--- title: Meet Your Host - Amanda date: 2022-04-05T05:00:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-7/meet-your-host-amanda/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 05 Episode 7 – Apr 05, 2022 40:13 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Meet Your Host - Amanda  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-05/S05-E07-amanda-lutz.mp3) Sean and Mike interview our new co-host Amanda Lutz. Amanda's goal is to out nerd Sean and Mike in this episode. ### Show Notes - Amanda made her first website in 1994 - a university provided website - Amanda's major is Computing and Information Sciences - Amanda has learned these languages: Basic, Pascal, C++, Java, C# - Amanda is a Windows/Android user - Made a time tracking website as a personal project in the early 2000s - Worked on a ticketing website back in 2005 (Audience View) - 10 years since Amanda, Sean, and Mike met up for the first time at an ExpressionEngine meetup. - Teaches web development at Seneca College. ### Show Links - [Lotus Notes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Software) - [Audience View](https://www.audienceview.com/) - [Canada Learning Code (Previously Ladies Learning Code)](https://www.canadalearningcode.ca/) - [Seneca College](https://www.senecacollege.ca/home.html) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hello and welcome to the website 101 Podcast. I'm Sean Smith your co-host with me as usual is Mike Mella, Mike how you doing today? I'm well how are you Sean? I'm doing great and I'm really excited about today's episode because we're having an interview with our new co-host Amanda Lutz. She joined us a couple episodes ago and today we're going to learn all about her journey to web **\[00:28\]** **Amanda:** development. Amanda, welcome to the show. Hello, it's almost like it's my first time here ever. **\[00:35\]** **Mike:** Are you ready for the tough questions, Amanda? We don't hold back on this show. I don't know if **\[00:40\]** **Amanda:** you've noticed. I have noticed your incredibly high journalistic standards. Integrity? Yep. Integrity? All I ask is please don't be mean. Don't make me cry. And I think I'll be fine. **\[00:53\]** **Sean:** No guarantees. Yeah, I got to move that off the checklist. Oh, make Amanda cry. Okay, or or do. Okay. Maybe that'll be fun with you. I don't know **\[01:04\]** **Mike:** So when we did our meet meet our hosts episode Sean and I We both started way way back in history and in the 90s Yeah, and you claimed when we first brought this up that you would out nerd the both of us So I'm anxious to see where this goes **\[01:22\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I think we both have pretty good nerd credentials. You got to hit it running. **\[01:29\]** **Amanda:** You do. I did spend some time this morning away from client work so I could write out my tech timeline. As I was listening to Mike's Meet the Host and I did everything between looking at old resumes and memories of childhood and checking out old websites that used to **\[01:50\]** **Mike:** exist and I'm ready to go. I can't wait to see these websites too when we dig them up. Oh, none of them exist anymore. We'll see. Let's find out about the **\[02:00\]** **Sean:** infancy of your web development career. Let's just dive in here. So one of the **\[02:05\]** **Mike:** first questions we asked each other was when generally did you build your first **\[02:10\]** **Amanda:** website? What year are we talking about? I actually want to go a little bit for their back in the past, but we can do that after. If we're talking first websites, when I went to the University of Guelph, I'm totally dating myself. I started university in 1994, and I went to university for computing and information sciences, and they had, we walked in on the first day and they had email addresses for us and they had Linux, logins for us, and Telnet, and server space. So my very first website that I ever worked on was uo-wealth.ca slash tilde a-loots, because way, way back in the day when you had like a, when you did like that, that it wasn't even ISP, it was just like, well, I guess an internet service provider, they would often give you your own username and a special email address that you would only ever work as long as you were paying for that company. **\[03:07\]** **Mike:** And a website that was always tilde, I don't know why, and then that email address. **\[03:13\]** **Amanda:** all through university. We were learning programming but playing online. Wow. I did not know that **\[03:22\]** **Sean:** about you. What exactly did you study again? Can you repeat that? Computing and information **\[03:28\]** **Amanda:** sciences. I have a BSC from the University of Guelph honors program with a co-op. You are the most **\[03:35\]** **Sean:** qualified of all of us. It's true. She's already winning the nerd trend. And that's not even my origin **\[03:42\]** **Amanda:** story. My origin story starts probably about a decade before that. **\[03:46\]** **Sean:** Q. The MCU Marvel intro graphics. Yeah. First, I want to say, I'm, I am just **\[03:52\]** **Mike:** impressed that you that there was a pseudo web course. Was it web? No, it was **\[03:59\]** **Amanda:** nothing. Well, it was, it was computer programming. So, um, so what language were **\[04:06\]** **Sean:** you programming in like Fortran or Cobalt or something? Let's tell my whole **\[04:10\]** **Amanda:** origin story. Way, way