Podcasts about Ladies Learning Code

Hosts Will Larry and Victoria Guido are joined by Wes Bos, a full-stack developer, course creator, and podcaster. Wes shares his web development journey, from blogging and creating a successful book on Sublime Text to developing his popular online courses and hosting the Syntax podcast. He talks about the spontaneous start of his teaching career, his approach to creating content that is both approachable and practical, and the importance of making web development accessible to all learners. Wes discusses the evolution of his career, detailing his experiences in teaching at Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou and how he transitioned into selling online courses. He emphasizes the significance of offering quality content in his free and paid courses, ensuring his teachings are relatable and helpful for real-world applications. Wes also delves into the technical aspects of managing his course platform, discussing the benefits of having complete control over his content and the challenges he faces, such as content theft and logistical issues in distributing his popular sticker packs. The conversation shifts to the role of AI in web development, where Wes highlights its impact on coding efficiency and the need for developers to adapt to AI integration in applications. He advises beginners in web development to be wary of over-relying on AI, emphasizing the importance of understanding the fundamentals of coding. The episode concludes with Wes offering advice for content creators in the tech space, stressing the importance of sharing knowledge and its positive impact on the community. He encourages listeners to stay passionate and continuously learn in the ever-evolving field of web development. Wes' Online Courses (https://wesbos.com/courses) Sublime Text Power User Book (https://wesbos.com/sublime-text-book) Syntax Podcast (https://syntax.fm/) Ladies Learning Code (https://www.canadalearningcode.ca/) HackerYou (Now Juno College) (https://junocollege.com/) Follow Wes Bos on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesbos/) or X (https://twitter.com/wesbos). Visit his website: wesbos.com (https://wesbos.com/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giants Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Wes Bos, a Full-Stack Developer, Coursemaker, and Podcaster. Wes, thank you for joining us. WES: Thanks for having me; stoked to be here. VICTORIA: Can you tell me, you know, on top of all of these skills that you have, podcasting, you're making courses; you're also doing development full-time; I heard that you've also picked up a new hobby in making stickers and, like, designing merch for aligning with some of your marketing goals. WES: Yeah. All right. So, my name is Wes Bos. I'm a full-stack developer from Canada, and I do primarily two things: I make web development training courses, and I have a podcast called Syntax in which we release three episodes a week and talk about everything related to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node, just web development and things that surround it. WILL: I want to see how you started in those courses. I know a little bit about your story because I remember when I first started in development. I think it's gotten a little better, but I was the only junior at one of the first companies I started at. And I went through a bootcamp and then became a junior. And I was like, how do I develop? Like, how do I get better? And they were like, "Wes Bos, his course. WES: [laughs] WILL: Go to Wes Bos." [laughs] And so, I did that, and it helped me tremendously. But it's interesting. I just want to see how you started. I know some of your background with ladies who code, and I think HackerYou. So yeah, wherever you want to start, bring us into the beginning of Wes Bos. WES: So, I've been a web developer forever, a good chunk of my life. And back in, like, the blogging days, I was doing a lot of posting blog posts and whatnot. And I had a couple of the blog posts do super well. And back in the day, it was like, you get tons of traffic, and you try to, like, seize the moment. Like, oh, there's, like, 50, 000 people on my website right now. Like, how do I, like, take advantage of that? So, what I did was I threw up a quick, little...it was a blog post about Sublime Text, which was the hot, new editor at the time. And I threw up a little thing. I'm like, I'm writing a book about Sublime Text. And I threw up a little sign-up where people could pop their email in and hear a little bit more about it. And I got, like, 2,000 signups for that in a matter of a couple of days. And I thought like, oh, all right, well, now I got to make this thing, you know, like, I just [chuckles] I didn't have any plans to make it. I had kind of been going around in my head, but I decided to write the book. And then as part of the book, I gave a bunch of videos, and I realized I liked the video part a lot better. And it makes a lot of sense to show people what you are doing when you're talking about code and code-related things. So, I came out with a bunch of videos for that as well. People loved the videos, and I thought, oh, let's just keep doing this. So, I made a bunch of free courses, a bunch of paid courses. And kind of at the same time as well, I was teaching at this thing called Ladies Learning Code, which kind of transitioned into a bootcamp that I did the initial content for, which was called HackerYou. And, like, people kept giving me the same feedback into like, I'm not a traditional teacher. I'm just a web developer that has learned on his own and figured things out. And a lot of people said, like, " I really like the way that you explain things. Like, it makes so much sense the way that you explain it." And I figured out that, at least for some people, they really like the way that I explain something, and I will continue to do that. So, that's pretty much how I got into it. It's just explaining how it works in my head, putting it onto video, and putting it out there for web developers to learn from. WILL: Yeah. And that was one of the reasons why I think I was so successful in my career is because there's a...Just learning development is hard; let's be honest. It's just hard. And I would run into people that would honestly just talk over my head, and I was like, I have no idea what you're saying, but okay. But your courses, it was like, oh, okay, I understand that. That makes sense. Like, I can't remember the name of it, but the React beginner course I've been to that one probably three times just because I'm like, it's making sense. And every time, I get more and more and more out of it. So, I can definitely agree that the way you teach your courses it brings it down to earth. Like, I think maybe anybody could pick it up, I would say, because it's like you're talking to them, so yeah. WES: It's really important to me that everything is approachable. And I will often explain things, like, I'm the same as you. There's extremely smart people out there, and they'll just talk at you about all of these things. And it's just like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Those words don't make any sense to me. And it's not that I dumb it down. It's just like, the way that it makes sense in my brain is not the same way that they're talking. So, the way that I explain it is just how it makes sense to me, and people tend to really enjoy that type of thing. And I really hope that I can make a lot of this web development stuff approachable. And sometimes it's not the, like, exact perfect explanation of how something really works, the explanation you need to understand how these pieces fit together and when you would actually use something. That's the other part of a lot of the stuff that I teach as well is that I have this big thing on one of my course websites, which is like, no foo bar baz. Because when you're learning to code, you stumble across all these foo bar baz where people are making functions and passing the values in, and they're called meta-syntactic variables. The whole idea is that because foo bar baz mean nothing, you're able to take it out of context and focus on what is happening, and I'm quite the opposite. Show me a real