Build and Learn

Flavors of DevRel: tummeling, docs, SDKs, meetings, and conferences

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 08:00:00 -0800

In this episode, we reconnect for season 3, after a short hiatus to chat about life in Developer Relations (DevRel) at bigger companies, the avalanche of meetings that come with onboarding, the rollercoaster of prepping for big events like GDC, and the ongoing quest to create top-tier documentation and SDKs. We swap tips for maximizing AI tools, reflect on building the DevRel muscle from scratch, and share some fun side stories about local AI models, the surprising details that delight developers, and the importance of building reusable content for conferences.

Topics Covered

DevRel at a Big Company
- Balancing one-on-ones, onboarding tasks, and project management meetings.
- Strategies for politely pruning your calendar so actual work gets done.
- Why dev advocates end up as “tummelers,” making sure every voice is heard in a bustling org.
GDC & Conference Prep
- The crunch leading up to a big event—workshops, talks, documentation updates, and unexpected scope creep.
- Juggling multiple presentations and deciding what content should be reusable or recorded.
- First steps planning DevRel activities for major company conferences.
Flavor Variations of Dev Advocacy
- Comparing DevRel at a self-serve startup (like Stripe) vs. an enterprise environment where devs aren’t always the decision-makers.
- How to navigate new responsibilities, from establishing YouTube channels to championing better docs platforms.
SDK Generation & Documentation Challenges
- The pros and cons of self-built vs. third-party, auto-generated SDKs.
- Maintaining a polished, dev-friendly experience across multiple languages.
- Cleaning up an OpenAPI spec, ensuring thorough examples and descriptions.
- Balancing “thin vs. full-featured” SDK approaches (retries, pagination, error handling, oh my!).
Insights on Tools & AI
- How many AI services are too many AI services? (ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Descript, ElevenLabs, local LLaMa, etc.)
- Encouraging new coders (like Logan!) to lean on AI-driven dev tools and embrace prompt engineering.
- Will auto-generated SDKs eventually make handcrafted clients obsolete? Maybe…but not quite yet.
Write the Docs
- Excitement around giving a talk at the Write the Docs conference on open-source documentation.
- Lessons learned from letting the community contribute PRs, and how it all ties back to building dev relationships.
Fun Developer Delights
- Appreciating the “little things” in product design—from underscore-only API keys that copy easily, to IKEA coffee mugs that drain flawlessly in dishwashers.
- Why it’s worth fighting for extra developer-experience polish (and how that shapes product love).

Resources Mentioned

Write the Docs
https://www.writethedocs.org
OpenAPI Initiative
https://www.openapis.org
ReadMe (API Documentation Platform)
https://readme.com
Fern (SDK Generation)
https://www.fernapi.com
Speakeasy (SDK Generation)
https://www.speakeasyapi.dev
Stainless (SDK Generation)
https://stainlessapi.com
Orbit (Community Tools)
https://orbit.love
Stripe
https://stripe.com
Descript
https://www.descript.com
ElevenLabs
https://elevenlabs.io
Anthropic
https://www.anthropic.com
Vercel’s v0 (AI App Builder)
https://v0.dev

Travel Tech/Gear and Learning Game Dev

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 11:00:48 -0800

This week we talk about travel from a tech/gear lens and learning game development.

CJ is back from Italy
- apple pay, currency conversion, splitwise, train, google maps, translation apps, tour headsets
- Colin's food tip: Topjaw on youtube
- Airalo for esim
- Train travel in europe is amazing!
- One-bag travel, having an extra smaller bag
  - Pack Hacker
Colin learning Unity
- Flappy bird tutorial
CJ is winding down from Craftwork, what's next!
Interviews and AI
Advent of Code 2024!

Wordpress Drama and Discord Activities

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:50:00 -0800

In this episode, we discuss the WordPress vs. WP Engine drama. We also chat about Discord Activities, the new way to embed games and experiences directly in Discord.

Resources

https://replicate.com/
https://mikecann.co.uk/posts/battletabs-global-launch-on-discord-activities
https://a16z.com/discord-activities-social-gaming/
Tech Crunch Wordpress Drama Explained https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/

To AI Assist or not to AI Assist?

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 13:36:49 -0800

CJ and Colin chat about AI tools and coding environments. Pros and cons, daily workflows, and challenges of various AI-driven coding tools like VS Code, Cursor, and Copilot.

We also talk about the broader implications of AI in content generation, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn, and emphasize maintaining a human touch in communication to avoid hollow, AI-generated content.

- Avante nvim plugin
- Cursor
- Github Copilot

Personal Knowledge Management (Second Brain)

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, you'll learn about the PARA Method for organizing your notes and tasks, emphasizing the importance of balancing craftsmanship with delivering real customer value. Discover insights from Pieter Levels' success with straightforward tech stacks and recurring revenue from multiple startups. The discussion covers the power of building in public, optimizing productivity with personal CRMs and AI tools, and managing digital notes using Obsidian and Logseq. Tune in to explore practical challenges and solutions for enhancing your workflow and staying connected.

00:00 Introduction and Catching Up
00:20 Lex Friedman and Pieter Levels Interview Discussion
01:09 Frameworks and Developer Influencers
03:08 Peter's Success and Indie Hacking
05:23 Building and Shipping Products
05:43 Marketing and Influencer Impact
13:23 Personal Knowledge Management
22:25 Exploring Obsidian and PARA
23:02 Organizing Projects and Areas
23:43 Daily Logs and Workflows
26:42 Handling Digital Scraps and Notes
30:31 Plugins and Syncing Issues
34:34 AI Tools for Meetings and Transcriptions
38:07 AI Code Editors and Future Discussions
39:37 Conclusion and Next Week's Teaser

Our Daily Drivers: Hardware and Software Edition

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 11:06:37 -0700

In this episode, Colin and CJ discuss their audio and video setups, ideal microphones, cameras, and software for content creation. They dive into the specifics of the equipment they use and recommend budget-friendly options for those just getting started. Additionally, they touch upon some useful applications and tools that streamline their workflows, and discuss their experience with various developer-related projects.

