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Andrew is the founder of the Remote Ruby Podcast (now a lot more prominent than when we talked!), RubyBlend and CodeFund. We talk about the prison and court systems, why FTP is a terrible protocol, reading code, ADHD and a lot more. For show notes and links, see: http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/andrew-mason-i-expected-college-to-be-basically-boot-camp/

Shai Schechter, co-founder of RightMessage, has been hustling since he was 11. He believes that what's practical is very different for different people. If you see a task through a particular lens (e.g. tech) then that's the way you should do it. Do what comes naturally. For show notes: https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/shai-schechter/

Caitlyn didn't want to go back and get a degree "at my age", but went to Thinkful to learn to be a full-stack software engineer, which is "like being paid to go to school and make cool things forever." It's hard to tell what to focus on when there's so much to learn. "It used different muscles in my brain," she says, as she "learn[ed] to work from a place of frustration." And in the end, "it's either a good time or a good story!" For show notes and links, see: http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/caitlyn-greffly-paid-to-go-to-school-and-make-cool-things-forever/

Jennifer is an early-career cloud engineer. We talk about how she got into software development without having experience before university, and what that meant about picking up the unspoken cultural norms. We also talk about the dark academic aesthetic and how she improves at all of this. For show notes and links, see: https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/jennifer-tran-coding-paradigms-the-satisfaction-of-studying-and-unspoken-cultural-norms/

Ernesto and I talk about how he learned software development, but also some business and management in his competitive public university in Argentina. We talk group projects, learning well and trying things that failed. For show notes and links, see: http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/ernesto-tagwerker-learning-programming-business-and-management/

I met John Pavan early in his career, after he'd just made the transition from nuclear physics to full-time computer programming. We caught up on how C++ is doing and how he's doing in it. We also talked about what he looks for in a software hire, and handling legacy code. For show notes and links, see: http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/john-pavan-coming-to-programming-from-nuclear-physics-and-some-vagaries-of-c++/

Chris Seaton, founder of TruffleRuby, talks with me about getting a computer science Ph.D, how learning compilers is necessarily like an old-style apprenticeship, and a near-the-metal view of complex algorithms for computation. For show notes and links see: For show notes, links and comments see https://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/chris-seaton-on-phds-and-software-apprenticeships/

Michael Dominick, of the Mike Dominick Show, talks to me about patterns in software, the Pokemon API, what he looks for when hiring developers and how he's pretty sure the universe is POSIX compliant. Links available here: http://justtheusefulbits.com/jtub/michael-dominick-your-duck-was-the-only-thing-going-for-it/

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/