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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

#231

Post by ars_technician »

contextual wrote: post #53

This is like watching some n0ob at the gym do warm up reps with my maximum weight. I'm impressed, inspired even, but also feeling like I'm underachieving. Good for her.

So to continue the analogy, she will now get bored with it and move on to the next interesting thing. Don't feel bad unless she continues at that pace for the next 5 years.

It's easy to be excited about something new. It's not so easy to be excited when you've picked all of the low hanging fruit and you have to do the dirty work for a living.

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

#232

Post by RyanZAG »

yapcguy wrote: post #92
jakewu1982 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is dating Aaron O'Connell, one of the technical co-founders of 42Floors. So, she may have been fortunate enough to have someone coach her along the way and unblock her when needed. Irrespective of that, I still think this is an impressive accomplishment in its own right. How many seasoned developers do we know that can execute at this pace for so long?

HN does seem to like promoting blog posts by 42Floors on the front page and whenever I've read them I think "meh". Maybe this is all part of the soft marketing for YCombinator backed companies so they get technology "mind-share".

There's no conspiracy, 42Floors just shares the HN blog post links internally and gets people to upvote them. You only need a few quick upvotes to hit the front page, and having a few 42Floors employees vote up 42Floors content is more than enough.

The 42Floors blogposts are generally good quality too, so nobody has any reason to flag them, and they're generally on topic and somewhat interesting, like this one.

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

#233

Post by nostrademons »

hnriot wrote: post #213
enraged_camel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two type of people in life. The first type graduates from college and their learning stops for the most part. They say to themselves, "well, I studied for four years and got a job, now it's finally time to sit back and relax." So they put in their regular 9-5 and then come home and waste their lives away by watching TV shows and playing video games and going out and getting drunk on weekends. Essentially, t…

The world isn't full of binary people. There are lots of types of people in the world, and pigeon-holing any of them doesn't help them or you.

"There are two types of people in this world: those who divide people into two groups, and those who don't."

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

#234

Post by nostrademons »

enraged_camel wrote: post #183
danielweber wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who judge others are the worst kind of people.

You have the right and the duty to judge the people in your life. This doesn't make you a bad person. On the contrary, it's part of the human experience. People who say they are not judgmental are the worst kind of liars, because they lie not only to others, but also to themselves.

Which is fine, but also understand that others will be judging you.

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

#235

Post by nostrademons »

conanbatt wrote: post #201
enraged_camel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two type of people in life. The first type graduates from college and their learning stops for the most part. They say to themselves, "well, I studied for four years and got a job, now it's finally time to sit back and relax." So they put in their regular 9-5 and then come home and waste their lives away by watching TV shows and playing video games and going out and getting drunk on weekends. Essentially, t…

This is wildly judgmental, and it would seem that you are projecting your own values in your assessment of people, which is also very narrowly fitted for technology where knowledge has potential to payoff. Have you ever met someone with perpetual knowledge of hunger that didnt succeed , and also had a very dented personal life? I met dozens of those, and what do you think they end up regretting? On the other hand i d…

I think it's more that you get good at what you practice. Someone who goes out every night of the week is practicing social interaction, and they will probably get pretty good at it. Someone who spends time with their family will have a strong family relationship. Someone who watches TV every night of the week will know an awful lot about the TV shows currently on the air. Someone who plays Farmville or Scramble with Friends or StarCraft with all their spare time will get pretty good at that. Someone who spends a lot of time on Hacker News will have really high karma.

And then ask yourself: is the stuff you're good at the stuff you want to be good at? Because if you want to be good at StarCraft or TV trivia and that's what you do with your spare time, great. But if you want to be good at programming but it's not your day job and you spend all your free time watching TV, you have some problems. Similarly, if you want to have a strong family relationship but spend all your time programming or holed up in your man-cave, you also have some problems.

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

#236

Post by scotch_drinker »

danielweber wrote: post #169
dionidium wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of "you should do this" posts on the internet can be summarized as, "people like me are pretty dang great."

People who judge others are the worst kind of people.

You, sir, have a finely tuned sense of irony.

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

#237

Post by ufmace »

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…

Most of that stuff really isn't that hard. I learned a bunch of that stuff on my own, and I've been spending less than 10 hours a week on it. Surf HN and a few Reddit boards related to coding and Rails, and you'll pick up stuff like that. I first read that the secret_token.rb file does not belong in source control in some thread on here or r/programming.

Not that it would be that tough to figure out - the name kinda invites googling, where the first few results will tell you what you need to know.

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

#238

Post by jjoe »

I'm reluctant to reference a scene from a film because it seems too cliche. But it's analogically relevant so here it is (Matrix: Neo vs Morpheus):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82GKTgVDkw (check the relevant quotes down below)

it's relevant because what we do on the Web is virtual. What we create for others to experience and use can seem magical. Every time someone creates a new product, a previously unthought-of experience, we're baffled, in awe. We're in shock even though we live a bit at the forefront of development (relatively). We feel empowered knowing that the Web is the one place we can potentially be Batman.

What she set herself to do is grandiose and beyond what she thought to be capable of doing. Yet she shook off the negative inner chatter and kept trucking along. So I think there's something positive to learn from this for all of us.

The work we do as product developers will always have a mundane or labor intensive component. This is where most of us take the "perseverance cap" off and start procrastinating. Not all the work is going to be fun and exciting. But the reward is awesome and packed with a healthy dose of endorphin.

Relevant quotes:

* Don't think you are; know you are!

* Come on! Stop trying to hit me and hit me!

* do you think that's air you're breathing now?

* Do you really think me being strong or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place?

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

#239

Post by thenomad »

adt2bt wrote: post #189
thenomad wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I linked this above, but it's so directly relevant to your idea that I thought I should re-link it here: check out the Julie/Julia project, which was one woman doing approximately the same thing with cooking, albeit on a more focused topic: http://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon... (As a side note, I love this idea, and would cheerfully jump into doing it myself were I not already rather overcom…

You know, I might as well throw it up on a blog. I need writing practice, photography practice, food shopping practice and cooking practice. It also helps keep me motivated! Thanks for the Julie/Julia project link. I have been considering going through Thomas Keller's great books in a similar way as well. I have Bouchon Bakery, and I've made probably 20% of what's in there. I haven't found anything that disappoints y…

Cooool. Oddly, Keller was the person who sprang to mind for me too.

If you do this, definitely blog it and let me know - hughhancock on Twitter - I'd love to read about how it goes.

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

#240

Post by k3n »

ars_technician wrote: post #211
k3n wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? Not so gullible so as to take to heart what you're saying, considering that you created your account solely to deride her. Here we are, 70 days after your account was created, and yet you've only posted 1 comment that wasn't negatively criticizing her? And your only argument is a copy/paste of your original complaint from 70 days ago, all based off of source-control introspecti…

Your comment is an ad hominem. Address what he said, not his intentions or account history.

Please consider that the comment in question is a verbatim copy/paste from the previous time it was brought it up. If you want to consider spamming the same comment over multiple threads as valid discussion, by all means, have at it.

However, everything they brought up was already addressed 70 days ago. To be honest, petea raises a valid concern, and I certainly don't want to be party to shills or other types of fraudulent or deceptive activities, but considering that petea didn't even put forth the effort to further refine or follow-up on their original argument (especially given 70 additional data points [sites] with which to draw evidence from), then that signals to me that they have motivations beyond what meets the eye.

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