#49 Ali Spittel works at the crossroads of development, teaching and communities
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Tim Bourguignon 0:06
Hello, and welcome to developer's journey. The podcast shining a light on developers lives from all over the world. My name is Tim Bourguignon, and today I receive Ali spittle. Ali is a software engineer at Dev. Before that she was a lead instructor as General Assembly. She loves Python, JavaScript, and talking about code. She is most interested in the intersection of programming art and education. When it is not working, you can find her watching New England sports competing and Cold War's taking runs around Capitol Hill rock climbing, or participating in DC coding community events. Allie also [email protected] slash a SPI TTL Speedo where she talks about code and her life surrounding it. Writing has gotten roughly 600,000 readers the past year only. Wow, Allie, welcome to dev journey. Hey, thanks for having me. Oh, it's our pleasure. So let's start writing. Tell us how did your journey into development start?
Ali Spittel 1:18
Yeah, so I totally ended up being a programmer accidentally. So I didn't go to a high school that had computer science or anything like that. I didn't even know what code was until I was a sophomore in college. So when I was 19, I had an extra credit unit in college, and a couple of friends had been taking programming classes, and said that computer science was the thing to learn. I didn't even know what code was, I thought that I would essentially be like dragging and dropping things or learning how to format Word documents. While I didn't know that I'd be building actual software. And so I ended up in this Python class. I remember the first day of class, they didn't even have us writing code or anything like that all they had was a piece of code printed out on paper, we were supposed to type that code into a text editor and run it. I remember thinking like, What is this, we're moving way too fast. I have no idea what's going on. And it was like the super, super easy assignment. But from there, we did all these games and built all these really cool things. I ended up just falling in love with programming and think it was the coolest thing ever. I then decided that I was going to try and double majoring in computer science. I done pretty well in the class. And they asked me to assistant teach the class the next semester. And so I was signed up for that and then took a c++ class the next semester while assistant teaching that Python class. I absolutely hated c++. So I felt like I was in way over my head. I didn't understand why we were programming all these things that we had built into Python. Like, why would we ever use this c++ language? If Python exists, pythons amazing, c++ is not fun. And the classes move pretty fast too. So we're doing like algorithms and data structures. And I was trying to try to figure out what was going on and so confused by everything. I remember I pulled it like two all nighters in a row trying to build a Sudoku solver. And I still didn't have the correct one by the time that the project was due. And I just worked so hard at that class and got worse grades that I was used to wasn't loving it. And so I was like computer science is actually not for me. I was incorrect that last semester when I fell in love with Python, this is actually not my thing. I'm walking away from this. From there. I obviously got back into it. Um, and what happened is that I was doing political internship, I wanted to work in government. When I graduated, I actually wanted to do like political journalism. So choosing the candidates on the campaign trail was kind of my dream job. And I was doing an internship for that. And they were asking me to do Excel work. And I was able to do the Excel work pretty fast because I could write macros, and I kind of understood how data was structured and was able to be printed. be efficient doing that. And then they kind of talked about this sequel thing and asked me to do a little bit with that. And I didn't really know what it was, but I played with it. The following summer, I was looking for political internships, I couldn't really find something that was paid. And I needed to have a paid internship. And I found this job that was a hybrid between politics, which I was I was doing, and computer science or software engineering. And there wasn't even like a job listing for it, it was just this company that had both these skill sets on their website. And so I cold emailed them, I was like, I am a junior in college looking for an internship. And it sounds like you all are, you know, doing some things that I could be interested in doing this. This data stuff is fun, and seems like kind of the future of politics. And I've written a little bit of code in college right to aid or assistant taught and
kind of one thing led to another. And I started in kind of a hybrid, politics, software engineering job that turned into just a software engineering job. And so my whole journey has kind of been accidental in a lot of ways where these choices haven't been super intentional. There's been a lot of highs and lows, but kept falling into it, no matter if I wanted to, or not, and have really loved doing it, even though it's been somewhat rocky red.
