8 ms·

My journey from high school to a feature in Forbes (thanks to you)

220 points by mxstbr 10y ago

GFischer 10y ago
Congratulations ! It seems you built something people needed and loved :) . Your story is an inspiration to people who think they're too "green" or "new" to contribute :)
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Thank you for the kind words! I absolutely agree, many junior developers are afraid to jump into open source – even though they totally don't have to be! The pain points you have while developing, no matter at which level of experience, other people probably have them too. Some of them are already solved, but many of them aren't! If you solve one of them, it can only be good for you to generalize it a bit and push it on GitHub and npm. Worst thing that can happen? Nobody uses your solution, oh well. Best thing that can happen? It could change your live. So why not do it?
  - paulryanrogers 10y ago
    "So why not do it?" Because giving your work away too freely devalues your work and that of your peers. That may be offset by the benefits depending on the circumstance.
- joshmanders 10y ago
  > Your story is an inspiration to people who think they're too "green" or "new" to contribute :) Not even to just new developers, even to us old developers. Max has been someone I look to as inspiration and I've been doing this for almost 20 years. Keep up the good work, Max.
acemarke 10y ago
Max has turned out to be a prolific contributor to the React community and an expert on the subject of React component styling approaches. He's also a pretty good speaker :) I had a sorta-similar path to getting involved with Redux over the last year and a half, which I wrote about at http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-journey-into-the-world-of-redux-and-open-source/ http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-j... . I'm also pleased to note that Max has been one of the biggest supporters of my efforts to improve Redux's documentation and provide help to people learning React and Redux, and I really appreciate his encouragement.
- mxstbr 10y ago
  I remember first meeting you in the Reactiflux Discord during a lively discussion about Redux or somesuch. It's been amazing to follow your journey and I can't wait to see where you'll be going!
fahimulhaq 10y ago
Congratulations Max. Max worked with us to create an interactive course on React/Redux[1]. Just wanted to say that he's an awesome guy to work with. Always willing to help and giving constructive feedback. Keep doing the good work Max. Congratulations again. Looking forward to 2017 and beyond. [1]: https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031244955648 https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031...
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Hey Fahim, thanks for the kind words! ---- I have a discount coupon for the course... It was originally meant for my friends, so I hope Fahim doesn't mind me sharing it, but if you enter "au-christmas" during checkout you can get yourself 60% off the original price! (I hope it's alright to post this, if not let me know mods and I'll delete this part!) I hope you enjoy the course and Merry Christmas!
hkon 10y ago
Cool, a real inspiration.
pen2l 10y ago
mxstbr, I just want to sound one comment: the seamless way that 'max stoiber' transitions to the "<mxstbr>" "logo" when scrolling down, the smoothness of the metamorphosis, is really impressive. Lots of sites do this type of thing, but for some reason they all suck. Yours doesn't. Great job.
- photogrammetry 10y ago
  It's a little annoying on mobile - if you read to the bottom, you have to press back ~15 times to cycle back through the sections get to the previous page.
  - mxstbr 10y ago
    Oh no! That's definitely a bug. What device/browser are you on?
    - edsouza 10y ago
      i have same problem. android chrome
      - echelon 10y ago
        Ditto. Latest Android Chrome. Probably something to do with pushstate.
        mxstbr 10y ago
        Super sorry about that, will get it fixed ASAP! (currently at a Christmas dinner with family...)
        mombul 10y ago
        Same issue on Chrome/Win8 :)
ggregoire 10y ago
Happy user of Styled-Components here. :) Thanks for your amazing work!
noonespecial 10y ago
>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. If you happen to be in a position of authority in a tech company in the bay area, I would personally contact this guy and ask if one of these companies was yours. If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  might be as interesting to know what companies he applied at, and how he presented himself. Did he list his projects at this time? Did he email to info@? Do people hiring for tech positions (esp out in the bay area) still filter just on school/degree, and weed out folks like max before learning anything else about them? I'm not trying to "blame the victim" so to speak as much as figure out what steps he took. Did he actually talk to a real person, and did that person review his resume/repos, and still pass (or... as is the case with almost all companies, just go silent and never respond again)?
- austincheney 10y ago
  I am curious how you come to that conclusion. Framework lust, particularly in the JS ecosystem, is inflated and often not representative of technical authority, experience, or sometimes even competence. If I were a hiring manager and the candidate couldn't write very basic vanilla JS I wouldn't hire them either. I don't care that they have a bunch of github stars. The inability to solve simple problems without a framework is a liability.
  - TAForObvReasons 10y ago
    Github stars mean very little. It is free to give one and many people just star every repo they see. The #1 repo by stars is FreeCodeCamp. I have not used the service, but if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 is to be trusted then the count is inflated: > GitHub part is so flawed... because FreeCodeCamp inflate their popularity by requiring during onboarding for the user to star their repository yet keeping them at the top. It's like if I told everyone to vote up my Hacker News posts... and gave them the link to do it and GitHub has no remedy for that inflation. I'm also guilty of starring repos that seem cool but have not read the code or tried to use it. I've never used D3 in a project and can't speak to its quality, but I've seen some wicked cool demos and starred it as a bookmark of sorts.
aantix 10y ago
>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. @mxstbr - Contact me at jim@techleads.io and send me your resume/cover letter/cold email that you used to approach these companies.. You probably just need a few tweaks with your personal pitch.
the_rosentotter 10y ago
This site messes up my browser navigation worse than anything I have ever seen before.
- spinlock 10y ago
  I thought about making the same comment but then figured I was just being salty because my 2016 was a failure :(