example of a bunch of dogs, or a sandwich, or a button that you can click on that fetches data. And I always try to make my examples something that is real world enough that you could understand, okay, I see where this might be used rather than something in isolation because I find that myself very frustrating. VICTORIA: What's one of your favorite examples or, like, example scenarios that you use when you're designing a code problem to teach people? WES: It really comes down to, like, what you're teaching, but the ongoing joke on the podcast that we have is that I always use sandwiches because a sandwich is a great metaphor for a lot of things in life. So, for example, when we talk about streaming versus buffering, and we talk about, like, you're eating the sandwich as it's coming into your house versus you're cutting it into pieces and eating it. Or in my upcoming TypeScript course, I have a bunch of examples where there can be multiple types of food, and a sandwich can be one of them, and a pizza can be another one. And that kind of shows how to use generics, right? Like, you might have a database entry that is a food entry, but you want to further that to be a sandwich or a pizza, and not all of them are that simple, right? Like, a lot of them are also just related to web development, which is like, here's buttons that you need to click on, and here's data that you need to fetch, and here's a database schema that needs to happen. And if that's the case, I try to, like, make it real world enough where you can say, okay, I understand that this is how it works. Now, how can I apply that to my own idea? Because often, people learning to code have their own ideas. They just want to make something to solve their own problems. WILL: How did you learn to code? Because I don't think you did a traditional route. I remember on one of your podcasts, you said your dad was in IT, but I don't think you went to a traditional route. So, how did you learn to code? WES: It's a really long story. But the story is that I got into computers at an early age. I got into designing T-shirts and CD art for a lot of, like, hardcore bands in the music scene when I was in high school, and that parlayed into Myspace. Myspace taught me CSS. And then I've always been, like, fairly entrepreneurial, so that I parlayed into running my own business, making websites. And I've just been at it for so long that I've sort of taught myself all the pieces that I need over the years. I do have a degree in what's called business technology management, which is, it's a business degree but no coding or things involved. It was more, like, higher level. There was some, like, networking IP addresses, and then there was a lot more, like, business management teams, procurement, SAP, things like that, so none of the web development stuff I have learned comes from that degree. It's all self-taught. VICTORIA: So, you found that you had the skill around explaining web development concepts, and then that led to you creating your own business and having your own, like, coursework out there and everything through your podcast. So, maybe you could share a little bit what that journey has been like. WES: It's been a very long journey. I'm not sure which part you want to hear about, but I've been selling courses for probably about nine years. And I have sold quite a bit because I also offer about half of them for free. So, I have a bunch of free ones where people take it, and they're like, "Oh, this is amazing. I'm going to take the paid one that he has as well." And I spend a lot of time making sure that the free ones and the paid ones are the same quality. Like, it's not just some crappy 10-minute course that I'm using as a lead magnet to get you in the door. Like, they're actually pretty good. So, it's been really fun. Like, I've built a whole course platform that sells all of my courses, and you can view them and stream them, and there's invoicing and checkouts built into it. So, like now, if somebody wants to get into selling courses, there's lots of options out there where you can sign up for some SaaS and upload your course, and you're up and running. But at the time when I had done it, there was nothing like that out there, so I had to build my own whole course platform. And I've really enjoyed working on that over the years and upgrading it, and changing it, and rewriting, and adding features to it. VICTORIA: Yeah, that's really interesting. I like that you kept the quality the same on the free and the paid versions. That's a really interesting, I think, like, a reflection of your own values. And then, I'm curious: now that there are other hosting options out there, is there anything that would make you decide to switch to one of those platforms? Because it also sounds like you're getting a lot of enjoyment about managing the one you have yourself, and there might be some other benefits to that. WES: Yeah, probably not. First, because they take a cut, and a lot of these course platforms are not there to promote your business. They're there to promote their own business. And it's the same thing with YouTube. When your YouTube video ends, what does YouTube recommend? They usually recommend what you think you're going to watch, which is sometimes somebody else's video, right? And not having full control over how the courses are sold and consumed, to me, can be a little bit frustrating because you can't do different ideas that you have. So, like, one of the ideas I had early on is I was getting lots of email from people in different countries, you know, in Argentina, and in Brazil, and in India. And they say, "Hey, like, I would love to take your course, but the cost of the course is a day, a week's wages, and that's way too expensive for me." So, I implemented this thing called parity purchasing power. I didn't come up with the economic concept of it, but I was the first person to offer different prices based on the country that the user was coming from. And, A, that's a cool thing to do for people, and B, it helps sales tremendously. And if I was using some course platform, some of the course platforms now have that in place; it's table stakes, right? But at the time, I don't think I would have done as well if I hadn't coded that in myself. So, having full control over absolutely everything is really important to me. And also, like, nobody wants a teacher who doesn't actually build stuff, you know? No one wants to learn from the guy who just, like, skimmed the docs and came up with a crappy, little example. Like, you want to learn from people who are daily writing code and building real-world applications that, like, I have to support my family on this application, you know, it's pretty important, and it's pretty real world. WILL: Yeah, and just following you, I think...and I don't know if you would describe yourself like that, but I think you're, like, a tinkerer. Like, you just...some of the ideas you have is just like, let me just try it out and see if it works. And so, that's amazing that you're able to do that. Where does that side come from? Was it from your dad being in IT, or where did that come from? WES: Probably. Apart from growing up and seeing my dad just fix stuff and do stuff, but I'm just a constantly curious and hungry guy. And I absolutely love dipping into different tech and not even just tech but, like, I built this whole recording studio that's soundproofed. I built the whole thing myself just because I love to learn new things and to dive deep and learn how everything works. And I think a lot of developers very easily burn out. And I always like to say, like, my competitive advantage is not burning out. So, I'm very cognizant of that might happen at some point. And part of the cure for me is I need to be excited about this type of stuff, and I need to be using it. And being able to build new things, and dip into tech, and learn constantly is what keeps me excited and motivated about web development. WILL: Wow. So, you say you built your office. So, you built the entire, like, from concrete up? WES: Not concrete up. So, this was like a...I'm in a basement right now, and I put up some walls. And I talked to a bunch of sound engineers about soundproofing. So, the whole