In this episode, Ben and I talk about the conception of CodeLand, last year's CodeLand, which had to switch to a virtual conference due to covid-19, and the biggest differences between CodeLand 2020 and CodeLand 2021. Registration for CodeLand is pay-what-you-want -- starting at $0. Grab your CodeLand 2021 ticket today at codelandconf.com. That’s codelandconf.com.
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CodeLand 2021
Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern is co-founder of Forem.
In this episode, we talk about what are the core skills you need to go from developer to entrepreneur with Ben Halpern, co-founder of Forem, which acquired CodeNewbie in 2020. Ben talks about getting into development with entrepreneurship on the brain, building DEV and now his new venture, Forem, and what skills he looks for when hiring developers.
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DEV
community.codenewbie.org
GeoCities
PHP
Linux
Ruby on Rails
Node.js
Lynda
Egghead
Udemy
Stripe
API
Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern is co-founder of Forem.
Abadesi is back to talk to Ben Halpern, creator, founder, and webmaster of DEV, an online community where developers share ideas and help each other grow. He is also behind @ThePracticalDev on Twitter and runs DEV alongside his two other co-founders, Jess Lee and Peter Frank. Fun fact: Ben is a Canadian who moved to NYC to join a startup and never left. He spoke to Aba from Brooklyn.
In this episode we talk about:
Why you need to lead by example when you're building an online community and how your behavior as a founder on the site can be more effective in setting a tone than complicated rules.
How DEV manages their distributed team, the advantages of working from home, and being honest with yourself about when you need to take a break from your work as a founder, even if it's not easy to do.
His love for open source, his predictions for future trends on the web and his very unique personal website, which is a throwback to the web of years past.
We also talk about his love for Tiles, the surprising usefulness of Android's Measure app, and why Ben says if you're not using a password manager, you're “not living your digital life to the fullest.”
We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸
Quotes from This Episode
“[On creating good communities] It didn’t just happen by accident, we really tried to foster this stuff by example. Anytime we try to create something new, some kind of new behavior or anything, we really try to do it by leading the way and being good ourselves and then rewarding those who get it, who share our understanding of what a good community needs to be.”
“You can really do anything you can want on the web. It’s a really fascinating platform. Anything you can hear or visualize is possible, it’s just our imagination that limits it.”
“[On remote work] I would say that it’s a good idea, but it’s not going to be something you get right at first, so you’re going to have to be accepting of it being a gradual thing that you don’t give up on but you also don’t just jump in and do without the expectation that anything’s going to go wrong.”
Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode
Amazon Alexa — Get information, news, weather, and more using just your voice.
LastPass — Essential password manager.
Measure — Measure anything with your phone.
Phillips Hue Smart Bulbs — Internet-connected color-changing lightbulbs that you can program yourself.
Tile — Track your lost items.
When Ben Halpern (@bendhalpern) decided to start another business, he set a very unusual expectation: He gave himself 10 years to succeed. In this episode, we discuss how Ben's patient approach and obsession with understanding things from his users' point of view helped him grow as massive following on Twitter and parlay that into fast-growing online community for developers.
Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/069-ben-halpern-of-dev-to
We talk with Ben Halpern the founder and webmaster of dev.to — a community for developers to talk about software. Last Wednesday they open sourced the codebase of the dev.to platform, so we wanted to talk through all the details with Ben. We talked through the backstory, how Ben realized this could become a business, how the team was formed, their motivations for open sourcing it and why they didn’t open source it from the start, the technical stack, and their vision for the future of the site.
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Featuring:
Ben Halpern – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
dev.to is now open source
thepracticaldev/dev.to
dev.to roadmap
O RLY Cover Generator
Saron from Codenewbie
Making dev.to insanely fast
RailsConf talk on making dev.to fast
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Anil Dash joins us for hosting duties again this week along with co-founders Jess Lee and Ben Halpern of the Practical Dev. Topics include Shabbat elevators, Failure, and racist AI.
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In today's episode, I talk with Ben Halpern. You may know him from his tweets as @ThePracticalDev. Ben also is the founder of dev.to, a site for developers to share knowledge and culture with one another.
Check out dev.to to learn a bit more about what Ben has created!
In today's episode, I talk with Ben Halpern. You may know him from his tweets as @ThePracticalDev. Ben also is the founder of dev.to, a site for developers to share knowledge and culture with one another.
Check out dev.to to learn a bit more about what Ben has created!