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

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

#121

Post by roywiggins »

vegggdor wrote: post #86
roywiggins wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flask. Flask Flask Flask. It's well-documented, in Python, and you can push it to Heroku easy as pie. You can add things like templates (they're built in, and can be really simple) or just concatenate HTML the old-fashioned way. You can program very imperatively and work up to abstractions. It's very friendly. I haven't seen it used as an introductory "language" but I feel like it would work well.

> and the people who get the most upset by that notion are often those who have taught 0 students Does that apply to you?

To me? Yes and no. Yes I've taught precisely 0 students. No, I'm not at all upset with teaching PHP, I coded up my fair share of awful PHP web apps. My first favorite language was ActionScript which everyone loves to hate! But at the time, nothing beat PHP and ActionScript/Flash for simple, fun web development for beginners.

I think something like Flask might be a worthy successor. Heck it even includes a webserver, no need to fiddle with installing Apache to test stuff locally. And with services like Heroku the barrier to getting it online is almost as low as PHP.

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

#122

Post by zanny »

jdreaver wrote: post #116
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)…

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?

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

#123

Post by FLUX-YOU »

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…

Until there are widely accepted competencies, the hiring process will continue to be murky. That may not be solvable just because technology has such a huge scope.

Ideally you'd want someone to be able to take a test and have it spit back "Okay, this guy's a good enough junior programmer" and then have some certificate so that the job connections and interviews only are for personality. This would reduce the burden on companies having to do their own technical filtering and hopefully get more deserving butts-in-seats to get work done.

Right now it's all guesstimation, voodoo, and a few things that seem to work on both sides of the table.

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

#124

Post by wyager »

vegggdor wrote: post #70
wyager wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also easy to teach programming with BASIC. That doesn't mean it's particularly good for the students. Setting up a web server with e.g. Python's SimpleHTTPServer is absolutely trivial, and teaches them a lot more about what a web server actually does (routing requests and building responses), and also prepares the students to use whatever hip python stuff people are doing servers in these days.

Routing is done by a router, not a server. a server serves. Does that really need to be said? Edit: to clarify, I read about "routing" in "web-apps" now and then. I have problems figuring out, although it seems to be clear to anyone. And then you come and mess up terms even more, while routing is absolutely not essential to a web-server. Also, if your idea of routing is anywhere near apache's rewrite-rules, I don't w…

"Routing" in this context means resolving URLs to their correct handler.

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

#125

Post by techpeace »

aianus wrote: post #95
techpeace wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basing hiring decisions on open source contribution rates contributes to the homogeneity (read: white maleness) of the industry at large. Women especially may not have as much time to contribute, since they are likely getting paid 30% less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be single parents than men. Ashe Dryden has a great breakdown of the issue, as well as some suggested alternative hiring techniq…

> Women especially may not have as much time to contribute, since they are likely getting paid 30% less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be single parents than men. I don't know if that's it. The undergrad population in the CS department when I was in college was 11% women (already pretty dismal) but when it came to code-heavy advanced courses like writing an operating system it dropped to 0%. I wo…

Am I correct in assuming that your assertion here is that women don't contribute to Open Source in as high a number as men because they're "unwilling to do the extra work?" This is based on your one experience in college, and its extrapolated gross generalizations. Did you happen to survey 11% of your classmates to determine their specific circumstances? Were there, perhaps, any other offerings of those same classes which you did not attend that might have had female students?

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

#126

Post by j_s »

tejon wrote: post #119
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 :)

...I make $12/hr... ... :(

You should flesh out your HN profile a bit; who knows who might be able to help you out. (Specifically, the email field is not publicly visible so no one can contact you right now even if you entered something there.)

Point to your GitHub or some other demonstration that you deserve better!

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

#127

Post by tim333 »

MrJagil wrote: post #38
tim333 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some fairly easy ways to get some code up if you go for the easiest solutions. eg web2py/pythonanywhere.com for Python, http://www.appgyver.com/ for javascript/phonegap apps

The deal is, there is no way for a beginner to come to that conclusion after finishing a given tutorial. The different solutions are separated. It is not a continuous flow. HTML/CSS/Javascript(/php) are luckily taught in succession and tandem, but rarely with the hosting, naming, storing, sharing aspects integrated. It should be: html -> css -> Javascript (-> php) -> Hover(DNS) -> AWS(server) -> Final assembly -> Liv…

By the way I kind of recommend "The Complete Web Developer Course - Build 14 Websites Web development from scratch in 6 weeks. HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Bootstrap, Wordpress, APIs, Mobile Apps all covered." On Udemy.

Available for $10 until friday pm (says usual price $199 but there's usually a discount on) and includes a year or so of hosting on Rob the teachers servers. I've been doing some bits myself. He also has a how to earn money while doing it by pitching your services on elance guide. It has detailed instructions to get the stuff up on the servers, for web at any rate.

https://www.udemy.com/complete-web-developer-course/?hb=get1...

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

#128

Post by jiggy2011 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #123
jiggy2011 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Until there are widely accepted competencies, the hiring process will continue to be murky. That may not be solvable just because technology has such a huge scope. Ideally you'd want someone to be able to take a test and have it spit back "Okay, this guy's a good enough junior programmer" and then have some certificate so that the job connections and interviews only are for personality. This would reduce the burden o…

The issue is teaching them in the first place, a real apprenticeship program should be able to take someone with no knowledge of programming and convert them into a competent developer without taking up too much of the time of a senior dev who is billing $50/hr+.

The best way to do this is to outsource at least some of the learning to a classroom setting and ideally have the government subsidise this, but the government can't possibly subsidise courses in every single type of software development,

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

#129

Post by techpeace »

yarper wrote: post #96
yarper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also took a look at your contributions - looks a bit spotty! https://github.com/mmcru No activity in the last month? Something I personally would pick up on.

Github contributions & open source is not a "white male only" affair. I don't know if you're trolling, but you're actually lowering the bar for women which is a massive disservice. Good coders spend time outside work keeping up to date on their skills - trying stuff out. This stuff needs to go somewhere. Why not put it in github and show me that you're regularly learning new things? Also, "pick up" meaning I would no…

I assume this was meant to be a response to me, even though it's not in the correct thread. I'd suggest you read the article I linked to, since it addresses each of the points you made fairly directly - with data and references, rather than empty assertions. It was also written by a woman, who would likely take issue to the claim that it's doing a disservice to women by pointing out discriminatory hiring practices.

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

#130

Post by cdcarter »

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?

In many cities for many of them, with the hours they have to work, the split shifts they are forced into, and the wage theft management is guilty of, yes, many of them are essentially zombies.
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