If you often find your days spiraling out of control, you’re not alone! Ensuring you have a productive workday isn’t always easy. There are many ways you can structure your day, and everyone has a different method that works best for them. This week on the podcast we’re giving you a rundown of our favorite productivity hacks you can use to improve your everyday life, both at work and at home. Let’s dig in! Show Notes 2:30 - Take care of your physical and mental health 11:33 - Scheduling...

Git is both simple and complex. You can usually get through your workday by memorizing a few commands, but under the hood there’s so much more to it. Today we will dive deep into Git with a special guest, Monica Powell. Let’s dive in! Shownotes 2:08 - Monica's introduction 2:44 - GitHub & other remotes 7:50 - Common Git commands 22:23 - Branches 31:26 - Debugging 36:01 - Workflows 41:43 - GitHub features 47:12 - Contributing to open source 50:33 - Shoutouts 52:40 - Where can you find...

Did you know that over one-third of the world’s workforce freelances at least part-time? As freelancing becomes more popular, you may be considering giving the freelance lifestyle a shot. This week on the podcast we’re giving you an introduction to freelancing, from establishing your rates and building a portfolio to finding your first freelance client and managing the project. We close with some final tips, including how to avoid scope creep and how to take time off as a...

Accessibility is the process of creating applications that are usable by everyone, especially focusing on those with disabilities. As web developers, it’s important that we design and build our applications to be usable by everyone, so in today’s episode, we’re joined by Wendy Fox, the design systems lead at LogMeIn, to discuss nine common pitfalls of application accessibility and what you can do to fix them. Show Notes 4:46 - Why should we care about accessibility? 8:43 - Types of...

Have you ever worked on a team comprised of people from all over the world and wondered why you were having difficulty communicating and getting work done? That’s because every culture has their own way of communicating. Today we’ll chat about how different cultures communicate, give negative feedback, make decisions, and perceive time in the hopes that you can improve your team collaboration. Show Notes 01:20 Does talking about culture cause us to stereotype? 10:00 Communicating 16:54...

React is a frontend library that is in super high demand in the industry. But, it can be difficult to get up and running with. Today we’ll talk about with React: why it’s so great, how data flows, and the gotchas we encountered when learning it. Let’s get started! Shownotes 02:15 What is React? 06:35 Framework vs. Library 10:43 Why is it helpful? 12:32 What is a component? 22:52 React's lifecycle 25:47 Data in React 36:34 JSX 37:24 Setting up a React app 43:34...

What’s the difference between a junior and senior developer? While there’s no distinct measure from one title to the next, you can measure your progress in three areas: knowledge, coding, and communication. This week on the podcast we’re doing a deep dive into the progression from junior to senior dev. Shownotes 02:19 The use of "engineer" in titles 04:43 What levels are there for developers? 08:24 The importance of job titles 11:22 Does years of experience matter? 17:17 What knowledge...

Today we’re talking about everyone’s favorite programming language: HTML! Hypertext Markup Language is the structure of a web page and while it’s not necessarily the hardest syntax to learn, it’s vital to your web applications. Show Notes 01:20 What is HTML? 06:44 How did we learn HTML? 09:54 Elements 12:10 Attributes 21:59 Formatting 27:17 Semantic elements 33:04 Styles 38:28 CORS 44:57 Shoutouts Resources CSS episode CORS HTML & CSS Book Egghead Transcript Here is the transcript...

Have you ever dreamed about selling everything you owned and moving across the world to begin a new life? In this episode we’re chatting with Rachel Nabors, an American abroad on the React Core team in London. We’ll chat about the pros and cons of moving abroad as well as the logistics. Let’s get started! Show Notes 01:25 Our experiences moving 06:44 Immigrant vs. Expat vs. Digital Nomad 11:04 Pros of moving abroad 35:21 Cons of moving abroad 53:57 Logistics of moving abroad 01:02:39...

There’s a classic interview question: what happens when you type a URL into the browser? To answer this question, we need to explore how the internet works. In this episode, our first of season 4, we’ll dive into URLs, DNS, basic networking, and how the browser works. Show Notes 02:08 Life updates! 04:19 How much do we know about the internet? 06:11 Servers 12:08 DNS lookup 19:04 Request/Response Cycle 27:48 TCP/IP 28:46 The browser 33:13 Internet history 36:09 Shoutouts Resources How the...

Systems design interviews are becoming more and more prevalent and can indicate your ability to work with complex systems. Many engineers struggle with the systems design interviews as a result of their inexperience developing large-scale systems. Today we’ll teach you some of the foundational elements of systems design so you can nail your next interview. Show Notes 01:30 What is systems design 07:20 Key characteristics of a distributed system 13:24 Load balancing 17:48 Caching 31:05 Data...

Have you ever written code to add a new feature that ended up breaking an existing feature? Or, have you ever written code that works in one scenario but breaks in a bunch of others? I think we can all admit to this as developers! Well, this is where testing shines -- we write code to test our other code so we immediately get warned if our code breaks something else! OR doesn’t work in every scenario. In this episode, we’ll talk about a bunch of types of testing and why they’re helpful....