Tim Bourguignon 6:45
That's a very interesting, interesting journey. Was there a moment where it became more intentional?
Ali Spittel 6:53
Yeah, so I think after getting that first software engineering job, or that job that turned into a real software engineering job, I think that ended up boosting my confidence a lot more, I was able to do really, really well in that role. It was doing Python. And then I did some more JavaScript stuff as I kept going with the role. But starting off with Python was great. And I had a lot of fun with that. And doing the more tangible stuff actually was a lot easier for me than the conceptual stuff from computer science. Because I understood the context more like being asked to build a linked list seemed really abstract. And I didn't understand why anybody would need to do that. Whereas building a site that analyzes campaign data that has a tangible output that helps political campaigns, and people can see that data and know what it does. And so, doing real world development, for me was actually much easier than the academic development.
Tim Bourguignon 7:59
Is this something that you you still see in your day to day job?
Ali Spittel 8:03
Yeah, so I've taken a couple different roads now in my career. So I worked for a while doing that job. And I grew so much working for that startup doing politics and software engineering for them, and really just grew so much out of that. But then I started teaching. And in teaching, I was able to teach a lot more of the tangible stuff, the stuff that made sense and was fun and can be used by companies. And I still do, or did teach a lot of those data structures and algorithms things. But from a more practical standpoint, and I think having a hard time learning it myself has made it so that teaching that stuff to other people is a little bit easier and can be a little bit more hopeful for them, at least I hope.
Tim Bourguignon 9:01
I'm sure it is. Did you have a chance to talk to the the teachers back then at university teaching you c++ and ask them? Basically, why they chose this dude's examples back then.
Ali Spittel 9:14
Yeah, so I was not one of those students. I was such somebody who had always academically done really, really well both in high school and college. I think that it was actually kind of harmful in a lot of ways. I've talked about this a little bit before, but um, I think that I grew up kind of expecting perfection ism with myself, especially when it came to like grades and doing well in classes. And I wasn't really used to struggling in a class and so I really, like blame that on myself. And just was like, if I work harder at this and spend more time at it, I'll understand it rather than going to office hours. or asking more questions. And again, I think that the whole class was kind of struggling with that class as well. Like looking back on it. A lot of people did drop, and didn't didn't stay in the program. So I don't think it was just me, but at that point really felt like it was my fault.
Ali Spittel 10:20
Hmm. Too bad.
Tim Bourguignon 10:23
I mean, it seems to have turned out okay. Yeah, definitely turned out. Okay. So after these, your studies, you said you went to work for a startup? That's right.
Ali Spittel 10:34
Yep. So that same startup that I started working at my junior year in college, I started working full time for them. After interning, so I interned that summer. And then that fall, I started as a software engineer for them. I finished college, kind of in a weird manner, I, my last semester of college, I worked full time for them was a full time student. And then also had a part time teaching internship at the middle school near my college. And so there's a lot going on at that point. But my last semester of college, my second semester, senior year, I ended up just being done with college, and I wrote my thesis remote. And that's all that I had left to do. So my last year of college was more work than then study is for sure.
Ali Spittel 11:34
Wow. Yeah.
Tim Bourguignon 11:36
You have a special trick to have more times in your day than than usual mortals.
Ali Spittel 11:43
No, no. Not somebody that needs a lot of sleep, and also not a lot of downtime. But I definitely do now more a couple years later.
Tim Bourguignon 11:53
But that's a cool superpower, though. Yeah, that's weird. Okay. And looking back, what do you take from this time? In your this first job in your carrier?
