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

281–290 of 383 posts

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

#281

Post by sumzup »

breckinloggins wrote: post #206
ars_technician wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's also a cost of liquidity. $10,000 sitting in a bank account at 0.1% is arguably worth more than $10,000 of equity in a house that might take 3 months to sell. You make a big assumption with that statement. It strongly (and wrongly) assumes that the monthly payments for owning a home are the same as the rent plus whatever you would be putting into savings. There are plenty of homes in other places you can buy…

I don't spend anywhere CLOSE to $2000/mo on rent, and I live in a pretty nice place in the middle of SF. That's really what I'm getting at: if you're single and don't have a family, and you're happy with roommates and not living in a palace, then you can enjoy SF and not only not go broke, but you might save a penny or two. Now if your life situation is such that the whole "single and don't have a family" thing doesn…

>I don't spend anywhere CLOSE to $2000/mo on rent, and I live in a pretty nice place in the middle of SF.

More details, please? I've been trying to look for places recently and everything seems to be exorbitantly priced.

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

#282

Post by eli_gottlieb »

enraged_camel wrote: post #147
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…

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…

Translation:

There are two kinds of people in this world:

1) Those who hit some ceiling and actually achieve contentment.

2) All-consuming psychopaths who love looking down on everyone else for their lack of ambition.

I was born the second, but I sure as hell don't have to stay that way.

Also, side comment: some of us don't want to be employer-capitalists. We like doing things for their own sakes, not so that we can turn every activity in life into a money pump. As such, by your notions, we simply don't have ambition.

By my notions, the default ambition you remark upon, the urge to become a wealthy, high-status leader of some sort, is indeed psychopathic. Why should I want to become a capitalist, military general, or statesman? I could stand being an activist leader, but I don't think I'd be much good at it.

On the other hand, if you ask me if I wanted to, for instance, destroy all existing social relations and have a socialist revolution, I happily say "yes". But somehow Revolution is simply not as ambitious as "become an employer", or as "become a research professor" (which is actually harder than becoming an employer).

Which, again, makes it sound to me like your definition of "ambition" is "a rise in wealth and social status" rather than any coherent notion of actual achievement.

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

#283

Post by dllthomas »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #254
marincounty wrote: post #246

I'm confused about the word Coder. I have found most website developement is just following directions, and memorizing a lot of man made terms. If you put out a lot of ROR websites, or write Java scripts you can call yourself a "Coder", but I still feel that the term Coder belongs to Programmers. I can put up a website, but programming from scratch, is beyond my attention span, and maybe intellect? I don't know why w…

Coder != website developer, methinks. There is a world beyond the web, after all. At any rate, the word "coder" is just so... ugh ... you may as well get right to the point and simply refer to yourself as a brogrammer. "Coder", "coding", all of that, it just sounds so wannabe-hip. I cannot possibly be the only person who feels that way.

"Coding" has history:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/code.html

code 2. v. To write code. In this sense, always refers to source code rather than compiled. “I coded an Emacs clone in two hours!” This verb is a bit of a cultural marker associated with the Unix and minicomputer traditions (and lately Linux); people within that culture prefer v. ‘code’ to v. ‘program’ whereas outside it the reverse is normally true.

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

#284

Post by fsniper »

It's a great start.

Jennifer has started her journey with a bootstrap training. Now she has to learn, try, apply, fail and success again and again. After years with failed gigs, succeeded gigs, great works , bad works, half works, long works, short works and many other types of works done looking back and seeing what a rookie she was, she will laugh and tell herself, "Shoot why did I ever started this career" :) Nope just joking. She will just tell herself "I was zero then and still approaching 1"

Well done Jennifer. Good luck on your new journey.

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

#285

Post by dllthomas »

Tichy wrote: post #178
rzc wrote: post #111

I would encourage her to try things other than web development. Make a desktop application, or a program in C, or do some performance coding on an embedded system, or write a webserver from scratch, or wrestle with writing a program with multiple threads. You might say this is too much to expect from a beginner, but no one would have said that 20 years ago. It only seems hard because of how easy web development is to…

It's getting difficult to justify coding anything else, though.

No it isn't.

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

#286

Post by eli_gottlieb »

enraged_camel wrote: post #198
ekm2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because people do one thing doesn't mean they don't do other things. You are good.He is only talking about people who only do one thing.

Yes, thank you. It wasn't obvious from my post, but I'm not against having fun, per se. Rather, I'm talking about drifting aimlessly, with no clear direction or purpose. And that direction or purpose doesn't have to be work related, or even creative. I have a lot of respect for people who make their families the center of their lives, for example.

Well that's nice for you. Maybe God will come down one of these days and tell everyone their Purpose.

Except, no, wait, not gonna happen, so show some respect for the existentially purposeless, please.

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

#287

Post by throwaway420 »

andyl wrote: post #6

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

Maybe she's better at marketing than coding - I don't know I haven't followed her project too closely.

But I think she's likely already demonstrated enough to land a junior front-end gig somewhere. Along with a work ethic and learning ability, she'll produce in that role.

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

#288

Post by breckinloggins »

PittedPrune wrote: post #279
breckinloggins wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live walking distance to my job and live in the heart of San Francisco right next to BART. I pay very little money in rent. Patience on Craigslist pays off.

I would sure love to know what "very little" is to you. I have a hard time believing your rent is less than $1500, and I certainly wouldn't consider that "very little". Given how relative one's perception of costs can be, would you mind being a little more explicit about your rent?

It's a little over half of that. And it was one of several places like that I found so I know it wasn't just "luck". It was not as simple as just "get on Craigslist and find something", though. I had to watch it carefully.

EDIT: Just checked Craigslist and I can STILL find stuff for under $1000/mo in numerous places in SF. The trick seems to be looking under "rooms / shared" and also not expecting to find a place in Pac Heights ;-)

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

#289

Post by breckinloggins »

PittedPrune wrote: post #277
jlgreco wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

um, what? With tiny 400 square foot apartments going for 2500 in San Francisco... how can you possibly say that?

Yeah, I agree with this. A key point of my post is "if you're willing to live with roommates you can find good deals". Of course you still have to find them. I spent over a week glued to Craigslist looking for a combination of the right price, right location, and right people. Yes I got lucky, but not "win the lottery" lucky. I ran across several that were good potentials.

The roommates part seems essential. There are a number of reasons but if I had to guess:

- With roommates you can often take advantage of someone who has been living there since before some recent price spikes (especially in certain neighborhoods). If you find a place by yourself, the landlord is free to charge whatever they want unless you can find a rent controlled apartment, but those have multi-year waiting lists.

- Vacant units are often renovated so the rent can be raised.

- Economies of scale. If you live by yourself chances are you want a place with your own kitchen, bathroom, etc. These are shared spaces in a roommate situation.

- There seems to be more competition for single-residency housing. I have no data to back this up, but just from talking to people it seems that there are more people who hate living with roommates than who hate living alone.

Post reply on HN