Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Lars Gyrup Brink Nielsen

This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Lars Nielsen who is a frontend developer, blogger, a tech speaker, and an OSS contributor. He has worked with many different frameworks, but he and Chuck talk in detail about Angular. Finally, they discuss Lars’ programming background and the current projects he is working on. Check out today’s episode to hear more! 

0:53 – Guest: Hello from Denmark!

1:00 – Chuck: My great, great, great grandmother is Danish. Introduce yourself, please.

1:20 – Guest: I have been working through various companies through my career. I have focused on frontend development and right now it’s Angular and before it was Angular.js and others. I have been developing C# and started off with PHP. So I really enjoy frontend development the most.

1:58 – Chuck: I am talking with Rob Eisenberg in a few days.

2:04 – Guest: From what I’ve heard he’s a great guy. He worked on the Angular router. He branched out to Greater Zone.

2:28 – Chuck.

2:38 – Guest.

2:45 – Chuck: His episode will come out in 2 weeks! Tell us about you – what got you into programming?

3:00 – Guest: It started when I was 5 years old. My brother and I broke 3-4 computers before they bought us a Nintendo set. That was my first dive into it. Then I went to PCs and back in 1999 I wrote my first website with Notepad. Then later I decided to make a career out of it and studied in college. Then started developing full-stack.

4:53 – Chuck: You mentioned Knockout, Angular.js, and others. What have systems have you built in the backend?

5:03 – Guest: Yes, PHP in the beginning. Then I moved onto...

6:30 – Chuck: What was about Angular that you liked? Why did you choose that framework?

6:47 – Guest: I got to choose the frontend framework (at the job I was at), and I chose NOT to use Angular. At the time, I thought it was confusing and overwhelming. Ember was stronger for me back then. But then later I got the opportunity to work with it in my current job, and now I am enjoying it. It’s always a challenge.

8:48 – Chuck: Seeing that transition and like that. I am curious though – what features do Angular have that Knockout and others don’t have for you?

9:08 – Guest: We used Coffee Script back then. Do you know it?

9:36 – Chuck: Yep I know it.

9:45 – Guest: I remember studying typescript, too.

Coffee Script removed a lot of the stupid errors.

11:22 – Chuck: I think typescript is the way to go.

11:57 – Guest: It helps with those stupid errors that people make once in a while. It’s a type language.

12:45 – (Guest continues.)

13:14 – Chuck: Making the transition from Angular to Angular.js – what process did you go through?

13:25 – (Guest answers. He talks about starting from scratch to learn the new Angular.)

14:08 – Guest: I wouldn’t want to go back to Angular.js. There is so much to learn about Angular and working in-depth with it, there are still new things to explore every day, it’s a large framework. I guess that’s part of the reason why people use React and other frameworks b/c it can be overwhelming, especially for beginners.

I enjoy it now b/c I read it now as a native tongue / native language. That’s what I see now, but that’s not what you see at first b/c there are so many new syntaxes. React is mostly JavaScript.

17:22 – Chuck: What features do you like about Angular over Angular.js?

17:28 – Guest: It’s the performance – it’s important!

18:20 – Chuck: What have you done in Angular that you are proud of?

18:24 – Guest: I am working on a few articles and I am about to release 2 of them. It’s a whole series.

I am going to Copenhagen soon and I will be giving a talk.

20:17 – Cuck: What else are you working on?

20:23 – Guest: Yes, the articles. I am finishing those up. There will be 4-5 more in the series on that one topic. I want to focus on one topic at a time. There are 3 main concepts: container components, presentation components, and migration.

Yes improving my talk for next month’s conference. I am building a small app, too. Working with new technologies and learning about offline apps and install the apps natively on most platforms now. We aren’t dependent on official App Store now, that’s a thing of the past now.

22:06 – Chuck: Where can people find you online?

22:16 – Guest: I have a few projects through GitHub. Find me there. (See links below.) Read my articles when they are published on Medium.

22:44 – Chuck.

22:48 – Guest: My first published articles will be at Angular In Depth.

23:00 – Chuck: Picks!

23:04 – Fresh Books!

27:13 – Chuck: What is the tech scene like in Denmark?

27:18 – Guest: You have to keep up the pace yourself b/c I live in a very small area. There are only a few cities in Denmark where the jobs are. I will go to Meetups and conferences and I am active on European Slack. That’s how I get to be social in the Angular community. I am mostly working at home. I have twin daughters who are 7 years old. I am mostly at the office, too, building and working there, which is 5 miles away from my home.

29:17 – Chuck: In the past episode I talked with someone from Bulgaria, it sounds similar to what you are saying Lars. I am curious are people willing to hire remote if they are outside of the city?

29:40 – Guest: It depends on the company.

30:25 – Chuck: Working remotely is definitely a skill.

30:44 – Guest: I have worked remotely for some jobs b/c I was driving several hours a day.

31:21 – Chuck: My longest commute was 30 minutes top, but I live in a heavy tech scene where I live. Do most people in Denmark know English?

31:5- Guest: My daughters have been speaking English since 3-4 years old b/c of iPads. They are also taught English and German in the school, too.

32:21 – Chuck: Anything else? Are there things that people don’t think about being a developer in Denmark?

32:40 – Guest: There aren’t that many big companies. It’s difficult to get into the right place. There are small companies in Denmark.

33:51 – Chuck: Does that change the way people find jobs in Denmark?

33:59 – Guest: If you don’t like to work for a bank then you have a problem b/c that’s half the jobs! If you don’t like certain industries that could make it harder to get a job as a programmer.

34:33 – Chuck: I am going to wrap this up – anything else?

34:44 – Guest: Create a blog post or start an open source project. That’s what I do when I get bored. When you teach a subject you have to be an expert to be able to explain it to someone else.

35:37 – (Guest lists the titles of his articles – check it out at this timestamp!)

35:50 – (Chuck discusses future episodes and future guests that he will interview.)