Ali Spittel 12:09
Yeah, so I think working at a startup is always fascinating, because you get so many more years of experience than you put in, like, I worked there for around two and a half years. But it feels like I had the experience of Sony 10 years in or something like that. Because you just see everything you get your hands on all these different tools, you get to work with different apps, you get to work on things that are moving really fast. Of course, you have to put in hours that are usually somewhat absurd. And at that point in my life, I was like very willing to do that and was able to, which I think is really lucky in itself. But I definitely think there are highs and lows to that, like I learned more there than I could have anywhere else, but also had to put more into it, I think then a lot of jobs would would request
Tim Bourguignon 13:07
that does that make sense? That makes sense. And where did you go after this?
Ali Spittel 13:12
Yeah, so near the end of working there, I transitioned into teaching code full time at a coding boot camp. So in back in college, if we're going back to that, I was going to be an education minor if I hadn't done my weird senior year of college. And so I was like one credit away from being an education minor, which was as much as you can do in education at my college. And so I had that context. I really loved teaching. And at that point, I really loved teaching kids. I thought that was really awesome. And it's still as something that I love doing, especially on a volunteer basis. But I had the opportunity to teach adult code through this boot camp. And teaching adults is another really, really incredible opportunity because you get to be so impactful on their careers. And it's definitely a different challenge than teaching kids. And so I transitioned into doing that I started off by teaching just kind of a normal coding boot camp environment, with students on campus. And then I moved over to teaching at companies. So there's this enterprise program within the boot camp that I worked for, and they took employees of companies that were still employed by those companies and rescaled them. So they had one job coming in and then would leave as a software engineer or web developer, and that was a really cool opportunity as well and the ability to like See those companies that invested in their employees like that was really, really cool to see. And it's also a very different environment than being on a boot camp campus. So I really, really enjoyed that. And then recently, I've transitioned over to a new role. And I'm currently a software engineer and a developer advocate for dev two. And then I still do teach code part time for that coding boot camp still as well.
Tim Bourguignon 15:30
Fantastic. How did you manage to wiggle yourself in this boot camp?
Ali Spittel 15:37
Yeah, so I started off by guest lecturing there. So actually, for their data science program, and I taught the web development program, so a little bit different. But I started teaching Well, sorry, started teaching data visualization there, just some guest lectures, and really enjoyed it, it was also just terrified, because I hadn't really done public speaking in front of adults like that. So it was was pretty scary, definitely at first. And each time that I did it, though, I got better and better and easier and more fun. And the the lesson got better as well. And then they eventually had an opening. And I was close friends with a couple people that work there, and ended up doing a sample teach in order to kind of interview in a way there and then ended up landing the job. So that's kind of my story is doing it on a volunteer basis first and then doing it for real. But the volunteering was really good for me, because I love teaching. And it was great for my company at the time, too, because those guest lectures turned into tire recruiting opportunities as well.
Tim Bourguignon 16:53
How did you overcome imposter syndrome? What did you did you have it in the first place?
Ali Spittel 17:01
Yeah, so I think that my peak imposter syndrome was definitely when I quit coding, because that was definitely, definitely something that was a huge milestone in my career journey. You know, dropping that c++ class, or dropping after that c++ class and saying that coding wasn't for me. So I think that that was the start of it. But I think it definitely peaks and valleys at different points in my career, I think that teaching actually really, really helped it. And I've felt more confident when I was teaching because in order to teach something, you have to know it really, really well. And to be able to answer questions, because they come from all different angles, and everybody thinks about things differently. So people will ask you stuff that like, you would never have thought of it that way. So I'm definitely teaching me to me feel more confident in my code. Um, but so I also have a programming blog, which he talks about in my introduction. And I think that in some ways that's brought about more imposter syndrome, just because so many more people are looking at my work and kind of putting it under a microscope. And you know, you get those truly comments, sometimes I think that that has been a little bit harmful. But that's more more recent, definitely for me there. But I think definitely teaching was like my kind of high point in, in battling imposter syndrome, where I felt pretty confident about my abilities.
Tim Bourguignon 18:42
What is in your opinion? Or what are the skills required to be a good teacher?
