A Teacher's Job Is Never Done: Get Your Hands on the Keyboard with Bob Ziroll

🎙 About the episode

Meet Bob Ziroll 🇺🇸! Bob is Scrimba's Head of Education and one of the Internet's favorite React teachers. In a past life, Bob worked in marketing before enrolling into a bootcamp, where he eventually became a teacher and Director of Education. In this podcast, you'll learn about his coding story and teaching philosophy, but also about the early days of Scrimba!

Bob and Alex discuss career change, Sunday scaries, and finding the right learning path for you. You'll find out how much work goes into creating a quality coding course, what's the difference between courses and YouTube videos, and why it's sometimes better to learn things more slowly. Bob also talks about how he pushed the limits of the Scrimba platform, how it perfectly lent itself to a successful approach to pedagogy, and shares a wealth of good advice for everybody currently learning to code.

🔗 Connect with Bob

• 👨🏼‍💼 Linkedin
• 🐦 Twitter

⏰ Timestamps

• How Bob went from coding, to advertising, to coding again (via V School)(01:56)
• Why Bob got interested in advertising, and ended up with Sunday scaries (04:43)
• How Bob realized he was interested in teaching and making a bootcamp better (07:12)
• Is there a selfish aspect to teaching? (09:13)
• What does it take to make a Scrimba course? And how is the approach different when compared to YouTube? (11:51)
• How Bob discovered Scrimba and ended up recording his first Scrimba course (13:19)
• Bob's first React course gained traction... How did he look at the stats? (16:27)
• React is always evolving and a teacher's job is never done: Bob made more courses and here's in what order to watch them (19:54)
• What happens if you release a course and something immediately changes? (21:10)
• Pushing the limits of Scrimba's platform and Bob's approach to pedagogy (23:02)
• The importance of practice when learning to code (and otherwise) (25:16)
• Do not cram! (26:53)
• There's no reason to drink from a firehose (29:19)
• Making a students' knowledge sharp, vs broad (32:32)
• Quick-fire questions: lofi beats, electric cars, how not to disappoint Cassidy Williams (34:55)
• Remix meetup (38:33)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Bob's courses on Scrimba
• Lofi beats on Spotify
• Centered app
• Learn and Understand Node JS by Antony Alicea
• Scrimba Podcast - Quincy Larson: Why Learning To Code as an Adult Might Be Easier Than You Think
• Scrimba Podcast - Ace the job interview with Cassidy Williams
• Scrimba Podcast - Be a Librarian, Not an Encyclopedia of Code: How To Learn (and Teach) Better, With Guil Hernandez
• Scrimba Podcast - Intentional career building with Kent C. Dodds
• Bob's Remix meetup lightning talk

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