Welcome to the Code to be podcast where we talk to people on their coding journey in hopes of helping you on yours.

I'm your host, Saron, and today we're talking about TypeScript with Dan Vanderkamp, principal software engineer at Sidewalk Labs, an author of effective TypeScript.

I think more and more companies nowadays are starting to adopt TypeScript, and so I think

inevitably you will run across it, and so getting comfortable with it, I think it's going

to be a pretty good investment.

Dan talks about the difference between working on a personal project versus a project at

scale, what TypeScript is and how it can help you

once you move on to those larger projects. After this.

Thanks so much for being here. Thank you.

So tell us a little bit about how you started your coding journey. I really moved pretty

much straight from playing with Legos to writing computer code. And in some ways, I don't think

those two are actually all that different. What happened was, it was probably in fifth or sixth grade.

And for reasons I don't entirely remember anymore, I expressed an interest in learning how

to work with computers. And there was a computer teacher at my grade school at the time. And she

gave me a book, which just talked all about everything to do with computers and how to program

them. It's called the Secret Guide to Computers, which I've learned since then is a little bit of a cult classic. Oh, cool. Yeah, so I learned how to program them. It's called The Secret Guide to Computers, which I've learned since then

is a little bit of a cult classic. Oh, cool. Yeah, so I learned how to program basic from that,

and I was kind of off to the races. What kinds of things did you make? I made a ton of little

computer games when I was a kid. I think that's how a lot of kids get started with programming.

I think there's something really fun about just the quick interaction of writing some code

and then seeing that turn into something moving on the screen or seeing it respond to the changes

you make.

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