ceiling is not mechanically fastened to the actual ceiling. It's like kind of, like, a floating ceiling, which is pretty cool. And then there's soundproofing material in the walls and outside the walls, and special drywall, and all kinds of interesting stuff to make it sound as good as possible and be as quiet as possible in here because I have three kids. WILL: [laughs] I totally understand the three kids... WES: [laughs] WILL: And the noise that that brings. So, that's amazing. And I think you bring up something that we don't talk about enough in development is that mental health side. Like, just trying to figure out, what do you like to do outside of your computer, away from your computer? So, that's neat that you're working on that, and that that's probably why you haven't burnt out compared to other people. But yeah, kudos to you. That's yeah, that's pretty interesting that you have hobbies outside of that. WES: Yeah, I find that pretty important to sort of keep that balance. Otherwise, if you're doing it day in, day out, especially if you're working on the same thing...like, another benefit I have is I'm always dipping into new stuff, and that keeps it really interesting. But there's plenty of other creators out there that go too hard, and they go 24/7 on it, and then you don't hear from them for six months. And it's because they got burnt out on it, which is very scary to me that that might happen to me at some point. So, I try...I don't know if I've got it figured out, but I try to combat that as much as possible. VICTORIA: And I'm wondering how you balance just that need to create content because it seems to me that web development is constantly changing, right? And so, content that you created a year ago, maybe you got to go back and update everything. So, how do you manage that and keep your content fresh with all the ongoing changes in web development? WES: Yeah, unfortunately, sometimes it means you just have to deprecate content, or you say, "Hey, this is not the content you should be taking right now," because some of the courses take four or five months to record, and after a year or two, they can be out of date. So, I'll mark them as deprecated if they need to be. But I'm just kind of always working on something new, both with my courses as well as, like, the podcast. We always just have...that's the kind of the benefit of the job as well is that, like, yeah, it changes all the time, but there's always new stuff to talk about. As somebody who makes a living explaining how new things work, it's kind of nice. VICTORIA: That's great. You got a good pipeline of content to talk about [laughs] and to update for, so that's great. Mid-Roll Ad: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what's important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: You know, you're creating this content for web developers, and you have this kind of global audience now. What's on the horizon for you? What are you planning for in the next couple of months or in the next five years? WES: Yeah, next couple of months, I have a TypeScript course I've been working on for over a year now. I've been sort of cranking on it, and that will be out. And then we have a podcast that we are going to be launching a video version of pretty soon, which I'm pretty excited about. We've been kind of going pretty hard. We just hired a producer. We've been going pretty hard on, like, the social clips type of thing. So, that's coming down the pipeline as well. And five years, I have no idea. I think I always say, like, a five-year plan is a five-year guess. You know, like, you can plan ahead for six months, a year, and have some good goals. But in web development, like, a year ago, AI, maybe a year, like, 13 months ago, the AI stuff was nothing but a murmur, right? And now, the AI stuff is a good chunk of what I talk about and what I teach. So, you just kind of got to react to it; otherwise, if you have a five-year plan, then you're not going to be able to catch these new things that pop up. WILL: How do you pick? Because I know you said you have a TypeScript course coming out. How do you pick new topics to talk about? Because there are so many. There's testing you can talk about. There's React Native. There are so many areas you can go to. How do you pick and choose that? WES: It's actually pretty easy because it's what I'm excited about and what I want to tell people and teach people, like, what they should be learning. So, like, every single one of my courses is tech that I myself am using and that I want to help teach other people, so it's pretty straightforward. It's not like I have some sort of, like, stats of, like, what is the most popular framework out there, and, like, obviously, that does play into it like a Next.js course. I've used Next.js in a couple of my courses. I'll probably do another Next.js course. But that's both because I enjoy it and because it's stable enough and popular enough that people would want to buy it. I'm not going to be creating a Java course or a Rust course or something like that because I know that's popular right now, and it would probably sell well. It's just not something I know enough about, or I'm excited about. VICTORIA: Yeah, and I'm curious to go back to your comment about AI and just ask you, how are you talking about it in your courses? What are, like, the things you think it's really important for developers to know right now about AI and web development? WES: There's kind of, like, two parts to it. First, there's the part of, like, using AI to help you code. So, there's all these, like, coding assistants that get in your editor, and you can send them your code, and it can help you decipher it, and it can scaffold out code. Those things are really, really good. And I know a lot of developers are hesitant about it because, like, "Who knows what kind of code it's generating? And you still have to be able to understand it. And I prefer to write it by hand." And that's a valid opinion, but, like, I don't think that that's going forward. And I think that this AI stuff is making us so much more efficient in writing code that if you're not picking it up, I think that you might be at a little bit of a disadvantage there. So, there's that [SP] hunk. And then there's also the, like, we're going to have to start implementing this stuff into the apps that we build, and whether it's just pinging in an AI service and getting data back or creating a bunch of embeddings so you can have related, like, for a blog post or for a podcast, we want related podcasts. Or if you want to use AI to, like...group tagging on a blog is a really annoying thing. Nobody uses tags well enough. But, like, what if the tags could just be automatically generated based on the words in the post or the words that we speak on the podcast? So, there's just, like, so many, like, new features that will make it better. Your product is going to be better for your end user. And even starting now and, like, when those features are not enabled, like, it's not, like, necessarily an AI feature, but it's like, wow, I wish this had better grouping of podcasts, or I wish that you had better tagging, or that your search is not very good because it's just a text match whereas there's a lot more depth that could be added with AI. So, integrating AI into our websites and our applications that we're building is going to become just another skill that you, as a web developer, have. VICTORIA: No, I think that's a really interesting take on it. And I'm curious if you've also seen AI used to even, like, suggest better standards for code or certain design patterns and, like, tools that help you, like what you said, kind of get better at coding faster. WES: That's the thing people are talking about. Like, if you're learning to code, should you use these types of things? Because, like, you can just hit Tab a couple of times, and it might look good. And it certainly can bite you. Especially if you need to be able to go back and edit that code to fix it, you need to understand how it works, so there's that part of it. But, man, does it make you faster for doing a lot of common things that you will be doing over again. It just really helps you out, so I'm a big fan of it. I