back in the day, my dad was into computers and tinkering. So we had them at home and playing games like Oregon Trail and some, and the joystick that you could use to play like the winter games, the Atari winter games, but on the computer. And so my very first programming was basic. Ten print Amanda, 20 go to ten. Just to see what would happen to mess around with it. In high school, one of my math classes, the teacher, I don't know why, came up with this assignment where you had to research a profession where you needed to use math. It was like, I was OAC classes, always high levels and good grades and whatever. So it was like, whatever, do this. And I don't know even what got me into it, but I started researching computer programming. And this was like early, early, early 90s. And even then, they were making like $45,000. \[BLOCK 1 CONT'D\] And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. And even though I came from a super tiny small town, the high school had a programming class that was Pascal. **\[05:22\]** **Sean:** Oh, nice. **\[05:23\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so I did that. In grade 10, I took typing because all of my friends wanted to be secretaries. And I just wanted to hang out with them. And in grade 11, I took programming, but I already knew how to type. So it was, you know, it came along faster. And in grade 12, there was more programming and then also a computer-basics class that talked about like the hardware and the RAM and memory and how it all worked. \[BLOCK 2 CONT'D\] And then my high school even had a co-op program when I was in OAC. So with that, because I wanted to do computers, they had a partnership with, I grew up in your Sarnia. So my co-op was in one of the companies and chemical valley. And I was going, and I was doing very basic hardware tech support, but it was all of the executives were getting the brand new 486 machines. And then there was a big hierarchy of who was getting their old machine and who was getting their old machine. So I had to go around and update autoexec.bat files and config.sys files. This was back in the day before Windows existed. **\[06:28\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you mentioned, I too had a similar experience that I didn't mention on my show, but yeah, but pre high school, we had a Commodore 64. And I remember there were games on there that would, I remember specifically a game that had theme songs for like, you know, a clockwork orange and stuff that would play just like little beeps on the computer, but in the sound of the thing. And in order to pull up a song. A midi or something. Yeah, yeah, basically midi, yeah. And in order to pull it up, you had to actually type in commands, boot whatever, DOS, this and that. And I ended up learning a little bit of programming that way, I suppose you could call it that. I couldn't do anything but do that really. **\[07:12\]** **Sean:** But you guys are both so lucky. I did not own a computer until after I was 30. **\[07:19\]** **Mike:** What about video game systems? No Atari, you know, nothing like that? **\[07:22\]** **Sean:** I had a clinical vision. My uncle gave me when I was like 12. And I had some roommates in university and they had, was it Amiga, Amiga 2000? And the game that I played on that was, it's like a world-conquering game, civilization. **\[07:41\]** **Mike:** Oh, I don't even know that game. **\[07:43\]** **Sean:** And you played civilization, there was five floppy disks. So periodically, you would have to pull out disk one, right, and put in disk three again. Five minutes later, pull out disk three, put in disk two. Yeah, right, right. **\[07:56\]** **Mike:** And then in university we moved to C++ on Linux machines and I think in later years we started **\[08:07\]** **Amanda:** doing Java development when Java was kind of new to the scene but again it was still all on Linux. So I was using like VI for an editor. I was even like hand coding like a Java front end when we were we're doing bigger class projects and stuff. **\[08:24\]** **Mike:** And we're talking about late 90s here somewhere there. **\[08:26\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, late 90s. **\[08:28\]** **Mike:** OK, well. **\[08:28\]** **Sean:** So you have a lot of experience with hand-coding stuff and actual proper education about computer programming principles, unlike Mike and myself who are self-taught. So you probably have a better understanding of the fundamentals than that area then. **\[08:47\]** **Mike:** I did take a course, remember. I took one course in 2000, which **\[08:51\]** **Sean:** is one more than I took. **\[08:52\]** **Amanda:** Exactly. But of course, there was a lot of classes in university that I basically finished the course and perched out the information. One of them was machine languages. And I think the project that my partner and I did for that was programming a remote control. And as soon as that was done, it was like, I'm done. I don't care. We did a cool database class that I liked a lot. But then we had a whole class, an entire class that was about sorting algorithms. Wow. And again, it was like, that's awesome and that's great, but it's like now these sorting algorithms exist and guess what, in all of the programming languages, you say .sort. And I don't care which one it's using, it's fast enough. I'm not making a new one, so. **\[09:34\]** **Sean:** Mm-hmm. Right. So, slightly tangentially related, you