In today’s episode, we welcome Lawrence Lockhart, a former hospitality manager turned full stack software developer. Apart from his tech job, he’s also a developer advocate, a teaching assistant at a coding bootcamp and a tech meetup leader, so you know he spends a lot of his time helping others build and transfer their existing skills into tech, being a powerful voice in the tech space for upcoming developers.

Today we talk briefly about how he managed to switch from hospitality to tech, and how that wasn’t as easy as a lot of people online make it out to be, the importance of local and in-person jobs as opposed to starting off remote, how learning with purpose is essential if you want to make progress and advice for people starting out!

Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Code Connector: https://codeconnector.io

Lawrence's X/Twitter: https://x.com/LawrenceDCodes

Lawrence's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawrencedlockhart

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:44 When did Lawrence start to be more involved in the online tech communities?

02:23 How did Lawrence meet James Q Quick

04:42 Transition from a Blue Collar job into Tech

10:59 6 months is not the standard anymore to get in the industry

13:44 The Timeline Discussion

15:56 Kelsey Hightower

18:09 Has Lawrence worked as a dev in non-tech companies and where he works now

23:33 It's IMPORTANT to go for local market and in-person jobs first

24:27 How networking actually works

28:46 Learning with a purpose

36:43 You shouldn't be trying to minmax your career path

39:43 Advice to people that are unsure in their skills

43:51 How to approach interviews

49:31 You have to practice interviewing

54:48 Learn the thing or get out

58:33 Disagree and commit

01:01:45 Where to find Lawrence

In today’s episode, we bring Spiro Floropoulos, a senior developer and architect with over 20 years of experience. This episode is an unusual one, as Spiro recently got laid off due to a bizarre chain of events that involved HTMX, overworking, and technical debt.

But we’ll learn from this story, as we want to shed some light on how situations that Spiro described could be avoided, namely how the tech industry is obsessing over developer experience and why that’s detrimental, why abstractions should be teaching you the technology as opposed to just doing the work for you, why you should be able to train your junior devs and much more!

Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Spiro's X/Twitter: https://x.com/spirodonfl

Spiro's Website: https://spirofloropoulos.com/

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:35 Why are we having this conversation

01:33 How was HTMX involved in this?

03:38 Spiro's background

05:58 Why are we focusing so much on developer experience?

13:38 The Tech Industry as a whole is headed down the wrong path

16:17 Abstractions teaching you about the underlying technology rather than hiding it

18:47 What are the long-term consequences of unresolved technical debt?

26:46 There's things you can't blame frameworks for

28:27 We have to slow down

30:46 What happened after the introduction of HTMX into the project?

40:26 Hiring juniors is great, but you should have the resources to train them

47:00 The Technical Debt

50:32 The more complex the feature became, the bigger the struggle with HTMX

53:42 The reasons why Spiro was let go

57:10 Instead of Agile we should treat our programmers like adults

57:31 HTMX was instant and testing ability was better

01:01:21 Is Spiro looking for work?

01:02:00 Where to find Spiro

In today’s episode, we go to war with Sam Selikoff, co-host of the Frontend First podcast, and specialist on everything Frontend related.

We have an amazing conversation where we discuss Sam’s journey, as he also did some backend work in the past, we talk about abstractions, what JavaScript is doing differently from other languages and frameworks, why the frontend should be driving the backend and not the other way around, and finish it off with a discussion about RSCs (React Server Components).

Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Frontend First: https://frontendfirst.fm/

Sam's X/Twitter: https://x.com/samselikoff

Sam's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/samselikoff

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:51 Who is Sam Selikoff

02:12 Abstractions - Should you go a level deeper?

06:37 What was Sam's talk about

10:51 What is JavaScript doing differently?

19:10 Do you want the frameworks to push more features out of the box for backend work?

24:04 Strong opinions on a library level

30:29 Shipping more standardized interfaces

37:06 The frontend should be driving everything in the backend

39:12 Your types should flow from the database to the frontend, but not the product decisions

46:53 React Server Components

58:49 Where to find Sam