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:
- - Dave introduces the show and Chris Ferdinandi
- - Comparing JavaScript to snowboarding - learning stages, competence, and Harry Potter illustrations
- - Chris's journey through human resources, web design, blogging ,and software development
- - How teaching career development turned into creating software
- - Designers and developers
- - Chris's human resources blog
- - Common images regarding software developers and designers
- - The virtue of shipping and the value of growth
- - The things that "light Chris up"
- - The ways Chris educates on https://gomakethings.com/
- - Chris's book recommendation
- - 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
- - Chris's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Chris
Resources:
- Go Make Things - Chris's website
- Chris's JavaScript Guides
- Chris's Courses
- CSS-Tricks
- Shawn Wildermuth on Developer On Fire
- Amy Hoy
- Mozilla Developer Network
- Wes Bos
- Jonathan Stark on Developer On Fire
- Jonathan Stark's Website
- Garr Reynolds: "Presentation Zen" | Talks at Google
- Ditching Hourly - Jonathan Stark's Podcast
- The Dance - Tony Arata
- Kalzumeus Software
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