Detailed Notes
Welcome back to episode 2 of Season 22 of our podcast, where two developers discuss the journey from coder to developer. In this episode, we delve into the pivotal moments that transform a person from simply writing code to truly solving problems with technology.
Continue reading: https://develpreneur.com/embracing-the-problem-solving-mindset-from-coder-to-developer
Join us in future episodes as we continue to explore the developer journey and share more insights on becoming better problem-solvers in the world of technology.
Stay Connected: Join the Developreneur Community
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
Additional Resources
* Coder or Developer – Learning To Solve Problems (https://develpreneur.com/coder-or-developer-learning-to-solve-problems/)
*Tools to Separate Developers from Coders (https://develpreneur.com/tools-to-separate-developers-from-coders/)
* Start A Developer Career – Interview With Robert Cooke (https://develpreneur.com/start-a-developer-career-interview-with-robert-cooke/)
Transcript Text
[Music] all right and we're just going to cut right into it so we'll give a little bit of time here we'll do one of these so you know how to cut welcome back we are continuing Season 22 episode two so it's just two two two today to too much we got to figure out what our Topic's gonna be and I'm thinking because you were going as you're going through with the the the overview summary that uh maybe the first one we talk about is and I talked too long and now I forgot it I will come back to it in a moment oh when you become a developer what I'm thinking about is that the progression from writing code just a coder to when do you realize you're a developer or maybe it is what are some signs that you like you know you're a developer if you know something like that because I think all of us had that point where you know if I think back even in my childhood where there's a certain point where it's like I'm just writing code and there's a point where you get was like oh I'm not it's not really about writing code it's really about solving that problem does that make sense yeah I like that I mean that brought back memories of you know college trying to be a doctor and picking all the medical courses but yet I'm writing all the code for all those seniors that can't pass Pascal that has been uh yeah sometimes that's what like gets you into it is it's like oh I'm not doing this all the time I'm doing this thing over here so maybe I should do this cool little coding job thing and then you know sort of build into where it's not just like hey I'm making an extra Buck on the side writing some code but now I'm you know I'm solving Pro business problems and now it changes from you know I'm only write I love to write JavaScript to I just like solving problems on computers and you know leveraging that technology so cool we'll see where this goes because this is so heavily scripted just like the last time hello and welcome back to episode two of Season 22 and we are two people talking about development we're talking about building better developers we're talk we are developing or we're talking about how to build better developers this is the podcast this is the place to be this season we are talking about the developer Journey this episode we're going to get into a little bit it's more of like I guess a retrospective for ourselves but it's how do you know what was that point where you go from being a coder to becoming a developer what are the things maybe that pointed you to to being a developer which is really I know we've talked about it here and there but the the gist of it this episode is going to be about like turning from that uh that person that likes to just sit there and write code to that person that's actually looking at how to solve problems and how to write better code I would love to become a better host but I'm not I'm going to continue with the same thing where I talk too much before I introduce myself my name is Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of developing or also founder of RB Consulting where we do we solve problems that's what we do but really focused on simplification Automation and integration of systems because technology sprawls all over the place and we like to come in with our little broom and and stuff and clean it back up and make it nice and neat and put it in a nice little box and little ribbon on the top and maybe a little chalk I'm going too far because now I'm going to let go over to Mike go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is mikash I'm one of the co-found is a developer ner also the founder of Envision QA where we help small businesses midsize businesses and clinicians write custom software to help automate their business needs so I'm G to tell a little story about way back one of the things that like was I think was one of a turning point for me from being a coder to a developer this is in high school and I had taken some courses I knew a little bit of programming stuff like that and we actually were doing a programming competition and we had gone the year before and the programming competition I don't remember the language I think it was I want to say it was basic it may have been turbo Pascal um or it may have been whatever you wanted it to be it may have been that they had a couple different things but the whole point is they would give you a list of all these little problems you know these little like mini code things they're usually basically like you know write a function to do this and it was like basically write a little application that does this you know takes two numbers and adds them together or takes a number then generates a matrix of that size or whatever it is it's always just like little random little things so they're all little sort of self-contained programming problems we had a team of four people first year I went my it was my junior year of high school we go we ended up in second place we you know we split it up there's four of us we've got an we've we've got one computer for the team because that's what you had and so each team had one computer and so what we did is we would sit there and like crank out our code like write it out on uh you know notebook paper so solve it there pseudo code it and then we would take turn sitting in front of the computer and typing our stuff in save it off what however it was that we we sent it to them I think we printed it out and then they reentered it really efficient system I digress we get it up in second place the next year we said all right it's not about programming where this was like how do we win what went wrong What stopped us last year that we can correct so we can win this year and one of the things was that one computer was it was like we would sit there and we write and we had to like transfer it out and all that kind of stuff now yeah if we could have brought a second computer that would have been cheating it would have been awesome we would have kicked their butt instead we're like well what can we do what we can do is we can find somebody that can type faster than we can and so we went from a team of four coders to three coders and somebody that could that understood general you know basic programming stuff so understood programming a little bit but typed faster than any of us you know we were like maybe 