have lots of complaints about it as well, but I think it's here to stay. VICTORIA: [laughs] Yeah, it's here to stay. And I've talked to founders who are really excited about it, and maybe they weren't, you know, they don't have years and years of React development experience, but they know the functions that their app needs to do. And they're able to use coding prompts and tools to kind of create at least a minimal product of what they want to build, so it's really exciting. WILL: I totally agree with AI because I use some, especially with the coding, and it makes it so much faster, but I do think you still have to know what you're doing. Because I think you posted on it, like, in one of the coding helpers that I use in VS Code, it still doesn't know how to close out the end of the line. You have these extra backticks or whatever. And it is like, so, as a new developer, you still have to understand your code, or that's going to drive you crazy every time that you use it [chuckles]. WES: Yeah, that's extremely frustrating, the backticks. I've had an issue open on GitHub Copilot for about a year now. They've said they fixed it, and a couple of little situations, it's been fixed. But I would love to, like, talk to somebody about, like, the actual issue because if you give the broken code back to the AI and say, "Fix it," it fixes it. So [laughs], it knows what's wrong. I just, I don't know. Yeah, you still have to know these things. WILL: You taught at Ladies Learning Code and then HackerYou. Did that help you overcome the imposter syndrome of teaching? I don't know if you knew how big your courses were going to become. But what did the imposter syndrome look like for you during that time, or did you even have it? WES: To a certain point, yeah. I think everybody has imposter syndrome, and that's good. Because if you're so confident that you're so amazing and blessed at this specific thing, then your head is probably too big, and [chuckles] you probably don't know what you don't know. But with a lot of my stuff, I'll often just ask people who know better than me. Like, that's a big part of what it is, is you can just consult experts or like, "Hey, what do you think about this?" Or "Is this the best approach?" Or "Here's my code. Do you mind running through it really quickly and see if there's anything that sticks out?" People are often, like, you can pay them, or people are often willing to help, so there's that. And like, also, you have to just know that this is for the people who enjoy it. Like, I'm not making courses for people who are better developers than I am. I'm making courses for people who like the way that I explain specific things. And then, like, another thing that probably really helped me is that I have, like, a 100% money back, no time limit on it. And that just makes me feel good about like, hey, like, if this is not actually good, if you do not think that this is good, or if you just don't jive with the way that I explain things, no sweat, you know, here's your money back. You keep going. And that makes me feel a lot better because it's not like I'm trying to fleece somebody for money and trick them into buying the course. Like, I feel pretty good about it, and if you feel pretty good about it, then we're both happy. WILL: Yeah, that's amazing because I feel like there's certain things that I would love to get started, but that imposter syndrome and also, like, the opinionated developers out there, like, you know what we are talking about. But it just seems like it would be hard to start with that. So, that's why I asked that question. WES: Yeah, I've learned that, like, a lot of these people that have these extremely harsh opinions are, A, they lack all the social skills, so there's something with them that they just don't have it. And you have to understand that that's just something that they have, and they may not be trying to be a jerk. That's just kind of the way they are. And if people are overly opinionated, it's usually because they're, like, covering for their own insecurity of what they want, not always. But a lot of times, I feel pretty good about people telling me, "Oh, you could do it this way," or "No, why are you doing it this way?" Like, I feel pretty confident in my skillset, but I also am always willing to learn and always willing to be corrected and learn new tips and techniques because that's how you get better. So, the people that are constantly being angry online and throwing around opinions and saying things are garbage, that's very scary for beginners because they think, oh, like, am I learning the wrong thing? I don't want to waste my time here. Like, am I going to lose my job if I don't learn it? And the reality is it's not that cut and dry, you know, it's a lot more easygoing. So, I try to convey that as well. And I don't put too much into these silly people who get really angry at semicolons or something silly like that. WILL: That's good advice. That's good advice. Because I think there's been some stuff that I want to do, that's held me back. So, that's really good advice. I appreciate it. WES: Yeah, just do it, like, you never know. Like, if someone's calling you out for putting yourself out there, like, that's a really big jerk thing to do. And I've called people out as well. Like, I don't get it as much anymore, and that probably has to do something with the fact that I've sort of established myself. But several times in the early days, people would be, like, mean. And I would just be like, "Hey, like, just call people out, like, nicely, but, like, hey, you don't have to be mean about it. I'm just trying to share what I've learned here." And that usually gets them. VICTORIA: Yeah. It's like, what are your intentions with providing this feedback to me right now? Like, are you trying to help? [laughs] Because it doesn't really feel that way. No, I appreciate that. And, you know, I'm also...part of thoughbot we've traditionally put out a lot of trainings, a lot of, you know, Upcase things on Ruby on Rails. And with my team, I'm looking at putting together some workshops around site reliability engineering and things that would be helpful for developers to learn how to instrument their code. So, speaking of advice that you would give to maybe any engineer or any developer who's looking to share their expertise, or put together a course, or even a blog post about what they're learning, like, what would you advise someone who's trying to create content like that? WES: Put it out there. When I released my Sublime textbook, keep in mind, a book about Sublime Text that's a pretty niche thing, there was already two books out there on that exact topic. And a couple of times, I was like, is anyone going to want this? There's already one of them out there. Should I even write this blog post? There's 70 out there. And just keep in mind that, like, the way that you explain it or the specific issue that you hit or whatever, it might be the way that really clicks for somebody else. So, I always tell people just put it out there. You never know what is going to come of it. It's likely going to be a net positive for the web development world in general. So, don't ever feel that you shouldn't put yourself out there because you might not know absolutely everything about it. Just share what you know. That's how we get better. VICTORIA: Yeah, I had a friend many years ago who we used to organize Women Who Code, and she said, "Do you think anyone would really be interested in, like, a cloud series of these topics?" And we're like, "Oh, maybe not." In the first event we had around Cloud for Women Who Code, I think, like, 30 people showed up. So yeah, put it out there, see who's interested, and go from there. That's great advice. WES: Yeah. On the same topic, is like, 'Will somebody want this?' is a huge question. People always come to me and they say, "Hey, do you think if I make a course on X, Y, and Z, will people buy it?" Or they'll put out a tweet that says, "Hey, would you buy this, or would you attend this?" And everybody's always like, "Yes, yes, yes," just trying to be supportive. But at the end of the day, you have to test these things by actually putting things out there. So, for me, how did I know the