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I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

blog.jenniferdewalt.com

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Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#331

Post by walshemj »

wensing wrote: post #285
samstave wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my first jobs out of highschool was as a cad drafter for an architecture firm. As the low kid on the totem-pole, I was given the tasks that were not liked by the architects: drawing detail sheets and reproducing blueprints. -- both tasks were highly repetative. I took both as opportunities to find a meditative cadence to the work. I actually really enjoyed the rhythm of taking plots of large 30x42 inch drawing…

Oh my goodness -- you too?! I spent many a summer day matching blue paper against printed sheets and the occasional Mylar! I found the same zone you're talking about. Except ... did you ever get a paper cut and then reach over the ammonia fumes coming out the back? :-P

Ah I remember the joys sharing the basement with our printing section though a dyline printers fumes did wonders for cutting through a heavy head cold.

Only down side is they kept flooding the basement having tide marks on you computer rooms walls is not ideal :-)

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#332

Post by ceol »

jimzvz wrote: post #307
ceol wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These guys tend to come out of the woodwork when the focus of the article is of a certain gender, if you catch my drift.

With stories like this, I have found it to be the opposite. People that would usually question this, won't because they are terrified of being called sexist which is (exactly what you have done and) one of those things that hangs around you and can ruin your career very quickly. This style of marketing is becoming very popular. The young, disadvantaged, novice, whatever does something extraordinary through sheer bril…

> we need to question it every time it appears

We really don't. You playing armchair internet detective will not stop people from getting more attention than you.

What do all of those things hurt? Nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a story on the internet for a few days. It's not being shoved in your face, you're not being made to read about it. You chose to join this thread, like you chose to look up those four examples of the thing you hate so much.

I would much rather question the people who spend their time trying to denounce others.

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#333

Post by antitrust »

eitally wrote: post #304
antitrust wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than personal observation, no, I'm afraid. I doubt there is any (greater than zero) interest in researching this topic, especially since most of us get nostalgic for any type of system if we've succeeded in it. However, having gone through a number of competitive schools at different levels of education... the smartest kids were not always at the head of the class. There were also people of moderate to high int…

This has been my experience, too. If you looked at the makeup of the top 10 students in my high school class, you'd find it composed of about 50% raw intelligence and 50% hard work. There is absolutely no question that there were a couple handfuls of super-smart folks who graduated nowhere near the top of the class (but still in the upper quartile, generally because doing worse than that is pretty tough if you're rea…

I'd agree there but with a couple of caveats.

First, I went to a type of magnet school, so it was more difficult and required more initiative than most colleges.

The top tier of students were probably about 50-50 intelligence and labor, but it wasn't "hard" work per se so much as diligence. Leave no stone unturned and spend a lot of time on repetition.

On the other hand, I did know a number of highly intelligent people who were at the bottom of the class. The phrase "not engaged" comes to mind. These are 50-50 hackers and liberal arts academes at this point.

Is your disclaimer licensed under the GPL? The same disclaimer applies to my narrative here.

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#334

Post by rdouble »

Did you pre-plan the ideas for the websites?

When doing art, I used to set goals like "do 30 drawings in a month." However, I've found that I just draw the same stuff over and over again if I leave it at that. I have to actually make a theme (draw 30 plants) and even get a detailed list (draw a jade plant, a hydrangea, etc) in order to actually make any progress.

I am curious if you did any planning like this regarding the choice of sites you made?

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#335

Post by Tycho »

I've thought of doing this before. Make one attempt every day, and see it through. Not just for websites but for other skills like songwriting, drawing, short-story writing, and also other types of programming. Needless to say I never went through with it, but it's good to see someone who has.

Taking songwriting as an example, what's interesting to me is that basically anyone can try it. Sit down with a note pad, think of a tune, and make a verse-chorus-verse-chorus song (chords and riffs are optional extras). No doubt people like Paul McCartney do try this every day, but then there's the vast majority of people who never make the attempt once in their life, despite their being no real barriers.

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#336

Post by [deleted] »

jccalhoun wrote: post #325
antitrust wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. I find this story very suspicious. Even theorists like to apply their work and prototype. It sounds more like they were scared into inaction…

There's no way the story is true because I'm sure that at least a few of the "quantity" people would have my thought and just take 50 pounds of clay and call it done.