said that the university had you using Linux and you've mentioned that several times. On your personal computer, are you a Linux, Windows, or Mac person? **\[09:50\]** **Amanda:** I am a Windows. I am definitely a PC, and I'm also Android for my phone. **\[09:56\]** **Mike:** I'm one of those weird combinations where I'm a Mac on desktop, but I have an Android phone, which is strange, I don't. **\[10:04\]** **Sean:** And I am a Windows desktop and Android phone, but I do a boot into a Linux OS from time to **\[10:12\]** **Mike:** time. This is getting super nerdy. **\[10:14\]** **Sean:** I know. Well Amanda did challenge us to like she's going to out nerd us so I mean we got to chime **\[10:22\]** **Amanda:** in with our own little bit. So here's my nerd topper for university, my final independent study project that I was doing was written with C sharp with a Java front end and it was **\[10:36\]** **Sean:** back-propagational neural networks. I understand those as English words but I don't know what **\[10:43\]** **Amanda:** they mean together. Yeah, basically I did like a Java friend end to upload a file that was basically just like a CVS, like just a like comma delimited text file that now a days anyone would use like a JSON a data object and just parsing it up and based on previous data trying to predict the next data point. Wow, it's a fancy way of saying I was trying to guess the trying to guess the next number. Did you work for SkyNet? I started SkyNet. You know when they when they're **\[11:18\]** **Sean:** going to become self-aware. So we got your your big background in computer programming with university and stuff. Let's jump forward a bit into where you start your first website whether it's a **\[11:32\]** **Amanda:** personal project or a client project or or whatever. When I was done university I started working at this place that wrote, I say, wrote, it was Lotus Notes development. **\[11:45\]** **Mike:** I don't remember that, yeah. **\[11:47\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, for those who have never heard of Lotus Notes, it was used for a very long time as a database alternative for like insurance companies and banks. And after a while, even the insurance companies and banks, they wanted their stuff to be a little more web accessible. So instead of always having to be at this client site, like having to log into Lotus Notes, You could actually, Lotus developed some web server. And so I started applying more of my web development knowledge then. And I think during that time, even at that first job, I was doing just some freelance projects that, you know, I just picked up here and there. I like, I can't remember any specifics. None of them are probably up anymore. But I remember it's very specifically that I wanted to move from Lotus Notes to web development. And the joke that I always made was that I wanted to be able to show my mom what I'm doing. Like my mom had zero clue about what I was working on or what my job entailed, and I wanted to be able to send her a link and be like, look what I made, be proud of me, even though I mean she was proud of me before. **\[12:55\]** **Sean:** That's actually exactly the reason I made my first website. **\[12:58\]** **Amanda:** So yeah, so I got into web development, and then in my free time, I started doing things like learning PHP on my own. So I could do like backend development and besides friend and development. And the very first program, the very first like PHP, like full friend and backend, full stack application was I made a time tracking website for myself for funsies. What year are we talking about there then? Probably early 2000s, probably around 2003. And at this point it was like I was like making the classes. I was creating the user classes. I was creating the time record classes. I was like, it was all, it was me coding all of it. And I can remember, I mean after, and then after a while, and I got more experience, and I got a job working at OISI, which is the teachers college at U of T. And I was like, in, I was making the websites for their department. And close to the end of when I was there, we were trying, our boss wanted us to look at different content management systems to see which one could maybe be a little more useful to recommend to the different people in the department to get a website up and happening a bit faster. And I was angry because I didn't want to be using a CMS. I wanted to be **\[14:16\]** **Sean:** making a CMS. Yeah. Yeah. That was actually going to be my next question. Since you mentioned making all these classes and working up with PHP kind of at a lower level, did you ever consider? Well, you answered that. But did you ever start making your own sort of CMS? **\[14:34\]** **Amanda:** No. No, because I sort of had it in my mind that it would always be a system for this company, a system for this client. So making something, and by that point, I mean, I was still doing freelance work, so I knew about clients. I was working at, still working at OISI, but dealing with all the different people there. So I kind of knew the heartache. I would be bringing on myself if I made something and released it in the public and then had people like picking it apart and critiquing it and do it this way it's better and this doesn't work and then having to deal with all **\[15:10\]** **Sean:** like the debugging and the fixes and no no thanks. Customer support is more work than actually