Desi McAdam

I spent a bit of time down in Florida this summer, and I got the opportunity to meet and spend some time with Desi McAdam (blog). She's one of the founders of DevChix, a developer at HashRocket and an all-around really nice person. During my stay in May, she was kind enough to sit down and record her story for us.

Enjoy!

Desi McAdam - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Terry Haines

While in North Carolina, visiting family for my mother's 60th birthday and my nephew and neices' graduations, I had the opportunity to sit down with a special guest for a truly abc afternoon special "How I Got Started In Programming" video, my father, Terry Haines.

He programmed through the 70s, 80s and 90s, providing the opportunity for me to start becoming familiar with computers from a very early age. It was really a great pleasure to listen to how his career developed.

Oh, and happy father's day!

Enjoy!

Terry Haines from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Bryan Liles

Bryan Liles is a prominent thought leader in the Ruby community, focusing on showing people how to effectively test and manage the complexity in their systems. As I found when talking to him, he's also an amazingly warm person who really has an interest in helping people. This video was a lot of fun to do, and his offer at the end to come talk at schools is a first for our series.

I first heard Bryan say 'change the message or make it pass' during his talk, TATFT: A Layman's Guide, at acts_as_conference 2008, and it really resonated with me. The BDD workflow seems like it writes the code for you, allowing you to really focus on what the system need to be do, rather than what code needs to be written. Since I heard him say it, I've been repeating it to everyone that I work with.

As usual, I split this into 2 parts to make up for the amount of information in it. :)

Enjoy!

Part 1

Bryan Liles - How I Got Started In Programming Part I from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

Bryan Liles - How I Got Started In Programming Part 2 from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

JB Rainsberger

JB Rainsberger is an agile coach and trainer, author of JUnit Recipes and, along with being a good friend, my employment addiction counselor. We met up at the first Code Retreat in Ann Arbor, and, not only was he kind enough to let me crash at his hotel, he sat in front of the camera and let me record his story.

JB is one of the most inspirational people that I know, both in his attitude towards computing and his attitude towards life. This is a great one that you won't want to miss, inspirational and funny at the same time.

Plus, bonus big beards!

I've split it into 2 parts, since our conversation ended up about an hour long.

Enjoy!

Part 1

JB Rainsberger - How I Got Started In Programming Part I from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

JB Rainsberger - How I Got Started In Programming Part II from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Steven Bristol

Steven Bristol is a founder of LessEverything, a software development company in Jacksonville, FL. I met him at Acts As Conference 2008, and he was kind enough to sit down and tell us his story.

Enjoy!

Steven Bristol - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Nathaniel Talbott

Nathaniel Talbott (blog) is the creator of the Test::Unit framework in Ruby. He is the owner of Terralien, as well as a regular speaker at conferences. I had the pleasure to meet him at Acts As Conference, and he was kind enough to sit down and tell me his story, which, let me tell you, is a great one. He's definitely had a varied set of experiences in the industry, so there is a lot that we can learn from him.

Enjoy!

Part 1

Nathaniel Talbott Part 1 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

Nathaniel Talbott Part 2 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Scott Gowell

I met Scott Gowell (blog) at Techsmith when I was given a nice tour there by Betsy Weber. She introduced us, and, looking around his office, I knew I had to get an interview with him. Why? Well, for one, it appeared he had a ton of large-size lego guys like in the video games. Hmmm... So, when Betsy stepped away for a meeting, I sat down with him and got his story; I'm glad I did.

Enjoy!


Scott Gowell - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.