40 50 words a minute this is it was just lady that was girl because we're in high school but this girl that was like could crank out 80 to 90 you know words a minute and even with Coach she could just really crank through it so if we you know it would take us 10 minutes take her literally like five or six minutes to enter the same stuff the short part of that is we won we like smoked everybody else and it was like I I will never forget we're sitting there and we're like they didn't announce but third place second and then first and so it's third place and it's like oh and then second place like oh and the team that beat us the year before they hadn't announced them yet and so we're like crap I bet that just didn't work and they announced us so we're like yeah in your face all of you people and we never told anybody what we did until years later I think we finally let the secret out like yeah we just switched up our team and decided to type faster now that to me was a turning point because it wasn't about writing code now technically you would say of course a programming contest is about writing code but really it never is and especially now there's a lot of these these contests out there these hackathons and stuff like that it is not about writing code it is about solving a problem it doesn't matter how you get there it's this is a problem how do you solve it and usually you are graded or scored on the best solution for that problem now that I think when you shift your mindset from I need to write a bunch of code to solve this problem to sort of almost like reverse I need to solve this problem what is the best way to solve this problem then how do I make the code solve that problem is very much like if you think about like test driven development some of these these things that become more modern but to me that is a that is a quintessential point in your journey is there that point where you shift from I'm writing code I'm really cool I can do some code stuff to I'm solving problems I am finding a way to use technology to solve my problems and now I will Sol pass this on to you allow you to solve this problem for a little bit like what are what are your thoughts am I or and maybe do you have another uh like Lynch pin in the in the history of your yourself or you're like this is where I went from coder to developer I actually had a different kind of start so I went through high school doing all premedic courses because actually I wanted to become a surgeon uh when I was in high school uh I still took all the math classes I liked programming but I liked it more of a hobby so I learned all the basic the Pascal but I had a math teacher that basically enforced documentation to the end degree to the point that we weren't really learning how to code or weren't really learning how to write logically we were learning how to write documentation and that applied nothing it bored me to tears so I'm like yep I'm going to be a surgeon forget this this I'm just going to dabble on this and play with this get to college and while I'm taking all my Premed courses I worked in the Central Supply office in the infirm on campus and in my daily job I had to keep track of our inventory within uh our Central Supply we were basically uh providing all the medical supplies to the infirmary and this is back in the early n probably about mid 90s and databases aren't really a big thing on Windows yet at this time so but what we had was we had Excel we had access and we were keeping track of the entire inventory system in Excel every time something came in we had to update one field update another uh you know in out by department and through my first semester okay I learned how the software worked I learned data entry I learned how to keep track of inventory but by the second semester I'm like why are we doing this this is Antiquated there's a lot of double entries uh things weren't making sense so I started learning VBA or macros within office which is another form of programming but what you're thinking is you're now taking a process and you're breaking it down into its components and you're starting to write uh little automation steps or macros to simplify the process by the end of my second semester by the start of my third semester I had actually taken the entire uh Excel spreadsheet system we had and had actually dumped it into access and had rebuilt the whole thing as a database and automated the whole system now mind you I'm doing all this while I'm studying to become a surgeon I'm taking biology chemistry anatomy I'm taking no coding classes I learned all this and this was actually even pre internet we didn't really have internet at the time we had bbs's so I had to pick up books in the library learn how how to do these things and it actually piqued my interest I'm like there's got to be a better way to do this so you start down that Journey not necessarily as a coder but as a problem solver and you're like there's got to be better ways to do this so you start thinking of automation you start thinking of scripting and then you get into coding and you're like wow this is kind of cool okay I you you take the next logical leap now long story short my journey to become a surgeon kind of fell flat once I got into the classes where I to deal with needles CU I have a phobia so bad that I passed out and I couldn't make it through the class long enough to stay awake or conscious without passing out in class so had to Pivot and I decided Well you know I'm good at this you know I really like software I like coding and I decided to give it a whirl and heck here we are 20 plus years later and I'm loving it I think that is a you touched on something that I have found with a lot of people particularly customers that I've worked with is that sort of that aha moment where they're working in usually it is it's like Excel or access or something like that some tool that helps you get some of the some of these things done but then when you jump to the next level where you realize that now well you're working something you're not in this constrained environment and you're especially with like a general programming language because honestly there are very few things from a programming point point of view there are very few few things somebody's going to ask for that you can't that you're not going to be able to say that is possible now it may be very costly it may be very expensive it may be very uh fragile uh for example like scraping is a big thing these days people go out they're getting data from all these different sites and I see all these places are like oh I'd love to have you a customer Rolodex basically so I want to go look at every website in the United States and be able to grab a phone number and a name and an email address and a mailing address yeah that would be awesome but those things don't exist on all these sites and then sometimes they're protected and they're in different formats and there's all these different things that you have to deal with so it could be done but it's going to take a long time because you have to go through and find all of the cases basically and find a way to address all of them you're going to be able to get some you know 8020 rooll you get a lot of stuff the first time around but the closer you get to 100% the more timec consuming and expensive it becomes and so I've