm.js

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Podwrench

Aimee Knight:

• How to Love Your Job and Avoid Burnout

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Vanilla JS toolkit

• Thinkster

• Artifact Conference

AJ O’Neal:

• Binary Cocoa

• Binary Cocoa Slamorama Kickstarter

• Binary Cocoa Straight 4

• Root

Sponsors

• Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit

• CacheFly

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

Joined by Special Guest: Jessica Deen

Episode Summary

Coming to you live from the podcast booth at Microsoft BUILD is Charles Max Wood with The Deen of DevOps aka Jessica Deen. Jessica is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. As an advocate she acts a liaison between developer communities and Microsoft to help understand developer pain points and road blocks especially in areas such as Linux, open-source technologies, infrastructure, Kubernetes, containers and DevOps. Jessica explains how to go about setting up a containerized application, Kubernetes and how to use Dockerfiles. Charles and Jessica then talk about how to get started with a Kubernetes cluster and the resources available for developers that don't have any infrastructure. Jessica advises that developers start with Azure DevOps Services and then go to Microsoft Learn Resource.

Charles also encourages listeners to also check out the Views on Vue podcast Azure DevOps with Donovan Brown for further references. Jessica also recommends following people on Twitter and GitHub to find out about solutions and resources.

Links

• Dockerfile and Windows Containers

• Kubernetes

• Jessica’s GitHub

• Jessica’s Twitter

• Jessica’s LinkedIn

• Jessica’s Website

• Microsoft Build 2019

• Microsoft Learn Resource

• HTTP application routing

• Getting started with Kubernetes Ingress Controllers and TLS certificates

• Kubernetes Ingress Controllers and Certificates: The Walkthrough

• Azure DevOps Services

• VoV 053: Azure DevOps with Donovan Brown LIVE at Microsoft Ignite

• Jessica Deen Youtube

• Kubernetes in 5 mins – YouTube

Follow Adventures in Angular on tv, Facebook and Twitter.

Picks

Jessica Deen:

• Lachlan Evenson

• Cloud Native Computing Foundation

• Kubernetes Handles on Twitter

• Shoe Dog Memoir

• Air Jordan 4 Fire Red Gum Singles Day

Charles Max Wood:

• Real Talk /JavaScript Podcast

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Sponsors

• Triplebyte $1000 signing bonus

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

• Linode

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

• Aimee Knight

• Chris Ferdinandi

• AJ O’Neal

• Joe Eames

Episode Summary

Today the panel discusses what is necessary to get a website up and how complicated or simple it needs to be. They mention different tools they like for static sites and ways to manage their builds and websites. They talk about why some people choose to host their websites and at what point the heavier tools become a concern. They discuss whan it is necessary to use those heavy tools. 

They caution listeners to beware of premature optimization, because sometimes businesses will take advantage of newer developers and make them think they need all these shiny bells and whistles, when there is a cheaper way to do it. It is important to keep the tools you work with simple and to learn them so that if you encounter a problem, you have some context and scope. The option of serverless website hosting is also discussed, as well as important things to know about servers.

The panel discusses what drives up the price of a website and if it is worth it to switch to a cheaper alternative. They discuss the pros and cons of learning the platform yourself versus hiring a developer. The importance of recording the things that you do on your website is mentioned. Several of the panelists choose to do this by blogging so that if you search for a problem you can find ones you’ve solved in the past.

