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After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

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Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#31

Post by danso »

The fact that she achieved her goal is just amazing enough...but this quote from the OP leaves me even more awestruck:

> Keep coding! The end of my 180 websites in 180 days project marks the beginning of the rest of my life as a coder. The project certainly hasn’t given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of. I plan to work on a couple of more complex websites that take more than a day to complete.

I know people who've taken a semester basic web dev class, built a few sites, and already think they've got a handle on things. Jennifer made so many things, in so many ways, that she's learned not just how to build websites, but that she still has a lot to learn.

A really stellar example for web devs of all skill levels.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#32

Post by ahoy »

andyl wrote: post #6

Her ability to attract attention was remarkable. She should become a marketer or spokesperson, not a coder.

She's certainly publicized her project well, but so do lots of people. I think the attention that she's garnered from this is mostly because what she's done is really cool and shows incredible initiative and dedication.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#33

Post by mseebach »

jorgeleo wrote: post #12

"The project certainly hasn’t given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of" No it has not, and no it has not. Don't get me wrong A+ for the effort... but it is a very small niche oriented effort. Comprehensive? Watch Rich Hickey talks ( http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey ), try reading and exercising data structures (b-tree, rb-tree, bit…

That's pretty elitist. You seem to confuse "coder" with "computer scientist" or "software engineer".

As the ecosystem of toolsets, frameworks and libraries mature, the number of opportunities for well-informed "commoners" with the right motivation to make computers do what they want them to increases violently.

Lemma 1: Simple CRUD-style web-apps and scripts can be very useful.

Lemma 2: Before-mentioned tools can be build to a perfectly serviceable standard without a comprehensive understanding of computer science.

These two combined suggests that the author can indeed be a perfectly productive and effective creator of computer programs. I see no reason "coder" isn't a perfectly good title for such a person.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#34

Post by tmimicus »

jorgeleo wrote: post #12

"The project certainly hasn’t given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of" No it has not, and no it has not. Don't get me wrong A+ for the effort... but it is a very small niche oriented effort. Comprehensive? Watch Rich Hickey talks ( http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey ), try reading and exercising data structures (b-tree, rb-tree, bit…

I don't usually comment... ...but man, you are a jerk.

She's becoming a coder, not a computer scientist.

And calling her work 'niche', then linking to a guy raving about Datomic, something that is even MORE niche?

Man... I'm wasting my time calling you out.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#35

Post by adt2bt »

DanielStraight wrote: post #22
adt2bt wrote: post #9

Congratulations, Jennifer. I really appreciate the lessons learned here. Like my favorite college professor (and I'm sure many others, as it is a fairly popular quote) would say: Sometimes you have something that looks really ugly and gross. You can liken it to having to eat a slimy, bumpy frog. The best way to eat the frog, is just to swallow it. Once you get in the habit of swallowing your frogs, the rest of your d…

If you haven't seen it yet, you'd probably appreciate this (or perhaps this was the inspiration for your comment in the first place): http://globaltableadventure.com/ Basically, someone doing the cooking thing, but on a weekly basis. She only has 6 weeks left. Pretty awesome site.

I had not seen it! Thank you for sharing. This is pretty awesome.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#37

Post by kamaal »

GuiA wrote: post #7

This is fantastic. Especially inspiring to me, more than the fact that she learned how to code, is the fact that she dove into something that she had no background in, and after 180 days she came out with a solid understanding of the basics of programming; enough to do stuff on her own (and, combined with her graphic design/illustration skills, probably enough to do freelance webdev or get a junior level position in…

This is very true.

I firmly believe that a person can learn anything other fellow human can. Mastering is a different beast. But you can definitely get started. This is the also the reason, why I don't criticize 'Learn programming in X hours' or 'Programming for dummies' kind of books. They get people started, and that is all you need at times.

In fact one must always have a hobby and 180 day cycle seems to be a good enough cycle for a new hobby. New hobbies keep you excited and on the edge. Most importantly they keep boredom from setting in and keep you going.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#38

Post by petea »

I don't know why she has never mentioned someone she worked with at all. I commented about this about her 70 days ago.

---

So let's see her repository (https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt).

This girl not only became a competent front end developer in 100 days, but looking at the Gemfile, she knows how to use capistrano, redis, capistrano, paperclip, omniauth and devise?

She knows the best practices for Rails perfectly. She not only grasped to use MVC perfectly, but also organized asset codes perfectly in like 50 days.

I forgot to mention that she knew Rails from like day 1.

Additionally, she knew better to hide sensitive information about secret tokens for maybe AWS in the config folder and other Rails environment info.

Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? If you really want to see what actual beginner struggle with for 10 hours a day, go take a look at StackOverflow. Beginners are struggling for hours to create hoverover effects and persistent footer.

---

Edit 1.

While rereading this blog post, I found that she made the first simple Rails app on day 69. So who was it that set up all the Rails dev environment for her starting day 1. I don't understand why she still wouldn't disclose how someone else helped her.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#39

Post by sharkweek »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
jorgeleo wrote: post #12

"The project certainly hasn’t given me a comprehensive understanding of software development, but it has laid a broad foundation for me to jump off of" No it has not, and no it has not. Don't get me wrong A+ for the effort... but it is a very small niche oriented effort. Comprehensive? Watch Rich Hickey talks ( http://www.infoq.com/author/Rich-Hickey ), try reading and exercising data structures (b-tree, rb-tree, bit…

Not it has not, yes it has. Web development is for many intents and purposes now the equivalent of software development. That there are other areas of interest (embedded, systems software, application development and so on) does not detract from the fact that if you want to do software development web development is more than likely your point of entry and it's a field wide enough and deep enough that you could easil…

I hate the argument that you have to dive into some complex language to really "understand" programming --

Some people just like to build stuff; much akin to someone who might just want to change the oil in their car. You would never ask them to build an entire transmission for their first project.

Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder

#40

Post by ianstallings »

luisehk wrote: post #10

Wow, this is the total opposite of me. I just spent weeks setting up the perfect development environment, instead of getting actual work done. I need to rethink the way I work.

You are getting work done ;). Getting used to tools is what you are both doing. Just differently. But yes, dig in now!
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