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Sue Smith (she/her)
Sue Smith (she/her)

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I’m Sue Smith, Developer Educator at Postman. Ask Me Anything!

Hey, CodeNewbie Community! Happy to be here.

I was a guest on this week's episode of the CodeNewbie Podcast:

play pause CodeNewbie Podcast

In this episode, I spoke with @saron about APIs — Application Programming Interfaces. APIs allow applications to access data and services.

I’m really excited to answer any questions you have for me after hearing this episode of the CodeNewbie podcast 😊

Here are a few things about me to warm things up…

  • I've worked in developer learning and education tech since 2007. 👩‍💻
  • At Postman I've designed an education program to help our users become more API-literate. 📖
  • I got my Masters Degree in IT from the University of Glasgow. 🏰

Go ahead — ask me anything in the comments below!

Top comments (9)

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gracie profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Loved the episode and appreciated your learnings from your time at Mozilla and their open source ideology. I'm curious to know what improvements you'd like to see in the open source community, if any
🙂

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suesmith profile image
Sue Smith (she/her)

Thank you! I feel like open source contribution could be much more of a learning pathway for people trying to acquire skills that could help them get tech jobs. There is unfortunately also a lack of support for people who's open source work keeps the web running - many companies profit from software that relies on open source tech but don't actually contribute to these whether financially or otherwise. There's a lot of interesting work going on around redefining open source in more ethical terms.

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ellativity profile image
Ella (she/her/elle)

Hey Sue, thanks for sharing your insights in the podcast and here. Maybe you can suggest some cool APIs I didn't know I needed?

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suesmith profile image
Sue Smith (she/her)

Ha not sure if you need these lol but here are some I like:

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ellativity profile image
Ella (she/her/elle)

These will keep me out of trouble for a while! Thanks again, Sue!

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mccurcio profile image
Matt C

Hi Sue,
Great discussion on APIs. I didn't know there was no standard but looking back that totally makes sense. ;)

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suesmith profile image
Sue Smith (she/her)

Thanks! There are definitely attempts at standardisation (like OpenAPI specification) which are starting to see some consensus but unfortunately adoption is still very inconsistent and the reality of working with APIs is just really unpredictable.. I believe it'll get better because organisations publishing APIs are finding that doing things in a more consistent way essentially makes it more likely that people will be able to use them successfully, but I'd expect to have to navigate a fair amount of chaos for a while yet..!

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mccurcio profile image
Matt C

Thanks,
During your interview, I didn't fully understand what a Developer Educator does.
When I think of education I think of teaching one how to use Math or Data Science.
What are the major differences or similarities?
;)

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suesmith profile image
Sue Smith (she/her)

It actually varies a lot between organisations! Dev educator roles are typically part of developer relations (but less common than dev advocates). Dev educators often create content like documentation, videos etc, as well as leading live learning experiences like training sessions, webinars and so on. In my case I've also been lucky enough to get to build tech to support learning which has been a lot of fun.

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