[deleted]

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#337

Post by cgcardona »

zange wrote: post #176
cgcardona wrote: post #49

Really great idea Jennifer! This is the kind of initiative and creativity that will surely land you multiple job opportunities. It reminds me of the steps which I took to transition into working on software professionally full time. I came to programming relatively late in life when I was 26 and found out that my wife was expecting a baby. The sudden change facing my wife and I made me take a hard look at my skill se…

Are you still based in Santa Cruz? I'm also starting up programming slightly later on while going to a community college (possibly the same one that you went to??), as I first started tinkering with some PHP around a year ago (my age now is 22), then tried a bit of RoR but they ended up being false starts. I've in the last few months started back up with Python (primarily Flask) and JavaScript (mainly AngularJS), and…

[edit spelling and formatting]

I'm no longer based in Santa Cruz. When I got the job at Trulia my family and I moved to the Bay Area. I'm currently living in Castro Valley and taking BART in and out of the financial district each day.

The junior college I attended is Cabrillo College[1]. They have a really great Digital Media Department[2] with many passionate and knowledgable teachers and students.

In particular Cabrillo has an excellent web design teacher named John Govsky[3]. I can honestly say that John's passion for web development was genuine and contagious. He is the first person that I remember showing me that software development is fun, cool, and exciting as well as serious business. It was in his classes that my confidence began to grow as I realized that I really understood this stuff.

For networking in Santa Cruz I did 2 things. The first is that I started a meetup called 'Startup Santa Cruz' and had bi-monthly meetings at my house in my personal office and invited people from my web design classes. The meetings were never huge, perhaps 5 people at the most but I found my first job via a 'Startup Santa Cruz' event.

A fellow student named Brook attended one of the first meetings. It turned out that Brook is the owner of a local Santa Cruz Web Design firm called Brooktown Designs[4]. She was looking for a web developer and my obvious passion for HTML/CSS as well as my drive to organize the 'Startup Santa Cruz' meetup got me the position at Brooktown Designs. I was only there very briefly before I transitioned to the Android dev shop that I mentioned in my original comment.

The second thing that I did to network is that I started hanging out at NextSpace [5] which is a really cool co-working space located in downtown Santa Cruz. They have regular tech talks so I signed up to give a talk on (still new at the time) HTML5.

A couple of dozen people showed up to the talk and I ended up leaving with several job leads and connections with local web/app developers as well as a couple of designers.

Regarding Ruby, Python, or PHP I would just recommend going with whatever feels the most natural to you, which according to your comment seems to be Python (Flask). I prefer Ruby on Rails because I think it has the greatest abstractions but the main thing is to feel comfortable and confident with the tools that you choose.

My email is cgcardona [at] gmail. Feel free to drop me an email so that we can make the connect. I'll pass along any leads that I can think of.

Best of luck!

:-]

[1] http://www.cabrillo.edu/

[2] http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/digitalmedia/index.shtml

[3] http://teacherjohn.com/

[4] http://brooktown.com/

[5] http://nextspace.us/nextspace-santa-cruz/

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#338

Post by XorNot »

freyr wrote: post #323
goblin89 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could turn out that she had some guidance Indeed. Not mentioning anyone doesn't mean she's working alone. It's possible that she uses some help. It's also possible that she works on her own. It's also possible that she's a fictional character (admittedly there isn't enough data proving otherwise). The idea itself is interesting regardless of the above. First thing that occurred to me is why don't I go for it mys…

> It's also possible that she's a fictional character (admittedly there isn't enough data proving otherwise). She does have a Twitter that's been active for a few years, and doesn't give an indication that she has prior programming experience. This would be quite the long con.

I've had a Twitter account for over a year and posted absolutely nothing to it.

I wouldn't say "con", but I do find it implausible someone went from nothing to everything and was making full websites on day 1. I mean I've cranked out some personal web-apps over a weekend, but I usually spend the next week or so "fixing" them, which for me is how I learn - I have the framework of what I want to do, and then I figure out how to add more and more features until it's the streamlined experience I want it to be.

But a ton of that time is just spending hours working out why things are the way they are.

Re: I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

#339

Post by freyr »

petea wrote: post #210
freyr wrote: post #143

So many hurt egos in this thread. If you think what she's done is impossible, have you ever devoted 70/hrs a week to a personal endeavor for 6 straight months? Would you have the willpower and perseverance to stay committed and focused? Also, these are cool sites, infused with a lot of creativity and a refined aesthetic sense, but it's not as if she's claimed to have written an OS or compiler in 115 days. Much of the…

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 Rails perfectly. She not only grasped to use MVC perfectly, but also organized asset codes perfectly in like 50 days. I forgot…

She says she works in a shared developer space. She's also co-founding a site with an experienced developer. It's quite possible that one of these developers helped set up the back end.

How would this detract from the front end work that she's done and put on display? It's quite clear, at least to me, that her effort has been focused on the content of the 180 pages, rather than the back end work, which to my knowledge, she hasn't taken credit for.

And really? Is your ego that fragile that you're desperately struggling to discredit a random person on the Internet?

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