Decoded

Brittney Ball proves that your past doesn’t define your future. Six years ago, she was a single mom living in a shelter. Now, the self-taught developer is a Documentation Engineer at Meta (formerly Facebook), as well as a keynote speaker and mentor.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai learns from Brittney what inspired her to teach herself to code and how her career path took her to Meta. They also discuss what makes up a great documentation team and the importance of an inclusive learning environment in the developer community.

Other talking points include:

• The role of documentation in educating developers and helping them continue on their learning journey
• The differences and similarities between internal and external documentation
• The growing prominence of self-taught developers and how the community can better cater to them

As developers, there’s always something for us to learn. Formal education provides a great foundation, but what we learn from our community of fellow developers is what really helps us grow.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai is joined by Ali Diamond, a Developer Advocate at New Relic who has started a unique learning community on her Twitch stream. Ali shares what it's like to learn in public with other developers, what she’s learned from growing her online community, and what it means to be authentic in such a public space.

Other talking points include:

• Why developers are starting to use platforms like Twitch for communal learning
• The benefits of “learning by watching” in the moment versus learning through keynotes, seminars, and other formal learning environments
• Why learning to build in public can be a double-edged sword

It's no secret that software developers have a love-hate relationship with legacy code. On the one hand, it can be frustrating to work with outdated code that doesn't follow modern conventions. On the other hand, it's often gratifying to successfully update and improve a legacy codebase. Regardless of how you feel about legacy code, supporting it is an important part of any developer's job.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai is joined by Joe Eames, CEO of Thinkster, an online full-stack development education group that provides a single source of learning for front- and back-end web development. They discuss what developers should keep top-of-mind when working with legacy code and how to properly support that code to provide modern experiences to end-users.

Other talking points include:

• Joe’s history in the software development space and how Thinkster came to be
• The importance of communal learning for creativity and innovation
• Joe’s recollection of how the software development scene has grown over the past 30 years.
• The role of the internet in future OS development for emerging developers.

Every technology user has struggled with notifications — getting too many of them, getting ones we don’t care about, or watching our email inboxes and other communication channels overrun by them. Troy Goode knew this experience all too well, so he started Courier, which makes it simpler to build notification templates and manage channels so that companies can send thoughtful and personalized notifications in whatever ways users want to be reached.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai talks with Troy about the considerations and processes around building notifications. Talking points include:

• Troy’s experience as a developer before founding Courier
• The entirely new role notifications play in user experience
• How notification infrastructures have evolved over the past several years
• Best practices for developing notifications that get attention without annoying users

Video integration is quickly becoming an integral part of web design. It's no longer just about embedding a video in your site with YouTube or Vimeo, but about how you can use video to improve the user experience, increase conversion rates, and engage with viewers.

Kwindla Hultman Kramer is a technology developer, engineering lead, and startup company executive. As the CEO of Daily.co, his goal is to help developers build the best possible video experiences, with ease and scalability.

In this episode of Decoded, our host Sydney Lai talks with Kwindla about the challenges and opportunities of video for today’s developers. They also explore the different ways you can make use of video integrations in your software development process.

Other talking points include:

• Why video integration development is so difficult
• How current developer trends limit or influence decisions around video integration
• Implications of developing video within web browsers versus web applications

At the end of the day, what is most important to you, your company, and your customers? Surely it's not just about creating cool stuff. It's about building relationships that lead to long-term success for all parties involved. That is why developer advocacy matters.

In this episode of Decoded, our host Sydney Lai talks with Cassidy Williams — Director of Developer Experience at Netlify and a legend in her own right — about what developer advocacy is and how it has evolved over the past decade. The pair also talk about how to discuss and promote developer advocacy internally at your company.

Other talking points include:

• The story behind Cassidy’s kickstarter project for a copy/paste keyboard
• How to develop products and experiences that resonate
• The process behind building for personal and professional needs
• Creating developer “rituals” to build advocacy
• How developer communities differ across various platforms

Full-stack designer Jesse Showalter is on a mission to help every developer and creative make an impact on the world. With more than 10 years of experience across all aspects of software development, Jesse is now helping a large audience of developers through YouTube, Instagram, and more to build what they dream up.

In this episode of Decoded, our host Sydney Lai chats with Jesse about the tools that put power into the hands of today’s developers. They also discuss Jesse’s journey to becoming a teacher and content creator for his nearly 200,000 subscribers.

Listen to the full episode to learn:

• How Jesse transitioned from back-end to front-end development
• How to evolve your skill sets to stay ahead of changes in the industry
• Fundamental skills that will help developers advance throughout their careers
• Tools that are helping to break down barriers for developers

Check out the video episode here!

Courtland Allen, founder of Indie Hackers, is all about helping developers find financial independence, creative freedom, and the ability to work on their own schedules. It’s easier now than ever for developers to kick off side projects that allow them to generate revenue — whether it's an extra $500 a month or enough income to quit their day jobs.

In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai chats with Courtland about how developers can take a side project from a supporting role to their main act. Other talking points include:

• The story of how Courtland built Indie Hackers, and how it’s adding value as part of Stripe
• Best practices of profitable Indie Hackers
• The importance of incorporating storytelling into the development process
• How to make end-users the superheroes in your projects

Interested in building the future of software development? Save your spot at the OutSystems Developer Conference today! https://outsyste.ms/osdc

Movies and TV shows are filled with magic — from the viewers’ perspective, at least. Getting a production off the ground can be less than magical. It’s surprisingly riddled with manual processes and inefficiency — but not if Chris Dhanaraj has anything to say about it.

As a Senior UI Engineer at Netflix Studios, Chris builds apps that make the complex movie and TV production process simpler and more streamlined. In this episode of Decoded, host Sydney Lai chats with Chris about the evolution of Netflix from a DVD-shipping service into a SaaS platform that millions of people invite into their lives each day. They also discuss the differences between building software for consumer use vs. business use, as well as how creativity can be expressed in a B2B environment.

Listen to the episode to learn:

• How to design a unified style across a suite of applications
• How Chris leverages React, an open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components
• Insights from scaling Netflix engineering into the company it is today
• What engineers should be mindful of when building for business users

Interested in building the future of software development? Save your spot at the OutSystems Developer Conference today! https://outsyste.ms/osdc

Almost every website can be built as a progressive web app (PWA), but developers aren’t doing it. Why — or rather, why now? Their reluctance isn’t necessarily due to technical reasons; instead, cultural reasons may explain why adoption hasn’t grown rapidly.

Our guest for this episode, Jeremy Keith, is a long-time contributor to the developer ecosystem and an engineer who builds progressive web apps and resilient web design. He chats with our host Sydney Lai about the present and future of PWAs and how they’ll impact software development.

Other talking points include:

• What it takes to develop PWAs
• The reasons PWAs aren’t used more often
• Considerations developers should keep in mind during their creative process
• How resilient web design will influence the evolution of software development

Interested in building the future of software development? Save your spot at the OutSystems Developer Conference today! https://outsyste.ms/osdc