Our Daily Drivers
1. Shure SM7B
2. Shure SM58
3. Cloudlifter
4. Triton Fethead
5. Scarlett Solo
6. Eleven Labs
7. YouTube Studio
8. Google Experimental Music Effects
9. Descript
10. Apple Studio Display
11. Sony A6100
12. Elgato Camlink
13. Elgato Key Lights
14. Elgato Streamdeck
15. OBS
16. Audio-Technica ATR2500
17. Shure MV7
18. Handmirror app
19. Cleanshot
20. Skitch
21. Warp
22. Neovim
23. iTerm2
24. OhMyZsh
25. Alacritty
26. VS Code
27. ngrok
28. zoxide
29. eza
30. fzf
31. Raycast
32. Fantastical
33. Textmate
34. CJ's /uses page

Find more audio gear at Podcast Method

Rails 20th Anniversary, Writing Culture

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Ruby on Rails, reflecting on its impact and vibrant community. We share Rails origin stories from the late 2000s and early 2010s. You'll hear about different companies' reading and writing cultures, including practices like decision documents, meeting notes, and internal newsletters.

You'll hear updates on current projects, with Colin discussing a major documentation initiative and the challenges of balancing meta-work with actual work. CJ provides an update on a large-scale refactoring project, detailing the process of converting enums to models across various parts of the codebase. You'll also get book recommendations, including "The PARA Method" about note-taking and personal knowledge management, and "Unreasonable Hospitality" which explores creating exceptional customer experiences.

Finally, we discuss the concept of "unreasonable hospitality" and how to delight customers through thoughtful, personalized interactions.

Resources

Unreasonable Hospitality - https://www.amazon.com/Unreasonable-Hospitality-Remarkable-Giving-People/dp/0593418573
PARA method - https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/
Amazon's working backwards - https://www.productplan.com/glossary/working-backward-amazon-method/

DevRelCon, Red Eyes, and Enums

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 22:12:58 -0700

We discuss visiting NYC, DevRelCon, red-eye flights, and why enums are terrible.

Some of the bits and bobs mentioned in this episode:
- DevRelCon
- Chef's Table (S2E1 Grant Achatz) / Alinea
- Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
- CJ enumerating lessons about enums

Two Years of Build & Learn

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 10:20:24 -0700

We're celebrating our 50th episode and two years of podcasting. In this milestone episode, we reflect on what has kept us consistent, our laid-back approach to podcasting, and give a shoutout to you! We also explore how social media affects consumer behavior and share tips for managing digital consumption and mental health.

You'll also hear about our latest projects, including optimizing Redis for better performance in our Rails app and our current work at Discord and Craftwork. Plus, we dive into the world of AI tools for content creation, using them to create engaging short-form videos. Thanks for joining us on this journey!

Resources
* Money with Katie - https://moneywithkatie.com/
* Mostly Technical - https://mostlytechnical.com/
* Bootstrapped Web - https://bootstrappedweb.com/
* Syntax - https://syntax.fm/
* APIs You Wont Hate - https://apisyouwonthate.com/
* The Bike Shed - https://bikeshed.thoughtbot.com/

Enum Types, Coworking Software, and more Atomic Habits

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 21:16:14 -0700

Producer's note: This episode should have gone out as episode 48 ahead of Webhooks! This is our missing episode. Join us next episode for episode 50!

Colin has a fitness update: working on the lungs, breathing and stress in general. CJ is digging into enums and converting them to models at Craftwork. More to come on that topic soon. Colin continues to avoid building Coworking Software (to everyone's applause) and CJ is digging back into James Clear's Atomic Habits.

Colin: Fitness update / massage / breathing
CJ: Big refactor from an enum to a model - evolving pricing models
CJ's sleek lidar mop vacuum
Colin: Coworking Software Update: not building anything, trying out Joan
Colin: Internal discussion on Webhooks
CJ: rereading Atomic Habits
Colin mentions some Obsidian (more on that to come in future episodes)

Webhooks!

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 12:29:13 -0700

In this episode, you'll learn about webhooks and how they enable event-driven integrations. We cover webhooks, how they work, and best practices for providers and consumers.

Topics:

- The evolution of webhooks and how they compare to traditional API polling methods
- Implementing webhooks securely, including verification techniques
- Strategies for handling and processing webhook data
- Challenges you might face with versioning and payload changes
- Useful tools and resources for working with webhooks

We share our experiences implementing webhooks across various platforms, mentioning Stripe, Twilio, and Slack as examples of good webhook implementations. We also discuss how tools like Zapier can help with webhook integrations and automation.

You'll hear about CJ's recent experiences with React Native and Expo Go, as well as updates on our side project "Buckets", a Mint-like finance app.

Resources:

Summer Fit Check, Cron Schedulers, and Sample Apps

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 21:59:51 -0700

CJ and Colin with the summer updates and fitness check-in. We dive into cron jobs, scheduling those jobs with various tools and services and best practices for when/how to cron.

- Summer updates
- CJ's live peloton class in the studio
- Peloton hotel finder
- Colin gives a RTO recap
- Craftwork update, one year of the Rails codebase
- Realtime project view tracking with action cable (who’s looking at the same doc as me)
- Command Palette using Ninja Keys
- CJ on Enums in Rails and other best practices
- CJ using sidekiq-cron, alternative to whenever. - team already asking for event-based things
- BullMQ mentioned!
- Colin working on some sample Discord bots and apps

Monoliths, GraphQL, Next.js, and DevRel Insights

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 -0700

Colin and CJ explore the ongoing debate between monolithic architectures versus API-driven frontends, touching on the pros and cons of GraphQL and REST. The conversation also covers the intricacies of integrating Next.js with Rails applications. On the personal front, CJ shares his solar pool heater project and Colin prepares for his upcoming relay race, Reno Tahoe Open (RTO). Both hosts reflect on their work anniversaries and discuss the challenges and strategies for effective Developer Relations (DevRel).

Monoliths vs. API-driven Frontends: The pros and cons of each approach, including the challenges of maintaining large JSON payloads and ensuring API stability.
GraphQL: A critical look at the limitations and complexities of GraphQL, including rate limiting and authorization issues.
Next.js and Rails Integration: Strategies for connecting a modern frontend framework with a traditional Rails backend.
Personal Projects: CJ's DIY solar pool heater project and the considerations involved in making it efficient and safe.
Relay Race Preparation: Colin's training for the Reno Tahoe Odyssey and strategies for managing challenging race conditions.
DevRel Strategies: The multifaceted role of Developer Relations and how to balance content creation, community engagement, and internal advocacy.

Resources

Thanks for listening!

Last RailsConf, Gameboy Nostalgia, and Platform Risk

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 09:00:00 -0700

This week, CJ and Colin talk about content clickbait, Gameboy nostalgia, and the in-vogue topic of AI/LLMs. CJ dives into some cautionary tales around more API integrations and his steps to avoid platform risk while trying to build software at a growing company. Finally, we bid farewell to RailsConf and discuss the market for Ruby/Rails conferences in 2024 and beyond.

Colin's Gameboy nostalgia
- a dose of retro gaming
- wifi gameboy cartridge
- right to repair
- Retro Future YouTube
- Acquired FM: The Complete History & Strategy of Nintendo
- Analogue Pocket
Gen Alpha == Generation AI
Wizards of the Coast/D&D and AI
Platform Risk when building on APIs
- More integrations
- API stability
- Degrated integrations and delivery
The RailsConf 2024 FOMO
- 2024 will be the penultimate conference
- 2025 will be the last RailsConf
- Focus on rubyconf and rubygems
- Focus on regional conferences
- Announcement: A New Era for Ruby Central Events

Slow Productivity, Write The Docs

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 27 May 2024 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, you'll hear about the Write the Docs conference in Portland, a must-attend for anyone in the tech writing community. CJ and Colin chatted about the unique, community-focused vibe of the event, which was akin to RailsConf or RubyConf, and shared some standout talks. One highlight is Calvin Fung's "Beyond Words: Strategies for Leveling Up Your Tech Writing Career," where he details practical tips for documenting your work and aligning it with your job description to advance your career. They also discuss creative ways to enhance documentation using interactive elements, and offers tips on how to get involved and meet people at conferences.

You'll also hear about "Slow Productivity," Cal Newport's book that has us rethinking how they manage their workloads. We'll discuss the book’s core principles: (1) doing fewer things, (2) working at a natural pace, and (3) obsessing over quality. This leads to a deep dive into managing distractions, the anxiety around being constantly responsive, and the value of deep, focused work. Plus, they share updates on fun projects at Craftwork, like organizing painting crews with a drag-and-drop interface and rebuilding a pricing engine. Finally, they touch on their DIY approach to calendar management and Colin’s adventures in learning Unity for game development. This episode is packed with insights and practical advice for balancing productivity and creativity in the tech world.

Resources

Afford Anything podcast
- https://affordanything.com/495-cal-newport-the-shocking-secret-of-productivity/
Write The Docs
- https://www.writethedocs.org/conf/portland/2024/speakers/
Slow Productivity
- https://amzn.to/3UNP0qT

APIs, Acquisitions, and Event Emitters

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 06 May 2024 09:00:00 -0700

This week, we discuss building companies on top of API integrations and recent acquisitions that we've been following closely and dig into some tech we're both using in our daily work. If you feel like you have a lot going on in your world right now, we also tease our upcoming episode on Cal Newport's newest book, Slow Productivity.

- Postman acquires Orbit! Congrats to the team!
- Discussing building companies that are heavy on integrations
- Autocode shut down
- Cloudflare acquires Partykit
- Using Turbo at Craft
- Calendaring and staffing in Craft
- Neverending conference room app
- Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
- Podcast Interview with Cal Newport
- Cal Newport's website
- Events and Event Emitting
- Building and learning on Game Engines

GDC, Buckets, and more calendars

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Colin shares insights from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) on cutting-edge technologies like motion capture and AI-powered game creation. We'll chat candidly about the challenges of achieving work-life balance, recognizing burnout signs, and staying productive amid demanding software projects. Additionally, we'll explore personal finance topics, such as budgeting, emergency funds, and leveraging AI and APIs to optimize spending and financial planning.

Resources

frvr.ai https://www.frvr.ai/
Robin desk booking software https://robinpowered.com/
Tailwind UI Calendars https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/data-display/calendars
Tailwind Catalyst https://tailwindcss.com/blog/introducing-catalyst
Fullcalendar https://fullcalendar.io/
GDScream https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GDC2024&src=typeahead_click

Digital homesteading, Discord SDKs and more house stuff

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 09:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we talk about that subscription fatigue that is coming for us all. CJ has been working on some homesteading projects, including maple syrup harvesting and an AI birdspotting camera. Colin finally reveals what he's been working on at work: a new SDK!

What we're building
- CJ is homesteading: maple syrup
- Raspberry PI + camera + AI to detect birds in the yard
- Colin finally shares what he's been working on at work: documenting a new Discord SDK!