had numerous customers but are in that First Leap particularly where they're in this thing that they've got a solution that sort of works they're in a spreadsheet and it works I mean it's like they can move data around it can add numbers it can do some things they needed to do they've got some formulas in there and when you take that spreadsheet the I don't know how but we take that spreadsheet and we just put it into a web application now they lose the the spreadsheet I don't know how often they come back like well we like like the Excel of this where I can like just click on cells and enter some data and a lot of times we end up building that back in for we have some way to build something like that for but somewhere along the way they realize that that was actually maybe inefficient for what they're doing now it may be something where I'm swatting at flies if you're watching the video it's like there's a little Gat that keeps going around so it's it's not me trying to do hand signals or you know like sign language it's me trying to find this little that so A IES for those of you that aren't seeing this just imagine me occasionally swatting a hand out there just to just I don't know liven it up a little bit back to the whole Excel thing a lot of times this goes back to my initial thing is that sometimes we have a hammer and so that's what we're using and that we learn how to solve the problem with the hammer and so we have a spreadsheet and we learn how to solve we Define the problem in a way that it works for the spreadsheet now sometimes we a lot of times we give stuff up because we're we do that with anything when you define it down when you constrain it by definition you're removing options you're you know constraining it but when you start to open it back up and sometimes we don't know how we've constrained it we don't understand where we have shut off Avenues until we open it back up and so sometimes it's it's really fun this is like part of the joy of solving problems is when we T we could take somebody from a spreadsheet that works that does their stuff but they've got all these issues with it where they have to copy it and they have to save it and they have to back it up and if something happens then it can like blow up the whole spreadsheet and sometimes a lot of times they've got little custom VBA code and all these little things they're doing and they would love to be able to integrate but right now they copy and paste stuff all the time and then they copy and paste and they have to correct the pasted data all that stuff you've probably felt that pain at some point regardless of where you're at when that gets turned around to uh like you know maybe like just a form based thing where it's like all the data entry is form based and we can put all these kinds of validations in it and we can avoid breaking their data when they're adding new data and then we can add sweeping scripting type things it's like hey if you click this button it replicates that and boom you've suddenly got a new spreadsheet and it can reset some of your data or we can integrate with other systems so you're not having to copy and pce now now you click a button or behind the scenes at night all of that data gets pulled in shoved into a report now you get to see your report you can slice it dice it throw it into a you business intelligence kind of thing whatever those are the steps that when we start looking to those to me that is really where you're becoming the developer and it's where it's almost I think confusing to some people that writing code may not be your strength like you know like Michael said it's like there's a lot of people that come into this as a developer and they didn't come out of it as a coder so they maybe don't have the same and this maybe some of you you don't have a broad range of computer languages and skills that you have but what you are is a a problem solver so you look at it and you look at what is it that you have you know what are the tool set that you've got there and figure out a way again it is a little bit square peg round hole but you find a way to think make those things work and how do you become a better developer is that you expand that tool set you expand it so that when you realize and I think that's part of that that Journey that we'll talk about is when you realize that the the solutions that you're building the tools that you're using are not ideal that you're having to you know do something it's like this doesn't make sense I think you you you as you said it's like why should it be this way why can't we do it this other way and when you start doing that you explore where those tools and sometimes that's how you create tools as well so I think I'll give you like toss this back you give you some sort of like closing thoughts on that whole journey of coder to developer yeah and in addition to kind of I kind of want to add a little thing on to what you're were talking about there with the spreadsheets and that it doesn't necessarily mean for you to be a coder to have to necessarily work with these spreadsheets or these uh you know screen scrapes things like that your journey could even begin by looking at your business you could be a paper-driven business or in a warehouse and you see a process that why are we doing this so many times we could put this into a computer we could write a little bit of code we can automate this a lot of the things to me for the journey from a coder to a developer is you start connecting those dots you start looking instead of me writing this one particular application for this one thing you start looking at how can I take these systems or these processes that we do on a day-to-day basis how can I streamline that how can I write code that basically makes my life better and at that point you're taking that step on becoming a developer not just a coder yeah and I think that's that's probably the best thing if there's a a parting thought that I think is important is that being a better developer is not about code it really is about solving problems now yeah as a developer you're you're leveraging technology so you're writing code but there's sometimes I I talk to my customers about this I say sometimes the best solution is pencil and paper sometimes and especially starting out because if you automate stuff and code it and do all of that and so now you replicate that solution a lot of times if it's a crappy solution then you are building crap faster you it's like it's one of those things that there are stories about businesses that every time they sold a product they didn't figure out their cost structure right so they were actually losing money every time they sold a product and eventually they went out of business because they sold too many products it cost them too much to advance to you know to get the additional customers and sometimes we have that same thing that instead of writing a bunch of code and leveraging technology in a code sense it may be better to lever leverage technology in a tracking data sense or something like that which you know could go from maybe you're just pencil and paper and that's a pain to handle hand a folder all over the place and instead now you you know maybe it's just as simple as instead of writing it on paper and sending it to you know carrying it to the guy down the street you use an