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My First Year of Coding

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

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Re: My First Year of Coding

#21

Post by HillRat »

coderbroder wrote: post #5

the word coding is so annoying when it's used as a one-fits-all sort of thing, it's like when people use the word literally instead of figuratively

Well, if you want to get ridiculously technical, we shouldn't use "coding" for anything higher-level than assembling bytecodes at the machine level. The term was in common currency at least as early as Wheeler's "The Use of Sub-Routines in Programming" (1952), while by 1954 the term "automated coding" was being used to describe the use of higher-level languages such as Hopper's A-2 or IBM's Speedcode (and, indeed, even basic mnemonic coding and relative/symbolic address transformations that underlie what we today call "assembly programming").

As it is, I'm comfortable using the term to denote any activity that programmatically and logically instructs a computer to take a certain sequence of actions. C? Coding! Java? Coding! JavaScript? Coding! CSS? Coding! Excel columns? Coding! Ctrl-h and a regex selector? Coding! It's coding all the way down!

Re: My First Year of Coding

#22

Post by gknoy »

enraged_camel wrote: post #13

Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how to code!" In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)

I absolutely agree. Jennifer's work and courage are inspiring, and basically make me willing to read pretty much anything of hers that is posted here.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#23

Post by coconut12 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #13

Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how to code!" In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)

I did the same thing! Was like wait, I remember reading about this girl last year. Great job such an inspiration.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#24

Post by kevrone »

enraged_camel wrote: post #13

Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how to code!" In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)

+1 I've been coding professionally for 6 years and I am inspired by this.

To me this is not a story about programming or gender, it's a story about grit.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#25

Post by curbenthusiasm »

sergiotapia wrote: post #14

My younger brother went from not knowing what a or tag was to hand-making this in 2 months: http://www.midepo.com/products/6150-venta-bolivia-non-enim-t... Responsive, built using Ruby on Rails, bootstrap, jquery, etc. Any questions he had he could ask me and I would nudge him along, but it was 90% his determination that got him to where he's at now. Having a mentor helps. I hope at least someone is inspired by jenni…

Where did he start? What was his first move?

Re: My First Year of Coding

#26

Post by marincounty »

I think Jennifer is truly inspiring. I wish I thought anyone over 10 years old using words like yum was still cute though. I'm sorry, but I sat next to a group of extremely privileged twenty something people last night-- and had to listen to how yummy their food was, and oh the picture taking. I get it, you enjoy your food. Just stop describing it in public; some of us just want to eat. And yes--I do think of all the starving kids whenever I hear yummy out of privileged people mouths. I'll probally get banned for this post, but it just might be the best thing anyone has ever done to me.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#27

Post by FLUX-YOU »

sergiotapia wrote: post #14

My younger brother went from not knowing what a or tag was to hand-making this in 2 months: http://www.midepo.com/products/6150-venta-bolivia-non-enim-t... Responsive, built using Ruby on Rails, bootstrap, jquery, etc. Any questions he had he could ask me and I would nudge him along, but it was 90% his determination that got him to where he's at now. Having a mentor helps. I hope at least someone is inspired by jenni…

I'd even say that having a mentor will make or break some people as learning programmers. I don't recommend going solo from personal experience. Similar effect as going to the gym with someone. They sort of remind you that you should commit to these things.

Got fed up with that and finally bought a rubber ducky.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#28

Post by jenniferDewalt »

marincounty wrote: post #26

I think Jennifer is truly inspiring. I wish I thought anyone over 10 years old using words like yum was still cute though. I'm sorry, but I sat next to a group of extremely privileged twenty something people last night-- and had to listen to how yummy their food was, and oh the picture taking. I get it, you enjoy your food. Just stop describing it in public; some of us just want to eat. And yes--I do think of all the…

Don't worry, I've seen much, much harsher critiques of things on HN. I doubt you'll get banned. I'll have to keep in mind that the name YumHacker was so offensive to someone they were compelled to write an off topic rant about it, though.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#30

Post by jacalata »

marincounty wrote: post #26

I think Jennifer is truly inspiring. I wish I thought anyone over 10 years old using words like yum was still cute though. I'm sorry, but I sat next to a group of extremely privileged twenty something people last night-- and had to listen to how yummy their food was, and oh the picture taking. I get it, you enjoy your food. Just stop describing it in public; some of us just want to eat. And yes--I do think of all the…

Grow a spine and leave, you don't need to wait to be banned.
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