building your product probably work? **\[15:20\]** **Amanda:** It for sure is, yeah. And if you're not getting paid for it, at that time, I definitely did not see the value. **\[15:25\]** **Mike:** I think it's funny that one of the first things you built was a time tracker while I, meanwhile, was making a website for my band. **\[15:33\]** **Amanda:** For your band, I know. **\[15:34\]** **Mike:** And you're making something practical like a time tracker, even back then. **\[15:38\]** **Amanda:** But I would look at it in the other way. You have other interests. You have other... I don't want to call them hobbies because I know that music is more than just a hobby to you, but you have these other things that you're into. I write code. That's all I've ever done. That's all I've ever wanted to do. I tried doing project management for a little bit. No, thank you. Anytime I try to design something, it basically looks like a grade one came in with an eight pack of Creole of crayons and just started making lines everywhere and not even a straight line. **\[16:11\]** **Sean:** You're saying it looks like a developer who designed something. **\[16:13\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, and I am not good at it, and I don't like doing it. I have enough experience now that I can talk to designers and talk to clients and offer suggestions, and maybe this isn't the best way to do it, and maybe here's a suggestion, but actually coming up with that design originally from the beginning, oh no thank you, not my **\[16:33\]** **Sean:** skill set. Hi, Sean here. Hope you're enjoying this episode of The Website 101 Podcast. We'd love it if you'd give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. These kind of reviews help new listeners find out about us and allow us to keep doing the show. **\[16:55\]** **Mike:** So I have a question about this. You know, you're a teacher now. You teach web development and part of that, as I understand it, involves, you know, there's this sort of overarching program in the school where even if you're studying design, you have to take some of the development courses from you and that kind of thing. So, my question is, when you were studying computer stuff, did you ever get into any formal design education around any of this? Or even when you were like dabbling early on. Did you kind of start looking into web design and just go, oh, I'm not into this, I'm into the code side. Like, how early did you know I don't want to do **\[17:38\]** **Amanda:** any of this design stuff? I don't know about the design specifically, but like from very, very early on, like when I was talking in high school, when I was taking that like computer basics class about the hardware and stuff, I don't care. Networks, I don't care. It's not what I like, it's not what I want to do. And even with the design, it's just, I never, I never gave it like a really hard effort. I never tried really hard to be good at it because it's just not. I mean, even, even for things like, for, for hobbies, I mean, the, the closest thing that I have to a hobby right now is doing cross stitch. And if you think about it, that's ASCII art. You follow. I never heard that before. That's awesome. you follow a picture that someone else made for you, they tell you where to put what colors, and then you build it. So that's, I'm doing web development, but with my hands. That's the closest thing that I have to a hobby. I can't, I am in awe of people who have artistic talent and can see the difference between different shades of green or this blue is warm. I have no idea what any of that means. **\[18:48\]** **Sean:** I think you do have another hobby. weren't you, I don't know if you're still doing it, but I know that you used to be a runner where you'd go out running later. **\[18:57\]** **Amanda:** Yes, I do still run, I do still like working out and lifting weights, it's harder to do that now with family obligations, and now I have my fingers in so many pies, the podcasts, the teaching, the client work, everything else, but yeah, I still, I, yeah, I like that, you're right, Sean, I would definitely consider that one of my, one of my go-tos is something that I need to do. **\[19:23\]** **Sean:** Hobby might not be the right word, but pastime or some sort of recreational activity. My hobby is photography, but I haven't done that since the pandemic, so I don't know if it's still a hobby. **\[19:36\]** **Amanda:** Get out and try it again. **\[19:37\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I don't think anyone's hobbies have maintained there. You're rich to doing this time, that's true. **\[19:44\]** **Sean:** Right, so Amanda, have you ever had a job where you did web development directly. I know you actually never mind the answer to that question. Wait, did she? **\[19:56\]** **Amanda:** At the U of T. I talked about OZ, but I see I consider OZ, where when I worked at OZ was sort of, it was almost like a design agency inside the department. So I would still like, one day it would be like student services at OZ and another day it would be like admissions at OZ and another day it would be someone else at OZ. But after working there, education doesn't pay a super a lot. So I decided to go and get a new job in the public sector, because girls, girls, get that cash. And I went and worked at a place where they build themselves as being a competitor of ticket master. So they were making this application where