George and I talk about how he learned to do what we do. He loved his classes on security, and I'm envious. He doesn't remember his classes on mathematics — I might envy that, too. We talk about how hard making good games is, a little. And we talk about how you need to think of each job as a stepping stone to the right next thing. 

For show notes, links and comments see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/george-sheppard-security-uml-and-what-is-more-important-than-money/

Jared and I talk about his journey through all sorts of programming platforms, from the Commodore 128, through PHP to Ruby and onward. He talks about Object Oriented programming, Rails service objects and why he doesn't like classes that are just functions. He talks about how GitHub brings a little of the benefits of pair programming to the single-programmer experience. We even talk a little language performance, and how machine learning code looks weirdly like graphics and GPGPU.

For show notes, links and comments see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/jared-white-the-trip-from-php-to-ruby/

In this episode, Chris and I talk about the black magic of video game timing, why you should build your own package manager, why you should write what you love, why Chrome using All The Memory is a good thing and what you can learn from Porsche redesigning their whole car every four years.

For show notes, links and comments see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/chris-oliver-the-black-magic-of-video-game-timing/

In this episode, Drew and I talk about job interviews, static and dynamic languages and a little of everything career-related.

For show notes, links, comments and transcripts see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/drew-carpenter-static-and-dynamic-langs/

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Swizec and I talk about his theory-heavy education in Slovenia and how extremely useful it's been to him. We also talk about educational overengineering, automata theory, why NoSQL is usually a mistake and whether online education has jumped the shark.

For show notes, links, comments and transcripts see http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/swizec-teller-the-value-of-theory-and-why-not-to-build-an-analytics-service/

Alain and I talk about the old days; about jumping into a first job in PHP because Commodore 64 coding was probably close enough; about how, to be really great on a development team you can skip most of the university education, but learning sport should probably be mandatory.

For show notes, links, comments and transcripts see https://justtheusefulbits.com/alain-mauri-to-be-a-great-developer-learn-sport-instead-of-computer-science

Jake and I talk about basically just getting lucky... And also about mastery and understanding the fundamentals of computer science. We talk about university and how it works well for some things (theory, longer-term understanding) and poorly for others (basic how-to-build understanding.)

We also talk about the semi-lost art of whiteboard interviewing and how to prep for it if you have way too much time on your hands. And the idea that there are only so many approaches to problems in the world. And maybe a bit about how much better it would be to be a coding recluse in a cave in Norway.

For show notes, links, comments and transcripts see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jake-yesbeck-on-getting-lucky-mastery-and-the-fundamentals

Mike, of course, is most famous in the Ruby community for Sidekiq. Outside Ruby, you're more likely to know him for Faktory. Mike and I talk a lot about his education in and out of university and how it's served him. We also talk about how that's changed over the years as his career has continued.

Tyler Williams talks about what made his education good. He's actually going back after years of development to finish his degree and get a master's degree. Not everything was perfect, not everything was good, but he thinks there are parts you can't easily replace in a formal education.