DEV Community: Ben James

What I learned from the co-founder of StackOverflow and founder of Discourse, Jeff Atwood

Ben James — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 10:39:51 +0000

For the latest episode of the Distinguished Devs podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Atwood.

Jeff Atwood is the co-founder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, the founder of Discourse, and the author of one of the most popular software blogs, CodingHorror.

Without Jeff, Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange simply would not exist. In addition to being an experienced programmer, Jeff has a lot of insight about the software community, how programmers interact, and how we learn.

In this interview we talk about how StackOverflow started, his experiences with blogging, his observations of online communities and motivation & learning.

You can listen to the Distinguished Devs podcast here, as well as on iTunes, Soundcloud (embedded at the bottom) or the podcast platform of your choice, but I'll summarise/paraphrase some of my favourite parts below.

Some of my favourite parts of the interview:

On blogging

Jeff believes in converting yourself to the philosophy of "public by default". Every time you learn or observe something, why not share it? The act of writing and blogging is like exercise, and if you do it regularly (more than once a week), over time you will accumulate a following. Jeff's blog, one of the most popular software blogs on the internet, receives millions of views, and was the starting point for his idea of Stack Overflow.

On Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow was originally launched to help experienced programmers find answers to targeted questions efficiently. As it grew, it came under pressure to serve beginner programmers better and to teach people how to code. In the interview Jeff discusses the tradeoffs and design decisions to appeal to the largest user base possible, whilst keeping its high quality content - even if perhaps at the expense of "friendliness".

On progressing through your career

Jeff says that sometimes, to progress with your software career, you have to stop writing code. It's hard for many programmers - as soon as you get really good at something you have to stop doing it. But Jeff explains it by simply saying: the next level of abstraction is natural language - communicating with other humans.

I personally enjoyed chatting to Jeff tremendously and would genuinely recommend listening to the full episode.

The Distinguished Devs podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify etc.
I hope you enjoy this episode, please let me know what you think!

Don't forget to hit follow if you're interested in more of the series!

What I learned from interviewing Miguel Grinberg, author of the Flask Mega Tutorial

Ben James — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 10:17:56 +0000

I recently interviewed Miguel Grinberg for the Distinguished Devs podcast.

If you’ve ever done any web development work with Python, you’ve almost certainly come across Miguel Grinberg - his successful blog being one of the most useful resources on Flask, Python and many other areas. He has literally written the book on Flask Web Development published by O'Reilly, and is the author of the Flask Mega tutorial.

He is also the creator and maintainer of a large number of popular open source projects, including python-socketio, Flask-SocketIO, FlaskHTTPAuth and many more.

You can listen to the full podcast here, but I'll summarise/paraphrase some of my favourite parts below.

On knowledge sharing

Miguel notes that sharing knowledge, in the form of blog posts, open source software, or books, has been the most important thing in his career. Though you might do it to help others, the rewards it gives you personally are immense.

Miguel says that initially, the motivation to blog and share has to come from yourself; his first tweet about the Flask Mega Tutorial only received one like, and the series did not receive much engagement for a long time before it gained traction.

On learning

Miguel says that the best way to learn anything is to pick a project or goal and use your new skill to work towards it. Without this goal, it's hard to find the motivation to learn effectively.

The Distinguished Devs podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify etc.
I hope you enjoy this episode, please let me know what you think!

Don't forget to hit follow if you're interested in more of the series!

What I learned from interviewing StackOverflow's top Python contributor, Martijn Pieters.

Ben James — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 09:20:42 +0000

Martijn Pieters is the #1 contributor to Python on StackOverflow. He's probably helped you out many times in your life without you realising.

Martijn has worked on developer infrastructure at Facebook; on Zope with Guido Van Rossum, the creator of Python; and on the framework team of Plone, which is used by the CIA and FBI.

He has made contributions to Python, Flask, and Mercurial, and currently works as an open source consultant.

You can listen to the full podcast here, but I'll summarise/paraphrase some of my favourite parts below.

On StackOverflow

Martijn refers to something that Eric Lippert said: the best way to become an expert on anything is to find a pile of questions that people are asking, and try and answer every one.
Doing this, you will become an expert incredibly quickly.

It's this curiosity that motivates Martijn to answer as many questions with the high quality that he does.

On algorithms

Martijn is a self-taught programmer, and encourages the learning of algorithms and computer science fundamentals, especially if you're self taught.
At one point, he made a conscious effort to learn these topics, from a free online course and textbook - and it influenced a lot of his later work.

Many coding problems are solved the wrong way, even by people who are talented programmers, because they are simply not aware of theoretical computer science and concepts.

The Distinguished Devs podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify etc.
I hope you enjoy this episode, please let me know what you think!

Don't forget to hit follow if you're interested in more of the series!

Distinguished Devs #2: John Leider - creator of Vuetify

Ben James — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 14:02:07 +0000

John Leider is the creator of Vuetify.

A few years ago, John was frustrated with the options available for rapidly prototyping and developing new applications. He started Vuetify as a side project for himself, and never intended to release it. After a friend persuaded him to make it an open source project, Vuetify has become one of the most popular (possibly the most popular) front-end frameworks for Vue.

In this interview, John talks about learning, workflow, and how he got into programming.
We also talk about John's approach to running a large open source project and how it differs from others.

The Distinguished Devs podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify etc.

The next episode will be an interview with Martijn Pieters, the top StackOverflow Python contributor, so don't forget to hit follow.

Distinguished Devs #1: Carsten Haitzler - creator of Enlightenment

Ben James — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 08:59:34 +0000

Carsten Haitzler, AKA Rasterman, is the creator of Enlightenment, a window manager used in millions of Linux devices worldwide - from desktops and smartphones to smartwatches and TVs.

As the creator and leader of a large project for many years, in this interview he talks about how open source has changed and how he approaches leadership. Carsten also gives his thoughts on learning to code, and what makes a great developer.

The Distinguished Devs podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify etc.

I hope you enjoy this episode, please let me know what you think!

The next episode will be an interview with John Leider, creator of Vuetify,
so don't forget to hit follow.

Distinguished Devs #0: Introduction

Ben James — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 12:19:06 +0000

This post marks the first in a series where I will interview outstanding developers who perform at their peak to lead large open source projects and make an impact at top companies.

The series will primarily focus on learning, productivity and motivation, but will also talk about tools and technical tips/tricks.

The point of the series is to coax out actionable advice that you can apply to take your dev game to the next level.

The first instalment of series should be out soon, but if you have any particular questions that you'd like me to ask in future interviews, feel free to drop them in the comments. And if you're an elite developer leading a large open source project or at a senior level in a large company, do get in touch.

Don't forget to hit follow if you're interested in the rest of the series!