Ali Spittel 18:47
Yeah, so I think being able to balance a bunch, there's so much that you have to balance as a teacher. So you're balancing everybody's different learning styles, you're trying to keep everybody focused on your lecture and not on Facebook, you're trying to make sure that everybody understands stuff. So you're asking a lot of questions and doing checks to make sure that people are grasping the material. You're also live coding a lot. So you're attached to some sort of smartboard, or projector writing code. And that's always stressful as anybody who's given a conference talk can attest to. And then on top of that, you're also managing technology. So if you're using something for screen sharing, if you're teaching online, or if you're using slack to communicate with other instructors, like all of that can potentially fail or the projectors can fail. So there's just so much to balance which I think a lot of people don't, don't fully understand. And so that's huge. I think, appealing different learning styles, really important and using your empathy to understand that different people learn differently. Not everybody's going to address stuff a at the same speed or be in the same way. And so I think having that kind of understanding is really important as well. Those are my two big ones right now that you can stay on top of things. And that you can put yourself in other people's shoes. And being a strong communicator, that's, that's a big one as well, the ability to accurately explain things, and stand in front of a room and give a talk and be comfortable enough with that.
Tim Bourguignon 20:33
I would have two questions. I'm not sure which one I should start with, I suppose a few of them. And then you can you can decide which one you want. And the first one would have to do with teaching versus mentoring. So how do you differentiate both bars? And how do you handle both bars? And the second one would be, how did you deal with the situation where somebody doesn't get it? And where were you, you don't know how to how to express yourself anymore? You tried three different versions? How to get a problem, and it's still not working? And how do you put yourself in question, but maybe not too much, and try to find a different angle, etc. So these two questions we've been stressing have interested me.
Ali Spittel 21:19
Yeah, so for the first one, the difference between teaching and mentoring. So I think that they're really intertwined. And I like to think of mentorship in some ways is like a form of teaching. But I think that the biggest differentiator is the format, the teaching is formal. And normally, for a group of people, there's a lot of structure to it. Whereas mentoring is a little bit less formal. And there's usually a little bit less preparation that goes into it ahead of time. And it's more like answering people's questions and giving them advice from your own career. So I think that those are the biggest differences that I've seen there. I've done a lot more formalized teaching than mentorship. I have definitely like mentored junior developers that work. But I try to focus more on teaching, I guess, outside of work. That makes sense. Okay, as far as the second question, how to deal with somebody just really not understanding that they, I think that having resources that explain things, well is really important, too. So maybe I just think about something so differently, that it just won't make sense for somebody. So if I have a stockpile of resources to send out to that person, so that they can go watch somebody else's video, and how they taught it, or if they have a blog post that they can read, and maybe somebody coming at it from that blog post perspective will help. And I've also done mostly teaching on instructional teams. So it can rely on co instructors, as well, though, that being said, after, you know, going through something, in lecture, and then also with that person in office hours, I'm not sure that I've had a situation where somebody still hasn't done it after doing both in person and the office hours,
Tim Bourguignon 23:29
then I guess it's fine. I had this problem recently. And I tried it really different angles, or trying to explain it differently, trying to plug different resources and, and somehow I couldn't make it make its own make it make sense out of it for this person. And after after a few minutes, I was very, very unsure of what to do. And if I got something wrong, and I put myself in question, and I guess it was a wrong alignment of planets at that time. And that was really hard to handle. I wasn't I wasn't used to that. So I was interested in that how you would handle this?
Ali Spittel 24:14
Yeah, no, definitely a tough one. I think another thing is just time like sometimes it takes somebody practicing with a concept a couple times, or just going on to another concept and then going back to that previous one at some point unless it's something like super, super critical usually, but that cycle kind of works of just giving somebody more time and coming back to something.
Tim Bourguignon 24:41
That's a very interesting point. How do you do you match this concept of giving somebody time to think about it and process it etc. With the construct of a bootcamp which is basically try to crunch as many hours in three or four months to prepare somebody to something, how do you do to work with the other?