email system and you just and it's you know you didn't have to write any code all you had to do was install something but sometimes that's the first step in your journey to the developer side of solving problems and leveraging Technology particularly using what we have instead of having to reinvent the wheel because that is another area that we get into way too often and we may talk about that in a future episode probably will because we have 31 up or more other episodes ahead of us in this season as always thank you so much for joining us for your journey to become a better developer because we want to get there we want you to get there because when all of us get there it saves us a lot of headaches and a lot of pain and it helps our customers helps literally can make the world a better place sometimes in very big ways because it could be things like you're saving lives you're doing better you know it's maybe in hospitals or something like that where it is literally saving lives sometimes it's making it better because you rate games that people have a fun time playing you know it could be an all points in between so as always shoot us an email at info developer not oh at info@ developer.com if you have any questions comments suggestions because we are open to those we love to get feedback love to take that utilize that and either work it into this season the next episode or sometime in the future we may also have blog articles about it we may have another little like Side YouTube post about it if you're not watching us on our YouTube channel you can go out to youtube.com I think it's SL develop andur you will get the uh the develop andur Channel if not look up d v l p re NE on YouTube developer alo.com you can see our site we've got links out there to all of our stuff including the school. developer.com we've got blog articles we have got hundreds of old uh podcast episodes including hundreds of uh interviews with people ranging from rodeo clowns that are now working for Google to uh and then actually spent some time in Blue Man Group to uh creating our own song at one point and also like you know CEOs down to developers from marketing to you name it we've interviewed them and they are really across the board it's it's amazing how many interviews we have that were awesome that I walked out of there I was taking notes there was maybe like I think there I could count on one hand the ones that weren't that good that were sort of like okay I'm running out of time I need to get off of this interview you are probably saying that to me right now so I am going to let you go go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus time what what's some bonus material that we can we can throw at them this time actually I'd kind of like to throw a few a couple things on from our conversation so you talked about screen scraping so for those of you that might have been in the industry for a while or are still running into this there are still analog ways of collecting data off of tape drives off of like data mining off of hard drives databases things of that nature so it's not just screen scraping we're always talking about but there are areas where you need to get data as well and you need to find ways of abstracting that data be it through Excel uh you know access databases tape drives things of that nature so we talk about one example that's not necessarily always the only example for that particular topic so just to kind of keep an open mind that you know some of the things some of our experiences while they may not fall exactly within what it is you do today chances are it may relate in some way in what you do today you just it might be a little more abstract but a lot of the topics we cover are multi-purpose so don't always take it that oh this is the only way like Rob said object oriented hammer nail you know you you want to always be on the lookout for how can I apply that to what I do or in the problem solving sense am I doing things the right way am I doing good processes you know do I have good processes in place are things streamlined the right way or am I writing out a sheet of paper putting it in a binder handing it to the next person they add sentence hand it to the next person you know would it be better to have an email system would it be better to just have a data entry system so these are things to think about along this journey with us this season I think a little my parting thought on this one is uh think about that tool chest that you you have built over time is that as you get further into your career one of the things that I find very useful is occasionally looking back at what you did 5 10 15 30 years ago whatever it was because sometimes there are some things that you used to do that you've sort of grown out of because you've you've got different sets of tools where sometimes that is actually the best way to go I don't know how many times I've looked at like old uh scripts that I used for various things particularly like to you know to chunk through data or split stuff up or to parse something I go back I'm like oh wow that's actually something I could use right now and sometimes the the technolog is all still here to be able to use that again you know if you have like an old C program you wrote that yeah I mean it doesn't have all these libraries and it doesn't have a user inter a graphical user interface and all that but sometimes it is better to have just a little command line little program that you run that you feed it a file and it kicks something out parer would be an example is it maybe you know a scraper of where it's like hey I just really need to get data out of this thing and put it somewhere else and sometimes it's a lot easier instead of having some drag and drop solution to just feed the big honken file in walk through whatever its format is and start kicking data out on the other side so don't you don't be afraid and I think it's it's actually a good habit to every so often review some of the stuff you did in the past and see if maybe that's something that uh applies to your work today or maybe like we've run into this few time where it is a a worthy project to dust it off and to revamp it in a new Lane language or to you know resurrect it because maybe it didn't make sense back then but now it makes a lot more sense you know maybe you're you were ahead of your time and now maybe your time has come to take that thing to put it out into the world that being said I'm going to let you go out there and put those things out in the world this is season you know 22 episode two we've just wrapped this one up we will come back to episode three and four and guess what five and six after that and we're just going to keep on working our way up until till again we'll probably hit that 3035 range and that will be Season 22 and we'll come back to season 23 we're going to keep doing this at any rate Tuesdays and Thursdays we drop these things out you can catch us on the podcast catch us here on YouTube and uh as always we're going to continue just with this season you're going to get bonus material if you catch us on video you'll also see great things like Rob trying to swat gats as they go by and you know those kinds of things that you just don't catch it doesn't translate well to the podcast uh as I almost digressed into some of the things that come from the old radio oh oh oh did I get oh almost got them anyways that being said I'll let you get back to it I'm going to go kill this natat or SWAT them out or do whatever I can with them so that next time I will be able to just sit here calmly instead of trying to take this guy out uh Mike have a great day the rest of you have a great time and we will talk to you next episode and as always I got to go find look I'm like I'm going to the right spot now I've got my [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
