Episode 13 – Why would someone get a PhD in Learning Sciences? Meet Dr. Reuven Lerner

We all know that a solid education is crucial to get a push up in life, but it is not always necessary for software development. In fact, few go further than a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. If you’ve ever wondered what the future holds for a higher degree, this podcast is for you. Arsalan will explore the opportunities and reasons behind Reuven’s decision to do just that.
 
Reuven Lerner’s Bio:
Reuven created one of the first 100 Web sites in the world just after graduating from MIT’s computer science department. Today, Reuven spends most of his time training programmers at companies such as Apple, Autodesk, Cisco, EMC, HP, SANDisk, and VMWare in four open-source technologies: Python, PostgreSQL, Git, and Ruby. Reuven teaches in Israel, China, Europe, and North America, as well as online.
His monthly column in Linux Journal has appeared monthly since early 1996. His latest ebook, “Practice Makes Python,” is aimed at Python programmers who want to improve their fluency in the language.  Two new ebooks, about regular expressions and technical training, should be ready in the coming months.
Reuven curates DailyTechVideo.com (offering a new conference talk about programming each day), and is a permanent panelist on the Freelancers Show, a weekly podcast for independent consultants. He also edits MandarinWeekly.com, a weekly collection of links and resources for anyone learning Chinese.
Reuven has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, and a PhD from the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University, where he created and studied collaborative online learning communities as the developer of the Modeling Commons.
Reuven lives in Modi’in, Israel with his wife and three children.
Please say hi to Reuven on Twitter.
 
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Reuven: From the time I was in high school I was really interested in programming. We had a computer at home and I would play around with programming, but nothing very serious. I was fortunate enough to go to MIT where I studied computer science. So, I have been doing software engineering for the last to 25 years. First, I worked for big companies like HP and Time Warner. Moved to Israel in 1995 and began consulting. Consulting business has morphed over time to include: Lennox system admin, helping people with configurations, and Pearl programming. From there I moved more and more into web stuff as the web became increasingly popular. That has shifted again over the last 2-3 years as I’ve moved away from doing more day to day developing work and moving more into doing technical training.
Reuven: I do some development work on my own and help people with development work here and there. Probably about 80% of my time is spent going to large companies: Cisco, VMware, EMC, SanDisk and training their developers to the technologies that I know best and like, which is most often Python, Postgres, GIT, and Ruby, with other things as well like Regular Expressions.
Arsalan: One of the favorite topics of any new developer, as you know, is Regular Expressions. They love it.
Reuven: The course that I teach in Regular Expressions basically came from my other programming courses. For years, I taught courses in Pearl, Ruby, and Python, and I would try to stick in about two hours of Regular Expressions. But because no one knew what I was talking about, I decided to make it its own course and give it two full days. It has been surprisingly successful. I really feel that giving it the time has been really worth the syntax and the effort.
Arsalan: I love Regular Expressions. I’ve been using them since I was in college. But, I can imagine many of the people listening to the podcast might be thinking what this Regular Expression thing is? Can you quickly describe in one line what it is and why we should care about it?

Episode source