What we're learning
- Our lessons learned when buying (or not buying) a house

Campfire Code Read

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:50:03 -0700

In this episode, we'll dive into the codebase of Campfire, a product released by the 37signals (now Basecamp) team. Sharing our initial impressions of the codebase hitting some of these topics:

- The use of helpers and views in this Rails app
- The gems and dependencies
- The decision to use SQLite
- The integration of Hotwire, Stimulus, and front-end tech
- The inclusion of Go code for the Thruster proxy accelerator
- The CSS files and design choices

Resources

Creating vs Consuming, Consistency & Fitness

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:00:00 -0800

This week, Colin and CJ discuss how differently we can feel when we get caught in the mindless doomscrolling traps of consuming content rather than creating things, interacting with other IRL humans, and more!

- Accountability/fitness update
- Quick update on Buckets!
- Consumption vs Creation
- Learning styles
- Badass Course Creators podcast: Raising the bar for online learning with Greg Rog

Next episode, we're digging into the Campfire codebase from 37Signals/Once.

glhf!

Performance review season, OpenAPI, Twilio, and calendar app

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 10:01:13 -0800

In this episode of Build and Learn you'll hear CJ and Colin discuss the following:

CJ's weekend project of installing new kitchen cabinets. They share the DIY process of customizing and installing inexpensive cabinets from Lowe's.
Running and training tips, including focusing on "zone two" aerobic base training. Colin shares his goals to rebuild his running foundation and get faster this year.
How performance reviews work at their companies, the process of self-reviews and peer feedback, and how 5:15s "five fifteens" help document accomplishments.
CJ is building API documentation using OpenAPI spec and integrating Twilio APIs into his product. He realized he needed both Twilio's legacy and modern APIs.
Colin is working on a Google Calendar integration for Discord, allowing users to schedule meetings in Discord voice channels. He discusses the challenges with Discord's permanent voice channel URLs.
Interviewing and pair programming with candidates using Tuple. They wish for ephemeral URLs to avoid overlaps.
Strategies for ramping up on and understanding a new codebase, like tracing the flow of a request. An LLM tool for summarizing codebases could be useful.
Encouragement to get outdoors, avoid burnout, and "touch grass"!

Our Daily Drivers: The Tools We Use

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 08:00:00 -0800

2024! This week, we're sharing the various tools we use day-to-day in our work and side projects. Let us know if you have any favorites on Twitter @buildandlearn_

Building

CJ: working on a side project, https://buckets.cjav.dev
Colin: working on some fun docs projects at work

Learning: Sharing Our Tools in 2024

Tools by Category

Terminal
Editor
API tools/clients
Content Creation/Editing
Mac Helper Apps
Notes
Calendar
Email

CJ's Toolkit

Warp terminal
ohmyzsh with my own theme which is based on Sarah Drasner’s night owl
Raycast
neovim
- fzf and telescope
- tpope: vim-rails, vim-commentary, vim-fugitive
- vim-test
- ale - linting
- AI: copilot + butterfish
Skitch for screenshot annotations
Postman (Used to use Insomnia a lot, but many companies have Postman collections so that’s easy to drop in)
Descript for screen recordings
Tuple for pairing

Colin's Toolkit

iTerm2 as my main terminal
ohmyzsh with Dracula Theme
VSCode as a daily driver for code and markdown (also Dracula themed)
RapidAPI client (formerly Paw)
Descript for audio-editing
Screenflow for screencast video editing
Mac Workflow Apps
- Cleanshot for screenshotting, annotations, and recording screen gifs
- Raycast for moving around apps quickly
- Magnet for window management
- HandMirror for monitoring video
- HiddenMe for hiding icons on desktop
Note Apps (too many lol)
- Notion for work and podcast notes
- Obsidian for 2nd brain, brainstorming
- Textmate for scratchpads while working on a project
- Apple Notes for personal on-the-go and collaborative notes for home
Fantastical for desktop calendars
Apple Mail on phone for personal inboxes, Gmail app for work emails

Build and Learn around the web

Twitter: @buildandlearn_
Colin: @colinloretz
CJ: @cjav_dev

Co-Founders, Layoffs, Ruby Memory, Docs Product

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 06:53:29 -0800

In this episode, we'll touch on office setup and soundproofing, with a focus on effective techniques and materials. We talk about the challenges and strategies in finding non-technical co-founders for startups, emphasizing the importance of shared values and complementary skills. The episode also delves into the impact of AI on the tech industry, particularly concerning recent layoffs. Additionally, we discuss technical topics like API documentation, memory management in Ruby and Rails, and the art of content creation and screencasting.

Resources:

Google Music FX - Text to Music https://aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com/tools/music-fx
Hammerstone Dev Podcast - https://hammerstone.dev/podcast
Tweets mentioned: https://twitter.com/cjav_dev/status/1742909106795528581
Job Boards We like:
Stripe OpenAPI https://github.com/stripe/openapi
ScoutAPM - https://scoutapm.com/
Screen casting course - https://screencasting.com/
KeyCastr - https://github.com/keycastr/keycastr
Keyboarding Videos

Replacing Mint, Finishing Things & Vim

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 08:00:00 -0800

Chris and Colin wrap up 2023 chatting about personal finance, website annotations, vim and a growing need to "finish" something over starting yet another thing.

Replacing Mint

Colin is using Copilot money
CJ was using YNAB earlier this year
Tagging + podcast expenses: notion, zencastr, transistor, descript
Use our referral code 7X6AQD to get 2 months free https://copilot.money/link/9p7G8LwLqNWGkfrL6

Building

Colin: Website Annotations
- Annotate the web
- Rap Genius
CJ: Lots of little API integrations: PostHog, Segment, Deputy, Twilio

Learning

Colin: Actually finishing projects before starting new ones
- Startup weekend vs Finish weekend
- Resolutions and goals
CJ: Couple new vim things -
- The missing semester of CS from MIT
- `:g` global command which lets you run ex aka command line commands on multiple lines at once it has two arguments, a pattern to match to find which lines to run on and the command to run. I’m excited to use this instead of macros for some common editing cases.
Tried out using Descript’s built in video recorder / editor for a video this week and it worked out pretty well except I couldn’t figure out the camera preview thing
Now Colin wants to learn vim
Happy 2024!