Links

• Heroku

• Github Pages

• Netlify

• Eleventy

• DigitalOcean

• Lightsale

• Ubuntu

• Git clone

• Node static server

• Systemd script

• NGinx

• Cloud66

• Thinkster

• Gatsby

• Docker

• Gentoo

• How to schedule posts with a static website

• How to set up automatic deployment with Git with a vps

• Automating the deployment of your static site with Github and Hugo

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Microsoft build

Aimee Knight:

• Systems Thinking is as Important as Ever for New Coders

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Adrian Holivadi framework video

• Server Pilot

AJ O’Neal:

• Jeff Atwood tweet

• More on Stackflow Architecture

• Minio

Joe Eames:

• Miniature painting

Sponsors

• Datadog

• Sentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

With Special Guest: Charlie Cheever

Episode Summary

Guest Charlie Cheever joins the discussion on JavaScript Jabber today. He was previously on React Round Up episode 47. Charlie works on Expo, which is a way to make React apps on every platform. Right now, Expo supports IOS, Android, and Web, provides a standard library of features, and takes care of services like builds and updates over the air. There are also code generators and templates available in Expo. Expo is focused on use cases where you just need to use a little bit of React Native in your app. Charlie talks about the origins of Expo, which was born from increased access of websites from people’s phones and the desire for a cross-platform tool that was as easy as building on the web. One of the biggest benefits is that Expo gives you the peace of mind knowing your app will work across all phones and all platforms.

They discuss how to approach building your API’s for Expo so that it’s easy for people to use and have it consistent across all these different systems. Expo also has a voting board canny.expo.io where people can submit suggestions for new features. Expo is compatible with map view and React Native maps. Currently, Expo is missing bluetooth and things where the underlying platform wants to have a direct relationship with the developer, such as in-app purchases. Charlie talks about other components available in Expo, all of which can be modified. They discuss the influence of React on augmented reality and VR. Charlie talks about the updating feature of Expo. Charlie talks about the evolution of Expo and their goal to be a “developer first” company. He talks about the company, libraries, The Client, and services. He gives advice on how to get started with React Native development and using Expo. There is also Expo Web, which can be used to create a website, and if you create an app with Expo you get a website too. Expo hopes to be a stable, easy, coherent way of using all these tools across your entire experience of building your application so that you can relax a little bit. 

Click here to cast your vote NOW for JavaScript Jabber - Best Dev Podcast Award

Links

• Expo

• Flex

• Valve

• jQuery

• Expo voting board

• LottieFiles

• SQLite

• React Native Maps

• The Client app

• Snack.expo.io

• NPM

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Vdot02

• Zoom H6 Portable 6 track Recorder

• Shure SM58-LC Cardioid Dynamic Vocal Microphone

• Chain React Conf

Charlie Cheever:

• Draft bit (still in beta)

• AWS Amplify

• Follow Charlie @ccheever

Sponsors

• Sustain Our Software

• Sentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit 

• Adventures in Blockchain

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

Episode Summary

In today’s show, Chuck talks about the recent tweet thread about 10x engineers. He goes through each of the points in the tweet and talks about each of them in turn. There are only two points he sort of agrees with, and believes the rest to be absolute garbage. One of the issues with this tweet is that it doesn’t define what a 10x engineer is. Defining a 10x engineer is difficult because it is also impossible to measure a truly average engineer because there are many factors that play into measuring productivity. Chuck turns the discussion to what a 10x engineer is to him and how to find one. A 10x engineer is dependent on the organization that they are a part of, because they are not simply found, they are made. When a 10x engineer is added to a team, the productivity of the entire team increases. Employers have to consider firstly what you need in your team and how a person would fit in. You want to avoid changing the entire culture of your organization. Consider also that a 10x engineer may be hired as a 2x engineer, but it is the employer that turns them into a 10x engineer. Overall, Chuck believes these tweets are asinine because it’s impossible to measure what makes a 10x engineer in the first place, and hiring a person that fits the attributes in the list would be toxic to your company. 

Links

• 10x engineer twitter thread

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Charles Max Wood:

• Copyhackers.com

• Good to Great by Jim Collins

• Keto diet

• Podcast Movement

Jonathan Lee Martin is an instructor and developer. He got his start in teaching at Big Nerd Ranch doing 1-2 week trainings for mid to senior developers, and then transitioned to 16 week courses for career switchers. He also worked for Digital Crafts for a year, and then wanted to focus on building out his own personal teaching brand. One of his first steps toward building his own brand was to publish his book, Functional Design Patterns for Express.js.The inspiration for Jonathan’s book came from his experience teaching career switchers. He wanted to experiment in the classroom with teaching functional programming in a way that would be very approachable and applicable and dispel some of the magic around backend programming, and that became the template for the book. 