all right and we're just going to cut
right into it so we'll give a little bit
of time here we'll do one of these so
you know how to cut welcome back we are
continuing Season 22 episode two so it's
just two two two today to too much we
got to figure out what our Topic's gonna
be and I'm thinking because you were
going as you're going through with the
the the overview summary that uh maybe
the first one we talk about is and I
talked too long and now I forgot it I
will come back to it in a moment oh
when you become a developer what I'm
thinking about is that the progression
from writing code just a coder to when
do you realize you're a developer or
maybe it is what are some signs that you
like you know you're a developer if you
know something like that because I think
all of us had that point where you know
if I think back even in my childhood
where there's a certain point where it's
like I'm just writing code and there's a
point where you get was like oh I'm not
it's not really about writing code it's
really about solving that problem
does that make sense yeah I like that I
mean that brought back memories of you
know college trying to be a doctor and
picking all the medical courses but yet
I'm writing all the code for all those
seniors that can't pass
Pascal that has been uh yeah sometimes
that's what like gets you into it is
it's like oh I'm not doing this all the
time I'm doing this thing over here so
maybe I should do this cool little
coding job thing and then you know sort
of build
into where it's not just like hey I'm
making an extra Buck on the side writing
some code but now I'm you know I'm
solving Pro business problems and now it
changes from you know I'm only write I
love to write JavaScript to I just like
solving problems on computers and you
know leveraging that technology so cool
we'll see where this goes because this
is so heavily scripted just like the
last time hello and welcome back to
episode two of Season
22 and we are two people talking about
development we're talking about building
better developers we're talk we are
developing or we're talking about how to
build better developers this is the
podcast this is the place to be this
season we are talking about the
developer Journey this episode we're
going to get into a little bit it's more
of like I guess a retrospective for
ourselves but it's how do you know what
was that point where you go from being a
coder to becoming a developer what are
the things maybe that pointed you to to
being a developer which is really I know
we've talked about it here and there but
the the gist of it this episode is going
to be about like turning from that uh
that person that likes to just sit there
and write code to that person that's
actually looking at how to solve
problems and how to write better
code I would love to become a better
host but I'm not I'm going to continue
with the same thing where I talk too
much before I introduce myself my name
is Rob Broadhead I am one of the
founders of developing or also founder
of RB Consulting where we do we solve
problems that's what we do but really
focused on simplification Automation and
integration of systems because
technology sprawls all over the place
and we like to come in with our little
broom and and stuff and clean it back up
and make it nice and neat and put it in
a nice little box and little ribbon on
the top and maybe a little chalk I'm
going too far because now I'm going to
let go over to Mike go ahead and
introduce yourself hey everyone my name
is mikash I'm one of the co-found is a
developer ner also the founder of
Envision QA where we help small
businesses midsize businesses and
clinicians write custom software to help
automate their business
needs so I'm G to tell a little story
about way back one of the things that
like was I think was one of a turning
point for me from being a coder to a
developer this is in high school and I
had taken some courses I knew a little
bit of programming stuff like that and
we actually were doing a programming
competition and we had gone the year
before and the programming competition I
don't remember the language I think it
was I want to say it was basic it may
have been turbo
Pascal um or it may have been whatever
you wanted it to be it may have been
that they had a couple different things
but the whole point is they would give
you a list of all these little problems
you know these little like mini code
things they're usually basically like
you know write a function to do this and
it was like basically write a little
application that does this you know
takes two numbers and adds them together
or
takes a number then generates a matrix
of that size or whatever it is it's
always just like little random little
things so they're all little sort of
self-contained programming problems we
had a team of four people first year I
went my it was my junior year of high
school we go we ended up in second place
we you know we split it up there's four
of us we've got an we've we've got one
computer for the team because that's
what you had and so each team had one
computer and so what we did is we would
sit there and like crank out our code
like write it out on uh you know
notebook paper so solve it there pseudo
code it and then we would take turn
sitting in front of the computer and
typing our stuff in save it off what
however it was that we we sent it to
them I think we printed it out and then
they reentered it really efficient
system I digress we get it up in second
place the next year we said all right
it's not about programming where this
was like how do we win what went wrong
What stopped us last
year that we can correct so we can win
this
year and one of the things was that one
computer was it was like we would sit
there and we write and we had to like
transfer it out and all that kind of
stuff now yeah if we could have brought
a second computer that would have been
cheating it would have been awesome we
would have kicked their butt instead
we're like well what can we do what we
can do is we can find somebody that can
type faster than we can and so we went
from a team of four coders to three
coders and somebody that could that
understood general you know basic
programming stuff so understood
programming a little bit but typed
faster than any of us you know we were
like maybe 40 50 words a minute this is
it was just lady that was girl because
we're in high school but this girl that
was like could crank out 80 to 90 you
know words a minute and even with Coach
she could just really crank through it
so if we you know it would take us 10
minutes take her literally like five or
six minutes to enter the same
stuff the short part of that is we won
we like smoked everybody else and it was
like I I will never forget we're sitting
there and we're like they didn't
announce but third place second and then
first and so it's third place and it's