first thing I wanted to do was Sublime Text? It's because I put out blog posts on probably 20 different topics, and those were the posts that just hit really well, and they really resonated with people. So, like, if you're trying to understand, like, will it work? You can test those things very easily by putting a YouTube video up, putting a couple of TikToks up, write a blog post, put a couple of tweets up. And, eventually, when you put out enough content, you're going to start to see a trend in a specific area, and that will give you a little bit of guidance as to what it is you should pursue. WILL: That's great advice. Have you had any hurdles through your journey of online courses and the podcast, releasing podcasts? WES: I feel like I'm always, like, course-correcting. I've never had, like, a flop. And, like, I've had courses I've shelved. Early on, after Sublime Text, I was like, I'm going to do a gulp course, which was, like, a build tool for JavaScript. And then webpack started to get a little bit more popular, and I was like, okay, well, maybe I'll just make a tooling course in general, but I was like, ah, that's kind of way too big. And after, like, working on it for a couple of weeks, I was like, you know what? Like, I'm going to scrap this because I don't think that this is it, you know? So, just kind of always listening, always feedback, and course correcting is probably my biggest advice there for the hurdles. There's stuff that comes up, like people stealing the courses. And, like, I had early access to one of my courses once, and somebody bought it with a stolen credit card and then put it up online. And, like, that's incredibly deflating because now there's your unfinished course out there before people could even buy it. And people will spam you and run DDoS attacks on you and lots of stuff like that, where people are just...they see that. And that's always really frustrating, but you kind of roll with the punches and kind of keep working on it. WILL: Wow. That's interesting. So, someone bought the course with a stolen credit card, and they released it early to the public? WES: Yeah. I don't know if I should say this or not, but there's a very large Russian website that is...literally, they have a paid membership, and the whole point is that you pay for the membership, and you get access to every course ever. Sometimes, they use paid cards, and sometimes it's stolen cards. WILL: Oh, wow. WES: They just buy every course by every creator, and they put it up on this thing. And you can get it for free for the first, like, three months, and then it goes under their paid thing. And that stuff was really frustrating to me at first, but I've learned just to...the web development community is incredibly supportive, and I have nothing to complain about, really. People who do want to support you will support you. WILL: That's neat. That's really neat. VICTORIA: Yeah. And speaking of the web development community, are there events or conferences you go to or different, like, places where you really connect to the web development community? WES: Yeah. Conferences are fantastic. I really enjoy that those are back. So, React Miami is coming up. It's going to be a really fun one. But I go to a couple of conferences a year, and I usually speak at them. We also do meetups every now and then with Syntax where we'll rent out a bar and get a bunch of merch and stickers and just kind of chit-chat with everybody. That's honestly, my favorite is just going to a meetup where there's no talks or anything. It's just a bunch of interesting people in a room, and you get to talk with all kinds of cool people. VICTORIA: That's fun, yeah. I've been organizing a monthly CTO lunch down here in San Diego, and it's like, we just get together and have lunch and, like, talk about different stuff [laughs]. WES: Love it. VICTORIA: And it's really great. I used to organize those meetups with, like, two speakers, and then there was pizza and drinks and all that stuff to coordinate. And it's a lot easier just to kind of get everyone together and talk, which is what most people want anyways [laughs]. WES: I'm always bummed when you go to a conference and the, like, after party has, like, a band or, like, music is bumping. It's like, I just want a quiet room with some drinks that I can talk to people and have a good conversation, you know. VICTORIA: Yeah, I go to a lot of events, a lot of conferences, a lot of events. I see a lot of different types of stickers and design and anything like that. So, I thought it might be fun to ask you about that. Like, you know, I don't know if you can share us a link of what your stickers look like. Or how do you make it fun and interesting for you to have that kind of thing to hand out? WES: Once a year, once a year and a half, I make these sticker packs, and they have, I don't know, 15 or so stickers in it, various web development things. And it's a pretty big production because I get a lot of them done. So, the last time I sold 11,000 packages of them, and I sell them for five bucks shipped anywhere in the world. And it's, like, a huge logistical hurdle to try to make that happen because there's so much to it. But it's really fun for me because I'm able to do something that is fun. A lot of people aren't able to go to conferences and get the stickers, and they want that. They want to feel part of a community, and everybody loves getting a pack of stickers. So, I've been doing that for probably seven years now. Just right now, I'm just doing a little bit of research into what the next pack is going to look like and some new materials that have hit the sticker world [laughs], so it's pretty fun. The website is bos.af with, like, bos.af. That might not work anymore. I got note that the people who I registered the dot AF domain name from have lost contact with the Afghanistan domain authorities. So, it's possible I might just lose that domain name, which is a bit of a bummer because that's a really cool domain name, but that's where I sell them once a year. And, usually, they're only for sale for about a week, and then they're done selling, and I do the whole shipping thing around the world. VICTORIA: Wow. I did not think you were going to say, "Sold 11,000" sticker packs. That's really impressive [laughs]. WES: Yeah, it's crazy. It's almost 200,000 stickers if you think about it. VICTORIA: That's, like, a major production. I bet when you got into web development, you didn't think you'd also have a side hustle making stickers off of it [laughs]. WES: Yeah, it's crazy. Like, I was, like, sending them out with stamps, and it's just like, I was holding in one single hand, like, $4,000 worth of stamps. It's crazy to think. VICTORIA: I can imagine going into the post office and being like, "I need $4,000 worth of stamps [laughs]," but that's great. WES: The first time I just started dumping them into mail, I would cross the border because I'm in Canada, and the USPS is much cheaper. So, we would just cross the border, and then we just dumped them into mailboxes. And it was okay. But they were like, "Hey, like, next time, just, like, bring it to the post office, and, like, we have processes for this much mail." I don't mail them out of the U.S. anymore because there's some weird stuff around crossing the border. You have to do all this crazy stuff. But it's pretty crazy buying that many stamps. They usually look at you funny when you go to the store and say, "Hey, I need this many stamps." [laughter] VICTORIA: They're like, "Well, what are you doing?" [laughs] Well, great. I think, let's see, we're coming up at the end of our time here. So, are there any final takeaways for our listeners today? WES: Check me out. I'm at wesbos.com; podcast is at syntax.fm if you want to give it a listen. We post three times a week. And I just encourage everyone keep learning, keep excited about web development because it's a pretty cool industry. VICTORIA: Awesome. Thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. I really enjoyed our conversation. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on X, formerly known as Twitter, @victori_ousg. WILL: And you could find me on X @will23larry. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.