Advent of Code, Economic Development

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 08:33:17 -0800

In this episode, Colin and CJ discuss their experience with Advent of Code challenges. They use it as a virtual meetup for their local developer group and the value of solving problems in new languages.

They also talk about live streaming using Twitch's built-in Stream Together feature and alternatives like Meld Studio for multi-person streaming setups.

Other topics include potentially writing code with voice in the future, resources for learning Ruby like Avdi Grimm's Graceful Dev, and managing home maintenance through preventative care rather than reactively.

Advent of Code- The coding challenges we discussed
Jonathan Paulson's YouTube - Videos solving Advent of Code challenges
Bash Bunny on Twitch - Learning Zig with Advent of Code
Stream Together on Twitch - Built-in multi-person streaming
Meld Studio - Alternative to OBS for Mac streaming
Screencasting Course - The course about recording screencasts
Whale Quench Talk - Emily's talk about coding with voice
Graceful Dev - Avdi Grimm's site with Ruby resources
City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America by David Banks
How to Outsmart Your Brain
Replit mobile

Coworking: Grit or Quit & Polish Week at Craftwork

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 21:43:33 -0800

This week we're digging into when to hold on and when to call it quits when it comes to a business. The team at Craftwork is paying down tech debt with Polish week. We also chat about USB hubs, llamas, and how to get started on YouTube.

BUILDING

CJ: Polish week at Craftwork - cleaning up code formatting, todos, tests, UI polish and clean up, DX clean up, etc.
Colin: Coworking space deep dive
- Running numbers on business models
- Using chatGPT to run forecasts
- Sustainability
- Book: Quit by Annie Duke
  - Grit vs Quit
  - Sunk Cost & Identity

LEARNING

CJ: Started doing these mob pairing sessions this week. Mike showed some React Native, Drew showed some UX/UI stuff, Nik showed how to fine tune. Got access to the llama2 models and trying to use ankane’s informers gem to run onnx models locally with Ruby.
Colin: Curious if you have any tips on getting started with youtube
- How to egghead
- Aaron Francis - Screencasting.com
- TubeBuddy
- Sean Cannell - ThinkMedia
- Ali Abdul Skillshare Course

AI launches, Docs, Calendars

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 20:00:00 -0800

In this episode, we catch up on recent tech events, discussing in detail the AI launches at both OpenAI and GitHub. We chat about the Hu.ma.ne AI pin, and touch on GitHub Universe. We also talk about Docs implementations and the challenges of managing and maintaining code snippets in documentation.

Show notes:

Docs
- Astro Starlight - https://starlight.astro.build/
- Tailwind UI protocol - https://tailwindui.com/templates/protocol
- Angular - angular.dev
- Markdoc - https://markdoc.dev/
Calendars
- cal.com infrastructure https://cal.com/infrastructure
- Calendly - https://calendly.com/
- Nylas - https://info.nylas.com/
- Full Calendar - https://fullcalendar.io/
StoryFuel.app
Humane AI pin https://hu.ma.ne/
Github monaspace https://monaspace.githubnext.com/
Crochet talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FtbmlZOk44
Jupyter notebook episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTmcdixuqcY

Mint Shutting Down, Project Catchup

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 08:00:00 -0800

Episode 31

Intuit is apparently shutting down Mint, pushing folks to Credit Karma
Colin's school bus update

Building

CJ is continuing to build out a comms center for managing customer comms in a scalable way for Craftwork. SAML`
Colin is working on the conference room booking app,
- Likely use jumpstart for all stuff you need when you build something new
CJ talks more about his new side project, Story Fuel

Learning

Colin is also learning a lot about sending/receiving audio over socket connections
The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok Or how, exactly, platforms die." from Cory Doctorow
The Imminent Enshittification of the Internet from Gary Marcus

Building Tools and Staying Accountable

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we'll share updates and talk about what we're learning and working on. First up, is the exciting prospect of buying a short school bus and converting it into a fun project. We'll touch on UI frameworks like PhlexUI, as well as share updates about our experiences with different diet and fitness regimens. We'll chat about some more AI tools. Lastly, we'll share updates on the conference room booking app and the Reno Colective co-working space's accountability group.

Resources

PhlexUI - https://www.phlexui.com/
RailsUI - https://railsui.com/
ShadCN - https://ui.shadcn.com/
v0.dev - https://v0.dev/
Macrofactor - https://macrofactorapp.com/
Chronometer - https://cronometer.com/
LangChain.rb - https://github.com/andreibondarev/langchainrb/
Detangle - https://detangle.ai/

Shiny New Tech: LLMs, iPhones and Ray Bans

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 08:00:00 -0700

No cut off date + multi-modal ChatGPT
Generating AI voices with ElevenLabs
Looking cool with New Ray Ban + Meta Smart Glasses?
Making an epic screencast set up with Screencasting.com from Aaron Francis
Who’s upgrading to the new iPhone 15 with USB C
Traveling with international / regional esim cards from Airalo
Betting against SaaS? Once from 37Signals
- Calculating customer lifetime value
- Not having to deal with churn
Hashicorp and the Business Software License
- OpenTofu - open terraform initiative

CJ is working on calendaring with FullCalendar and tinkering with Rails generators.

Colin is exploring prose linter options for docs and keeping docs quality high without relying purely on human. Working on some open-source project maintenance.

Btw, Craftwerk is hiring!