their clients would be, we had a bunch of casinos and Vegas, you know, with all the shows that they have. I think a couple of theaters in Toronto also use this application, where they would set up their venue and then the website would go live whenever they have a show and customers could come and use this website that I worked on and like pick the seats that they wanted to purchase. **\[21:04\]** **Mike:** Cool, that sounds very, I keep thinking this is a long time ago. Was this a long time ago? **\[21:11\]** **Amanda:** It was 2005 to 2007. **\[21:15\]** **Mike:** Yeah, it was pretty long time ago. That's pretty, you know, it's sufficient. Yeah, but so it was pretty advanced for at the time. **\[21:24\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, there's still around, so shout out to audience view. **\[21:27\]** **Mike:** Do you remember any of the URLs of any of the earlier websites that you made? Because the way back machine exists, and that's where I tracked down my first website. **\[21:38\]** **Amanda:** It does, yeah. **\[21:39\]** **Mike:** I would love to show your stuff in the show notes. **\[21:42\]** **Amanda:** I think I would choose not to. So after working at audience view, that's when I went full-time contract, freelance basis, and stuff. And yeah, I do actually have, because then it's like I started keeping track of those actual projects for my portfolio. So I do have a lot of the early URLs dating back from 2007. And so I'm sure that I could use the way back machine to go look at some of those. But here's the thing that's difficult about it is that I didn't design any of them. And it's even hard with my portfolio now. It's like, I can show you all of these different sites that I worked on. But a client doesn't care about the code. A client only cares about what it looks like. But I'm actually, I'm making what somebody else wanted it to look like. So it's kind of hard to convey to clients just development-wise. Hey, this is what I can do. unless you start working with a very broad range of the keywords, you know, craft, expression engine, wordpress, react, you know, all of these other things. **\[22:49\]** **Mike:** So. So let's talk about that for a second. You do do client work now as well as teaching. So how do you position yourself when you can't show them, hey, look at this website, I did not design that. You know, it's not very effective as far as luring them in. What is your selling, do you go after jobs that are for a word press developer or a craft developer? Do you seek them out? Is that how you find work? **\[23:15\]** **Amanda:** I've been very, very lucky in that the majority of my work has been word of mouth from other clients. Somebody who was, what was it? The most recent was that I got an email from someone and they were like, I really liked working with you on this project and I'm going to recommend, a friend of mine has a company, I'm going to recommend you to them. And I was like, awesome, great, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I had to go back and search my email. And this was like from like three or four years previous. And it was a dude who had like sat in on a meeting. Like so I didn't even actually like interact with him about anything. **\[23:49\]** **Sean:** But. Obviously made a good impression a lot based on their work and whatever you said or did in the meeting. **\[23:56\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so I think that I mean, what I'm kind of trying to build myself now and I have been for a while is that I am a nerd, but that can talk to non-technical people. **\[24:06\]** **Sean:** The soft skills are so important. **\[24:08\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, they're super important. I can sit in a client meeting, I don't like to, but I can sit in a client meeting. And I can listen to all of the business proposals and offer suggestions about how technology could enhance that, could help out. I can talk to the designers and be like, yeah, that's a great design, but it doesn't really, especially back in the day when a lot of print designers were trying to do web design. And it was like, OK, that's not really going to equate to web development for these reasons. Let's try doing it like this. I have worked with everything from the mom and pop shop around the corner, who just need a little brochure website to e-com sites, to design agencies, to marketing agencies, to the companies that I've worked at, like big teams, just me individually. **\[24:56\]** **Sean:** You name it, I've done it. When did you make the transition from employee to being self-employed, or what some people like to call a freelancer? **\[25:08\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, so while I was working at audience view, I was the last company that I worked at. And even that was, what did we figure out 15 plus years ago? I was still doing freelance work and I had a previous colleague, somebody that I worked with at a previous company. And she was a designer and she was in Hamilton and she had like this design agency, and she would like freelance projects to me. And I was talking to her one day on the phone, and she was like, listen, I think it's about time that I hired somebody and let's talk. And I was like, awesome, let's talk. And she laid everything out, and she was not able to come anywhere near what I was making at the company I was at. Like, she wasn't even paying herself as much as I was