Melissa Sariffodeen has a number of roles and titles on her profile. One of them is "lifelong student."  And it's fitting. As Co-founder and CEO of Ladies Learning Code and Canada Learning Code, lifelong learning is integral to her founder's journey. Since 2011, over 700,000 Canadians from all walks of life have had the opportunity to learn critical skills and build up the confidence to become builders - not just consumers - of technology in an increasingly digital world. In this episode, Sariffodeen joins fellow Ivey alum and Director Internal of Morrissette Entrepreneurship, Deniz Edwards, to share her story and her passion for entrepreneurship, education and technology.

CEO of Ladies Learning Code and Canada Learning Code Melissa Sariffodeen joins the show to talk about the ever-changing field of computer science, and the role it plays for the 85% of 2030 future jobs that do not exist yet today. The London, ON native shares how her love of Harry Potter helped to pique her interest in tech, by giving users a chance to be sorted into one of four houses.Read more...>>>

Maybe the key to success ISN’T always working hard. Find out how this woman took time to not work so hard. SOURCES: https://www.thestar.com/business/2015/05/10/the-leader-heather-payne-hackeryou.html https://junocollege.com/blog/torontos-super-woman-heather-payne Thanks to: Assistant Dominique Viard *Subscribe or follow on social media to get your weekly Encourage Minute: * www.HeidiRew.com https://www.instagram.com/heidirew https://www.facebook.com/theencourageminute

Ladies Learning Code (LLC) is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of teaching 200,000 Canadian women and youth to code by 2020. It's a fantastic organization that Georgian Partners is proud to support. In this episode, Steve Leightell speaks to two of LLC's founders, Melissa Sariffodeen and Laura Plant, to learn more about who the organization works with, what their goals and objectives are, and how they're making a difference in tens of thousands of lives each year. You'll learn about: • What LLC is and how it works (0:32) • The women in tech problem and what it means (1:47) • Some of the LLC's success stories (6:55) • How LLC exposes students to other tech companies (12:08) • Some of the challenges LLC has overcome over the past five years (13:02) • The LLC's main objectives (15:00) • The demographics of LLC's target audience (18:49) • How to get involved and offer your support to LLC (21:34)

"Something I always suggest to founders is if you can solve one of your own problems then that's really interesting."Rebranding takes a lot of work. If you've ever pursued this difficult project at work, you know how much work and how many people are involved in the process. Juno College is the newly rebranded HackerYou and the rebrand has been widely accepted and loved!Heather shares how her entrepreneurial mindset changed after she had both of her children and how she stepped back and hired people to fill roles (and succeed in them!). She also discusses how she entered into Y Combinator, and in typical founder fashion, leapt on the last minute opportunity and changed vacation plans to attend. If you've ever considered entering into Y Com, Heather discusses the benefits of being part of it. Find out Heather's journey from Ladies Learning Code (now Canada Learning Code), to HackerYou, to officially accredited Juno College of Technology.Support the show (https://www.floatorfounder.com/our-sponsors.html)

GUEST BIO: In this episode Phil talks to Wes Bos. Wes is a Fullstack web developer and designer who spends most of his time working with JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5.  Wes is also a lead instructor at HackerYou, an instructor for Ladies Learning Code and a regular conference speaker on everything from Front End Dev to ServerSide JavaScript. KEY TAKEAWAYS: ­­­ (1.00) – Phil asked Wes to tell the audience a bit more about himself? Wes says he has been a Fullstack web developer for about 10 years now. He spends most of his time writing JavaScript. Mostly React on the frontend and Node.js on the backend. He also builds web development courses and has been running his own podcast for about a year now, which is regularly in the iTunes top 40.  (1.53) – Phil asks Wes for a unique IT career tip. Wes starts by saying that for his whole career he has been teaching people how to learn code. Over the years, he has noticed that most people become frustrated with their rate of progress. They want to know what the secret code is in order to understand things. I always tell them that there is no secret. Repetition is what you need to learn. You have to keep putting in the time and just build stuff. Developers need a continual learning mindset and they have to put what they learn into practice. (3.40) –Wes is asked to share his worst career moment. Wes explained that this happened when he was working for an oil and gas company. At the time, he was earning great money. It was a 4-month summer co-op deal, which was fortunate, because Wes hated it. For him, that time was his career low point. However, the experience taught him that he was far better off running his own business. That is what he has done and it is working out really well for him. (5.12) So, has your focus been courses as much as anything else? Wes, says yes, but not only courses. He has continued working as a freelancer to ensure that he stays sharp. But, right now, most of his income comes from his courses and teaching work. (5.53) – Can you take us through your career highlights or greatest successes. Wes ran a blog and wrote a book about Sublime Text. At times he doubted anyone would read it. However, when he finally published it, within a month he had been paid way more for his time than he would have had he used that time to work as a freelancer. It was a good feeling. (7.04) – Phil wants to know what excites Wes about the future for the IT industry and careers. Wes finds it amazing how fast things are developing. He likes the way an ordinary person, a regular developer, can radically change things. That is exciting, so is the fact that industry moves so quickly. It means that anyone can start learning now and be at the forefront quickly if they are prepared to apply themselves. (8.38) - Are there any particular technologies or languages or anything like that, that you think right now are the ones to look at? For Wes it is learning JavaScript and things like TypeScript. Ordinary people can learn how to use it and within 3 or 4 years be doing amazing things with it. (9.28) – What first attracted you to a career in IT? Wes’s dad worked in IT, so they were the first kids on the block to have a computer, followed by the internet. He got used to, and liked, being at the cutting edge of everything and he loved computers. For him a career in IT was a natural progression. (9.57) – What is the best career advice you’ve ever received? Wes tells Phil it was “double your rates”. He tried it and it worked. This enabled him to work part-time on client work and still have enough money and time to spend on other interests. (10.46) – If you were to begin your career again, right now, what would you do? Wes said he would start by spending a lot of time on YouTube just soaking in much as he could. (11.28) – Phil asks Wes what career objectives he is currently focusing on. Wes says he has always “optimized for happiness” and still does today. He is currently able to spend as much time as he wants with his kids, take holidays whenever he needs to, and he feels happy with what he produces. So, his focus is on maintaining that freedom, staying happy. (12.35) – What’s the number one non-technical skill that has helped you in your career, so far? Wes says funnily enough it is writing. He sees himself as a terrible writer who is always making grammar and spelling mistakes. However, he can convey what he needs or wants to be done, in succinct emails, which is a great skill to have. He is also able to write good copy for marketing websites, which is also useful. (13.41) – Phil asks Wes to share a parting piece of career advice with the audience. Wes says – “Just go out there and start. Start doing it rather than sitting around pontificating about it.” BEST MOMENTS: (2.30) WES - "I always tell people, there's no formation without repetition." (3.36) PHIL - "Learning is only balanced by the doing. That's the vital ingredient from my point of view." (3.40) WES - "You definitely have to have a mindset of like a forever learner and you should always be picking up new skills" (7.31) WES – “Technology that you're able to put into just a regular web developers hands or a regular IT person's hands is super powerful" (12.22) WES - "If you really work at it, you can do it from anywhere and you can you can make your own rules." (14.00) WES - "You're going to get where you want to be by actually putting in the time and building that skill whatever it is that you want." CONTACT WES BOS: Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/wesbos @wesbos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesbos/ Website: https://www.wesbos.com    

