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

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

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

#111

Post by rzc »

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 today.

Nowadays we have so much scaffolding to work from that it's easy to mistake results for software engineering skill. Many of these projects are mash-ups.

I do admire her dedication, it's a rare quality, but I can't help but think this is the easy way out. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

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

#112

Post by FLUX-YOU »

Bahamut wrote: post #72

I too have went a similar journey - I went from my first programming job as a junior frontend dev to senior frontend dev (with full stack capabilities) in ~10 months. I'm pretty happy to see that someone else has taken the initiative to learn & grow. Does it matter that she had help? No, the end goal is what matters. Some public acknowledgement would probably be good as a thanks to those who have helped her, but I do…

If I may ask, what skills and how many projects did you have when you joined as a junior?

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

#113

Post by ars_technician »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #101
ars_technician wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math implies 64k after taxes, which is only 20% and is completely wrong. The effective tax rate in Cali after federal and state is closer to 40%. That leaves 48k after taxes. Take out the 24k you blew on the 2k/mo apt and you're down to 24k and you haven't even put food on your plate or paid for transportation costs. Take out 4k for food assuming you don't eat at nice restaurants. Take out 2k for a train pass an…

I don't think it'll be 40% for someone making 80k per year. The effective federal rate on the first 80k is around 20%. The CA rate should be 9-10%. Maybe another 5% for soc sec. But I also made a very generous assumption re: apartment spend. I think my point stands.

No, it doesn't still stand. You just adjusted from your initial 20% up to 35%, which essentially eliminates most of the 'savings' money you mentioned in your post. Also, the apartment assumption isn't that generous. If you want to live in SF by yourself, that's what you will pay for a decent apt.

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

#114

Post by jacobquick »

pauletienney wrote: post #45
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…

I should do this with arduino/electronic. Just a point : coding is free. Cooking, wood crafting, electronic, or any physical activity requires you buy some material.

"Coding is free" except for the $2000 laptop, the thousands of people working for pennies to make it, the military required to project enough power to keep them working, the endless supply of Starbucks to power through the coding process, the thousands of people working for pennies to grow that, and the military required to project enough power to keep them working as well.

Free otherwise though.

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

#115

Post by mooreds »

Volscio wrote: post #89
mooreds wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who talks about the flywheel model of learning. If, every day, you spend even 15 minutes towards your goal of what have you (aka, add even a little momentum to your flywheel), at the end of a year, you will have a lot of knowledge.

I used to agree with this but what I've seen in practice is a lot of people who have half-assed their way through beginner tutorials but have no actual practical grasp of how to do a non-guided project. What she's done is pretty difficult -- executing a new concept daily -- and it's amazing she managed to keep it up when most others would drop out/fail. I personally think "a lot of knowledge" comes through those lost…

Hmm... I guess I'd say half assing your way through beginner tutorials is better than doing nothing (if it is on the path to your goal). That said, flywheels are slow to start up, and you can't expect to do one or two or ten tutorials and have it spinning fast.

As Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

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

#116

Post by jamesaguilar »

ars_technician wrote: post #113
jamesaguilar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it'll be 40% for someone making 80k per year. The effective federal rate on the first 80k is around 20%. The CA rate should be 9-10%. Maybe another 5% for soc sec. But I also made a very generous assumption re: apartment spend. I think my point stands.

No, it doesn't still stand. You just adjusted from your initial 20% up to 35%, which essentially eliminates most of the 'savings' money you mentioned in your post. Also, the apartment assumption isn't that generous. If you want to live in SF by yourself, that's what you will pay for a decent apt.

> If you want to live in SF by yourself

Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about someone who is making the bare minimum effort to save money. My mistake.

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

#117

Post by percentcer »

ceejayoz wrote: post #107
petea wrote: post #38

I don't know why she has never mentioned someone she worked with at all. I commented about this about her 70 days ago. --- So let's see her repository ( https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt ). This girl not only became a competent front end developer in 100 days, but looking at the Gemfile, she knows how to use capistrano, redis, capistrano, paperclip, omniauth and devise? She knows the best practices for Rai…

We don't call male coders "boy", let's not call female ones "girl" unless they're a fourteen year old or something.

"girl" is used in place of "guy" because "guy" has a masculine connotation. I'd be happy to see "gal" but it's a little anachronistic.

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

#118

Post by nickdoesdesign »

ars_technician wrote: post #100
breckinloggins wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. That's why the no dependents part is essential. If you are single and willing to live with roommates, you will be able to navigate the "high cost of living" pretty successfully. I'm living quite comfortably in San Francisco and spending a fraction of what I was spending in Texas. Why? - No car. No gas. No upkeep. No payments. No insurance. No inspections. No car. - Roommates. I HATE living alone so this was a n…

>They were wrong, and I was a fool for listening to them instead of exploring it for myself. Don't make my mistakes. They were right if you ever want to have a family. You are building no equity in rent so you will essentially have to leave and start over somewhere else to have kids. Your story is fine as long as it ends with you being single and alone without any real assets.

This is what gets me. The whole building equity thing by equating it to property. I have equity, but I invested it elsewhere. I still rent. You dont need to own property to have equity and to state otherwise is a disservice.

America is not all subdivisions and white picket fences...

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

#119

Post by AznHisoka »

benihana wrote: post #69
jamesaguilar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, maybe Chicago. This list is not exhaustive.

All of those places have prohibitively high cost of living to make saving six months of salary very much not trivial. It's possible, but it isn't anywhere close to trivial.

I dunno why people always say NY is expensive... have you ever lived there? Live in NJ, rent a basement somewhere in Queens, or heck you can rent an apartment in Chinatown for $800/month. I know people who rent an entire floor, and then sub-rent it to their friends, so they end up paying $0.00 for rent.

Don't eat out everyday. Bring your lunch everyday. It can be done.

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

#120

Post by imd23 »

Months ago a friend of mine who is doing CS in my country (Uruguay) was really demotivated, basically just sad, because he couldn't see how the career he was studying would pay off.

In Uruguay, CS programs are quite old and outdated. If I am not wrong the public university program dates from 1987. Prior to the internet. So you can imagine how people there feel depressed soon.

After his constant demotivation I offered him to help him learn the web. And I was like, 'where the hell do O start?' I mean, I have been doing sites since I was 8.

My first thought was pretty near what she did here, helps friend learn that he can do it alone. It has been my biggest motto in life, but I not everyone knows that it is just a matter of start and never quit.

I offered him to guide him, but not help him.

After some months he now knows Ruby, HTML5, CSS.

My biggest lesson was that sometime we want everything now, but we underestimate the power of time and dedication.

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