Once upon a time, Gina Trapani started Lifehacker. It got big, really big, with the ups and downs of being the sole editor responsible for a website that millions of people read. But after awhile, she wanted to get back to coding. In part one of our two-part interview, Gina talks to us about her journey going from famous blogger to product creator, the risks of building an app based on APIs, and what it felt like to shut down her company.

Show Links

• Udacity (sponsor)
• Postlight
• Lifehacker
• IBM PC Junior
• Track Changes
• Paul Ford episode
• Meet the Twitter API (book)
• The End of ThinkUp
• ThinkUp
• Anil Dash
• TWiG (This Week in Google)
• Leo Laporte
• TWiT
• Danny O’Brien “father of life hacks”

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Ashley Lewis used to light stages. She worked as a theater technician working shows like Hamilton (when it was much smaller) and New York Fashion Week. But after some introspection, she realized that her passion wasn’t in light design, and she searched for other career options. She talks to us about the similarities between coding and her art background, what it’s like working as a theater technician, and how being introspective has helped her on her coding journey.

Show Links

• Linode (sponsor)
• Ira Glass Quote
• OSCON
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Hamilton Musical
• Viking School
• Planet Money podcast
• MIT Open Courseware
• Savannah School of Art and Design

Shoutouts

• Sponsored Shoutout: Linode (Saron)
• The Odin Project (Ashley)
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (Ashley)
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar and other essays by Eric S. Raymond (Ashley)
• Ashley’s blog (Saron)
• CodeNewbie Austin (Saron)

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Nickolas Means talked about airplanes, and in doing so, he connected them with code in beautiful and interesting ways. In this interview, Nick explains how to take seemingly disconnected subjects and put them together in compelling talks, and how he uses his public speaking training to turn these talks into inspiring performances.

Show Links

• Braintree (sponsor)
• Udacity (sponsor)
• NPR One App
• CodeNewbie Logo Contest
• Skunkworks by Nickolas Means
• Conway’s Law
• Scott Hanselman
• Here Be Dragons
• Strunk and White’s Elements of Style
• Brandon Hays
• Ruby Conf 2015

Shoutouts

• Sponsored Shoutout: Udacity (Saron)
• Sponsored Shoutout: Braintree (Saron)
• Alex Harms – The Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership (Nickolas)
• Deckset (Nickolas)
• Garr Reynolds – Presentation Zen (Nickolas)
• Ummo (Saron)
• Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public Speaking (Saron)
• Callback Women (Saron)
• Skunkworks (Nick’s Talk) (Saron)

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When one man decided to crowdfund a bailout for Greece on Indiegogo (a feat the required over a billion dollars), Stella Cotton and her team found themselves in trouble. The site went down, and they had to figure out what to do. Stella takes us through the journey of getting the Indiegogo site back up, shares what she’s learned about site availability and what CodeNewbies can do to be ready for their own heavy traffic.

Show Links

• Linode (sponsor)
• Michael J. Fox Foundation Data Challenge
• W3C
• Kaya Thomas Episode
• RSpec
• Latency
• Feature Flag
• Etsy
• Cache
• Indiegogo
• Heroku
• REDIS
• Apache bench

Shoutouts

• Sponsored Shoutout: Linode (Saron)
• If Me (Stella)
• Julia Evan’s Blog (Stella)
• High Scalability (Stella)
• Down For Everyone or Just Me? (Saron)
• Is It Down Right Now? (Saron)
• The Website Is Down (Saron)

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