like oh and then second place like oh
and the team that beat us the year
before they hadn't announced them yet
and so we're like crap I bet that just
didn't work and they announced us so
we're like yeah in your face all of you
people and we never told anybody what we
did until years later I think we finally
let the secret out like yeah we just
switched up our team and decided to type
faster now that to me was a turning
point because it wasn't about writing
code now technically you would say of
course a programming contest is about
writing code but really it never is and
especially now there's a lot of these
these contests out there these
hackathons and stuff like that it is not
about writing code it is about solving a
problem it doesn't matter how you get
there it's this is a problem how do you
solve it and usually you are graded or
scored on the best solution for that
problem now that I think when you shift
your mindset from I need to write a
bunch of code to solve this problem to
sort of almost like reverse I need to
solve this problem what is the best way
to solve this problem then how do I make
the code solve that problem is very much
like if you think about like test driven
development some of these these things
that become more modern but to me that
is a that is a quintessential point in
your journey is there that point where
you shift from I'm writing code I'm
really cool I can do some code stuff to
I'm solving problems I am finding a way
to use technology to solve my problems
and now I will Sol pass this on to you
allow you to solve this problem for a
little bit like what are what are your
thoughts am I or and maybe do you have
another uh like Lynch pin in the in the
history of your yourself or you're like
this is where I went from coder to
developer I actually had a different
kind of start so I went through high
school doing all premedic courses
because actually I wanted to become a
surgeon uh when I was in high school uh
I still took all the math classes I
liked programming but I liked it more of
a hobby so I learned all the basic the
Pascal but I had a math teacher that
basically enforced
documentation to the end degree to the
point that we weren't really learning
how to code or weren't really learning
how to write logically we were learning
how to write documentation and that
applied nothing it bored me to tears so
I'm like yep I'm going to be a surgeon
forget this this I'm just going to
dabble on this and play with
this get to college
and while I'm taking all my Premed
courses I worked in the Central Supply
office in the infirm on campus and in my
daily job I had to keep track of our
inventory within uh our Central Supply
we were basically uh providing all the
medical supplies to the
infirmary and this is back in the early
n probably about mid
90s and databases aren't really a big
thing on Windows yet at this time so but
what we had was we had Excel we had
access and we were keeping track of the
entire inventory system in Excel every
time something came in we had to update
one field update another uh you know in
out by department and through my first
semester okay I learned how the software
worked I learned data entry I learned
how to keep track of inventory but by
the second semester I'm like why are we
doing this this is Antiquated there's a
lot of double entries uh things weren't
making
sense so I started learning VBA or
macros within office which is another
form of programming but what you're
thinking is you're now taking a process
and you're breaking it down into its
components and you're starting to write
uh little automation steps or macros to
simplify the process by the end of my
second semester by the start of my third
semester I had actually taken the entire
uh Excel spreadsheet system we had and
had actually dumped it into access and
had rebuilt the whole thing as a
database and automated the whole system
now mind you I'm doing all this while
I'm studying to become a surgeon I'm
taking biology chemistry anatomy I'm
taking no coding classes I learned all
this and this was actually even pre
internet we didn't really have internet
at the time we had bbs's so I had to
pick up books in the library learn how
how to do these
things and it actually piqued my
interest I'm like there's got to be a
better way to do this so you start down
that Journey not necessarily as a coder
but as a problem solver and you're like
there's got to be better ways to do this
so you start thinking of automation you
start thinking of scripting and then you
get into coding and you're like wow this
is kind of cool okay I you you take the
next logical leap now long story short
my journey to become a surgeon kind of
fell flat once I got into the classes
where I to deal with needles CU I have a
phobia so bad that I passed out and I
couldn't make it through the class long
enough to stay awake or conscious
without passing out in class so had to
Pivot and I decided Well you know I'm
good at this you know I really like
software I like coding and I decided to
give it a whirl and heck here we are 20
plus years later and I'm loving
it I think that is a you touched on
something that I have found with a lot
of people particularly customers that
I've worked with is that sort of that
aha moment where they're working in
usually it is it's like Excel or access
or something like that some tool that
helps you get some of the some of these
things done but then when you jump to
the next level where you realize that
now well you're working something you're
not in this constrained environment and
you're especially with like a general
programming language because honestly
there are very few things from a
programming point point of view there
are very few few things somebody's going
to ask for that you can't that you're
not going to be able to say that is
possible now it may be very costly it
may be very expensive it may be
very uh fragile uh for example like
scraping is a big thing these days
people go out they're getting data from
all these different sites and I see all
these places are like oh I'd love to
have you a customer Rolodex basically so
I want to go look at every website in
the United States and be able to grab a
phone number and a name and an email
address and a mailing address yeah that
would be awesome but those things don't
exist on all these sites and then
sometimes they're protected and they're
in different formats and there's all
these different things that you have to
deal with so it could be done but it's
going to take a long time because you
have to go through and find all of the
cases basically and find a way to
address all of them you're going to be
able to get some you know 8020 rooll you
get a lot of stuff the first time around
but the closer you get to 100% the more
timec consuming and expensive it becomes
and so I've had numerous customers but
are in that First Leap particularly
where they're in this thing that they've
got a solution that sort of works
they're in a spreadsheet and it works I
mean it's like they can move data around
it can add numbers it can do some things
they needed to do they've got some
formulas in there and when you take that
spreadsheet the I don't know how but we
take that spreadsheet and we just put it
into a web
application now they lose the the
spreadsheet I don't know how often they
come back like well we like like the
Excel of this where I can like just
