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My Story as a Homeless Developer

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241–250 of 322 posts

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#241
One thing I found interesting straight off - by the cartoons and tech described (Pentium ii as a hand me down computer, internet connections at school and at homes) the author is at least 10 years younger than me - yet they started using the same language I did: qbasic.

Being poor rather than middle class put them about a decade behind on the tech curve.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One week I measured how much water I needed to clean myself top to bottom: two glasses. This measurement is meaningless without calibrating for how dirty you were to start with. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you were mostly clean and presentable, wearing freshly cleaned clothes daily, only needing to wash off some sweat and skin oils. A person living rough on the streets will probably be wearing dirty cl…

Of course I was talking about water requirement for regular daily showers. It would be stupid to speak about rough dirt.

The context of the parent you were replying to was homeless people, and your reply appears to suggest that they could bathe with a couple glasses of water. It's absurd.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#243
post #241

One thing I found interesting straight off - by the cartoons and tech described (Pentium ii as a hand me down computer, internet connections at school and at homes) the author is at least 10 years younger than me - yet they started using the same language I did: qbasic. Being poor rather than middle class put them about a decade behind on the tech curve.

Luckily Ubuntu on a Pentium II might be dog slow but most programming languages will work just fine.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#244
This guys code on GH is quite a bit better and broad than plenty of actual hires I've been part of. Kind of ridiculous someone who's gone as far as understanding and playing with cellular automata off their own back can't find stable work. Also someone presenting code in Lua, PHP, Python, JS and Ruby... you're lucky if someone has 100 lines of pure copy paste Python on GH.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#245
post #241

One thing I found interesting straight off - by the cartoons and tech described (Pentium ii as a hand me down computer, internet connections at school and at homes) the author is at least 10 years younger than me - yet they started using the same language I did: qbasic. Being poor rather than middle class put them about a decade behind on the tech curve.

Luckily Ubuntu on a Pentium II might be dog slow but most programming languages will work just fine.

Oh yes you can definitely do useful programming on a Pentium II!

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I listened to the A16Z podcast recently on the refugee crises in Syria[1] where they talk about a generation of people that will have missed out on secondary education due to the war there. I'd be curious to know what positive actions you've seen taken (or heard of) that can help address the issue? [1]: https://a16z.com/2016/12/15/refugee-crisis-mobility-technolo...

I'm not Syrian, I'm Iraqi, and I can assure you the issue is bigger than that around here (most middle east) The only positive(ish) thing I know of is a Bootcamp they do in northern Iraq for Iraqi(ISIS crisis) and Syrian refugees that teach them how to code, but it's most basic stuff that bearly qualify you for an interview but no more. The problem with these international organization is that they sponsor local educ…

Thats not ideal, off course, but surely better than no education?

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I was talking about water requirement for regular daily showers. It would be stupid to speak about rough dirt.

The context of the parent you were replying to was homeless people, and your reply appears to suggest that they could bathe with a couple glasses of water. It's absurd.

It's not absurd, it was to measure to minimum amount of daily water one needs to maintain hygiene. Some homeless people rely on public bath house which are disgusting and not always available, I know now that I only need two cup of water (and a shower mitt) to do so.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#248
post #76
post #44

Sounds like you never learned how to do anything outside of coding. There is more to succeeding in life than being able to code.

Have you looked at the GitHub profile? Don't want to be harsh, but it looks like he never really learned how to code either, which is kind-of sad. I'm not a stickler for education, but there's something to be said for at least finishing highschool; you learn how to learn if nothing else.

Did we look at the same GitHub profile? I see a Conway's Game of Life implementation in Python [1], a few (admittedly simple) games in Python and Lua, a web framework written in Lua [2], a web app in Lua using said framework [3], and a host of other experiments in JS, Ruby and PHP.

IMO this is the work of someone who could become a great asset to any software development team.

[1]: https://github.com/jessehorne/life

[2]: https://github.com/jessehorne/kolba

[3]: https://github.com/jessehorne/glance

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait until the MTA gets so bad that people tell me, "you take the subway? sorry, we're not interested." But in some sense, having a reliable vehicle is a microcosm of a particular location and mindset. Nobody I know owns a car. We still mostly get to work on time, though.

He's in Iowa. In these midwest states (Nebraska for me), public transportation is very scarce. Most jobs out here require we own a car, or have some way to reliably get to work. Most of the time that does not involve public transportation in any way.

You can reliably get to work by walking... if you are homeless, you can reliably get to work by sleeping in the parking lot. I just really don’t see how not having a car is at all relevant to the question of reliably getting to work.

Re: My Story as a Homeless Developer

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context of the parent you were replying to was homeless people, and your reply appears to suggest that they could bathe with a couple glasses of water. It's absurd.

It's not absurd, it was to measure to minimum amount of daily water one needs to maintain hygiene. Some homeless people rely on public bath house which are disgusting and not always available, I know now that I only need two cup of water (and a shower mitt) to do so.

It's irrelevant to the requirements of a homeless person. You're basically not dirty at all living a typical domestic western life spent mostly at a keyboard and indoors.
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