Jonathan loves the minimalist nature of Express.js and talks about its many uses. He believes that it knowing design patterns can take you pretty far in programming, and this view is related to his background in Rails. When he was working in Rails taming huge middleware stacks, he discovered that applying design patterns made builds take less time. He talks about other situations where knowing design patterns has helped. Express.js leans towards object oriented style over functional programming, and so it takes to these patterns well. Express.js has its shortcomings, and that’s where Jonathan’s favorite library Koa comes into play. 

The conversation switches back to Jonathan’s book, which is a good way to start learning these higher level concepts. He purposely made it appealing to mid and senior level programmers, but at the same time it does not require a lot of background knowledge. Jonathan talks about his teaching methods that give people a proper appreciation for the tool. Jonathan talks more about why he likes to use Express.js and chose to use it for his book. He cautions that his book is not a book of monads, but rather about being influenced by the idea of composition over inheritance. He talks about the role of middleware in programming. 

The panel asks about Jonathan’s toolchain and approach to writing books, and he explains how his books are set up to show code. They discuss the different forms required when publishing a book such as epub, MOBI, and PDF. Jonathan found it difficult to distribute his book through Amazon, so he talks about how he built his own server. Charles notes that your method of distributing your book will depend on your goal. If you want to make the most money possible, make your own site. If you want to get it into as many hands as possible, get it on Amazon.

Many of the JavaScript Jabber panelists have had experience publishing books, and Jonathan shares that you can reach out to a publisher after you’ve self-published a book and they can get it distributed. Jonathan believes that If he had gone straight to a publisher, he would have gotten overwhelmed and given up on the book, but the step by step process of self-publishing kept things manageable. The panelists discuss difficulties encountered when publishing and editing books, especially with Markdown. Jonathan compares the perks of self-editing to traditional editing. Though he does not plan to opensource his entire editing pipeline, he may make some parts available. The show concludes with the panelists discussing the clout that comes with being a published author. 

Panelists

• Charles Max Wood

• Christopher Buecheler 

• J.C. Hyatt

With special guest: Jonathan Lee Martin

Sponsors

• Adventures in Blockchain

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• The Freelancers’ Show

Links

• Big Nerd Ranch

• Digital Crafts

• JSJ 070: Book Club JavaScript Allonge with Reginald Braithwaite

• JavaScript Allonge by Reginald Braithwaite

• Functional Design Patterns for Express JS by Jonathan Lee Martin

• Node.js

• Express.js

• Koa

• Minjs 

• Sinatra

• Http.createserver

• Monads

• Middleware 

• Markdown

• Pandoc

• Diff-match-path library

• Epub

• MOBI

• LaTeX 

• Stripe Checkout

• Fstoppers

• Softcover

• Bookseller API 

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Picks

Christopher Buecheler:

• Cluisbrace.com newsletter

J.C. Hyatt:

• Corsair wireless charging mouse pad

Charles Max Wood:

• Magnetic whiteboard baskets

• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books

Jonathan Lee Martin:

• Eric Elliot JS

• YellowScale

• Follow Jonathan and find his book at jonathanleemartin.com

In this episode of JavaScript Jabber, Charles talks about the new direction he has for the company. He wants  to drive people to the point that they have the skills that make people want to hire and work with them, to teach them how to ‘Max out’. Today the panel the skills that developers need to progress in their careers: social skills. 

The panel talks about their observations from work that the people who advanced and grow in their career were the ones with social skills, not necessarily with technical skills. The company wants to get stuff done, and if your social skills are getting in the way of projects getting done because you can’t work with others, you are not that useful to the company, and you will be stuck in the lower ranks while others who may not have the same technical skills will rise in the ranks because they are pleasant to work with. Mani talks about his personal experience getting laid off for lacking these soft skills. But then he read the book 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green, realized his shortcomings, and started to apply just one lesson from the book. Within 6 months, he was promoted.