click on cells and enter some data and a
lot of times we end up building that
back in for we have some way to build
something like that for but somewhere
along the way they realize that that was
actually maybe inefficient for what
they're doing now it may be something
where I'm swatting at flies if you're
watching the video it's like there's a
little Gat that keeps going around so
it's it's not me trying to do hand
signals or you know like sign language
it's me trying to find this little that
so A
IES for those of you that aren't seeing
this just imagine me occasionally
swatting a hand out there just to just I
don't know liven it up a little
bit back to the whole Excel
thing a lot of times this goes back to
my initial thing is that sometimes we
have a hammer and so that's what we're
using and that we learn how to solve the
problem with the hammer and so we have a
spreadsheet and we learn how to solve we
Define the problem in a way that it
works for the spreadsheet now sometimes
we a lot of times we give stuff up
because we're we do that with anything
when you define it down when you
constrain it by definition you're
removing options you're you know
constraining
it but when you start to open it back up
and sometimes we don't know how we've
constrained it we don't understand where
we have shut off Avenues until we open
it back up and so sometimes it's it's
really fun this is like part of the joy
of solving problems is when we T we
could take somebody from a spreadsheet
that works that does their stuff but
they've got all these issues with it
where they have to copy it and they have
to save it and they have to back it up
and if something happens then it can
like blow up the whole spreadsheet and
sometimes a lot of times they've got
little custom VBA code and all these
little things they're doing and they
would love to be able to integrate but
right now they copy and paste stuff all
the time and then they copy and paste
and they have to correct the pasted data
all that stuff you've probably felt that
pain at some point regardless of where
you're at when that gets turned around
to uh like you know maybe like just a
form based thing where it's like all the
data entry is form based and we can put
all these kinds of validations in it and
we can avoid breaking their data when
they're adding new data and then we can
add
sweeping scripting type things it's like
hey if you click this button it
replicates that and boom you've suddenly
got a new spreadsheet and it can reset
some of your data or we can integrate
with other systems so you're not having
to copy and pce now now you click a
button or behind the scenes at night all
of that data gets pulled in shoved into
a report now you get to see your report
you can slice it dice it throw it into a
you business intelligence kind of thing
whatever those are the steps that when
we start looking to those to me that is
really where you're becoming the
developer and it's where it's almost I
think confusing to some people that
writing code
may not be your strength like you know
like Michael said it's like there's a
lot of people that come into this as a
developer and they didn't come out of it
as a coder so they maybe don't have the
same and this maybe some of you you
don't have a broad range of computer
languages and skills that you have but
what you are is a a problem solver so
you look at it and you look at what is
it that you have you know what are the
tool set that you've got there and
figure out a way again it is a little
bit square peg round hole but you find a
way to think make those things work
and how do you become a better developer
is that you expand that tool set you
expand it so that when you realize and I
think that's part of that that Journey
that we'll talk about is when you
realize that the the solutions that
you're building the tools that you're
using are not ideal that you're having
to you know do something it's like this
doesn't make sense I think you you you
as you said it's like why should it be
this way why can't we do it this other
way and when you start doing that you
explore where those tools and sometimes
that's how you create tools as well so I
think I'll give you like toss this back
you give you some sort of like closing
thoughts on that
whole journey of coder to
developer yeah and in addition to kind
of I kind of want to add a little thing
on to what you're were talking about
there with the spreadsheets and that it
doesn't necessarily mean for you to be a
coder to have to necessarily work with
these spreadsheets or these uh you know
screen scrapes things like that your
journey could even begin by looking at
your business you could be a
paper-driven business or in a warehouse
and you see a process that why are we
doing this so many times we could put
this into a computer we could write a
little bit of code we can automate this
a lot of the things to me for the
journey from a coder to a developer is
you start connecting those dots you
start looking instead of me writing this
one particular application for this one
thing you start looking at how can I
take these systems or these processes
that we do on a day-to-day basis how can
I streamline that how can I write code
that basically makes my life better and
at that point you're taking that step on
becoming a developer not just a coder
yeah and I think that's that's probably
the best thing if there's a a parting
thought that I think is important is
that being a better developer is not
about code it really is about solving
problems now yeah as a developer you're
you're leveraging technology so you're
writing code but there's sometimes I I
talk to my customers about this I say
sometimes the best solution is pencil
and paper sometimes and especially
starting out because if you automate
stuff and code it and do all of that and
so now you replicate that solution a lot
of times if it's a crappy solution then
you are building crap faster you it's
like it's one of those things that there
are stories about businesses that every
time they sold a product they didn't
figure out their cost structure right so
they were actually losing money every
time they sold a product and eventually
they went out of business because they
sold too many products it cost them too
much to advance to you know to get the
additional
customers and sometimes we have that
same thing that instead of writing a
bunch of code and leveraging technology
in a code sense it may be better to
lever leverage technology in a
tracking data sense or something like
that which you know could go from maybe
you're just pencil and paper and that's
a pain to handle hand a folder all over
the place and instead now you you know
maybe it's just as simple as instead of
writing it on paper and sending it to
you know carrying it to the guy down the
street you use an email system and you
just and it's you know you didn't have
to write any code all you had to do was
install something but sometimes that's
the first step in your journey to the
developer side of solving problems and
leveraging Technology particularly using
what we have instead of having to
reinvent the wheel because that is
another area that we get into way too
often and we may talk about that in a
future episode probably will because we
have 31 up or more other episodes ahead
of us in this
season as always thank you so much for
joining us for your journey to become a