making at the company I was at. And I called her and I was like, I feel really bad about it and it's unfortunately all about the money and sorry, and as I'm hanging up the phone, I say super sarcastically, you know, unless you just want to keep paying me for my freelance raid, and she was like, yes. So for the first year, we had a contract where she would guarantee me a minimum number of hours a week, and there was only once, maybe twice, that we didn't hit that, that she still had to pay for it. So for the first year of me working freelance, it was a really great, easy, it was a great safety net. **\[26:30\]** **Sean:** Oh, excellent, excellent. **\[26:33\]** **Amanda:** And during that first year, it's like I could, you know, go out and get other clients and make new contacts. And I used to do girl geeks, ladies learning code, a bunch of like networking groups like **\[26:45\]** **Mike:** that. Cool. So almost like a retainer, you were on a retainer with someone while you were able to find other work at the same time. **\[26:52\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. **\[26:53\]** **Mike:** Like I said, she kept me busy. **\[26:56\]** **Sean:** Well, that's a really good starting point because it gets you that regular income but it also doesn't take all of your time so you have that opportunity to learn the business side of it as well as work on other client work. **\[27:10\]** **Amanda:** Yes. And the networking, which is so super important because Sean here is an extra special surprise for you. I still have the original email from you on March 14th, 2012. **\[27:23\]** **Sean:** This is about, this is less than a year after I moved back to Canada. **\[27:27\]** **Amanda:** You emailed me telling me about the expression engine group that you were putting together because Francis, our mutual acquaintance Francis, told you about me, and I replied, I'm like, yeah, Francis, we're just telling me about this. **\[27:38\]** **Mike:** I want to come out. Which is where the three of us all met at once, me and there is me. **\[27:44\]** **Sean:** Exactly. Including some other guests from the show, I'm, yeah, as well. **\[27:47\]** **Amanda:** So hey guys, we're coming up on our 10-year anniversary. Congratulations. **\[27:52\]** **Sean:** Right. Oh, what was what was the date on that March? What March 14th? We need to have a meetup that week if we're allowed. If we're allowed. Seeming that in-person dining is, is uh, okay, but we definitely should schedule something for mid-March. That would be awesome. **\[28:09\]** **Amanda:** I'm making a note of that. That's right. Everyone, everyone go get your COVID vaccinations so that Amanda can go out and have a drink. Yeah. **\[28:17\]** **Sean:** Yeah, 10-year meet-up. Okay. That is amazing. I can't believe it's been 10 years. **\[28:23\]** **Mike:** Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah, that's true. So, expression engine, if anyone doesn't know, is this content management system that's been around for years and we've all used it before. We've talked about it on the show many times. And yeah, we all, so we all met through, Sean, did you organize all those meet-ups or how did that go? **\[28:42\]** **Sean:** I organized it all. So if you recall from my meet your host episode, I lived overseas for like 14 years and I moved to Toronto in summer 2011. Got myself established and said, I need to meet other developers. I need to make some friends or whatever. This is a great opportunity. So I called emailed a whole bunch of people. Basically, I Googled anybody who had something to do with expression engine and so I'm starting a meetup because frankly I was really surprised that there was no expression engine meetup at that time in Toronto and it's since evolved to mostly a craft meetup but you know we'll take anybody who uses craft or expression engine or just as long as we're good people. **\[29:27\]** **Mike:** It's even only peripherally related to web development half the time we just kind of go out. **\[29:31\]** **Sean:** Yeah, go meet up. It's just people who work in the same industry and we go have drugs. Yeah, that's it. **\[29:36\]** **Amanda:** Well, I think also because we all work for ourselves from home. So I mean, we are we are the work social network. **\[29:42\]** **Sean:** That's right. Yeah, yeah. We spend our time Our time socializing, but you know, we talk about clients and how to improve businesses. Help each other out a lot. We hire each other also. I've hired Amanda and Mike, you know, it all goes around. Yeah. **\[29:58\]** **Mike:** Yeah. So can we talk about teaching a little bit? Yes. Oh, yeah, we have to hit the teaching thing. So you are a tea. Well, why don't you just tell us generally your teacher what do you teach, what's the deal there? **\[30:12\]** **Amanda:** So at Seneca College here in Toronto, they have a couple campuses. I teach at the campus that's at York University. And it is in the department, it's INM - interactive new media. For this four semester certificate, as I think Shazan mentioned it before, the students maybe just want to be introduced to the idea of new media. So they all of the students have to take the design classes. All of the students have to take the development classes. All of the students have to take the UIUX class. All of the students, I think there's like an animation class. They're getting a very good broad range. There's a marketing class. There's a branding class. So