Mani delves deeper into the first lesson taught in 48 Laws of Power, Never Outshine the Master. Fundamentally, this means that you don’t try to prove in meetings how good you are, or that they’re wrong, or that you think that you are better than them. The more you the aforementioned things, the less likely you will be to get promoted or trusted. Mani talks about how he used to do these things and how it cost him multiple jobs. When he put this lesson into practice, he changed his methods and the boss started to like him, leading to his promotion 6 months later. The panel discusses this lesson and what benefits can come from it. 

Mani shares another lesson that he learned through the story of a friend trying to get him to invest in his business. After Mani refused to invest multiple times, his friend stopped asking him to invest, but instead asked him for business advice. Eventually, Mani invested in the business because when he saw that his friend was influenced by his advice, it engendered trust between them. The panel agrees that if you want to influence someone, you have to be influenced by them. It is important to treat someone as a person rather than an asset or wallet, and ensure them that their investment is not their end goal. One of the most fundamental social skills that you must be able to like people, because other people can smell manipulation. 

The panel transitions to talking about the paradoxical nature of social skills and that they are often the opposite of what you think will work in a situation. Unfortunately, there will always be difficult people to work with. To illustrate how to work with difficult people, Mani shares the story of how Gengis Khan was convinced not to destroy a city of artists and engineers by his advisor, Yelu Chucai. Gengis Khan agreed because Yelu Chucai was able to structure his plea in a way that would also benefit Gengis Khan. 

The conversation shifts to how to conduct an interview to see if a candidate will fit into your team culture. First, you must know what you’re looking for and understand your team culture, and then ask for stories of when they accomplished something in the interview. If every story is all about how they did something and they don’t include other people, then that may indicate their self-centeredness. They discuss the Ben Franklin Effect. 

For those listeners wondering where to begin with all this self improvement, Mani has read over 2,000 books on business and offers a course on his website, 2000books.com. Mani has teamed up with JavaScript Jabber to offer a special deal to the listeners of this podcast. To get lifetime access to Mani’s courses at a 40% discount, follow the links below. 

Panelists

• Steve Edwards

• Charles Max Wood

With special guest: Mani Vaya

Sponsors

• React Native Radio

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• React Round Up

Links

• 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green

• The 360 Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell

• The Ben Franklin Effect

• javascriptjabber.com/social and 2000books.com 

  • 40% off for the first 200 people

  • Coupon code: Jabber

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Picks

Steve Edwards:

• Rex Chapman

Charles Max Wood:

• BombBomb

• IndieHackers.com 

• Stolen bike prank

Mani Vaya: 

• How I Built This by NPR

• As a Man Thinketh

Bell, Vereen M., 1934-

Konicek-Moran, Richard

Crommelin, Claude August, 1840-1874

Childs, G. W. (Musician)

Vitale, Joe, 1953-

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Busse, Richard C

Reed, David (Carl David), 1957-

Cagle, Ronald B

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Badger, Michael

Badger, Michael

McLeod, Doug

Economist and chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Speeches, memoranda, reports, correspondence, business files, autobiography drafts, and personal material related to Greenspan's life as an economist in the federal government and private sector.

Collection of papers, photographs, interviews, field recordings and other audiovisual materials comprising the professional archive of folklorist Nancy Sweezy created in the course of her career as a folk arts advocate, author, and administrator of non-profit folk craft and performance organizations. Includes research materials for her books Raised in Clay: The Southern Pottery Tradition,...

With the arrest of Tehsin Akhtar, thought to be Indian Mujahideen (IM) commander of India operations, security agencies have netted another big fish in the fight against terror.

Stefanakis, Alexandros, 1982-

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Weis, Judith S., 1941-

Weyler, Rex, 1947-

Castro, Peter, author

Pickering, K. T. (Kevin T.), author