21–30 of 48 posts
Anyone used http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/? Seems like a good starting point for someone wanting to get going without creating your own CSS classes.
Nice, clean design and code. Think it will be perfect for mockups and user flow design. Going to give it bash, will report back if anyone is interested.
There are so many different paths you could take when you set out on this quest that without a little guidance, you could waste a lot of time. Save learning to be an independent hacker for lesson two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is the point of this post, to get them over the fear, to give them the confidence to do it. Having a personal tutor can accelerate the learning process dramatically. Even if you can teach yourself, you can learn faster if someone just tells you the answer. But, you can also just do it. And, the process will teach you the benefits of being precise with your searches and that if you know to use the work "toggle" r…
I propose that we are running into a very studied phenomenon in teaching: expert knowledge vs novice knowledge. The expert sees stuff as simple and straight-forward that causes confusion in the novice -- because the novice doesn't fully have the framework with which to understand in place yet. To get to a point where googling and reading can be really effective (for most people... there are some who can just naturall…
I think the assumption here is that if someone asks you, “I want to learn to code, what should I do?” they know you already, since if they were asking the anonymous internet hordes, they're already basically doing what this post suggests. If you ask someone you know for advice, you aren't going to get the same thing you get if you ask Google, and you aren't even necessarily looking for the same thing. I was in exactl…
The answer to every question is out there. Engineers know that better than anyone. Even the best engineers ask Google questions all the time. The biggest difference between you and an engineer is the mindset.
After you have the right mindset, here is how the execution will go:
You start asking Google questions, which leads you to all sorts of resources on StackExchange and Quora and a million blogs and other websites. You find twelve tutorials on HTML and nine on CSS, and you bounce around between them to find the best ones
Unless you're a pretty amazing auto-didact this is terrible advice. The author posits his advice as learning how to learn on your own (which is good to a certain degree), but what this advice requires is to first become an expert in querying Google and not only sorting results but going through all the different recommendations? How would someone without programming experience effectively evaluate which are 'the best ones' from the spam and the outright wrong articles?
Over the last few years I'd never really considered "go google some keywords, read everything on the first page, and let me know how that works out for you"
I think the assumption here is that if someone asks you, “I want to learn to code, what should I do?” they know you already, since if they were asking the anonymous internet hordes, they're already basically doing what this post suggests. If you ask someone you know for advice, you aren't going to get the same thing you get if you ask Google, and you aren't even necessarily looking for the same thing. I was in exactl…
> don't just point them at Google. Tell them YOUR story ... and .. what YOU would do differently ... > Use your friends These are good bits of advice. I would also encourage folks here to realize just how far programming is from what most people do all day. When you live in Windows XP all day, grew up with Windows, and spend your time talking with people about, in my case, medicine, and family in the evenings, progra…
I don't get a lot of chance to code, but I do enjoy scripting. Google is fantastic at answering questions when I know what it is I want to do. But it's terrible at preventing bad habits. "But this guy on this website said do -foo- and it works perfectly!", to which my mentor says "yuk yuk yuk yuk. do not do that. It does not scale. It relies on -bar-. And most importantly, it's revealed that you do not understand the concepts behind why you are doing -foo- and what it is you actually want to achieve".
I'm extremely fortunate in that I have access to a very good mentor who loves chewing the tech fat with me and genuinely loves sharing tech info with anyone at any level. I don't take enough time to take advantage of him, but I recognise that it's really rare to have someone who is both highly skilled, a good teacher, and motivated.
Google is great for the things that google is great at. But it does not take the place of a good mentor. I've read code sample after code sample and made a script do -foo-, but my mentor has picked up some subtely as to why I should be doing -bar- instead.
To some extent, it's reflected in the "RTFM" ideology. Man pages are great... if you already know what you're doing. If you're new to a concept, they vary from 'great' to 'fucking abysmal', as they take all sorts of knowledge for granted. Telling someone "just go learn from the documentation" is slightly evil, in my opinion. Yes, absolutely, there must be a culture where you go for the documentation early and often, but guidance and direction from experts is extremely important.
Tons of helpful links here.
Agree with most of it except its not that thats the wrong question its just that the answer is to try . Get started and build something. Stumbling and not knowing already but figuring it out are part of the process and are valuable skills. Also the whole buy a mac thing. It never ceases to amaze me how many people completely fail to realize how much privilege it takes to have the money to purchase a mac. Or the time…
"You buy a Mac because you’re embarrassed that you ever used anything else."
Although there's the argument that that's likely what they're already used to, and trying to learn two things at once is probably going to stunt their growth.
A pity, since most of the rest of the article was spot-on.
The only difference between the advice given and the strawman argued against is giving the urls of search engines to find tutorials and answer questions rather than giving specific resources. The idea of cultivating a self starter, motivated to research mindset is good, for people halfway through the beginner stage. The idea that a complete beginner even knows how to "bounce around between [different search results]…
That process of drinking the soup and learning what to swallow and what to spit out is an incredible learning experience. That is a skill and comes from trial and error, reading everything, and trying things. And you are training yourself in that process and mindset of learning on your own. Agree though that learning best practices is difficult without some guidance and working with others.
Just not at the beginning.
Maybe that's because I'm a CS major and have dealt with so many smart people who's learning paths were derailed by the self taught plan advocated here. They found a local maxima (in my experience it's often procedural php or eclipse driven java) and won't move off of it because it seems impossible and the benefit is intangible and by definition difficult for them to understand. Pretty perfectly described by PG's Blub Paradox essay.
There's a reason the "standing on the shoulders of giants" metaphor is so prevalent in the programming world.
I think the assumption here is that if someone asks you, “I want to learn to code, what should I do?” they know you already, since if they were asking the anonymous internet hordes, they're already basically doing what this post suggests. If you ask someone you know for advice, you aren't going to get the same thing you get if you ask Google, and you aren't even necessarily looking for the same thing. I was in exactl…
> don't just point them at Google. Tell them YOUR story ... and .. what YOU would do differently ... > Use your friends These are good bits of advice. I would also encourage folks here to realize just how far programming is from what most people do all day. When you live in Windows XP all day, grew up with Windows, and spend your time talking with people about, in my case, medicine, and family in the evenings, progra…
> Use your friends
These are good bits of advice. I would also encourage folks here to realize just how far programming is from what most people do all day.
It's interesting for me to read this thread because you could find/replace programming insert any number of other activities, like writing (the one I'm closest too), but music, photography, cooking, and many others probably apply too.
Theoretically, you could be a steppenwolfe and teach yourself how to write without any direct interaction from others, or others from the Internet hordes. But it would be so damn difficult and time consuming that you'd be better off finding a friend—any friend—who is already at least moderately proficient and getting her to read your stuff.
I'm a grad student in English lit, so when I tell people I spend a lot of time writing and they reply by saying, "I write" or "I want to write better" and are curious about what's going on, I'll talk about my experience and what I've done and so on. If they want me to read their stuff I will, provided they pass the (very low) barriers described here: http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2... .
The mentor / mentee or teacher / student paradigm exists for a reason. Yeah, a lot of its official manifestations in the school system don't work real well, but there's a reason it's there.