it's pretty well rounded, which I think is great, and I also think is awful. Because again, just from my perspective, I only like doing development. So I would not want to take any of those other classes. And as an instructor, it's really a tightrope, trying to keep it interesting enough for the students who are interested in development and yet not making it too complicated or too boring or too difficult for the students who don't really like writing code, but still want to pass the program. **\[31:39\]** **Sean:** The ones that are designers and not developers, like you mentioned that when you went to school, you had no interest in design. So you're the opposite of your own students. Sure, some of them. **\[31:52\]** **Mike:** I wonder why, then, what is the decision, maybe you don't know, but why is there a decision that, you know, whoever takes any of these courses needs to learn all of these different disciplines in some form? Is it just that they think they're so closely related that it's important that even if you just want to design, you have to know some code, too, or what's **\[32:12\]** **Amanda:** the deal? Again, I think it's just because it's this certificate that's been set up. This program that's been set up is that it's interactive new media. So I mean, I haven't looked at Seneca's other course calendar, but I'm pretty sure that they do have like just a programming certificate. I don't know what they do in there, but this program that I'm teaching in, I teach web development. And it's only front-end web development. **\[32:41\]** **Mike:** Right, okay. **\[32:43\]** **Sean:** Only front-end web development. That's still a pretty broad industry As we all know, it is super broad. **\[32:50\]** **Amanda:** So when I first started, I taught the first in the second semester, which was very intro, very HTML and writing properly indented code and all of the HTML tags always need to be lowercase. And you don't do attribute name, space, equal sign, space, quote, trying to just write good code, teaching them the basics of CSS, styling and, you know, inheritance and cascading and things like that. Second semester includes a bit more JavaScript, a bit more advanced, you know, design ideas, like flexbox and grid, responsive web development. Third semester we get into, it's third semester right now is a lot of things like accessibility and CSS naming conventions and pre-compilers. And then in the fourth semester, the class is actually called development and emerging technologies. So again, it's like trying to keep the developers interested but the non-developers not falling behind while I'm trying to talk to them about things like react and restful APIs. And not that they're really emerging anymore. But I've actually this semester for the first time, fingers crossed, we'll see how it works. I've got a class coming up where I'm going to just have it be like an open topic. So I made an assignment for the students to force them to actually reply, asking them like, what are they interested in? Like, here are some of my ideas about emerging technologies. Here's a couple articles listing, you know, emerging technologies for 2022. What do you want to talk about? So I haven't seen the results yet. I'm interested to see up to because besides doing web development like I am... **\[34:39\]** **Mike:** what they've got to say. Yeah, that'd be a good way to get your finger on the pulse of, you know, younger people and what what's exciting them online and things like that. Yeah see what they're **\[34:48\]** **Amanda:** I mean besides doing web development like I am just my partner Andrew and I we've got the smart house that everyone thought that the future would include we've got Google devices you've got Alexa devices we've got like light switches and plugs and LEDs that can change colors and it's all voice command and activated and scheduled and you know our seven year old kid can can activate all of the lights in the house. He's got his own little voice-recognized profile. And yeah, we're constantly playing with technology and stuff and seeing what's new. So it's not even just about the development. It's the learning new and the playing and seeing what's out there. And stuff like that really excites me. So I'm trying to get this enthusiasm into the students. Even if they don't care about development, you're always going to be learning something new. **\[35:40\]** **Sean:** be excited about it. Yeah, excellent, excellent. So Amanda, this has been a really great conversation. We have one last question for you. Yeah. What advice do you have for new web developers? And this is a question that both Mike and myself actually, should we reiterate our answers so that **\[35:59\]** **Amanda:** you can do? Please do. I was going to start with that, but please do. So Sean's answer was I believe **\[36:04\]** **Mike:** don't get discouraged by the fast pace of this industry. Was that generally? **\[36:09\]** **Sean:** Yeah. That's a fair assessment. **\[36:11\]** **Mike:** Okay. And mine was something to the effect of you should take advantage of networking opportunities, make connections, and don't expect things from people, something like that. So given those two answers, what would your answer be? **\[36:29\]** **Amanda:** For a new web developer, somebody who's just interested in it, like, I'm constantly telling my students the best way to learn anything is to get in and play with it. in and play with it and