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My First Year of Coding

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

41–50 of 117 posts

Re: My First Year of Coding

#41

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! :)

Thank you! Learning something new is so intimidating but I really think the best way to do is to just dive right in. Sure, you'll suck at first but that's ok. Eventually you'll get better.

I agree 100%. The experience I've gained working on personal projects of my own has brought me further than working on class assignments. Not being afraid to fail will take you a long way.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#42

I started to learn how to code back in August and got my first job as a developer at the end of February. I went through a bootcamp and didn't see anyone besides my girlfriend for 10 weeks. It's definitely tough not having a mentor, and I struggled a bit for a couple months after classes trying to figure out what I should spend my time learning. I still struggle with it when working on personal projects and often wor…

> deep down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS degree. I stopped working to write this comment--that's how important it is to me that you know this is a belief that will only hold you back. I could cite any one of thousands of articles that talk about dropouts who made it, but I suspect you know about those articles and it hasn't affected your belief. So I'll just say this: If I had graduated…

Now if this is true, that takes lots of balls...

I mean the whole "-I've put all my chips in." burn the boats outlook.

I quit my job to work on my startup ideas but have difficulty throwing all my savings in. Wife & kids is my excuse.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#44

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.

I've seen much, much harsher critiques of things on HN.

As have we all. It makes me cringe thinking about it!

I doubt you'll get banned.

Your intuition is better than most; that comment has been punished enough. Things go much better when the community corrects things itself without moderators intervening. My goal is never to have to do anything. Edit: My long-term goal. :)

Re: My First Year of Coding

#46

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

Seems fine to me. My dad started programming in the late 60s. I've been doing it for money for 25 years. He says "coding" as a catchall term, and so do I. At some point words get new meanings.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#48
post #47

Very inspiring! Did you compile a list of the resources you used while learning each of the languages/libraries or was it pretty random?

I pulled lots of bits and pieces from all over the place but some of the big helpers have been Stack Overflow, MDN, HTML5 Canvas Tutorials, Rails Tutorial, GitHub, jQuery docs, and the Rails docs. I read tons of blogs and demos as well.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#49

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.

Perhaps not helping with this comment.
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