The strength of Canada’s economy is built through strong foundations, with young skilled leaders and tech-savvy innovators. Canada Learning Code, former Ladies Learning Code, started with the simple vision to empower women to build technical skills. Now, it’s grown through overwhelming support to teach Canadians... The post Coding for Women Founders with Laura Plant – July 26, 2018 appeared first on Startup Canada.

Melissa Sariffodeen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canada Learning Code. She is a celebrated digital literacy advocate who is dedicated to ensuring that women and youth have the critical skills, confidence, and opportunities that they need to thrive in our increasingly digital world. She is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Education Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She taught herself how to build websites from scratch using HTML when she was 11 years old and has been coding ever since.   She also won the 2017 RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur award for Social Change Award   It was originally called Ladies learning code and it started in 2011 out of self-interest for us group of 4 woman who wanted to learn more technical skillset. They wanted to create this opportunity to learn to code and that time in toronto there was not any opportunity or explicitly welcoming for women or for beginners to learn to how to code.   Episode overview:   In this episode, I get to chat with Melissa Sariffodeen of Canada Learning Code where she provided us with a thorough explanation on how important coding is to the younger generations. Here you will find that Melissa and her colleagues really feel the need to empower, educate and inspire teachers to introduce coding to their students.   Their popular course is the Intro to HTML and CSS where the workshop will allow you a day or over a day or evenings to build your own website from scratch or maybe edit a website that you already have. The other popular course is Data Analysis and Visualization where they focus on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) where the desire of people to know how to work and manipulate it visually. They also teach arts and music making things fun and engaging like creating emojis, prints and graphic designs.   For every four learners there is always one technical expert who is there to work with you the entire day for the program and to help you learn.   In this episode, you will also understand the importance of why learning how technology is built and learning coding is going to be critical for every role into the future whether you want to start your own business or whether you are working in a company and you want to jump-start your career; it provides a way of understanding (connecting the dots) of people.   How can you support Canada Learning Code:   If you are technical or run a technical team; volunteering and giving back or hosting our program to their chapters/programs running around 35 different cities around the country; they are always looking for technical mentors or spaces to host their programs because they don’t have a physical space anywhere. They are also looking for innovative content on sponsorship, donations or charity. Resources Mentioned: Tips: “Get started” Understand how coding works and how technology works Launching fast, failing fast, elevating fast Try to serve the best Do not be afraid to try different things Progress is an achievement as well as getting things out there Do not be afraid to fail forward   Tools: Slack Hootsuite   Book: The Radical Candor by Kim Scott How We can Win by Anthony Lacavera   Hootspot: GTA for food Nelson BC for retreat   About Company:   Canada Learning Code is a national not-for-profit organization championing digital literacy education, working nation-wide and across all sectors to equip Canadians with technical skills. To date, the organization has taught over 80,000 learners through their programs, which are offered in over 30 cities across the country.   Founded as Ladies Learning Code in 2011, the organization has evolved to run programming for adults, youth and educators through programs Ladies, Girls, Kids, Teens and Teachers Learning Code. Canada Learning Code’s goal is to create 10 million technology learning experiences for Canadians over the next ten years.   Technical skills are a tool of empowerment, and it is the organization’s mission to ensure that all Canadians - particularly those who are currently underrepresented in the tech sector - have access to learn these critical skills and be active participants in the digital age.   Connect with Melissa:   Website: Canada Learning Code Twitter: @learningcode @melsariffodeen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissasariffodeen/ Instagram: @learningcode Facebook: Canada Learning Code Facebook   Thanks again for tuning in! To help out the show: Please leave an iTunes review or post a comment below. Your help is greatly appreciated. If you know any Canadian Innovators whom you like us to feature, please feel free to email us. Listen to more innovators who are crushing it here. I’m still channeling Gary Vee! Ratings and reviews are my oxygen! Have you seen the new CanInnovate resources & tools page, that provides different offers and discounts. Who doesn’t love to save money? We are a big supporter of Unsplash.com photos. Special thanks to Hitesh Choudhary!

Melissa is the Co-Founder and CEO of Canada Learning Code and is an advocate for providing Canadians (especially women and youth) the critical skills, confidence and opportunities they need to become passionate builders - not just consumers of technology and to inspire everyone to leverage and build technology that has the power to truly change the world. Since 2011, Canada Learning Code has taught over 80,000 Canadians code through one of our programs and they're just getting started. Their goal is to provide 10,000,000 technology learning experiences to Canadians over the next ten years through their programs Ladies Learning Code, Girls Learning Code, Kids Learning Code, Teens Learning Code and Teachers Learning Code. We sat down with Melissa to chat about everything Canada Learning Code and her journey thus far.