break it and swear at the heavens and read the documentation, go RTFM and look at the, you know, stack overflow and Google it and fix it. And then what did you do wrong with it and you probably won't do that wrong again and then start changing the values and see what else you can do with it, break it again, fix it again. Like just play with it, be curious, have fun with it because... And again, like that's for development but that's also, I feel that also applies for like design. if there's new design methodologies or design software, or if you're into project management, there's always gonna be a new software that you can use for that. Just get in there and click a link, see what it does. **\[37:20\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so the TLDR, the TLDR on this is, don't be afraid to break it. **\[37:26\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, well, a caveat, make a backup, and then don't be afraid to break it. **\[37:31\]** **Mike:** That's why we use Git. Well, that's one of the things that, yeah, that's specific to this industry that, you know, it being a digital medium, it is possible to just make a copy and delete it or undo things, control Z and whatever. Whereas some other industries, if you're wiring somebody's house, because you're an electrician, maybe you don't just toy around and try to break it, you know, I mean, do it, do it right the first time. **\[37:55\]** **Amanda:** What happens if I touch it with this metal? **\[37:57\]** **Mike:** Electrical fire burned down the house. **\[37:59\]** **Sean:** Yeah. **\[38:00\]** **Amanda:** That's a good answer. **\[38:01\]** **Sean:** Thank you. Amanda, thank you for a great interview. Thank you for joining our podcast. We're looking forward to having you on and with all our future guests. **\[38:10\]** **Mike:** And we're glad we have such a professional on the show now that we know the history, which is twice the history we have in terms of experience and whatnot, so that's great. **\[38:20\]** **Sean:** Twice ours combined. **\[38:21\]** **Amanda:** I might have the technical proficiency, and now my goal is to become a bit of a jackass for everything in the future and be the weird one. **\[38:31\]** **Mike:** That's good. That's good. Good to have life goals. Yeah. Excellent. **\[38:36\]** **Amanda:** Amanda, bye guys, thank you. **\[38:42\]** **Sean:** The website 101 Podcast is hosted by me, Sean Smith. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.ca, and on LinkedIn, where my username is caffeinecreations. **\[38:56\]** **Mike:** And by me, Mike Mella, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella. **\[39:03\]** **Amanda:** And one third of the website 101 Podcast Talent is provided by me, Amanda Loots. You can find me online at my website, AmandaLoots.com. I also hang out on Twitter sometimes. You can find me at Amanda Loots T.O. **\[39:17\]** **Sean:** And Mike, when I say burn down the house, you should in the background play the talking heads. Please don't. I don't think we have the the licensing for that I think if you have less than 10 seconds, you're saying oh, that's not true That's a myth. Oh, I'll take your word for her **\[39:41\]** **Amanda:** Come on burn them down the house Just even even if it's not a licensing issue, please don't yeah, we won't do that. Yeah, thank you **\[39:50\]** **Sean:** Well, I'm disappointed in her man **\[39:55\]** **Amanda:** I don't think I care fired It was really nice being your ex-host for these two episodes and I guess I'll see you guys around. **\[40:07\]** **Sean:** I think we can call that a wrap. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 05 - 1 [ Meet your Host - Sean](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-1/meet-your-host-sean/) - 2 [ Meet Your Host - Mike Mella](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-2/meet-your-host-mike-mella/) - 3 [ Wes Bos - Your Web Boss](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-3/wes-bos-your-web-boss/) - 4 [ Tailwind CSS with Adam Wathan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-4/tailwind-css-with-adam-wathan/) - 5 [ Starting my own Website with Bill Campbell](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-5/starting-my-own-website-with-bill-campbell/) - 6 [ CSS is Awesome with Kevin Powell](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-6/css-is-awesome-with-kevin-powell/) - 7 [ Meet Your Host - Amanda](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-7/meet-your-host-amanda/) - 8 [ 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-8/11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/) - 9 [ Vanilla Javascript - Fundamentals before Frameworks](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-9/vanilla-javascript-fundamentals-before-frameworks/) - 10 [ Hiring Junior Devs and How to Stand Out from the Crowd](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-10/hiring-junior-devs-and-how-to-stand-out-from-the-crowd/) - 11 [ AlpineJS with Caleb Porzio: Lightweight javascript in your markup.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-11/alpinejs-with-caleb-porzio-lightweight-javascript-in-your-markup/) - 12 [ Contract Opinions From Not a Lawyer](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-12/contract-opinions-from-not-a-lawyer/) - 13 [ Talking to a New Dev](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-13/talking-to-a-new-dev/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>