Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 251 | James Stone - Bridging the Gap
Guest:
James Stone talks with Dave Rael about diverse backgrounds, school and education, compensation, and the differences and similarities between design and engineering
James Stone is a Design Systems Engineer and a top contributor to the Open Source ZURB Foundation CSS front-end framework. He is most well known for his videos on YouTube which have had over 294k views to date. He has written for UX Pin and ZURB University and is an Adjunct Professor at Penn State's School of Visual Art, where he teaches an online introduction to scripting course targeted at artists and designers. Interesting fact about the course: many CS, SE, and IST majors take it because they want to do something a bit more creative with their code.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and James Stone
- - James's path to expertise in both design and engineering
- - James's journey through schooling
- - Family history, learning that software was a driver for James, and getting into professional development
- - Working as a programmer, at a record store, and going back to school
- - James's deep interest in creating great experiences
- - The nature of design and what it has in common with software development
- - Bridging the gap between designers and developers
- - Applying the engineering mindset to the design problem
- - James's story of failure - failing to finish high school
- - James's success story - discovering the value of having an email list and focusing on the audience
- - James's book recommendation
- - James's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with James
Resources:
James's book recommendation:
James's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Have empathy for the people you're interacting with
- Really focus on business values
- Do great work, share your work, and continue to iterate and improve