Aujourd’hui à prod, on parle avec Cassie Rhéaume, ambassadrice chez Ladies Learning Code MTL - section française - et agente de développement à Concertation Montréal. Elle nous parle de son parcours, de comment elle s’est découvert une passion pour le code et de l’importance de permettre à tout le monde de prendre part à l’innovation technologique.

Cassie Rheaume nous raconte son implication dans Ladies Learning Code, ainsi que le projet sur lequel elle travaille au sein de Concertation Montréal. Elle explique aussi à quel point il est important de favoriser l'implication des femmes en science et en technologie.

May 13, 2017 - Mother's Day edition. Jeff Blanco, Canaccord head of currency; Matt Ramsey, Canaccord Tech Analyst; Jenny Ma, Canaccord REIT analyst; Melissa Sariffodeen, co-founder and CEO, Ladies Learning Code; Tracey Bochner, co-founder and president Paradigm Public Relations; Sandra Longo, founder, Navy Street Charity for Persons with Disabilities.

I talk to a couple of the ladies from Ladies Learning Code, a great Canadian organization that is showing women and girls that code doesn’t have to be intimidating and providing them with valuable tech skills. Find them at ladieslearningcode.com... Continue Reading →

In this episode I'll share with you how I picked up myself up, dusted myself off and started to make positive shifts to my mindset and world around me. We create our reality and can create a life we truly love if we are willing to turn inwards and listen. Takeaways: You can train yourself to think positive thoughts that set you up for success. Self development is a process and takes time. Reinforce positive mindsets with meditation, journaling and asking yourself questions and listening to what comes up. Resources: The Coach training I mentioned - https://erickson.edu/coach-training/art-science-of-coaching/ A great app for getting started with Meditation - https://www.headspace.com/ Ladies Learning Code - in case you are interested in being a maker with tech - http://ladieslearningcode.com/

Heather Payne, founder of Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou, proves you really can do whatever you want when you grow up, as long as you aren't afraid to take risks, do something completely new and really put your heart and soul into it. Long description:  I learned about Heather Payne after I took one of her Ladies Learning Code classes, and man is she one inspirational lady! She's one of the youngest female entrepreneurs I know, having founded both Ladies Learning Code and HackerYou in her 20s. If that's not impressive enough, she's also an angel investor and was named one of Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women. The fact that she's so down to Earth is pretty baffling, but she is. She's pretty much the whole package! For this episode, we chat about how Heather took her idea of maybe one day being her own boss to full on turning her side hustle into her full-time hustle. I think this is something a lot of us can relate to, so it's very cool to hear from someone who has successfully made the jump from 9-5 with a second job on the side to successful entrepreneur in only a matter of a few years. It just goes to show the power of actually taking action. I'm sure we all have ideas we'd love to realize, but most of us never do anything about them do we? We shouldn't be afraid to try new things and take risks, and I have a feeling I'm going to be taking a page out of Heather's guidebook very soon. What Is Ladies Learning Code? I seriously upgraded my coding skills by doing the Ladies Learning Code night classes, and it's a big reason I wanted to chat with Heather for this podcast. Coding was literally a foreign language to me, and the thought of being taught about it with a bunch of advanced coders terrified me. But Ladies Learning Code is a super non-threatening program that really breaks it down into something digestible. Honestly, without learning the basic HTML and CSS skills I learned in the program, there is no way I could have make rebranded my website into what it is today. So check it out, there are courses throughout Canada! Follow Heather on Social Follow Heather on Twitter Connect with Heather on LinkedIn For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/78

Hey the MTJC T-Shirt is back for 2016. We chat about the rumored MacBook Pro refresh, thanks to Justin Stanley, and riff on a Pro iOS or mashup of iOS & OS X.  We dissect the Mac Dev 2016 Survey. Is Apple stealing your Music and are they responsible for dyld crashes? Github has a new pricing policy. Jaime attended CocoaConf 2016 in Seattle. Picks: Star Wars - Episode V “The Empire Strikes Back” Homage, Launcher, GIF, Deadpool, BonMot, Managed App Configuration. Episode 91 Show Notes: MTJC T-Shirt: USA  Edition MTJC T-Shirt: EU Edition MacBook Pro MacID Near Lock Mac Dev Survey 2016 App Camp For Girls Ladies Learning Code Women write better code, study suggests Apple stole my music GitHub unlimited repositories GitLab CocoaConf 2016 Seattle Mark Zarra Daniel Steinberg Brent Simmons James Dempsey Ellen Shapiro Jonathan Penn dyld crash at launch App Config Community (discussion cut from the show) InvisibleRed RoundaboutFM - Episode 55 – Joseph Cieplinski RoundaboutFM - Episode 56 - Agile Bettys Episode 91 Picks: Star Wars - Episode V “The Empire Strikes Back” Homage Launcher GIF Deadpool BonMot Managed App Configuration

Mark Zuckerberg a écrit : "Ne dites pas [à une femme] de marier un geek, dites-lui d’en devenir une." Le prenant au mot, une gang de badass travaille en coulisse pour propulser les femmes dans le secteur de la technologie. Le plan : leur apprendre à coder. La journaliste Isabelle Porter et l’apprentie codeuse Valérie Duhaime discutent du langage du futur avec les ambassadrices montréalaises de l’organisme Ladies Learning Code, Nancy Naluz, Cassie Rhéaume et Iva Olah. Les rencontres extraordinaires, une production d'URBANIA en collaboration avec Le Devoir. www.urbania.ca/rencontres

Meg Smith is the Senior Designer at factor[e], a local design and technology company, and also the Hamilton chapter lead for Ladies Learning Code, a nationwide not-for-profit organization that helps both women and men learn to code.  We chat about both of her roles, and some of her favourite things about the city she's lived in nearly every corner of.

This is the eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Heather Payne(@HeatherPayne), CEO of HackerYou (@HackerYou), part-time and full-time courses for people who want to learn to code. Heather is the co-founder of Ladies Learning Code and was recently named one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women.

Heather meets with me at LLC HQ to talk about how these two companies got started and her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs who might want to follow in her footsteps