Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 383 posts

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

#221

Post by ig1 »

MartinMcGirk wrote: post #64
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…

>saving 6 months worth of expenses on a tech salary when you have no dependants is trivial I have no dependants, I am 25 and I would love to be earning the kind of money in my tech job that made saving 6 months worth of expenses "trivial". Where are these jobs and how can I get one?

You basically need to be saving 33% of your take home salary.

As a rule of thumb you shouldn't be spending more than a third of take-home on your housing. That leaves you with 33% for your cost of living.

To see how that breaks down in "real-money", the take-home of an average CS graduate working at a typical large company in a developer role in London would be around 20k.

So that would be around £550/month (£6600/year) in rent, so a shared flat in a cheap-to-average part of town.

Food would cost you about £2000/year

Personal goods another £2000/year

Travel around £1200/year.

Leisure around £1400/year.

Leaving you with £6.6k in savings, enough to afford all of the above for another six months without pay.

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

#222

Post by ars_technician »

ritchiea wrote: post #188
antimagic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful champ - that was not necessarily a snarky comment. A more charitable reading would be that the andyl thinks that the OP could make more money / have a better career by focusing on what is clearly an intuitive gift that is highly valued in the employment market...

The phrase "not a coder" at the end of the comment signals snark pretty heavily. Suggesting that someone who spent the last 180 days coding should not be a coder is a very rude and dismissive. The OP could have easily praised her marketing savvy without suggesting she should not be a coder.

>The OP could have easily praised her marketing savvy without suggesting she should not be a coder.

If someone is training to become a janitor and they have excellent marketing skills, it would not be rude to say he/she/it should not be a janitor and should be a marketer instead. You are trying so desperately to be offended by something that doesn't have to be offensive.

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

#223

Post by devcpp »

hnriot wrote: post #213
enraged_camel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two type of people in life. The first type graduates from college and their learning stops for the most part. They say to themselves, "well, I studied for four years and got a job, now it's finally time to sit back and relax." So they put in their regular 9-5 and then come home and waste their lives away by watching TV shows and playing video games and going out and getting drunk on weekends. Essentially, t…

The world isn't full of binary people. There are lots of types of people in the world, and pigeon-holing any of them doesn't help them or you.

Obviously, it's an approximation. I'm sure you could very easily fit everyone you know in either of these buckets if you had to. And it's pretty accurate.

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

#224

Post by aytekin »

thenomad wrote: post #87
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 approach definitely works for cooking - it's been tried before. See, for example, the Julie/Julia project, where one woman decided to cook her way through the entirety of "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking" by Julia Child. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon... )

They made it into a movie. Good one: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/

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

#225

Post by jenniferDewalt »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #167

Hey Jen, did you ever do a blog post on your hosting setup for 180 websites which mix simple html/css/js + Rails + Node? That would make an interesting blog post too.

I haven't written anything about it but I will definitely consider it. That would be a good way for me to fully internalize how the stack actually works. I bet I've come across a few weird things given my unconventional use, too.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

thenomad wrote: post #87
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 approach definitely works for cooking - it's been tried before. See, for example, the Julie/Julia project, where one woman decided to cook her way through the entirety of "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking" by Julia Child. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon... )

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by look_lookatme »

omegant wrote: post #192
AznHisoka wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno why people always say NY is expensive... have you ever lived there? Live in NJ, rent a basement somewhere in Queens, or heck you can rent an apartment in Chinatown for $800/month. I know people who rent an entire floor, and then sub-rent it to their friends, so they end up paying $0.00 for rent. Don't eat out everyday. Bring your lunch everyday. It can be done.

Why is chinatown so cheap? How livable are those apartments?.

I would think a Manhattan Chinatown full apt for anything less than 2K would be a unicorn. However the parent is right about Jersey and Queens. Also places on the Metro North or LIRR. It's entirely possible to live near NYC and work there everyday for a reasonable cost of living.

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

#228

Post by jlgreco »

breckinloggins wrote: post #86
benihana wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope. That's why the no dependents part is essential. If you are single and willing to live with roommates, you will be able to navigate the "high cost of living" pretty successfully. I'm living quite comfortably in San Francisco and spending a fraction of what I was spending in Texas. Why? - No car. No gas. No upkeep. No payments. No insurance. No inspections. No car. - Roommates. I HATE living alone so this was a n…

Honestly I think roommates isn't a requirement (at least in most of those cities) either.

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

#229

Post by ars_technician »

tmimicus wrote: post #34
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.

It can be hard to see if you spend a lot of time in web dev, but he is 100% correct. You confused about what computer scientists are. Think about this, some of the best computer scientists in the world would have difficulty passing fizzbuzz, let alone engineer large projects. Computer science != software engineering

What she did is a niche, but linking to another niche is the whole point, not a counter-argument to what he said. The idea is to expand your view of programming, not spit on things that aren't in your field.

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

#230

Post by ig1 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #107
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…

We don't call male coders "boy", let's not call female ones "girl" unless they're a fourteen year old or something.

Let's not have another semantic argument (hacking vs cracking), the term "girl" (and the term "boy" for that matter) has both the meanings of an child of the given gender but also the informal friendly meaning for an adult of that gender.

For example "lets check with the (boys|girls)" is a pretty common usage casual usage of the term for adults, especially in the 18-35 age bracket. The term boy is actually very common in uniformed occupations (military, police, etc).

Depending on the context using "women" implies a level of formality and abstraction that some could find more offensive. So whatever word gets chosen carries some risk of offence, but it's best not to get hung up on subtitles especially when so many people are non-native english speakers.

Post reply on HN