A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job • Hacker News Board

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#131

Post by nogridbag » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:32 PM UTC

memonkey wrote: post #89

nogridbag wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My previous comment may have been misleading. I don't think it's imperative to have a github account or a showcase of your work (it definitely would not hurt). I only have one public github project and I'm not exactly proud of it. I normally start all of my interviews by trying to engage in a conversation about programming topics. But as most of the people I interview have little experience outside of Java a…

Is Java frowned upon nowadays? I'm learning it as my first "real" language, especially for Android & Spring, however I've been playing with Javascript/JQuery and have a web/design background. I've also attempted deploying websites to AWS and CloudBees and failed deploying to Heroku multiple times. In any case, my original question still stands and what would it take for me to get a job with you if I don't have a degr…

Java itself is not frowned upon - I'm a big Java fan. What is a big red flag, in my opinion, is when someone has multiple years of experience but is only familiar with a single language and has absolutely zero exposure to any other tools or languages. To me it shows that person has no interest in improving his/her craft. It just so happens that in the finance industry, Java is used heavily. Those who list JavaScript on their resume believe it's only purpose is for HTML form validation. I get a bit frustrated when I'm interviewing someone who has used Java exclusively for 15 years and is still making basic syntax errors, like mixing up angle and square brackets. It's not a one time occurrence, I may interview 4-5 people in a row making these same mistakes.

As to your main question, it's difficult to answer. Since we have a very small company with only a few developers, I personally am nervous hiring someone with little experience.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#132

Post by 300bps » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:40 PM UTC

embwbam wrote: post #104

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…

Has anyone else tried this?

I've tried it with several people with varying degrees of success. The only real insight I've had from the process is that there are some people that just can't be taught programming because they have no interest in computers.

They're only making a half-hearted attempt to learn because they "hear you can make a lot of money programming."

Even junior level web programmers need to know a lot of non-programming topics to get their foot in the door. They need to know what a domain name is, what an IP address is, what a web browser is, what a file is, what a folder is, what a hard drive is and how to access it, how to back up files, how to copy files, the difference between http and https, the impact of various browsers and versions, etc, etc. All sounds great until you really try to teach a complete computer novice how to program. They just have incredible gaps in their basic computer knowledge that are not easily overcome.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#133

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #115

embwbam wrote: post #104

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…

How much were you teaching him personally vs pointing him at the right resources and letting him mostly learn himself? The biggest concern I think that a lot of people have about this approach is that your own productivity would suffer if you have to spend too much time handholding the apprentice with their own work. If the person is already a mathematician then they obviously have an advantage because a lot of the l…

[deleted]

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#134

Post by Schweigi » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:45 PM UTC

embwbam wrote: post #104

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…

We have this apprenticeships in Switzerland for all kind of jobs including IT. Those apprenticeships do always end in an official degree which is controlled by the government and is the same for all professions (e.g. mechanic, electrician, nurse, construction and so on).

For IT there is one apprenticeship with Software Development focus which takes 4 years and is split between school and working in the company. The content is defined by an IT company association and all companies providing those apprenticeship need to stick to this defined content. Those apprenticeships are usually done when people get 16, so they have this degree when they turn 19/20. After that they can go to university to do a Bsc or Msc if they want. I think its quite a good system because people get introduced early but slowly to the working world and also have a lot of time to learn other job related things like project management or office politics.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#135

Post by fillskills » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:47 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #105

School-Cotton wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a huge company named after a big river in South America. I don't know of anybody in my org that has a GitHub, and maybe like 1/10 of the resumes I see for interview candidates have one. Is this "expectation" a San Francisco thing?

I find that if you're not in Silicon Valley, 50% of the stuff on HN won't matter to you.

Very off topic, and I dont completely agree with you. But you had me laughing out loud in a coffee shop.

HN has a suprisingly vast and interesting topic base. My mom (a complete non techie) and my sister (Bio Medical engineer) read it on a regular basis.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#136

Post by exhilaration » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

talkingquickly wrote: post #54

philbarr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would probably be pretty easy to create a tutorial that gets someone to set up a github account, introduces the basics of git/html/css/javascript, and ends up with the tutee having a Github Page that demonstrates what they've done exposed to the world on the internet. Include the DNS setup via cloudflare if they want to buy their own domain. Are there not tutorials like that? And then there would be next steps, us…

That's basically what we do with https://www.makeitwithcode.com , we take people through building things and teach them theory as they go along. Then we go through deploying something to Heroku etc as part of subsequent lessons, so by the end they've got a mixture of the theoretical stuff as well as the more practical "how do I make this be on the internet". I think there's a few others which also follow the approach…

Your website isn't clear - is there a cost?

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#137

Post by cschneid » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:53 PM UTC

mhurron wrote: post #50

" Exercises consisting of a test suite and a README are available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift." I wonder why no plain C?

Probably just that nobody has sat down and done it. Maybe that could be you... :)

https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#138

Post by j_s » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

embwbam wrote: post #104

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…

What tools did you use? Was any of the time spent working together remotely? I would love to help people out but I don't see it fitting into my schedule easily. (It sounds like you did this as a freelancer, but I would be doing this outside of my full-time job.)

The tool I am looking into next is http://bigbluebutton.org/

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#139

Post by jiggy2011 » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 6:55 PM UTC

Schweigi wrote: post #134

embwbam wrote: post #104

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…

We have this apprenticeships in Switzerland for all kind of jobs including IT. Those apprenticeships do always end in an official degree which is controlled by the government and is the same for all professions (e.g. mechanic, electrician, nurse, construction and so on). For IT there is one apprenticeship with Software Development focus which takes 4 years and is split between school and working in the company. The c…

Doesn't this restrict the technology choices of the companies who are employing these apprentices?

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#140

Post by edgyswingset » Tue, Sep 23, 2014, 7:05 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #122

jdreaver wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have loved an internship like that! I'm afraid that some would accuse you of oppressing your friend by exploiting his labor at the unlivable wage of $12/hr though :)

If $12 an hour is unlivable, are the Mcdonalds and Walmart employees working $7 an hour just zombies?

Nope, they just accrue debt because there's no other way to live in this society at that pay scale unless someone has very convenient living conditions (such as not needing a car).