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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

#71

Post by jamesaguilar »

huu wrote: post #68
jamesaguilar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, maybe Chicago. This list is not exhaustive.

Just make sure you don't live in those cities proper :P

You can do it there too. I'd guess the average entry-level programmer in SF makes 80k a year. 2000/mo on rent (which is honestly a pretty nice place if you're sharing) leaves you with 20k to play with while still saving netting about 20k after taxes.

Of course, if you live in the valley, you could save more, but the point is to illustrate that many (single, no dependents) tech workers can live in SF and still save.

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

#72

Post by Bahamut »

I too have went a similar journey - I went from my first programming job as a junior frontend dev to senior frontend dev (with full stack capabilities) in ~10 months. I'm pretty happy to see that someone else has taken the initiative to learn & grow.

Does it matter that she had help? No, the end goal is what matters. Some public acknowledgement would probably be good as a thanks to those who have helped her, but I don't view it as a huge deal - that is between her and them, and they are probably savvy enough to come forward if they want to.

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

#73

Post by jakewu1982 »

petea wrote: post #38

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 Rai…

She is dating Aaron O'Connell, one of the technical co-founders of 42Floors. So, she may have been fortunate enough to have someone coach her along the way and unblock her when needed. Irrespective of that, I still think this is an impressive accomplishment in its own right. How many seasoned developers do we know that can execute at this pace for so long?

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

#74

Post by chris_mahan »

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 reminds me of a quote attributed to Henry Ford: "Men become successful in the time other men wittle away."

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

#75

Post by jamesaguilar »

benihana wrote: post #69
jamesaguilar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, maybe Chicago. This list is not exhaustive.

All of those places have prohibitively high cost of living to make saving six months of salary very much not trivial. It's possible, but it isn't anywhere close to trivial.

I know the cost of living at least in SF, and it is my contention that most entry level engineers should be able to save six months expenses per year trivially. Of course, if you eat out every night and blow all your money on booze, partying, and the most upscale apartment you can find, it would be harder. But a person who is making any real effort would not find it difficult.

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

#76

Post by FLUX-YOU »

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.

Sounds like you already have a job in development. I wouldn't worry too much if that's the case. :)

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

#77

Post by 0X1A »

petea wrote: post #38

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 Rai…

While I don't think you're trying to discredit her, I definitely think there was someone helping her and coaching her. I don't think that makes her effort any less important, but I think it'd make sense to at the very least acknowledge it.

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

#78

Post by huu »

fein wrote: post #61
petea wrote: post #38

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 Rai…

I've been a pretty hardcore PHP guy for 3 years now, and know exactly how long it would have taken me to do all of this: probably 200 days on my own. My biggest issue is stuff like this. Take a look at the JS from day 1-8, then look at day 9. Day 8: http://jenniferdewalt.com/more_drop_shadow.html Day 9: http://jenniferdewalt.com/bouncing_ball.html That's a pretty massive jump in coding proficiency in a delta of one d…

Pretty much everyone is guilty of using outside resources. She explains in her blog post that she used a lot of Google, SO, etc. Maybe she doesn't give exact citations for every piece of code she uses/takes inspiration from, but no one really does.

I don't think it's helpful to speculate as to whether she had someone in particular helping her throughout the lifetime of her project.

I suspect that if a similar project were done by a male, no one would question if it was a solo venture or not. I think the fact that Jennifer is a woman makes people suspicious enough to inspect the code and say things like, "it just seems like there was some outside help".

Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. It's as disprovable as it would be if Jennifer was a man instead of a woman, yet only a woman would get called out on it.

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

#80

Post by kisielk »

fein wrote: post #61
petea wrote: post #38

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 Rai…

I've been a pretty hardcore PHP guy for 3 years now, and know exactly how long it would have taken me to do all of this: probably 200 days on my own. My biggest issue is stuff like this. Take a look at the JS from day 1-8, then look at day 9. Day 8: http://jenniferdewalt.com/more_drop_shadow.html Day 9: http://jenniferdewalt.com/bouncing_ball.html That's a pretty massive jump in coding proficiency in a delta of one d…

You think it's a massive jump? I'm pretty sure a novice programmer could go from one to the other spending a full day on it, especially with the help of SO or tutorials. 8 hours is a lot of time if you are focused.
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