On Learning

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 07:50:45 -0700

This time around Colin and CJ talk about learning styles and how to learn to learn. We highlight a documentation framework called "Diataxis," which provides a structured approach to content categorization, differentiating between tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and references. The significance of recognizing and adapting to varied learning styles, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

We share our personal experiences and emphasize the importance of diverse teaching methods and creating content even when the subject might have been covered elsewhere. Mentioned were unique projects like an offline Wikipedia on a tablet and a hacked Casio watch that serves as a two-factor authentication generator. The session ends with considerations on video creation and the challenges of live streaming.

Resources:

Hackers Inc Fitness Episode - https://hackersincorporated.com/episodes/losing-70-lbs-getting-in-shape-and-15-minute-workouts
By Mody Tutor - https://www.mybodytutor.com/
My Fitness Pal - https://www.myfitnesspal.com/
Sendgrid - https://sendgrid.com/
Resend - https://resend.com/
Rails Conf Webhook Workshop - https://github.com/colinloretz/railsconf-webhooks
diataxis - https://diataxis.fr/
Cloudflare Docs - https://developers.cloudflare.com/
Crunchy Data Postgres Sandbox - https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/learn-postgres-at-the-playground
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning - https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Thinking-Learning-Refactor-Programmers/dp/1934356050
The Dreyfus Model - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition

Everything Old Is New Again & Niching Down

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:00:00 -0700

It's the One Year Anniversary of Build & Learn!

In this episode we chat about refreshing OAuth tokens and building CRM features with SMS/voice APIs. CJ and Colin also talk about the tradeoffs of building "calm", bootstrapped companies versus venture-backed startups. It seems like everything that is old is new again! What startups from the 2009-2012 vintages do you think could do with some disruption today?

Some resources mentioned:

Follow along off-pod!

@colinloretz on Twitter
@cjav_dev on Twitter

Calendar Discord Bot and Turbo Stream Gotchas

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 09:00:00 -0700

In this episode you'll hear about Colin's adventure of building a Google Calendar Discord bot using CloudFlare, mastering Google Calendar APIs, and navigating serverless Postgres with neon.tech. We'll also share our insights on the benefits of being part of Y Combinator, and the unexpected hiccups we faced with Rails' Turbo Streams. Dive in and learn from our experiences!

Resources:

* https://neon.tech/
* Jason's tweet: https://twitter.com/jmcharnes/status/1687286039356829698
* Cloudflare Worker docs: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/
* Jumpstart Pro starter kit for Ruby on Rails: https://jumpstartrails.com/
* Turbo Streams documentation: https://turbo.hotwired.dev/handbook/streams
* YCombinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
* Google Calendar API docs: https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/guides/overview
* Microsoft Startup program for credits: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups

Role Reversal & Summer Catchup

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0700

Welcome back after the summer break! CJ and Colin get caught up after a summer of adventure and... new job announcements!

CJ update
- Tahoe Time / Family Time
- E-Bike with Dad
- Boat / Plane flight simulator
Colin update
- Spending time on the coworking space
- Summer camping
Role reversals and announcement
- We have new jobs!
- Context switching
  - Colin: product & engineering → developer relations
  - CJ: developer relations → product & engineering
- Fewer guard rails, much less narrow focus, wearing more hats, more autonomy, freedom and responsibility
- CJ is now at Craftwerk
  - NextJS
  - T3 stack
  - MySQL with Planetscale
  - Drizzle ORM
  - Zod schema validation
  - Back office/Admin CRUD app in Rails
- Colin is now at Discord
  - Currently onboarding and learning
  - Building a Google Calendar app to get fully up to speed on all the areas of the developer experience
Other happenings: RailsWorld is happening later this year in Amsterdam
- Tickets sold out in 45 minutes
- Speakers announced this week
Must download calendar app for MacOS folks: Fantastical

Dave Paola: Agency of Learning

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 11:58:00 -0700

In this episode, we chat with Dave Paola, the founder of the Agency of Learning, an organization aimed at getting early-career developers job-ready, especially developer boot camp graduates. We delve into the history of boot camps, identify key gaps in current education methods, and explore how the Agency of Learning addresses these gaps by simulating a real-team environment and emphasizing technical and non-technical skills.

Resources and Links

Visit the Agency of Learning to learn more about Dave's innovative approach to junior engineer hiring and management.
For a more in-depth understanding of teaching for mastery, check out Sal Khan's illuminating TED Talk.
Get involved with open-source contributions and support social good with Ruby for Good.
Discover Casa, a case management open-source app that supports volunteer work for children in foster care.
Dive deeper into the tech industry's professional growth and career progression with Engineering Ladders.
Check out "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" by Sarah Drasner for relatable and pragmatic advice on engineering management.
Read David Marquet's transformative leadership book, "Turn the Ship Around" for a novel perspective on leadership and management.
Connect with our guest on Twitter @dpaola2 for more enriching content and discussions.

Chris Oliver: Building a Life (and Businesses) on Rails

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Tue, 30 May 2023 09:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we talk with Chris Oliver about his deliberate approach to building GoRails and his other businesses on Rails. In a tech world that only seems to be moving faster and faster, we discuss the slow and steady path he has followed to create a fulfilling life for himself and his team while shipping awesome Rails things for his customers.

Some links to things we discussed:

Some of the things Chris and his team work on:

GoRails
Jumpstart Rails
Hatchbox Hosting
The Remote Ruby Podcast
and many other things you can find at https://excid3.com/

Streamlining global ingress with ngrok

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 15 May 2023 06:06:13 -0700

In this episode, we're joined by Alan Shreve, the founder and CEO of ngrok, to discuss the future of software development and the emergence of innovative tools that simplify complex tasks -- like ingress. We talk about ngrok's solid approach to error handling, which enhances troubleshooting and user experience by assigning unique codes to each error. The conversation also delves into the evolution of ngrok, an "ingress as a service" platform designed to streamline the setup of web application infrastructure by abstracting complexities of networking, thereby reducing your workload.

