I’m a teacher and I’m hoping someone can share some of the best platforms to teach middle schoolers how to code. Thanks.
This list might help: https://github.com/HollyAdele/awesome-programming-for-kids
I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
221–230 of 258 posts
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
My introduction to computers was similar. I began by learning turtle graphics in the Logo programming language during my childhood days. It allowed me to be creative and draw pictures on a blank canvas using code. Back then, for me, programming was not about solving useful problems. Instead it was about expressing whatever random ideas come to mind. Quoting a relevant excerpt from my own blog post[1] that I wrote som…
Similar sort of experience, although we had no turtle, so it was BASIC on the MICRO for us. 10 MODE 7 20 PRINT CHR$141”A text adventure” 30 PRINT CHR$141”A text adventure” May as well have been the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th, for the infinite and incredible possibilities which followed. Anything. I could make anything . It was the most incredible sensation and realisation - and still is.
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Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may come across as facetious and/or condescending, despite my intentions to be to give actual advice here... Learning TDD is what helped me get past this. It's surely not the only way to do it but it really made it click when I did. In learning the craftsman style of TDD (i.e., the fluffy altruistic style) helped me to grok breaking down tasks, not because I wasn't able to have a detailed view of the big picture…
It doesn't come across as facetious/condescending. Thank you for your advice. I'm actually using a TDD-ish approach in my work, but I never felt comfortable letting it actually drive design decisions. I don't believe it works that way - I can explore the design space up front and pick good solutions faster than it would take me to organically arrive at them through applying orthodox TDD. I'd like to do more TDD-ish a…
I start at step 1 in the task I'm trying to accomplish. First write the main function then put in the first thing your program needs to do.
I guess I usually have a plan before I even sit at the editor of what I'm going to accomplish with the project. You don't have to know all the classes and data structures you'll need at the start, you will discover it along the way when you find you have data you need to group together or code you need to call in multiple places.
I think of writing code like writing a list of instructions to tell the computer how to do something. The natural place to start is step 1. Then of course you can start roughing out the major steps in order and filling in the details once you have something you can run and start testing parts with (either manually or automatically).
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I definitely know how hard it is, I have 10 years of experience and I'm now staff eng and team lead at a 50B+ MC company. I had my own startup, and built many projects first-hand, but I'm not going to de-anonymize myself for the sake of argument. In my opinion, it should always be hard. OP had a good launch and delivered, which is something that's incredible and that only I also love the fact that he did this out of…
Solid humblebrag there. There are legions of engineers perusing HN that have double+ your experience sans the narcissism.
Experience doesn't equate to skill though? Tons of 20+ years devs can't even do what OP achieved here.
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#225I'll be honest, this is a great start and a good app that not a lot of people would achieve and deliver. Hopefully this feedback can be constructive. It does not feel like a modern "professional" app though, the design is extremely lacking and not something you'd see from an intermediate+ frontend dev. The "New lesson" part doesn't work because it's behind an auth check, but there's no error message and it's displaye…
The design is fine, it’s totally functional, perfect for a developer focused site and quite refreshing actually. Great that you’ve pointed out a couple of bugs but I’ve seen “senior” developers who couldn’t conceive of, build and deploy anything close to this. There’s enough here to build a SaaS business out, and the OP can be CEO, CTO or whatever title they want
Yeah I totally agree, OP is definitely further off in delivery and self-drive than most developers, senior or otherwise.
I just meant to give him fair feedback to keep him growing. Design is subjective, so if most here people love it, it must mean it appeals to its audience!
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they're passionate about helping the company wherever necessary, that's one thing. Why would anyone be passionate about any specific corporation? Sounds like a great way to be exploited. People are passionate about enjoyable activities such as programming, not companies. They help companies with their problems because they get paid for it.
> Why would anyone be passionate about any specific corporation? This is quite evident in the entertainment (video games, film, music, etc.) industry. It has been established that many creative resources go to companies that produce most of their favorite work. Sadly, it is quite common for those companies to have rather diverse and relaxed ethical guidelines around crunch and overtime.
I've seen this first hand. Even heard a manager asking a whole company "don't you want this game to be good?!" when challenged regarding increased overtime.
Luckily, my own experience is moving away from a company with crunch and a product I didn't particularly care for to a company strongly against crunch making a whole array of games I really love.
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's complicated. At my last startup (web application) I was in charge of hiring for the technical team. I've got an application from a guy who really really wanted to work there. But the truth is that he didn't have basic coding skills (in that, he couldn't do FizzBuzz level of coding). I really tried to get him in but in reality we would not have been able to put him in any position. I was sad because he sent the b…
If you're still measuring candidates with leetcode and fizzbuzz, I'm afraid you're part of the problem in with broken hiring in tech. I just hope the candidates you pass up trickle down my way.
He did qualify that: he said "FizzBuzz level of coding", which might not have been the actual FizzBuzz test. But his point was that the guy couldn't write code at the level they were hiring for.
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#228I tried visiting https://codeamigo.dev/lessons/preview/90, but no matter what I type in the text editor, if I press the Test button, Ctrl+E, the right arrow, or Ctrl+Enter, it doesn't get executed.
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#229>My favorite part of the photographic process was watching prints come to life. I loved starting with a blank sheet of paper and applying various photographic methods to bring the image to life. >I found that building websites was similarly satisfying. For example, click the "Reveal Image" button to watch an image fade in to the blank canvas! I think a lot about why I went into computer science and this is the same c…
I found it to be like my favorite toy as a kid: Lego, with the computer i could do something very similar and build my own stuff, i never wanted to do anything else..
Re: I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
#230Rejecting someone three times from something is pretty brutal. How bad could this candidate have been? Is Codeacademy like the Rhodes Scholarship or something? One of my luckiest breaks was when a college that rejected me the first time around accepted me the second time I applied. Really grateful for that opportunity.
How is it brutal? Dependeing on the job and the applicants CV/interviewing skills, it would be easy to consider that she/he is not a good fit for the company or the role.
The fact that they have created their own site is not a reflection on Codecademy, just that the interview process is not necessarily great or even that they would still not be a good fit for CA for whatever reason.
I don't like the tone of naming the company then basically sticking two fingers up at them "look at me now". There is a tonne of stuff involved in these sorts of sites and we will see whether they can keep up or not.