He imagined he could make the web shinier, so now he does.

Join us as we talk with Kristian Hamilton about his passion for helping adults and children learn to code. We explore his hypothesis, "There's no better escape from poverty than education," and how that inspired him to become a volunteer coach and organizer at CodeBar.

Kristian Hamilton (LinkedIn) is a Senior Front End developer keeping Signavio running at SAP, a global software company.

Listen as we talk about mentoring as motivation, being black in very white spaces, intersecting art and code, and eating delicious British food.

This episode is packed with insights about:

• (00:00:22 ) Starting in East London


• (00:02:50 ) One-line word processors


• (00:07:41 ) Copying code from magazines


• (00:14:08 ) Teaching kids to build games in Scratch


• (00:17:21 ) Rolling the dice at Codebar


• (00:24:02 ) Creating the workshop vibe


• (00:28:37 ) Breaking it down like Feynman


• (00:30:34 ) Making things shiny


• (00:40:57 ) Berlin <3 Code + Art


• (00:43:14 ) Hum of not belonging


• (00:48:10 ) More black people in tech


• (00:49:52 ) Websites on the brain


• (00:56:15 ) Flash pages were cool, but...


• (01:00:01 ) British food is delicious

Mentions:

• CodeBar - International non-profit that enables minority group members to learn programming in a safe and collaborative environment.


• Scratch - Scratch is the world's largest coding community for children and a coding language with a simple visual interface.


• Feynman Technique - A study method for students to learn through the act of teaching.


• Creative Code - Part casual hang out, part show-and-tell, the Creative Code Stammtisch is a free event for artists, coders, and anyone interested in using code for self-expression.

Check blog.introspectivedeveloper.com for transcripts and show notes.

Zeke Arany-Lucas is a principal engineer, consultant, and coach living and working in Berlin since 2014. He was previously a leader at Amazon and Microsoft, where he started his career building Internet Explorer. You can also follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Mastodon, and Instagram.

Artwork by Emre Aydogan & Laura Diezler — ©️2022 Zeke Arany-Lucas