Ali Spittel 25:05
Yeah, so I think for pretty much everybody a boot camp is this start or a part of your journey, I usually recommend that people like self teach a little bit before doing a boot camp so that they know that they like writing code and understand what's going on at a basic level first, so that's kind of first level. But a lot of boot campers also had programming experience in their past, they took computer science in college, they weren't a software engineer 20 years ago, but are trying to move back to that. So a lot of them, this is not their first step in their coding journey. But once they get to the boot camp, it really looks different for different people, and different people get more and less out of it, just based off of like learning styles and how fast these things click for them. And so I think everybody comes out of a boot camp with some nice level of knowledge. But some people are going to have to go back and keep working on their projects. After that boot camp and really keep solidifying their knowledge, go back through the lessons that were given, like, go back through those materials, make sure that they make sense. So for some people that's going to be a reality after the boot camp is that their learning journey. I mean, for anybody, their learning journey is just starting. But for them, it's really just starting, and they do have to go back through the curriculum and make sure that they're up to speed on everything before job seeking. But the majority, the vast majority, are at a place where they can just keep expanding their knowledge and my experience. But yeah, it's really it is a really tough scenario, because things do tend to kind of snowball if people don't catch up just because of how lessons build off of one another. So that's one of those things, if you're at a boot camp, like, please take advantage of office hours, if you have access to them, because then you're getting a one on one chance to have everything explained to you, I also really recommend if your instructors put out materials before class, going through the material before class, so that when you're actually in lecture, it's the second time you're seeing the material. And you may have a better grasp of it there. But then again, you're also getting hit with the material, again, when you're doing the homework or the projects. And so hopefully, these things are being reinforced over and over again, and you're staying up to speed with them. Or the project time periods usually are a little bit slower, at least the one that I worked at, we had dedicated weeks where you just work on your projects. And that was a pretty good catch up time, if you weren't understanding something to put that time in and learn that thing in order to make the project. So it is definitely really tough to catch up. But it also is, it is doable. And as long as you have an instructional team that is really strong, then hopefully, hopefully, you'll get back on pace. But it is hard because things do tend to snowball
Tim Bourguignon 28:24
as he as he did you have a chance to to guide people after they started their their career. So So at the end of a boot camp or at the end of their studies.
Ali Spittel 28:37
Unfortunately, once they're kind of done with a boot camp, then they transition on to the Career Services. And then also I transition on to having new students usually. So that's kind of the the tough part with that is that I definitely stay in touch with former students and learn how they're doing. And I love hearing their success stories. That's like the coolest thing to me. But at the same point, unfortunately, I'm not their teacher anymore. I'm just just kind of a friend at that point.
Tim Bourguignon 29:13
That's fine as well. Yeah. relationship. Could you speculate on there? Maybe you have some some idea? Where would people coming out of boot camps be? be exceptionally well prepared for what what would they be exceptionally well prepared for? And where would they maybe have some some trouble or struggle compared to people coming for university for instance?
Ali Spittel 29:40
Yeah, so the best one that I can give you like if you can do this, it's a total home run. If you're a career changer. So you had a career before the boot camp and then you're transitioning to a new career. If you can go back to the industry that you were in as now a developer or Software Engineer like that's such a perfect match. Because you have the context of the field like you understand what tools you're building, you know how that field works. But now you also have this additional skill set of writing code on top of that. And so you can really mesh well into a team and give a lot of really great context to that team and support it really well. So that's kind of like my, hit the ball out of the park fit for boot camp grads. And that's what I did to like, my interests were politics before joining us feel it. And I worked in politics as a software engineer and having that context of knowing how politics kind of worked. And I knew the jargon, I knew how all that that worked. I knew what things people needed, that was so helpful. And so that's what I recommend, if at all possible. If that's not possible, then finding a role that's going to have really, really great mentorship, I think is really important for anybody starting their career, like having a job that they really know what they're doing and support you well, and aren't going to blame stuff on you too fast. And all of that, like make sure that you're joining a great team, where I think people may struggle a little bit more than CS grads, computer science grads tend to have more math background, in general like to over generalize. So if it's a really mathematical role, or really, engineering heavy role, then the computer science grad usually has the leg up there, especially if it's non web focused, the boot camp gradually have more of the web focus than anything hardware related or anything like that.
