Christian Heilmann

Podcast recording: Development tools in the expert’s eye with Chris Heilmann

Tuesday, January 18th, 2022 at 2:10 pm

JS Master Podcast cover photo with Dariusz and me

Yesterday I was a guest on the JavaScript Master Podcast by Dariusz Kalbarczyk and we talked a bit more than an hour about my job as a Developer Tools PM, what annoys me the most about the toolintg situation and how the community can help. You can listen to the podcast on anchor.fm or Spotify .

The questions we covered were:

  • Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
  • The robots are coming and we need to make a great example for them. What do you mean by this text? How can we set a good example for them?
  • What computer did you start programming on?
  • What was your first computer program, were you proud of?
  • What has changed since you started programming in your perception of the world of technology?
  • Does software rule the world?
  • How many books have you written? What is the most exciting and what is the most difficult about writing a new book?
  • You work as anPrincipal Program Manager for Browser Tools at Microsoft. What is your working day like?
  • Why did you choose to take on developer tools as a new experience after being in DevRel for so long? By the way, what does being a DevRel mean to you?
  • What are the main problems you see with Developer Tools at the moment?
  • What are problems you face as a Developer Tools creator?
  • What can the community do to help you?
  • What are some things you are proud of having achieved in this role and how did you do it?
  • How big is your team? How is it structured?
  • What is going on in the development stack for the web that puzzle you?
  • You’ve been doing JavaScript for ages. Do you see patterns that keep coming up in the JavaScript community?
  • What is a term that people keep using that annoys you when it comes to coding and technology?
  • What is a finding you had in Developer Tools that might surprise people?
  • How do you measure the success of Developer Tools?
  • What is a feature you are really excited about that people should play with?
  • What do you think is needed to get us to become more effective as a community?
  • How can people learn more about what you do?
  • What do you think about TypeScript? Is there a chance that TS will completely replace JS in the coming years?
  • Do you remember the first edition of the JS Poland conference five years ago?
  • You will be performing at JS Poland soon, what have you prepared for the participants this time?

Non technical part:

  • What kind of person is Chris? How do you see yourself?
  • Do you have some hints for us regarding self-organization?
  • Do you have any favorite hobbies?
  • What about your work/live balance? Do you have some hints for us?
  • Thank you for providing a lot of valuable information during this recording. Finally, can you recommend any interesting podcast or book to our audience?

Share on Mastodon (needs instance)

Share on Twitter

Newsletter

Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

160: Graphs and RAGs explained and VS Code extension hacks Graphs and RAG explained, how AI is reshaping UI and work, how to efficiently use Cursor, VS Code extensions security issues.
159: AI pipelines, 10x faster TypeScript, How to interview How to use LLMs to help you write code and how much electricity does that use? Is your API secure? 10x faster TypeScript thanks to Go!
158: 🕹️ Super Mario AI 🔑 API keys in LLMs 🤙🏾 Vibe Coding Why is AI playing Super Mario? How is hallucinating the least of our worries and what are rules for developing Safety Critical Code?
157: CUDA in Python, Gemini Code Assist and back-dooring LLMs We met with a CUDA expert from NVIDIA about the future of hardware, we look at how AI fails and how to play pong on 140 browser tabs.
156: Enterprise dead, all about Bluesky and React moves on! Learn about Bluesky as a platform, how to build a React App and how to speed up SQL. And play an impossible game in the browser.

My other work: