DevDiscuss

In this episode, we chat about ethics in code, with Nashlie Sephus, applied science manager at Amazon Web Services, AI, and Abram Walton, Director of the Center for Lifecycle and Innovation Management, and former Director for the Center for Ethics and Leadership at Florida Tech.

In this episode, we talk about the history of IRC and the evolution of other community building tools with Sara Chipps, co-founder of Jewelbots and director of public Q&A at Stack Overflow, and Jason C McDonald, CEO and Lead Developer at MousePaw Media.

In this episode we talk about little-known things you can do with CSS with UX Developers at Shopify, Hui Jing Chen and Ananya Neogi.

In this episode, we chat with Neal Ford, software architect at ThoughtWorks, and author of The Productive Programmer, about how to build better habits and different tools and resources that can boost your productivity.

There are a lot of ways that the tech world is failing when it comes to employing and developing for those who are neurodivergent. We speak with Heidi Waterhouse, senior developer advocate at LaunchDarkly, and Lydia X.Z. Brown, Policy Counsel for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Adjunct Professor for Georgetown University's Disability Studies Program, about neuraldiversity and what tech could be doing better when it comes to universal design and accessibility.

In this episode, we get into what are our pet peeves and grievances about the coding language we love the most. Guests Addy Osmani, engineering manager at Google, and Ridhwana Khan, senior engineer at DEV, both chose JavaScript, and they dig into why the language could be more opinionated, whether there should be a standardized library, and more. We also hear from our audience about what they dislike most about their beloved coding languages.

Each June, communities across the world celebrate Pride Month as an important, reflective, and joyful time to recognize both the ongoing adversities and inspiring achievements of LGBTQIA+ people everywhere. DEV has decided to post this episode on June 23rd, because on this day in 1912, English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist, Alan Turing was born. Turing's accomplishments were astounding and groundbreaking during his lifetime and still are today: He invented the device that broke the code for the German Enigma machine, a device for sending coded messages to units of the German forces during WWII. Later, he would also break the Naval Enigma, which had vastly more complicated code than the first. Turing's work had to be conducted so secretly that the importance of what he accomplished — and the degree to which he shortened the war— were vastly overlooked at the time. Turing also happened to be gay. He died at the age of 41, two years after being stripped of his security clearance and charged legally and violently for his sexuality at the hands of the same government he served during the war. Turing was not only an astounding technologist — he remains a symbol of the triumphs of LGBTQIA+ folks in tech in spite of overwhelming persecution. This year, Pride Month is particularly poignant. The United States - and the world - is finally beginning to grapple with the countless deaths faced by Black people due to police brutality, overt racism, and systemic hatred for centuries. In the midst of this pain and important work, we cannot forget the particularly deep and painful impact experienced by the LGBTQIA+ individuals that overlap with these communities. Black and transgender women are particularly oppressed and at risk of being victims of violence. For more data on the disproportionate affect of violence on the transgender and gender non-conforming community in 2020 alone, please read the report in our shownotes titled, “Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in 2020.” Most importantly, you can support Black LGBTQIA+ people with your signatures and money. Discover ways to do so via GLAAD. Please enjoy this collection of recordings collected from the DEV community about their experiences being a LGBTQIA+ developer and what makes them proud.

In this episode, we go through our favorite hardware and software that allows us to be the best developers and designers we can be. We invite DEV Principal Software Engineer, Josh Puetz, and DEV Lead Product Designer, Lisa Sy, to talk about their favorite desk setup, organizational, and efficiency tools.

Sometimes, as developers, we can get so wrapped up and absorbed in our work that that it becomes an all-consuming force in our lives. We get into why we shouldn't forget to have outside hobbies and passions, and how they can even help in mitigating things like burnout, imposter syndrome, and can also help with problem solving, as well as soft skills. To talk about how their own myriad of hobbies have made them better developers, we are joined by Milecia McGregor, senior UI engineer at Mediavine, and author of the DEV post, "Why It's Important To Have Hobbies Outside Of Tech," and Kayla Sween, user experience engineer at Dogly, and author of the post, "Powerlifting has made me a better developer."

Ruby is a scripting language created in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan. It's popularity surged in Japan by 2000, which was also when the first English language book about the language, Programming Ruby was printed. After that, Ruby had its sunrise and sunset in terms of favor amongst developers, but continues to have a robust community of users. In this episode, we talk about the history of the language, some of its benefits and pitfalls, and why we continue to use it at DEV, with Vaidehi Joshi, senior software engineer at DEV, and James Harton, software engineer at Balena, and author of the 2018 DEV post, "Please stop using Ruby."

Developers can have pretty strong opinions about their industry, and we wanted to air out our most unpopular ones, your most unpopular ones, as well as Kelsey Hightower's, staff developer advocate at Google.

More companies are considering going fully distributed, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are experiencing working remote for the first time. Although there are a lot of benefits to remote work, it's not all flowers and sunshine. We speak with Sophie DeBenedetto, senior software engineer at GitHub, and Mac Siri, senior software engineer at DEV, about how to make being distributed work for you.

As an industry, tech is not well equipped to accept when people change their names. This problem effects a range of people, including those who have a change of marital status. However, it can especially effect the security of those who are survivors of domestic violence, and those who are trans, who have to suffer through deadnaming by their tech accounts. This constant barrage of deadnaming can be very psychologically and emotionally harmful. We speak with Penelope Phippen, director at Ruby Central, and author of the DEV post, "Changing your name is a hard unsolved problem in Computer Science," about this issue and what can be done to make it better.