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My First Year of Coding

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

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Re: My First Year of Coding

#101

Post by jenniferDewalt »

aurumpotest wrote: post #81

This is the first I've seen of this project, it looks inspirational. But how did you choose the projects? I've often wanted to do a small project just for the sake of making something nice and pretty, and improving my skills at the same time, but I can never come up with anything. All your ideas are great - but I can't imagine being able to come up with one a day for 6 months! Also, how did the project work out time-…

Before I started the 180 project I made a list of every idea I could think of. Then as the project went along I was often inspired by something I came across the day before or a new concept I wanted to explore. I had a few moments where I thought I'd never have a good idea again.

I quit my job last year and have been working on the 180 websites project and now YumHacker full time. I spent on average 10 hours a day on the 180 project.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#102

Post by altero »

thumbtackthief wrote: post #97
altero wrote: post #87

Nothing against Jennifer, her stuff is impressive. But I find this ridiculous. This is called learning and is done by thousandth/millions others. Everyone has to overcome their fear of being judged and stuff. Giving kudos just because of gender just undermines girls to take on harder challenges in future. I started coding professionally when I was 17 not to starve, while overcoming depression and mental illness. My c…

Ugh, now I'm all angry. Can you point to _one_ comment where someone gave her kudos based on her gender as opposed to her work? I just went through the entire page to see if you had any leg to stand on.

Can you show me _one_ comment which actually recommends how to improve her skills? You know: " I noticed you are using ... but there is framework which does it better"... sort of stuff.

I think boys deserve bit more encouragement and girls deserve bit more honest constructive criticism.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#103

Post by jenniferDewalt »

kbajorin wrote: post #99
readymade wrote: post #37

It's worth revisiting the original HN post from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155 IMHO she deserves kudos not just for accomplishing her goal (which really is impressive enough on its own) but doing so in the face of a community with such deeply ingrained sexism that some people thought it "suspicious" at the outset. Obviously she's a strong enough person that this kind of stuff didn't derail he…

It seems to me encouragement is the dominant response, both here and in the original post. My criticism would be that in her post she highlights only the negative comments she got. When, on the whole, the community votes her posts up and the top comments are always positive.

The response from the community has been amazingly and wonderfully supportive. My comments in the post were mostly a reflection on the weird things people have said to me personally. For example, I had a close family member look me dead in the eye and say, "You shouldn't have started this project."

Re: My First Year of Coding

#105

Post by Marcus316 »

altero wrote: post #102
thumbtackthief wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, now I'm all angry. Can you point to _one_ comment where someone gave her kudos based on her gender as opposed to her work? I just went through the entire page to see if you had any leg to stand on.

Can you show me _one_ comment which actually recommends how to improve her skills? You know: " I noticed you are using ... but there is framework which does it better"... sort of stuff. I think boys deserve bit more encouragement and girls deserve bit more honest constructive criticism.

Are those types of constructive comments typical on HN? I ask because I'm fairly new here, and I haven't really noticed many (there are a few) constructive criticisms for any of the projects I've seen posted around these parts.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#106

Post by jenniferDewalt »

Marcus316 wrote: post #105
altero wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show me _one_ comment which actually recommends how to improve her skills? You know: " I noticed you are using ... but there is framework which does it better"... sort of stuff. I think boys deserve bit more encouragement and girls deserve bit more honest constructive criticism.

Are those types of constructive comments typical on HN? I ask because I'm fairly new here, and I haven't really noticed many (there are a few) constructive criticisms for any of the projects I've seen posted around these parts.

I generally receive constructive feedback via email and I am always happy to receive more. The source for YumHacker is on GitHub.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#107

Post by dang »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #95
dang wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam, come on. No crap comments on HN, please. (I edited this to make it less harsh.)

It's not an especially crap comment, it's just a joke you didn't get. Jokes don't do well here admittedly.

Ok, fair point. I thought it might help to make a public comment in this case because repeated private requests don't seem to have worked.

The jokes thing is a tricky one for HN. I love comedy and I love wit. I'm sure most of us do. But when you're optimizing for signal/noise ratio, as HN tries to, there are tradeoffs. On the whole, I think the community habit of downvoting most (not all) jokes is reasonable for what HN is trying to be.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#108

Post by thumbtackthief »

altero wrote: post #102
thumbtackthief wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, now I'm all angry. Can you point to _one_ comment where someone gave her kudos based on her gender as opposed to her work? I just went through the entire page to see if you had any leg to stand on.

Can you show me _one_ comment which actually recommends how to improve her skills? You know: " I noticed you are using ... but there is framework which does it better"... sort of stuff. I think boys deserve bit more encouragement and girls deserve bit more honest constructive criticism.

Oh, I see. So, since no one said, "Hey, you've been coding for 100 days! Here's EVERYTHING YOU DID WRONG" then clearly, we're all just too sexist to treat women like people.

If there _is_ any pussy-footing here (er, no pun intended) and I in no way am acknowledging that there is, it is in reaction to the extreme chauvinism of coders like you.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#109

Post by stickperson »

ericabiz wrote: post #36
stickperson wrote: post #33

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…

Thanks for the motivation. Like others have said, it takes a lot of guts to do what you're doing.

Re: My First Year of Coding

#110

Post by stickperson »

Intermernet wrote: post #77
stickperson wrote: post #33

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…

I apologize if the below seems like a rant, but hopefully it'll help you feel less "overwhelmed" at the amount of stuff you can learn in CS / IT. Many years ago (Makes me sound old...) I dropped out of a CS degree to pursue archaeology, and then dropped out of that when I ran out of money and needed a job... That job (and all the subsequent jobs) taught me a lot about people and business, and trained me with the disc…

Thanks for the kind words. I hope others out there in a position to hire have the mentality you do. I was a bit discouraged because it took me about 4 months to find my first job as a dev, and at no point during any of my interviews did anyone care to test if I had the aptitude to learn.
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