La Vie en Code

In this episode, Nicole introduces you to an often-overlooked technique for solidifying the programming knowledge you encounter: visualization. I first discovered visualization when in 2017, when I was working as a freelance web developer. I had my first client, but I found myself regularly needing to brush up on what I was learning. Additionally, I was spending a lot of time with my grandfather and found myself away from keyboard quite a bit. Fortunately, there wasn't a massive rush on the project. While I was away from my laptop, I'd think about the code I was writing... as we often do while we're learning. I walked through it in my mind, and made mental notes of things that struck me as unfamiliar or where I experienced uncertainty. What I was doing was visualizing my coding experience. In this episode, you'll learn more about visualization, why it works, and how you can leverage it to practice coding when you're AFK. I hope it's helpful! Read the episode notes!

In this episode, Nicole helps you work through your feelings and obstacles when you feel like giving up on learning to code. It happens to all of us. We're plugging alone, doing tutorials and maybe building some small projects. And then things start to get hard. (It's super rare that people continue feeling confident like they do in the beginning, trust me!) So what do you do? You can hunker down and work harder or smarter, or you can choose the easier option: giving up entirely. I gave up entirely when I switched out of my Computer Science degree, and it still bothers me somewhat to this day although I've ultimately come to terms with it. The stress and imposter syndrome even in low-level college CS courses drove me to believing I wasn't a good fit for the industry. And seeing where I am now... I couldn't have been more wrong. I just wasn't learning properly. Whatever your reason, when you find yourself at the point where you want to give up, there are things you can do to mitigate those strong emotions leading you to question your skills and potential. I want to help you build that resilience so that when you inevitably fall... you'll always get back up. :) Even if you're not looking at the exit currently, I hope this episode will help you to understand the reasons why we decide to quit, a little about my own story, and how to stay standing when the experience of learning to code gets super rocky. Peace, love, and code,

In this episode, Nicole tells the story of how she decided to create online tech courses, and why they were powerful enough to make them into an immensely fulfilling (AND very lucrative!) career! Online courses are more popular than they've ever been, especially in the age of social distancing. And they're not going anywhere anytime soon. They revolutionized education as we know it, providing visual and auditory learners with more customized and accessible learning media. I personally leveraged online courses to teach myself front-end web development starting back in 2015. Treehouse TOTALLY revolutionized my education as I knew it, helping me to understand concepts that I absolutely could NOT contextualize before. While listening to this episode, I hope that you'll begin to see options for you in the Educational Technology industry! I did a previous episode of the podcast on why I decided to become an entrepreneur, which may also help you decide if creating online courses could be something you'd be interested in pursuing. Peace, love, and code,

In this episode, Nicole walks you through the process of breaking a complex problem down into smaller pieces—making it easier to solve, with less stress! Solving code challenges is hard enough as it is, but new developers sometimes run away because they can't see past the surface complexity. In reality, each problem or code challenge we face can be broken down into smaller problems that are much easier to solve. Then, you connect the dots to put together a solution to the larger problem as a whole. I'll provide some examples and advice for pulling apart your problems that you can use immediately! My hope is that after this episode, you'll feel more confident leveraging problem breakdown as a valuable tool in your problem solving toolbox. (Technically, it's one step of 8 in a problem solving approach!) Peace, love, and code,

In this episode, Nicole highlights the different, distinct stages of our growth as web developers, from beginner to expert, so you always know where you are! We all know we can't go from beginner to expert overnight. Your growth process from "hello world" to building on advanced codebases is going to be a long one. Fortunately for us, there are competency scales that can help us understand where we are in terms of how confident and capable we are in using our skills—whatever language you may be using. The problem is, a lot of new coders in particular don't really "see" their skills increasing, and don't know how to graduate from one stage to the next. Allow me to walk you through this process, and define the requirements of each unique stage as you grow. My hope is that after listening to this episode, you'll gain a much better understanding of what you need in order to grow and build your skills (and get a job if that's your goal!) Peace, love, and code,

Your early stages of learning to code are really something special! 🥰 Basically everyone starts out fairly confident, because things are easy and straightforward. It’s the honeymoon period. But as soon as we dig in a ways, it can go from a positive experience to a negative one, depending on how you respond to those super strong emotions. We start comparing ourselves to other developers, and imposter syndrome can kick in too. It might not feel so fun anymore, and you might want to take “a break”. In this episode, I'll show you why you're in a fantastic place as a new developer, how you're more valuable to the industry than a lot of experienced developers, and tell a bit about my story of learning to love the experience of learning to code. I hope you'll turn off the episode with a greater sense of peace and purpose—you totally got this. ❤️ Peace, love, and code,

Twitter is Where Tech Happens™! When you create a Twitter account as a developer, you're effectively stepping into the tech community. You'll expose yourself to all kinds of helpful content (like the content I write! 😊) and valuable people posting it. I want to help you understand the nuances of the platform, how it differs from other social media platforms, what to post, and a bunch of valuable advice. Not being on the platform will actually hurt your career opportunities, especially if you're a new developer and/or career changer. I hope this episode helps you connect with others, find great resources and events, and make some awesome friends! 💕 Peace, love, and code, P.S. Be sure to follow me at @lavie_encode!

Mentorship can really help you gain clarity on your personal and career goals. By finding someone doing what you want to do, but better/for longer, you have a clear vision of what your future could look like, and what steps you need to take in order to get there. In this episode, we'll talk about what mentorship is, and I'll offer some insight into my own (current!) search for mentorship to fit my career goals. As always, I hope this episode will help you in your education and career. 😊

In this episode, Nicole walks through your first steps into the developer world, and how you can align your goals with actions to get your first paying work! If you're learning to code with the hopes of getting a job and launching a developer career, you know that there's like 500 things going on at once. There are a lot of folks out there telling you what to do and how to do it. But like, how do you choose which path to go? Where do you learn the skills? How do you apply for jobs? Although the answers are complex, we can begin to pull the curtain back and welcome you to your first steps. Once you get the ball rolling and connect with your community, you'll have a much clearer idea of how everything fits together, and how you can turn your skills into paying work. As always, I hope this episode will help you in your education and career. 😊

In this episode, Nicole shines a light on what it really means to "think like a programmer", and highlights some of the traits of individuals who tend to think this way. When I first began learning to code, it felt like some people just had more natural aptitude than I did. I had to wonder: what did they have that I didn't? Or did I have it in me, but I just wasn't channeling it properly? It turns out, I'm quite the programmatic thinker! (You'll learn what that means in the episode) Being aware of powerful programmatic mental approaches and interpretations will also help you to hone this perspective, so you can improve them on an ongoing basis. You'll be able to notice the little things that newbie coders and advanced beginners tend to overlook. I hope this episode will help you in your education and career! 😊