Tim Bourguignon 31:56
is pretty, you pretty well matches up with what I've observed. so far. People coming from apprenticeship or from boot camps have a tendency to be very, very practical and go very fast finding, finding practical solutions. And people coming out of university have more this, this abstract view on things, and they can have a struggle with getting to a practical solution first, and nothing is ever seen. But five years after starting into universal in the indie industry, it's leveled up usually.
Ali Spittel 32:34
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It only really matters for that first job or so. And then after that first job at all kind of evens out?
Tim Bourguignon 32:43
Absolutely. Um, you've said you are a Developer Advocate right now. Just quick.
Ali Spittel 32:49
Yes. So I have two jobs. Right now. I work as just a software engineer writing code for the codebase. And then on top of that, I also am a developer advocate.
Tim Bourguignon 33:01
So what do you do as an advocate?
Ali Spittel 33:03
Yeah, so I'm new to it. So I'm definitely not the foremost expert on developer advocacy. I've just been doing this for a couple of months now. But I, to me, a lot of it is building community bonds. So I am really passionate about working with the developer community to try to grow together to try to improve, to try to build resources for other people to teach better, and to learn better, because of kind of my background, what I'm passionate about. So fostering that is really important to me. And so I try to do a bunch of community events, both speaking at them and organizing them. And then I also have a blog that does pretty well. And so that is something that's a big part of my work as well. So balancing out this kind of community relationship along with the software engineering, what I do is the other half of my job.
Tim Bourguignon 34:10
Is this a role that you had foreseen for yourself?
Ali Spittel 34:14
It's definitely something I was interested in. Because
to me, it felt like kind of a natural extension of teaching in teaching is really my passion. I love doing that. And so developer advocacy seems like a great way of meshing that love love with a little bit more of the writing code on a day to day basis. situation is wild. So I definitely did not know it was a thing until I was on Twitter maybe a year or so ago. But after after talking to some it seems like a really great, great role.
Tim Bourguignon 34:56
Did you did you apply for it? Or did did somebody hunt you for that.
Ali Spittel 35:02
Yeah. So I was actually a community member on dev before I worked for them. And I was a member for a year or so. And it was pretty involved with that community and writing blog posts, but also doing webinars for them and contributing to the code base. And so it seemed like kind of a natural extension of the community work that I was doing already to move over to working for them full time. So I did just have conversations with the founders instead of doing formal interviews or anything like that.
Tim Bourguignon 35:38
That's interesting. That's the second time you speak about this, about giving your time and and trying to do something I wouldn't say for free. But for, for the for the sake of of the stuff you want to learn. You said this before, when when you said you started teaching on a voluntary basis. And this evolved into something else. Is this Yeah, the case?
Ali Spittel 36:04
Yeah, so I think my kind of fun fact that I don't talk about too too much, but it's out there is that I haven't actually ever applied for developer job. So my first job I got through just writing or cold email to this company and saying that what they were doing was kind of similar to what I was interested in. And then my second job I got through that guest lecturing, and then this one through the community. And so that's definitely been an interesting balance there, of really getting jobs through connections that I made when I was not looking for jobs, rather than connections that I made when I was looking or anything like that.
Tim Bourguignon 36:50
I do intentional in making connections, not in the purpose of getting something out of the afterward. But I'm trying to network and get out there intentionally because you know, it's important.
