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Christina
Christina

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I’m Christina Gorton β€” Developer Advocate, Technical Writer, Open Source Enthusiast. Ask Me Anything!

Hi CodeNewbie Community!

If we haven't met, I'm Christina Gorton: Developer Advocate at Forem. I had the pleasure of joining Saron to help kick off Season 18 (🀯) of the CodeNewbie Podcast. Listen right here on CodeNewbie Community and/or wherever you get your podcasts.

play pause CodeNewbie Podcast

In the show, Saron and I discussed many things including the intersection of art and code, scalable vector graphics(SVG), and my personal journey in this field. I hope you enjoy it and learn more about something you’re interested in!

Now, I’d love to answer any questions you might have about my career, what I do at Forem, or anything else we chatted about on this episode.

Here are a few things about me to kick things off...

  • I co-host a weekly Twitch stream with @nickytonline β€” typically on Wednesdays. We have fantastic guests and discuss a range of tech-related topics. I'd love for you to stop by!
  • I live with my husband, 4 kids, 3 dogs, and 30+ goats on a farm in Costa Rica πŸ¦₯
  • I’ve taught thousands of developers through my courses on LinkedIn Learning, egghead.io, Design+Code, and more.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments below!

Top comments (14)

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gracie profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Hi @cmgorton ! Great episode. You mentioned that when you started getting involved in CSS art challenges, you began by taking famous artwork and recreating it with CSS. What is some of the famous artwork you recreated?

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

One of my more popular ones was pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 painting "Spray"

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gracie profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

omg this is awesome!!

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amywtlin profile image
Amy Lin

What do you find most rewarding as a Developer Advocate? Do you think that also applies to other Developer Advocates, or it varies from person to person?

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

Oh, good question!
I enjoy not only learning new things but taking the things I learn and packaging them in a way that others can understand more easily. I want to help developers do their best work. Whether that be developers in our community or the developers I work with everyday.

I don't know if it applies to ALL developer advocates but I have noticed a common theme amongst most of us. We enjoy learning new things AND sharing what we learn. πŸ˜„

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao

What's it like taking care of 30+ goats?!? Easier than you thought? Any advice for a wishful future goat herder?

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

We have a wonderful family friend who has been working on our farm for over 12 years. He is the real MVP and I do very little. I just play with the baby goats πŸ˜† I used to milk them all and it was A LOT of work. Making cheese is fun though πŸ§€

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xaviour1504 profile image
ankit sahu

Hi I have completed basics of html and css I have made some projects also but I have no confidence in it. How I can sharpen my skills.

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

The more you work with it the more confident you will be. Find websites or various UI components you really like and try to duplicate them. Look at the code from developers who create great UI and see how they are doing it. One of the things I loved doing when I was first learning was to take a CodePen from someone who was really good at CSS, fork it, and then break it. Take out bits of CSS and see what that CSS was doing and why it was needed.
Then I would share with others what I learned because teaching others helped me better understand what I had learned.

These are all just suggestions. Ultimately confidence will come with time and use. πŸ˜ƒ

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

What's the most intimidating thing about SVG?

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

I think seeing SVG code for the first time is intimidating to most people. Once you learn how to read some of the code and understand the different elements you can change it because a lot easier to use SVG.

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juliannatetreault profile image
Julianna Tetreault

I’ve taught thousands of developers through my courses on LinkedIn Learning, egghead.io, Design+Code, and more.

This is amazing! Which course of yours do you enjoy most, @cmgorton ?

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cmgorton profile image
Christina

Great question. I really love my new Learning JavaScript Animations LinkedIn Course. I put a lot of time in to it and have been trying to find the perfect platform to publish it on for over a year. I am really happy with how it turned out and enjoyed working with LinkedIn. πŸ˜„

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demiroo

hello i need the video forem workshop but on youtube this video dont work.