We address the challenges in distributed systems and the importance of automating processes, focusing on the role of tools like Heroku, Vercel, and CloudFlare in managing infrastructure and security. We explore the concept of edge computing and globally distributed applications, envisioning two potential futures - one with advanced storage layers handling global distribution and another where applications can split between the origin and the global edge.

The discussion also highlights the shift in the industry away from tasks like memory management and assembly language and the rise of cloud-based tools, which lowers the barrier to entry for new developers. Despite the potential pitfalls of abstraction, like the reduced need for developers to tinker and learn, we see this as a positive development. We wrap by emphasizing the end goal of software development - delivering a product that serves the customer's needs, facilitated by tools that simplify and standardize the development process.

Resources:

ngrok: ingress as a service - https://ngrok.com
Introducing ngrok-go - https://ngrok.com/blog-post/ngrok-go
ngrok-go library - https://github.com/ngrok/ngrok-go
Introducing ngrok-rs - https://ngrok.com/blog-post/ngrok-rs
Vim plugin for GitHub CoPilot - https://github.com/github/copilot.vim
Stripe's Embeddable Payment Components - https://stripe.com/docs/payments/payment-element

Forest Bathing, RailsConf, and Developer Communities

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 01 May 2023 09:00:00 -0700

CJ and Colin are back to chat about getting outside, recap the recent RailsConf and discuss building and participating in developer communities in 2023.

Getting Outside

RailsConf 2023 and Webhooks Workshop

Some other cool events/conferences that we've attended

Follow us on Twitter

ChatGPT, LLMs, OpenAI, doom or boon?

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Colin and CJ discuss using the new GPT tools for work and play.

Open AI
Large language models
Generative AI
How do we use it, and is it going to be doom & gloom?

How We Use It

Brainstorming & riffing on ideas
- I was building something in React and hadn’t touched React in a few years. I had all this iteration going on in my components to generate dynamic content. Still, I wanted the topmost component to be able to have references to all these components to download them all as images in a zip file.
Assistance with math-based things like animation or rendering graphics
- Example: I had to display a bunch of circles in a 2nd plane in a random pattern
- Computers are pretty good at that
Learning how to do something new faster
- Explain this to me like I’m 5
Summarizing
We use Descript for editing this podcast
Shifting the tone of writing, building a writing style
Writing video scripts
Finding obscure information
Story arcs
Brushes to write tailwind classes
Jokes
DnD character sheets
Bing to find esoteric star wars character that’s buried on Wookiepedia

Doom and gloom or boon?

What does this mean for the future?
Privacy & security concerns
- Voice clones and scams (create a safe word!)
Productivity + time
- Are we just going to be expected to be more productive with more output because cApItaLIsM
Constitutional AI (Anthropic)
- give it principles to train on vs having human input
- https://www.anthropic.com/index/core-views-on-ai-safety

ChatGPT coauthored a PR to a major open-source project

via Ruby Weekly: How long is it until ChatGPT makes a pull request to Rails? Oh, it (sort of) just happened. Ultimately it's still under the name of Rails core team member Guillermo Iguaran, however.

Everything in this pull request, including the code, tests, changelog, commit message, pull request title and description has been created by ChatGPT with some guidance. If you believe ChatGPT is infringing your copyright please let me know.

People to follow

(Written by Notion AI)

Here are 5 social media influencers to follow to stay up to date about AI:

Rachel Woods (@the.rachel.woods on TikTok, @rachel_l_woods on Twitter)
Logan.GPT (dev advocate for OpenAI)
Swyx (shares a lot of thoughts on AI)
Lex Fridman (MIT researcher and AI podcaster)
Siraj Raval (AI educator and YouTuber)

Tools

Github Copilot

Copilot X for VS Code & VS Extension
Copilot Docs
Copilot CLI
Copilot Voice
Copilot for PRs

Resources

Digging into the HackerRank Survey 2023

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 08:00:00 -0700

In this episode we dig into the HackerRank annual survey that was released a few months ago for 2023 including the top in demand skills from employers in this uncertain tech and economic environment.

Note from Colin & CJ: This episode was recorded in November 2022. It is amazing how much changes in a few months.

Languages By Volume of HackerRanks

Java
Python
SQL
C++
Javascript
Bash
C#
Go
Typescript
R
PHP
C
Swift
Ruby

Methodology for languages

To estimate employer demand for specific programming languages, we looked at HackerRank Work tests where a specific programming language was required, or where specific library questions were asked. Skill demand was estimated by the number of HackerRank Work tests using specific library questions.
On the preference – or supply–side, we tracked submitted languages by candidates when they have multiple options available, as well as their proficiency in those languages. We also included HankerRank Community practice data to get a full spectrum of skill preferences.
Notable these results are not survey results like the Stack Overflow survey
Demand for most languages growing, but not equally
Is there potential bias in the types of companies that use HackerRank?
- Companies that are more likely to use Java for example

Top 5 Skills in demand

Problem Solving
Machine Learning
REST APIs
React
HTML/CSS/JS
REST API shows sustained drama-free demand growth 😂
Keep an eye on Go and TypeScript

Outlook

Tech hiring (and everything else) hit headwinds in 2022
Overall, the tech industry continues to growing

Other Links Mentioned

Build and Learn around the web

Twitter: @buildandlearn_
Colin: @colinloretz
CJ: @cjav_dev

Keith Casey: Webhooks & webhooks.fyi

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:00:00 -0700

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.

