Talking Code

Coderly
  • 4.8 (70)
  • TECHNOLOGY

The Talking Code podcast contains short expert interviews that help you decode what developers are saying. We help non-technical founders, designers, project managers, or anyone who needs a 30,000 foot view of how to run a successful software company.

  1. How to Become an Effective Junior Developer

    10/20/2015

    How to Become an Effective Junior Developer

    Louisa Barrett of Haught Codeworks tells us about how to become an effective junior developer. We also speak in depth about how to become a better teacher. Here's what to listen for: 01:54 - Who is a junior developer? 02:59 - How did you go from going to an art school to wanting to learn about code? 06:43 - How long did it take to become a junior developer? 08:14 - How comfortable were you when you first started working out of bootcamp? 09:16 - How well do you feel that the dev bootcamp prepared you for starting a job? 11:39 - Why is networking so important? 14:02 - Why is it so hard to find a mentor? 15:17 - What does a mentor help with? 21:27 - What is the difference between a helper and a teacher? 26:04 - How does one become a better teacher? 28:56 - Once you get out of a boot camp, what kind of companies are best to join? 36:18 - How to junior developers get off on the right foot? 37:48 - Why is pair programming important?

    43 min
  2. Making the Most of Your Analytics

    10/13/2015

    Making the Most of Your Analytics

    Diana Smith of Segment tells us how to get the most out of our analytics tools. In the pursuit of trying to be data-driven, we have been conditioned to track everything. Diana tells us why this can be dangerous if we want to draw useful insights from our data. Here's what to listen for: 00:49 - What specifically are we talking about when we are talking about analytics in this context? 01:55 - What is the difference between user path and funnel tracking? 03:10 - Are there tools similar to Kissmetrics Path Report tool? 03:57 - If I’ve got my own database, why should I be using some sort of other analytics tool when I could just easily track events that happen on my database as it is? 05:43 - What events should I be tracking? 07:22 - When I set up what these events are, does it matter how I name them? 08:19 - What is the best naming convention? 09:14 - Why should I start only with just tracking a few events? 10:53 - What kind of info should I be putting in these properties? 13:16 - How do you connect and keep track of the who the referrer is? How does that work? 14:45 - How important are user demographics for data and tracking? 19:59 - How should I make use of the data that I’m collecting? 23:25 - Do you recommend that people create a bunch of accounts on these different sites and then choose one? How do you deal with the paradox of choice? 24:57 - What types of other analytics tools are out there? 26:33 - How do you decide which of these tools to use? What sort of questions should I be asking around “which one is right for me”? 31:54 - Are there any can-not-ignore metrics? 33:03 - How do I actually try and make a connection between the action that I’ve taken and the results that I’m seeing? 34:34 - Do you recommend waiting and focusing on qualitative things over quantitative? 36:42 - Is there a number you should be looking for in terms of when things should be statistically significant? 37:19 - In terms of doing the qualitative work that you talk about, and maybe trying to use quantitative data to make it match up with the qualitative data, or at least help … are there any specific strategies that you recommend for going out and getting that qualitative data? 38:51 - Let’s say that I am collecting enough data at this point. Even though I have a baseline for myself and my company, how do I know whether or not that’s a good baseline?

    44 min
  3. How to Deliver a Successful User Experience

    09/22/2015

    How to Deliver a Successful User Experience

    Sarah Doody, a UX designer, consultant, and writer, tells us how to build products with great user experiences. We will hear why user experience is far more important than design. Here's what to listen for: 00:46 - What is Sarah’s background in UX (User Experience)? 03:09 - What is the distinction between the experience and the interface? 05:53 - How do you create the ideal team at a startup? 10:53 - What is the distinction between experiential design and visual design? 13:14 - Which comes first: experiential design or visual design? 14:34 - What’s the process for evaluating the UX of an app? 19:01 - How do you get customers to use your product the way that it’s intended to be used? 20:22 - What mistakes do you see in the UX of an app once you are past the onboarding flow? 24:26 - How does user experience get compromised? 29:10 - How can you get back on track? 33:00 - How is product development like storytelling? 37:39 - What is a storyboard? 41:30 - Is a storyboard like a comic strip? 43:16 - How do you evaluate whether a developer is good or not at UX design?

    50 min
  4. Going from Junior to Senior Developer

    08/25/2015

    Going from Junior to Senior Developer

    Ben Orenstein of Upcase tells us how to go from a junior to a senior developer. He reveals a number of things senior developers do that junior developers don't. Here's what to listen for: 02:34 - Would a degree in computer science benefit somebody who is interested in starting programming? 03:23 - How do you convince people that getting a computer science degree isn’t necessary? 08:41 - What is the path from zero to junior developer? 14:16 - How do you define what a junior developer is? 15:35 - What goals are junior developers making? 17:24 - How was Upcase started? What was the focus/goal? 19:43 - What might an intermediate developer be doing that a junior developer isn’t? 21:50 - What is the difference between TDD (test-driven development) and writing tests after you write your code? 26:15 - Where do you look for your first job? How do you go about getting hired? 30:01 - How do deal with impostor syndrome when applying for a job? 32:46 - What kind of qualities that you look for when making a hiring decision for junior developers? 33:55 - How can you create a work environment for junior developers that helps them get better? 35:33 - What did Ben mean by, “To become a better programmer, one should practice like a musician.”?