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Extremely extremely sorry about that, horrible bug on my side. It's fixed now, please excuse the horrible experience!
6stringmerc 10y ago
Great story, quite inspiring and a testament to new media being useful for professionals and innovators alike (e.g. his use of Twitter & HN connecting his work to how it was being used / viewed). For all of those who are now offering to hire the guy, could you be any more stereotypical? It's just like in music - every record label or tech company wants somebody to show up on their door already famous and/or already with a reputation of success - you know, basically the total package. Invest and develop new talent? Well, that's what unpaid internships are for - slave labor, and then we pick the best of the bunch...maybe! Same old song and dance. "Come back when you're famous." This example is truly good for him, because he invested in himself when big-time names and others wouldn't bother at first, and now I hope he takes his time to pick and choose his opportunities now that he's earned his industry status.
jdcarter 10y ago
Does anybody know the font used in the screenshot [1]? It looks like a pretty typical monospace coding font but has fantastic pseudo-cursive italics. I can't figure out what it is, but I want it! https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1 https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1
- niftich 10y ago
  It's Operator Mono [1][2]. It was asked and answered further down the thread. [1] http://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-operator http://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-operator [2] http://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/
  - jdcarter 10y ago
    Thanks! I didn't see it mentioned here or in the HN comments, and looking at a bunch of font samples didn't turn it up, either. However I did stumble into Fira Code [1], which has some awesome ligatures for programming! [1]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode Edit: ouch Operator Mono is $199 and up. I've purchased quality fonts before, but that's well above my impulse-buy threshold.
- pcunite 10y ago
  I want to think it is Consolas. But the author says it is "Operator Mono". The editor is Atom. Fonts can look different on Mac vs. Windows, I think.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
petetnt 10y ago
What a great story! As a fellow React developer (amongs other things) I really appreciate the stuff you have given back to the ecosystem (and in a really short time to boot!) Keep up the good work!
jventura 10y ago
> I tried (again) to study Computer Science at the local technical university, but my joy of programming was (and still is) sadly not accompanied by a joy for converting numbers from the binary to the decimal system and back (much to the dismay of my parents). As a teacher on a local technical university, I completely understand what you're talking about here. However, the purpose of technical universities is to teach broads concepts on computer science (or computer engineering). Therefore, we have to start somewhere, building from basic concepts such as the need for digital "codification" up to the dozens or hundreds of concepts which will provide students with a better understanding of the field. In your case, you pretty much decided that you would want to do frontend web development, so you made a choice. Where I teach, students only have one course which they will ever learn about html/css/js, and on a very basic level (there's a lot of information to fit into 3 years!). Assuming that most technical universities are like this, I think you made a good choice for you. However, if someday you decide to switch to backend development, making your way down the stack for DBs, or eventually up the stack for higher-level things, such as data analysis, ML, etc., you may probably find difficulties related to the lack of breadth on your understanding of the field. All in all, just to say that you made a good choice for you, but that technical universities can provide students with a breadth of information which allows students someday, after some years of experience, to grok the similarities between most CS subfields..
- lkrubner 10y ago
  "the purpose of technical universities is to teach broads concepts on computer science" Which might be a fine way to teach in those nations where college is free, but even there, ignoring the interests of the student, and sticking with a standard canon of course work, undercuts the uniqueness of each student. And in those nations where college is not free, then the cost of spending time on broad topics needs to be balanced with the student's ability to pay for it. The style of teaching that you describe is criticized by Paulo Freire in his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". "In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. However, he argues for pedagogy to treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed This is a model of teaching that can work well if the student is affluent enough that they don't have to worry about money for several years, but it is a style of teaching that really breaks down for 2 important groups: 1.) adults who need to learn a new skill 2.) just about everyone who lives in a poor country Freire developed his ideas while he was teaching adults to read and write. There is a teaching style that caters more to the full circumstances of the students, taking into account their age and their economic situation and their interests, so that the teaching empowers them with knowledge, without also disempowering them in other ways (such as crushing them with debt).
nickstefan12 10y ago
While I am happy for his success, a part of me can't help but wonder: "Is being popular on twitter a big part of front end development these days?: JS, CSS, HTML and Twitter Followers"
runbmd 10y ago
That's awesome and everything, but why can't I back out of your site??
- alexdgg 10y ago
  my thoughts exactly, lol
  - mxstbr 10y ago
    Tracked it down and fixed it, should work fine again now – sorry about that!
- mxstbr 10y ago
  I've been trying to replicate this bug for ages now, I have no idea what's going on! :( Massively sorry for the troubles! Which device/browser are you on?
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Finally tracked it down and fixed it, should work fine again now! Extremely sorry about that, totally my fault.
tenementfunster 10y ago
gazes at navel for hours on end
jumasheff 10y ago
"Books read: 40" WOW. How did you find time for this?
- NoWhiteHorse 10y ago
  Airports visited: 24 Airport visits: 76 Airplanes boarded: 62 Kilometers travelled: 323,877
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Travelling includes lots of waiting, at airports, counters, etc., so I just get my Kindle out and read in that downtime! It sounds like more than it actually is.