better developer because we want to get
there we want you to get there because
when all of us get there it saves us a
lot of headaches and a lot of pain and
it helps our customers helps literally
can make the world a better place
sometimes in very big ways because it
could be things like you're saving lives
you're doing better you know it's maybe
in hospitals or something like that
where it is literally saving lives
sometimes it's making it better because
you rate games that people have a fun
time playing you know it could be an all
points in
between so as always shoot us an email
at info developer not oh
at info@ developer.com if you have any
questions comments suggestions because
we are open to those we love to get
feedback love to take that utilize that
and either work it into this season the
next episode or sometime in the future
we may also have blog articles about it
we may have another little like Side
YouTube post about it if you're not
watching us on our YouTube channel you
can go out to youtube.com I think it's
SL develop andur you will get the uh the
develop andur Channel if not look up d v
l p re
NE on YouTube developer alo.com you can
see our site we've got links out there
to all of our stuff including the
school. developer.com we've got blog
articles we have got hundreds of old uh
podcast episodes including hundreds of
uh interviews with people ranging
from rodeo clowns that are now working
for Google to uh and then actually spent
some time in Blue Man Group to uh
creating our own song at one point and
also like you know CEOs down to
developers from marketing to you name it
we've interviewed them and they are
really across the board it's it's
amazing how many interviews we have that
were awesome that I walked out of there
I was taking notes there was maybe like
I think there I could count on one hand
the ones that weren't that good that
were sort of like okay I'm running out
of time I need to get off of this
interview you are probably saying that
to me right now so I am going to let you
go go out there and have yourself a
great day a great week and we will talk
to you next
time bonus time what what's some bonus
material that we can we can throw at
them this
time actually I'd kind of like to throw
a few a couple things on from our
conversation so you talked about screen
scraping so for those of you that might
have been in the industry for a while or
are still running into this
there are still analog ways of
collecting data off of tape drives off
of like data mining off of hard drives
databases things of that nature so it's
not just screen scraping we're always
talking about but there are areas where
you need to get data as well and you
need to find ways of abstracting that
data be it through Excel uh you know
access databases tape drives things of
that nature so we talk about one example
that's not necessarily always the only
example for that particular topic so
just to kind of keep an open mind that
you know some of the things some of our
experiences while they may not fall
exactly within what it is you do today
chances are it may relate in some
way in what you do today you just it
might be a little more abstract but a
lot of the topics we cover are
multi-purpose so don't always take it
that oh this is the only way like Rob
said object oriented hammer nail you
know you you want
to always be on the lookout for how can
I apply that to what I do or in the
problem solving sense am I doing things
the right way am I doing good processes
you know do I have good processes in
place are things streamlined the right
way or am I writing out a sheet of paper
putting it in a binder handing it to the
next person they add sentence hand it to
the next person you know would it be
better to have an email system would it
be better to just have a data entry
system so these are things to think
about along this journey with us this
season I think a little my parting
thought on this one is uh think about
that tool chest that you you have built
over time is that as you get further
into your career one of the things that
I find very useful is occasionally
looking back at what you did 5 10 15 30
years ago whatever it was because
sometimes there are some things that you
used to do that you've sort of grown out
of because you've you've got different
sets of tools where sometimes that is
actually the best way to go I don't know
how many times I've looked at like old
uh scripts that I used for various
things particularly like to you know to
chunk through data or split stuff up or
to parse something I go back I'm like oh
wow that's actually something I could
use right now and sometimes the the
technolog is all still here to be able
to use that again you know if you have
like an old C program you wrote that
yeah I mean it doesn't have all these
libraries and it doesn't have a user
inter a graphical user interface and all
that but sometimes it is better to have
just a little command line little
program that you run that you feed it a
file and it kicks something out parer
would be an example is it maybe you know
a scraper of where it's like hey I just
really need to get data out of this
thing and put it somewhere else and
sometimes it's a lot easier instead of
having some drag and drop solution to
just feed the big honken file in walk
through whatever its format is and start
kicking data out on the other side so
don't you don't be afraid and I think
it's it's actually a good habit to every
so
often review some of the stuff you did
in the past and see if maybe that's
something that uh applies to your work
today or maybe like we've run into this
few time where it is a a worthy project
to dust it off and to revamp it in a new
Lane language or to you know resurrect
it because maybe it didn't make sense
back then but now it makes a lot more
sense you know maybe you're you were
ahead of your time and now maybe your
time has come to take that thing to put
it out into the
world that being said I'm going to let
you go out there and put those things
out in the world this is season you know
22 episode two we've just wrapped this
one up we will come back to episode
three and four and guess what five and
six after that and we're just going to
keep on working our way up until till
again we'll probably hit that 3035 range
and that will be Season 22 and we'll
come back to season 23 we're going to
keep doing this at any rate Tuesdays and
Thursdays we drop these things out you
can catch us on the podcast catch us
here on YouTube and uh as always we're
going to continue just with this season
you're going to get bonus material if
you catch us on video you'll also see
great things like Rob trying to swat
gats as they go by and you know those
kinds of things that you just don't
catch it doesn't translate well to the
podcast uh
as I almost digressed into some of the
things that come from the old radio oh
oh oh did I get oh almost got them
anyways that being said I'll let you get
back to it I'm going to go kill this
natat or SWAT them out or do whatever I
can with them so that next time I will
be able to just sit here calmly instead
of trying to take this guy
out uh Mike have a great day the rest of
you have a great time and we will talk
to you next
episode and as always I got to go find
look I'm like I'm going to the right
spot now I've got my
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