    45 min
  5. Using Data to Make Informed Product Decisions

    08/18/2015

    Using Data to Make Informed Product Decisions

    Lincoln Ritter, director of engineering at Animoto, shares how they use data to make more informed product decisions. Here's what to listen for: 02:01 What can we do with data? 04:21 Why should a company care about data and trends? 08:02 How can you become more data-driven? 12:28 How can you get more people involved in caring about data? 16:41 What are the tradeoffs when it comes to agility in software development? 18:29 How do you combat paralysis and help people on your team understand the data better? 20:58 Is data-supported a better term than data-driven? 22:50 What’s the difference between data engineering and data science? 24:59 How do you get data in the right format? 25:59 What kind of question might you have that requires information from multiple sources? 30:13 How do you decouple, consolidate, and keep data separate? 33:01 Do you think real-time data is necessary? 35:06 How would Animoto look at data and make a product decision? 39:04 When is split-testing useful and not useful?

    43 min
  6. How to Do Information Architecture

    08/11/2015

    How to Do Information Architecture

    Abby Covert, author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess, teaches us about information architecture, a subject she strongly feels is a core life skill. She's seen people get fired over language and informs us that – quite obviously in hindsight – architecture is less expensive than design. Here's what to listen for: 00:44 What is information architecture? 01:52 How is information architecture used specifically in building software? 04:25 Is information architecture synonymous with customer development? 04:52 Is information architecture as a practice pervasive and can it be used in multiple contexts? 06:28 How do we make sure everybody’s on the same page? 10:24 What does deciding what language to use entail? 13:27 How do you get started with information architecture? 15:06 Does everybody on the team need to be involved in the information architecture/design process? 17:49 Are there a range of emotions/feelings about people’s involvement in architecture design? 19:34 What is meant by a “mess”? 20:53 How do you get customers involved in the information architecture process? 24:01 Why should you consider architecture before design? 25:18 How can we make sure we’re going about naming things properly?

    38 min
  7. Product Design and User Experience

    08/04/2015

    Product Design and User Experience

    Sven Lenaerts joins us to share his expertise on product design and user experience. This conversation includes some thoughts on MVPs, when to hire a designer, and what a product person really does. Here's what to listen for: 00:46 What do you do as a product designer and UI/UX designer? 04:18 What should I figure out before I talk to a designer or developer about building a product? 07:01 What things can I do inexpensively that are lower-risk to see if building an app is the right solution for the problem I am trying to solve? 12:35 What are the biggest mistakes people make when trying to define their Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? 15:29 Should you do much experimentation before the product goes out into the wild? 17:53 What do you do when clients are including features in their MVP that they shouldn’t be? 21:22 How do you formulate conversations to make sure the vision of the product is realized? What do those conversations look like? 27:13 Does your vision document have a narrative start/finish to it? 31:17 What “expensive mistakes” can be made when building products? 34:58 Are there any qualities that would distinguish a good product person from a bad one? 38:38 What can I do if I want to stretch my skills and be a little risky without feeling like I’m putting a client at risk? 44:32 What do you do when you find yourself becoming cynical about product ideas and features? 50:06 What can I do to help a UI/UX design person do their best work?

    58 min
  8. Modern Web Architecture Fundamentals

    07/28/2015

    Modern Web Architecture Fundamentals

    James Ward shares how the hosting landscape has changed for web applications over the years and how you can avoid some of his middle-of-the-night pager nightmares. Here's what to listen for: 00:47 What are the differences between hosting services? 05:19 What is a sysadmin? 07:14 What is the advantage of having people or a service do system administration for you? 09:23 What are some things that Heroku does for you that a lower-level server won’t? 13:36 Given all the choices out there, how do you think about where to host your application? 17:28 Why might one want to switch between servers? 21:58 What are container technologies and why do they matter? 24:42 What is virtualization? 26:44 Why are app servers fading away? 30:02 Are add-ons the way to think about services that are broken out? 32:06 Should startups use services like Heroku to start out or roll it yourself? 35:13 Why do people want to/think it’s easy to manage production systems themselves? 37:01 When should you begin thinking about the scalability of an app? 45:33 What is the right way to handle multithreading in Ruby? 48:12 What does “stateless” mean? Why should app servers be stateless?

    55 min
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4.8
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About

The Talking Code podcast contains short expert interviews that help you decode what developers are saying. We help non-technical founders, designers, project managers, or anyone who needs a 30,000 foot view of how to run a successful software company.

Information

  • Creator
    Coderly
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    23
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Talking Code 2015
  • Show Website
    Talking Code