🤔 Who am I?

I’m a Lead Developer Advocate at Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM platform, powered by data and AI. When I’m not blogging on dev.to, contributing to open-source examples or projects, or live streaming, I’m looking for new places to hike with my wife in not-so-sunny Seattle, WA.
🛠 Favorite technologies, frameworks, and top programming languages:
Python (Flask/Django), Node (Express/Fastify), Vue.js, React, SQL, GraphQL, Stripe, Google Cloud Platform, Google Analytics, Google Ads

🧳 What’s my story?

You can see my resume on LinkedIn page, but here's a quick recap of what I’ve done so far:
 
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Salesforce

  • Lead Developer Advocate: Empower and inspire Salesforce Developers through code samples, demos, in-person talks, prerecorded videos, and workshops.
 
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Grammarly

  • Staff Developer Support Specialist: Support developers integrating the Grammarly Text Editor SDK by writing tutorials, updating docs, building demos, and finding creative ways to improve the overall experience of Grammarly’s developer platform.
 
 
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Stripe

  • Senior Developer Advocate: Wrote technical tutorials, built demos, and influenced the direction of Stripe’s SDKs and APIs by gathering insights and feedback from the developer community.
 
 
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Google

  • Solutions Consultant: Developed and delivered customized solutions, supported developers and customers, and authored internal documentation for Google Analytics and Google Marketing Platform.
 
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Yale University

  • Earned a Bachelor of Science Degree
  • Spent a summer semester abroad in Kenya, played IM basketball, and majored in psychology

🤝 Let's connect

To start, the best way to reach out is through LinkedIn.
I'm open to speaking at conferences, being a guest on dev live streams, and playing PC games.
If you'd like my assistance, it would help to make your request clear and provide the details in advance of a conversation.
~ Charles

Writing

5 reasons why your .env environment variables don't work
It's happened to the best of us. You've just started your dev server after adding in all your required environment variables to your .env file, and for whatever reason, the environment variables just aren't working.🤔 Here are a few reasons why: While some frameworks and packages come built-in support for environment variables using .env, many packages like Express.js don't.
5 reasons why your .env environment variables don't work
https://dev.to/stripe/5-reasons-why-your-env-environment-variables-dont-work-1hc0
5 reasons why your .env environment variables don't work
Making sense of Stripe Checkout, Payment Links, and the Payment Element
Stripe works to make payments as easy as possible, but sometimes all the industry terms and APIs available can overwhelm the best of us. In the Stripe Fundamentals series, we tackle an essential topic in each article and explain the topic in simple terms. This week, Charles Watkins will explain the differences between three approaches to accepting payments with Stripe: Stripe Checkout, Payment Elements, and Payment Links.
Making sense of Stripe Checkout, Payment Links, and the Payment Element
https://dev.to/stripe/making-sense-of-stripe-checkout-payment-links-and-the-payment-element-23o5
Making sense of Stripe Checkout, Payment Links, and the Payment Element
Fundamentals of the PaymentIntents and PaymentMethods APIs
Understanding how online payments work can be overwhelming. Developers must learn payment industry terminology, test the APIs, and choose a revenue model in order to complete a successful transaction. To guide you on this path, we're introducing the Payment fundamentals series: A collection of articles released every few weeks where we address fundamental developer topics and explain how they work.
Fundamentals of the PaymentIntents and PaymentMethods APIs
https://dev.to/stripe/fundamentals-of-the-paymentintents-and-paymentmethods-apis-3646
Fundamentals of the PaymentIntents and PaymentMethods APIs
Testing Payments with Stripe's New Postman Collections | Postman Blog
This is a guest post written by Charles Watkins, developer advocate at Stripe. Stripe builds payments infrastructure for the internet and exposes APIs for a variety of use cases. To improve the overall developer experience, we recently launched our own team profile on the Postman Public API Network to help anyone explore our payment, billing, and identity APIs.
Testing Payments with Stripe's New Postman Collections | Postman Blog
https://blog.postman.com/testing-payments-with-stripes-new-postman-collection/
Testing Payments with Stripe's New Postman Collections | Postman Blog

Talks & Walk-throughs

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Scaffolding One-Time Payments With Stripe
Hey there! 🙂 Ever heard of Stripe? 💳 Join @joyce and Charles Watkins from Stripe next Thursday to see how to set up one-time payments with the Stripe API. Follow along at home, and learn how to create and manage online payments for your side hustle.
Scaffolding One-Time Payments With Stripe
https://community.postman.com/t/scaffolding-one-time-payments-with-stripe/26517
Scaffolding One-Time Payments With Stripe
Scaffolding a Point-of-Sales Integration with Stripe Terminal
Fork the stream collectionhttps://www.postman.com/stripedev/workspace/stripe-developers/collection/665823-2664f86d-f802-463a-b731-b68d6821464bFork the Stripe...
Scaffolding a Point-of-Sales Integration with Stripe Terminal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88MLJtOLfI
Scaffolding a Point-of-Sales Integration with Stripe Terminal
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Hasura ❤️ Stripe: Build No-Code Marketplaces with Stripe Connect & Hasura
Our own Gavin Ray will be joined by Charles Watkins (Developer Advocate at Stripe) to talk about all things Stripe and Hasura. In this fun stream, they'll be...
Hasura ❤️ Stripe: Build No-Code Marketplaces with Stripe Connect & Hasura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C94Rktkx_UE
Hasura ❤️ Stripe: Build No-Code Marketplaces with Stripe Connect & Hasura