Build and Learn

In this episode, CJ and Colin share their origin stories and what led them to become software developers. They also set the stage for what to expect on the show - building and learning from software development but also life.

Audio note: this episode was recorded via Zoom. Look forward to better audio in Episode 2!

Show Notes


  • Why a podcast? 
    • Fun to hang out
    • We learn a lot from one another.
    • Chance to share what we’re building and learning in public
    • Chance to meet and elevate other folks in the community
  • Set the stage for what to expect on the show 
    • We are figuring this out, so don’t hold us to it in these first few episodes ;)
    • Building and learning from Software Development but also life
  • Introduction and background - Our Origin Stories 
    • First web dev moments
    • CJ
      • TI89 games (2003)
      • MySpace (2004?)
      • Perl for seismology lab (2005)
      • free 000webhost style domain with ads (2005)
      • PHP pamphlet sites for air conditioning company
      • UNR Student union ASP.NET
      • Contract work building one-off apps - campaign management app that later rebuilt in Rails
      • Joined the military, deployed in 2011 to Afghanistan, and learned a ton of Cisco networking and security
      • Learned c++ in CS, but also did a lot of IS classes and started IS focused MBA after graduating
      • VB.NET at a finance company focused on insider trading
      • .NET c# for robots - wasn’t a fan of the company
      • “become a hacker” - App Academy fell in love with ruby
      • Small vacation rental startup where I learned - Django and python
      • Stripe
    • Colin
      • Library books on “VRML”, making games, “hacking” games locally to do different things https://store.steampowered.com/app/32380/STAR_WARS_Jedi_Knight_Dark_Forces_II/
      • Homestead, Geocities, Myspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_GeoCities, https://myspace.com/
      • Photoshop Communities & Kirupa Forum - Layer Tennis
      • Writing code in Notepad, no syntax highlighting, no project folder
      • College - Started with Computer Sci but decided to take another path
      • College Newspaper - College Publisher 
        • Rails CMS for the newspaper
        • Realizing that I would graduate, I moved us to WordPress
      • Agency → Laid off in recession → Starting my own agency 
        • WordPress
        • APIs
        • Salesforce
      • Building tech community 
        • Reno Collective Coworking
        • Ignite Reno
        • hackathons, meetups
      • A few startups 
        • Founder, first-employee
      • More consulting
      • Now at Orbit - https://orbit.love/
    • Links
    • https://twitter.com/colinloretz
    • https://twitter.com/cjav_dev
    • https://github.com/cjavdev/vim-curriculum
https://abookapart.com/
https://www.aneventapart.com/
http://www.csszengarden.com/
https://www.zeldman.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelCanvas/ live pixel canvas
https://www.youtube.com/cjavilla

Creators and Guests

Host
CJ Avilla
Developer Advocate @StripeDev. Veteran. 📽 https://t.co/2UI0oEAnFK. Building with Ruby, Rails, JavaScript
Host
Colin Loretz
I like to build software and communities. Building software at @orbitmodel 🪐 Coworking at @renocollective 🎙Sharing software learnings on @buildandlearn_

What is Build and Learn?

A podcast about software development and developing ourselves as software engineers. Hosted by CJ Avilla and Colin Loretz.