Ben Clinkinbeard talks with Dave Rael about being misled, data visualization, JavaScript, caring about the domain, and being a self-taught programmer
Ben Clinkinbeard is a consultant, trainer, and the author of D3 + SVG: How to Create Flawless Charts for Any Screen. His video courses include Build Interactive JavaScript Charts with D3 and to date, more than 25,000 developers have spent over 18,000 hours watching his video lessons. Ben helps organizations improve their data visualization capabilities by providing advice, education, and custom development.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Ben Clinkinbeard
- - Ben and D3.js
- - Working in boring domains with tedious tasks
- - Ben's experience with both client and service-side web programming
- - How Ben got started in software and misleading marketing information regarding a college major
- - The good and bad of being a largely self-taught programmer
- - The applicability of computer science concepts to the typical daily life of a developer
- - Ben's comfort with public speaking and sharing information and the intimidation of people with impressive educational backgrounds
- - Ben's story of failure - executing on an opportunity in a business without interest in the domain
- - Ben's success story - incremental growth of knowledge and gradual acquisition of competency
- - How Ben stays current with what he needs to know
- - Ben's book recommendations
- - Ben's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Ben
Resources:
Ben's book recommendation:
Ben's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Care about the domain in which you are working
- Don't be attached to your code
- Do more than the bare minimum - find the right balance in the space between not caring and obsessing