Tech Done Right

Episode 61: Tech For Good With Andrew Means and Sean Marcia

May 8th, 2019  |  33 mins 21 secs

community, developer, nonprofit, open source, tech for good

Our guests this week are Andrew Means of Data Analysts for Social Good and Sean Marcia of Ruby for Good. Both of them run organizations that are involved with using technology to helping non-profits that could use even some simple software or data assistance. We’ll talk about what kinds of work their organizations do, how non-profits differ from for-profit work, how they try to keep projects running over time, and how you can get involved working with technology for good.

Episode 60: Jumpstarting Your Side Project With Dicko Sow

April 24th, 2019  |  35 mins 14 secs

career, design, developer

Our guest this week is Dicko Sow. Dicko is a software developer at a technical consultancy, but recently she has been spending her time building out a side project called Yodi Naturals. We talk about how she chose the project, how important it was to plan the project, the technical decisions, and what Dicko learned putting together the launch page. If you’re trying to decide whether to try a side project, this episode has some good information about how to put that together.

Episode 59: Building Git with James Coglan

April 10th, 2019  |  41 mins 9 secs

book, developer, git, open source

Our guest today is James Coglan. James has written an extraordinary programming book called Building Git. In it, he describes the inner workings of the Git source control tool by re-implementing a substantial part it in Ruby, including commits, diffs, branching, and networking. Along the way he shows not just how Git works, but also details of some of the algorithms it uses. There’s also a lot about building complex systems generally. And it has some great examples of test-driven development. James and I also talk about implementing in a high-level language like Ruby, versus a lower-level language like C. It’s a unique book, and I’ve been looking forward to talking to James about it for some time.

Episode 56: Developer Hiring

February 27th, 2019  |  44 mins 28 secs

career, developer, hiring

Today on the show, we're talking about hiring with Jennifer Tu and Zee Spencer of Cohere, Thayer Prime of Team Prime, and software consultant Matt Patterson. We talk about the entire developer hiring process from how to advertise your company to potential candidates, through coding tests and interviews, and all the way to the final decision process. It's a great conversation with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of good advice. We’d like to hear from you. What do you look for when hiring developers? Let us know at http://techdoneright.io/56 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Episode 55: Engineering Management With Allison McMillan

February 13th, 2019  |  38 mins 45 secs

career, developer, management

Today on the show we’re talking about engineering management. Allison McMillan is an engineering manager for the Atom team at GitHub. We talk about what her role is within the team, how she helps her team grow and improve, and how the management role is different from her previous developer jobs. We’d like to hear from you. What makes a great engineering manager? Let us know at techdoneright.io/55 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Episode 54: Code Style and Community with Sam Phippen and Justin Searls

January 30th, 2019  |  47 mins 16 secs

code, communication, developer

On this episode, we’ve got Sam Phippen and Justin Searls back for their third round on the show. Both of them have been working on new Ruby tools to better standardize your team’s style and code formatting. We talk about why they’ve decided these tools are important, what their philosophy of coding style is, how coding style relates to the Ruby community, and how they evaluate code when given a code sample to look at.

We’d like to hear from you. How does your team handle differences of opinion in code style? Let us know at techdoneright.io/54 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right

Episode 52: Small, Sharp Developer Tools With Brian Hogan

January 2nd, 2019  |  41 mins 30 secs

career, developer, tools

Developers use a variety of tools other than their programming language to get their jobs done. This week, we talk about those tools with Brian Hogan, a Technical Editor for Digital Ocean. Brian's a prolific technical educator, writer, and editor and he's currently the author of the book Small, Sharp, Software Tools from the Pragmatic Press. We talk about why command line tools in particular are important, what command line tools do well, and why some people including myself often find them opaque and confusing. We talk about our favorite tools and about customizing your workflow to fit your needs.

Episode 51: Becoming a Senior Engineer with Jamey Hampton

December 12th, 2018  |  39 mins 29 secs

career, developer, hiring

On this episode, we're talking about becoming a senior engineer. When you first become a senior engineer, you suddenly have new job responsibilities that aren't coding and they aren't management. It's not clear how to balance your time or evaluate your success. Our guest this week is Jamey Hampton, a panelist on Greater Than Code podcast and a Senior Engineer at Agrilyst. We talk about how to handle the changing responsibilities and perspective that comes from being promoted even when you're still the same person that you were the previous week. We also talk specifically about hiring as a non-coding responsibility.

Episode 50: Your First Open Source Contribution with VM Brasseur

November 28th, 2018  |  39 mins 39 secs

community, developer, open source

The Open Source world is large. It’s also complex and difficult to manage, especially for a novice. Our guest this week is VM Brasseur, who is the Vice President of the Open Source Initiative and the author of a new book from Pragmatic called Forge Your Future With Open Source. We talk how Open Source is different from free software, and how to get started in Open Source, how to pick a project, how to navigate a new project to make your first submission. We’ll also look at it from the other side, and talk about open source projects can make themselves more contributor-friendly. And we talk about the state of Open Source in general. We want to hear from you. What was your first open source experience like? Or, how do you handle new contributors on your project?

Episode 49: Accessibility With Luisa Morales

November 14th, 2018  |  35 mins 1 sec

accessibility, d_and_i, developer

As many as 15 to 25 percent of your site’s potential users may have trouble accessing it due to some kind of disability. How can you design your site to allow your content to be usable by the widest variety of users? My guest today is Luisa Morales, an engineering fellow at the New York City Mayor’s office for Economic Opportunity. We talk about what accessibility means, how to design your site to be accessible, and what guidelines to use to help ensure success. We’ll also talk about a very literal form of accessibility — making your site behave in a way that it is accessible to users with limited bandwidth or older devices. We’d like to hear from you. What issues or successes have you had with accessibility? Let us know at techdoneright.io or on Twitter at @tech_done_right.