Skip to content

DEV Community

Developer on Fire

Episode 078 | Jezen Thomas - Simplicity Master

Dec 31 '15

Guest:

Jezen Thomas talks with Dave Rael about great tools, mastering the command line, the primacy of simplicity, and geeking out about the rotation axes of the arms

Jezen Thomas is a freelance software developer from London spending most of his time writing software with Ruby and JavaScript. He is currently working with UXPin a company which makes a browser-based UX prototyping platform using ReactJS. He enjoys all things TDD, functional programming, Vim and Unix, and he shares his thoughts by speaking at conferences, tweeting as @jezenthomas, and writing articles at http://jezenthomas.com.

Chapters:

0:28 - Dave introduces the show and Jezen Thomas
1:52 - From music to programming and how Jezen got started in software
3:40 - Jezen and Vim and becoming terminal-oriented
4:57 - Jezen's definition of value
6:57 - The things that "light Jezen up"
10:18 - Jezen's story of failure - tinkering for the sake of tinkering without thinking through the purpose and value
11:47 - Jezen's success story - fostering social engagement by reducing the cost to communicate with a large company
14:37 - How Jezen stays current with what he needs to know
18:24 - Jezen's book recommendation
20:39 - The things that have Jezen most excited
22:46 - Javascript's identity crisis
24:13 - Jezen's greatest sources of pain
29:15 - The things about which Jezen likes to geek out
33:14 - Jezen's prediction for the future of software
35:44 - Jezen's top 3 tips for delivering more value
39:00 - Keeping up with Jezen

Resources:

Jezen's book recommendation:

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages - Bruce A. Tate

Jezen's top 3 tips for delivering more value:

1. Clear and concise communication
2. Don't code for the future
3. Make code cheaper to write and easier to delete