And since my blog has never had more than 5 people on it at a time... it crashed.
Might want to consider octopress since you're a fan of ruby. :)
How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
11–20 of 183 posts
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#12Great to see that. There's plenty of "you should learn how to code" posts, Codecademy, Treehouse etc, but there are very few case studies of people who seemingly A) used these tools and/or B) actually ended up being able to wing it learning to code mid-to-late-stage in their career. Not sure if this post really qualifies as either of those, as well. If there's more examples of this that I'm missing, please let me kno…
I had a different trajectory, but a similar end point (biology -> freelancing -> full-time web dev).
The biggest similarity I noticed between myself and the OP is that you have to put yourself in the way of opportunity. For me it was building side projects and hosting Startup Frontier. For the OP it was ruby meetups and send out an email to the list.
It takes a lot of guts to cold-email people like that, I have a lot of respect for the OP. Good work!
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#13My first thought reading through was "heh, but now that I'm in NYC... I wonder what my chances are..." and then bam... there ya go! I'm glad to see stuff like this, and totally agree with the points– especially the whole git-like-a-boss bit.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#14"In February 2012 I had never written a line of code. But, as of July 11, 2012 I am employed as a full-time Ruby Developer. You can do it too."
Best. Quote. Ever.
I am re-motivated to continue learning programming.
Nice work sir. Congrats.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#15I don't mean to be a mood killer but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Ruby/Python/Perl are awesome language for beginner because it abstract so much that they think they know how to code after a day, and when they have to learn a new language like C they are completely lost and produce spaghetti code. That might be ok for web development where you can hack here and there (with JS/CSS/HTML) but I really chal…
Totally want to learn C, but I wouldn't even have thought to try if I hadn't tried ruby first. I got my first look at C digging through the Ruby source code, trying to figure out how it implemented Array.sort.
Ruby opened me up to the world of programming and I look forward to exploring the rest!
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#16"In February 2012 I had never written a line of code. But, as of July 11, 2012 I am employed as a full-time Ruby Developer. You can do it too." Best. Quote. Ever. I am re-motivated to continue learning programming. Nice work sir. Congrats.
Awesome!!!
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#17The problem with self-learning is one of discipline and motivation. I started a learn-to-code startup and iterated 7 times (now profitable). It's nearly impossible to keep someone engaged without having a human involved. When I think back to how I learned to program, it wasn't alone. I surrounded myself with CS students. And I had a lot of intrinsic motivation before I started.
Join a program like Dev Bootcamp. You'll save an enormous amount of time by working alongside other people with similar goals, and the social pressure will keep you on your toes.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#18And since my blog has never had more than 5 people on it at a time... it crashed.
Funny seeing Aubrey & Gavin mentioned on an HN post. Both are great guys and also attend the iOS meetups here in Tampa. You're welcome to join too. We're meeting Aug 30th next: http://www.meetup.com/Suncoast-iOS/events/77862782/
Gavin actually talked about you in one of the past meetups, saying how he knows one smart-cookie from his Ruby group who taught himself coding over a few months and got a job through sheer persistence. He mentioned being impressed by the progress in your code at day 1 vs day 30 vs day 90. Great to see you're sharing your lessons here.
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#19I don't mean to be a mood killer but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Ruby/Python/Perl are awesome language for beginner because it abstract so much that they think they know how to code after a day, and when they have to learn a new language like C they are completely lost and produce spaghetti code. That might be ok for web development where you can hack here and there (with JS/CSS/HTML) but I really chal…
Totally want to learn C, but I wouldn't even have thought to try if I hadn't tried ruby first. I got my first look at C digging through the Ruby source code, trying to figure out how it implemented Array.sort. Ruby opened me up to the world of programming and I look forward to exploring the rest!
If you're looking at how ruby implemented Array.sort you are definitely on the right track !
I'm not sure that's how all people who started with Ruby/Python are evolving but that's good. However I'm not too comfortable trying to lure people to believe that you can write a web client in 2 lines :/
PS: Got downvoted for making a usefull comment ? Seriously guys you can't give a different opinion than the crowd...
Re: How to Get a Job as a Developer in Less Than Six Months
#20While I absolutely applaud the effort and tenacity of this individual, at the same time, I feel a substantial amount of trepidation regarding the current state of the tech / start-up industry.
Virtually every hot new startup I see on blogs, it just takes a few minutes of basic penetration testing to find gaping security holes. Everything from simple XSS or CSRF to blatant leaking of sensitive user data. Obviously he was hired at a "junior" level but I've interviewed plenty of "senior" candidates who, 5 years ago, would have been "junior" with their skillset and this guy would probably be a coffee-fetching intern. We keep lowering the bar (due to the crazy imbalance of talent vs. jobs right now) in hiring practices and the long-term impact of this practice has me worried.
On the flip-side, seeing all of these amazing ideas being brought to life and fostering such a strong sense of innovation is amazing to see.