One niche in development that we have no experience with is building mobile apps. Luckily, today we have an expert to teach us all about it: Timirah James who is the founder of TechniGal LA and a developer evangelist. Show Notes 02:00 - Can you tell us a bit about yourself? 05:20 - What was your path to becoming a developer? 18:00 - What’s your day-to-day like? 21:00 - What technologies does an iOS dev work with? 33:19 - How do you get your app accepted into the App Store? 40:22 - What is...

Micro-interactions are small animations that delight our users and they are changing the way we design and build our applications. Micro-interactions have many benefits like enhancing perceived performance, indicating state change, and drawing users’ attention to something on the page. Today we’ll dive into micro-interactions and the animation libraries you can use to build them. Show Notes 02:25 - What are micro-interactions? 05:48 - Why are they important? 10:55 - How do we build...

We’ve talked a lot about interviewing and getting hired in tech from the engineering perspective, and today we’re going to build on that. We have a special guest, Hilliary Turnipseed, the founder of Hill Street Strategies to talk about hiring from the recruiting perspective. She specializes in hiring and maintaining diverse teams. We also want to give a big shoutout to Black Girls Code, if you're able to, please donate! Show Notes 01:13 - Tell us about yourself! 08:37 - Tell us about Hill...

Shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, Louisville police entered the apartment of Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker using a battering ram to force open the door. Breonna Taylor was shot at least eight times and pronounced dead at the scene. No drugs were found in the apartment. June 5th would have been Breonna’s 27th birthday. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for...

For the month of May we read "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. "Outliers" examines the factors which contribute to high-levels of success and while we often attribute success to circumstance today we’ll discuss our thoughts to see if we agree. Show notes 1:08 - What does it mean to be successful? 6:12 - How does privilege play into success? 22:12 - Practical intelligence versus analytical intelligence 30:52 - Our thoughts on the book Resources Outliers Nader Dabit's tweet Goodreads Group The...

Today we're talking about routing and switching, starting with layer 1 of the OSI model. Let's dig in. JUST KIDDING I know nothing about that kind of networking, but we ARE talking about networking today! Networking is a great opportunity to meet new people in the same industry, learn new skills, and develop your career. This week we’re talking all things networking: why we network, how to network, and what to do if you’re really not that into networking. Let’s jump in!

Developer community is centered around the idea of nurturing and amplifying community voices within a company and the head of developer community is responsible for leading this effort. Today we’re joined by Kim Maida, Head of Developer Relations and Community at Gatsby. We’ll discuss what her job entails, the ins and outs of developer advocacy, advice for someone looking to get into this field, and more. Show notes 2:34 - Can you tell us a bit about yourself? 3:27 - What does it mean to...

JavaScript is notorious for being one of the most popular, yet also one of the most despised programming languages to learn, so today we’re covering some of the intermediate and advanced JavaScript concepts! We’ll discuss convoluted topics like generators, prototypal inheritance, and the rendering engine. Knowing intermediate JavaScript concepts like the call stack, context, scope, the prototype chain, higher order functions, async programming, and the event loop is invaluable and will help...

Welcome to season 3 of the LB podcast. This season we’ll cover topics ranging from advanced JavaScript to networking. We’ll chat about Git & GitHub, making money outside your 9-5 job, and many more topics. For our first episode of this new season, we’ll be reminiscing about our coding history and discussing some advice we wished we had when learning to code ranging from asking more questions to negotiating job offers. Show notes 01:50 - Our stories 09:29 - Find a community 10:43 - Take...

There are so many ways to learn to code, and so many things to know. Today we’ll give our perspectives on different paths you can take. Whether you’re looking for your first dev job or you’re looking to advance your web development knowledge, we’ll be covering a ton of different options for you. 01:50 - What did we know before getting our first jobs? 06:40 - T-shaped knowledge 08:38 - HTML 14:07 - CSS 18:24 - JavaScript 25:00 - Backend 31:00- How the web works 32:15 - Testing 37:13...

How often have you found yourself working late into the night at the office? Or maybe taking advantage of the quote unquote benefits like free dinner only to realize that your work life balance is strained? If this sounds like you, chances are it might be crazy at work. For this month’s Ladybug Podcast book club, we read "It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work" by Jason Fried and David Heinemeyer Hansson, best known as DHH. In it they share their expertise about maintaining a healthy work life...

On our podcast, we talk a LOT about what to learn as a developer. But today we’re switching gears and talking about HOW to actually learn all this information. We’ll discuss the concept of metacognition, or how we learn and retain information as well as some strategies for making the process easier.

This week we have a super exciting episode, we’re chatting with Courtland Allen, the founder of Indie Hackers. We’re going to talk about what indie hacking is, how to get started with it, and his advice for gaining traction with indie products. Let’s get started!