Other Links from the Show

Build and Learn around the web
- Twitter: @buildandlearn_
- Colin: @colinloretz
- CJ: @cjav_dev

Chelsea Otakan: Design and build systems, not just features

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 09:00:00 -0800

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

Custom codegen for SDKs

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 08:00:00 -0800

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

Building Developer Relations Teams with Trag

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 20:28:54 -0800

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

Building things that excite you with Charlie Gerard

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 08:00:00 -0800

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

IC to Lead: Building Confidence In Your Skills with Lindsay Barrett

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 22:57:01 -0800

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_

AWS Amplify and Front-end Frameworks with Erik Hanchett

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 06:20:33 -0800

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

Mike Bifulco: Building a Developer Brand

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:00:00 -0800

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

Getting hired as a developer

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 08:55:51 -0800

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
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

CFPs! Submitting talks to conferences

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:00:00 -0800

Some Links

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?

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

Content creation for developers

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:00:00 -0700

Types of Content

Tweet
Blog Posts / newsletter
Live Streaming (Twitch, etc)
YouTube & YT Shorts
TikTok & Instagram

Resources

Rubyists who tweet useful and helpful stuff
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/

Code Reviews: Giving and Receiving Feedback

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:11:19 -0700

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 this is deployed?
  - Is there observability in place?
  - Is there a large migration that needs special treatment?
Other things:
- I try to group all of my replies into one big response rather than lots of individual comments, that way the

Tools Mentioned

Graphite.dev

Build vs. Buy

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 08:00:00 -0700

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

PTO and Taking Time Off

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 09:00:00 -0700

- 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_dev

Is there a “traditional background” for programmers anymore?

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 11:33:47 -0700

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 https://exercism.io/ to get feedback about your code, don’t work in a silo
https://roadmap.sh/

How to pick a language or stack to start with in 2022

Programming languages are tools
Some are more commonly used to build specific things
- JavaScript/TypeScript - web (started as front end, now is also backend, is what browsers run), iot, drones, most things support javascript (Airtable, lambdas, google sheets, etc.)
- HTML/CSS - web (front end only, structure and style)
- Python - web, data, machine learning
- Ruby - web, small utilities
- PHP - web
- C#/F# - enterprise, windows, azure, games like X-Box
- Go - CLI tools, scalable servers and large-scale programs
- Elixir - web, event-driven systems, distributed systems
- Java - enterprise tools
- SQL - data only, not for building applications
- R - data
- Fortran, COBOL, VBA, objective-c, Perl - I would not invest much in learning these unless it was required for a job I was already hired at
CJ says - learn javascript, but then I say learn ruby and ruby on rails
Whatever you decide, stick with it until you feel comfortable building decent working applications

Cord management

Braided cable managers https://www.amazon.com/CrocSee-25ft-Management-Protector-Self-Wrapping/dp/B08FJ2WDMK
Conway Electric pretty extension cords https://www.amazon.com/s?k=conway+electric&gclid=CjwKCAjw3qGYBhBSEiwAcnTRLmh5ke7bwCi9XoBwyjybypGPUD-TeEmXgoa4Ge6FBDkyFNYkRSpe0hoC7EUQAvD_BwE&hvadid=616991286179&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9002297&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=16357591836090420375&hvtargid=kwd-3626162047&hydadcr=24660_13611807&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_27vjmz70n7_e
Instagram desk setups -

Other mentions

Product school - https://productschool.com/

Black tech pipeline - https://blacktechpipeline.com/

wnb.rb - https://www.wnb-rb.dev/

codeacademy - https://www.codecademy.com/

The 2022 Stack Overflow Survey

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 09:00:00 -0700

Welcome from Build & Learn!

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 amount of influence when purchasing new technologies. But with the exception of students, at least 60% of all developer types have at least some influence on purchasing.
85% of developers say their organizations are at least partially remote.
No other technology is as widely used as Git (93%). Especially among Professional Developers. But for those learning to code, 17% still do not use a version control system.
With Professional Developers, we see some interest in wanting to use chat and video platforms other than they are using now.
Ruby is 50/50 loved and dreaded

Links

Follow us on Twitter

The First Pancake: Hello World

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 09:24:03 -0700

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 graduating
  - VB.NET at a finance company focused on insider trading
  - .NET c# for robots - wasn’t a fan of the company
  - “become a hacker” - App Academy fell in love with ruby
  - Small vacation rental startup where I learned - Django and python
  - Stripe
- Colin
  - Library books on “VRML”, making games, “hacking” games locally to do different things https://store.steampowered.com/app/32380/STAR_WARS_Jedi_Knight_Dark_Forces_II/
  - Homestead, Geocities, Myspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities, https://myspace.com/
  - Photoshop Communities & Kirupa Forum - Layer Tennis
  - Writing code in Notepad, no syntax highlighting, no project folder
  - College - Started with Computer Sci but decided to take another path
  - College Newspaper - College Publisher
    - Rails CMS for the newspaper
    - Realizing that I would graduate, I moved us to WordPress
  - Agency → Laid off in recession → Starting my own agency
    - WordPress
    - APIs
    - Salesforce
  - Building tech community
    - Reno Collective Coworking
    - Ignite Reno
    - hackathons, meetups
  - A few startups
    - Founder, first-employee
  - More consulting
  - Now at Orbit - https://orbit.love/
- Links
- https://twitter.com/colinloretz
- https://twitter.com/cjav_dev
- https://github.com/cjavdev/vim-curriculum

https://abookapart.com/

https://www.aneventapart.com/

http://www.csszengarden.com/

https://www.zeldman.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelCanvas/ live pixel canvas

https://www.youtube.com/cjavilla

Introducing Build & Learn

CJ Avilla, Colin Loretz — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 10:53:49 -0700

Welcome to Build & Learn, a podcast about software development and developing ourselves as software engineers. Hosted by CJ Avilla and Colin Loretz.