Developer on Fire

Episode 316 | Chris Ferdinandi - Idea to Living Thing

Feb 26 '18

Guest:

Chris Ferdinandi talks with Dave Rael about teaching and learning, self-discovery, JavaScript, and delivering value

Chris Ferdinandi helps people learn vanilla JavaScript. His JavaScript plugins are used by organizations like Apple, Harvard Business School, and CNN. After years of struggling with hostile web forums, bad documentation, and incomplete tutorials, he now helps beginners learn JavaScript faster and easier. He love pirates, puppies, and Pixar movies, and lives near horse farms in rural Massachusetts. He runs Go Make Things with Bailey Puppy, a lab-mix from Tennessee.

Chapters:

2:04 - Dave introduces the show and Chris Ferdinandi
5:03 - Comparing JavaScript to snowboarding - learning stages, competence, and Harry Potter illustrations
9:40 - Chris's journey through human resources, web design, blogging ,and software development
12:57 - How teaching career development turned into creating software
15:53 - Designers and developers
19:03 - Chris's human resources blog
20:54 - Common images regarding software developers and designers
22:17 - The virtue of shipping and the value of growth
24:33 - The things that "light Chris up"
26:52 - The ways Chris educates on https://gomakethings.com/
33:31 - Chris's book recommendation
36:32 - Chris's story of failure - spending time on a career that failed to fulfill, agreeing to a job based on the suggestion that things might change
43:59 - Chris's top 3 tips for delivering more value
47:07 - Keeping up with Chris

Resources:

Chris's book recommendation:

Chris's top 3 tips for delivering more value:

Talk to users and more uses and, if possible, observe people using what you've built
Ask a lot of questions, especially about why people do things
Focus on business outcomes and results over technologies

Episode source

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