Ali Spittel 37:02
Honestly, I am just a really social person. And so I like having a lot of friends, and making a lot of connections in that respect. And so I never really think about like, you know, oh, this might lead me to a job someday, it's more just like, Oh, this person is really cool. I want to be friends with them. And then, you know, luckily, someday something happens, where, you know, my blogging, I never thought that was gonna lead anywhere. Like, you know, when I was getting seven reads on each of my medium posts, I never thought that I would be at a place where I'm gonna, you know, reach a million viewers in a couple months. Like, that's such a different thing that I would have ever expected from myself. So yeah, these things that definitely not intentional, but I feel very grateful that they they have happened.
Tim Bourguignon 37:55
I cannot leave it, leave it leave this in in in the air without asking, how did you get to set from 73 to 1 million? What's the secret sauce?
Ali Spittel 38:04
Yeah, so what what factors in that? So I think the first thing, I started cross posting, and so instead of just posting on medium, I was also posting to dev two, which I work for now. And they're kind of homepage algorithm, and their social sharing, I really ended up building more of a following there. And then, also, social media has been kind of a part of that as well, where I've gotten lucky couple times with Hacker News and Reddit and then also having a consistent Twitter situation has also helped. So definitely a combination of a lot of factors. But, um, I think just like, a lot of patience is is key for for growing any sort of blog is that it's gonna be slow at first and then at some point, hopefully, will hockey stick a little bit.
Tim Bourguignon 39:11
You I think you're downplaying your, your efforts in there. So you are consistent for a few years? I I'm sure.
Ali Spittel 39:18
Yes. So I have been blogging really consistently for around a year or so. So it definitely has grown faster than I would have thought it would. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of work that goes into it and writing a lot of blog posts that are content that I believe in and stuff that I can really stand behind and then also, you know, using my beliefs and things and writing about that has also been been a good formula for me there. And then also like, social media is fine. But it's also work in a lot of ways and building that has taken some effort as well.
Tim Bourguignon 40:09
Oh, boy, there's so much I would like to ask. But we are almost ready. Um, if you could give yourself I'm an advisor advice, maybe back back at university, what would that be?
Ali Spittel 40:24
Yeah, so I'm going to give you two pieces of advice here and break the rules a little bit. The first one is to yourself that you think you're worse at this than you actually are. And coding, at least at first is really hard for almost everybody, like, nobody really understands this right away, it doesn't come to them immediately. And so sticking with it, is going to be worth it. So that's the first piece. The second one is to get involved with the developer community faster. So I was not involved in the groups that I'm involved in, like woman who code or DC tech, or any of those things early early on in my career. And I think having those communities around me of other programmers, especially other women in tech, would have been super, super helpful to have people in a similar position to myself. And then also just to learn what other people are building and going to these lectures to learn about different things and reading other people's blog posts and all that I think that being involved in the developer community earlier than it was would have been really helpful. Mm
Tim Bourguignon 41:37
hmm. Fantastic. And to two inches is perfect. Thank you very much. Um, so what's on your plate in the near future?
Ali Spittel 41:48
Yeah, so I am speaking out a couple things over this summer. The ones coming up most fast, I guess, are revolution conference in Virginia Beach, and off con in Portland, Oregon. So those will be two really fun ones. In addition to that, I'll be blogging kind of like normal at dev to slash a spittle. And then you can find me on Twitter again as a spittle, and all of my upcoming events and all the things that I'm doing are in one place at my portfolio site, which is a Li, SPI T dot t. l. So it's my name. But with a dotnet.
Tim Bourguignon 42:39
Fantasy guy, I will add all those links to the show notes so that the listeners can just click on it and don't have to type anything fantastic. And would be the first place to to reach out to you.
Ali Spittel 42:54
I think that dev two is probably the best one. We have a chat platform so you can reach out to me there but Twitter is also free.
Tim Bourguignon 43:02
Okay, so we'll add all that to the shows. Thank you very much. This is a blast. A very interesting story. thank thank you very much.
Ali Spittel 43:11
Thank you. This was fun.
Tim Bourguignon 43:13
And this has been another episode of developer's journey. We'll see each other in two weeks. Bye.
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