Her ability to attract attention was remarkable. She should become a marketer or spokesperson, not a coder.
It's amazing how people are reacting to this.
After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
41–50 of 383 posts
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#42The project was an awesome undertaking, and completing it successfully is brilliant. Jennifer clearly has an aptitude for taking an idea for a small website from conception to completion quickly. That's a heck of a skill.
But it's not a skill that makes a good web developer. Web development is, in the most part, the easiest kind of development. In 15 years of doing this stuff I can state with some authority that 99% of websites are simple CRUD applications. Web development doesn't challenge your coding skills much. Occasionally it does, but only if you get in to either a product company or an agency that does fun things. Most don't.
The most important skills for a web developer are the ability to talk to a client, see a good solution based on an existing platform (Wordpress, Magento, Pyro, Backbone, etc), and implement it in an organised and maintainable way. Skills most coders see as dull. Spend the next 180 days learning how to do the "boring" side of business analysis, project management, simple admin stuff and then you'll be a brilliant web developer. Most of the people in the industry are terrible at that stuff.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#43"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 mean to nitpick, but I think you misread. She specifically said it hasn't given her a comprehensive understanding.
Haha, not sure that qualifies as a "nit" given that it invalidates their point entirely ... :)
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#44Give her some time and she will eventually create a simple app that blows up. Obviously, she is extremely disciplined, focused, creative and most importantly, she has a story (fully documented)... and the press eats this shit up.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#45This 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…
I should do this with arduino/electronic.
Just a point : coding is free. Cooking, wood crafting, electronic, or any physical activity requires you buy some material.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#46Okay now build an e-commerce web site that can handle thousands of transactions on a daily basis and can talk to internal systems like CRM, warehousing, and manufacturing. I'll be honest here. Coding was fun when I was young, but now I code for the money. So stay young Ms. Dewalt - don't become a cynical bastard like me (us?).
Evidence of why I tend to lurk on HackerNews. Some of you lot are insufferable sometimes.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#47Wow, 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.
I feel you there buddy, gotta get the whole (yeoman, bower, grunt, angularjs, batarang, postman, karma, typescript, git, git deployment, ci, visual studio support, assorted js librariers) setup ready to kick some ass.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#48Okay now build an e-commerce web site that can handle thousands of transactions on a daily basis and can talk to internal systems like CRM, warehousing, and manufacturing. I'll be honest here. Coding was fun when I was young, but now I code for the money. So stay young Ms. Dewalt - don't become a cynical bastard like me (us?).
How about no? It's great that you've built a webshop handling thousands of transactions a day (it's cute, you say that almost like "thousands per days" is a big number), but it's not like that is some universal rite of acceptance into the ranks of those worthy to write code.
Maybe you should try to address the fact that you don't enjoy your job rather than projecting your misery onto the rest of us? I, for one, throughly enjoy making computers do things to solve problems (of which coding is a component).
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#49I 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 Rai…
She's a she. It fits into the whole hacker news agenda of championing women in tech.
The fact it's not true doesn't really matter.
If a man had done the exact same project, no one would care. So, well done her for being a woman.
Re: After 180 Websites, I’m Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder
#50I 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 Rai…
> Really? Is Hacker News this gullible?
Not so gullible so as to take to heart what you're saying, considering that you created your account solely to deride her. Here we are, 70 days after your account was created, and yet you've only posted 1 comment that wasn't negatively criticizing her? And your only argument is a copy/paste of your original complaint from 70 days ago, all based off of source-control introspection?
I don't care if what you're saying is true or not, I think your behavior (an apparent personal vendetta) is the only sad thing here.