220 points by mxstbr 10y ago

Congratulations ! It seems you built something people needed and loved :) . Your story is an inspiration to people who think they're too "green" or "new" to contribute :)

mxstbr 10y ago
Thank you for the kind words! I absolutely agree, many junior developers are afraid to jump into open source – even though they totally don't have to be! The pain points you have while developing, no matter at which level of experience, other people probably have them too. Some of them are already solved, but many of them aren't! If you solve one of them, it can only be good for you to generalize it a bit and push it on GitHub and npm. Worst thing that can happen? Nobody uses your solution, oh well. Best thing that can happen? It could change your live. So why not do it?
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  "So why not do it?" Because giving your work away too freely devalues your work and that of your peers. That may be offset by the benefits depending on the circumstance.
joshmanders 10y ago
> Your story is an inspiration to people who think they're too "green" or "new" to contribute :) Not even to just new developers, even to us old developers. Max has been someone I look to as inspiration and I've been doing this for almost 20 years. Keep up the good work, Max.

acemarke 10y ago

Max has turned out to be a prolific contributor to the React community and an expert on the subject of React component styling approaches. He's also a pretty good speaker :) I had a sorta-similar path to getting involved with Redux over the last year and a half, which I wrote about at http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-journey-into-the-world-of-redux-and-open-source/ http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2016/09/how-i-got-here-my-j... . I'm also pleased to note that Max has been one of the biggest supporters of my efforts to improve Redux's documentation and provide help to people learning React and Redux, and I really appreciate his encouragement.

mxstbr 10y ago
I remember first meeting you in the Reactiflux Discord during a lively discussion about Redux or somesuch. It's been amazing to follow your journey and I can't wait to see where you'll be going!

fahimulhaq 10y ago

Congratulations Max. Max worked with us to create an interactive course on React/Redux[1]. Just wanted to say that he's an awesome guy to work with. Always willing to help and giving constructive feedback. Keep doing the good work Max. Congratulations again. Looking forward to 2017 and beyond. [1]: https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031244955648 https://www.educative.io/collection/5642398931615744/5741031...

mxstbr 10y ago
Hey Fahim, thanks for the kind words! ---- I have a discount coupon for the course... It was originally meant for my friends, so I hope Fahim doesn't mind me sharing it, but if you enter "au-christmas" during checkout you can get yourself 60% off the original price! (I hope it's alright to post this, if not let me know mods and I'll delete this part!) I hope you enjoy the course and Merry Christmas!

hkon 10y ago

Cool, a real inspiration.

pen2l 10y ago

mxstbr, I just want to sound one comment: the seamless way that 'max stoiber' transitions to the "<mxstbr>" "logo" when scrolling down, the smoothness of the metamorphosis, is really impressive. Lots of sites do this type of thing, but for some reason they all suck. Yours doesn't. Great job.

photogrammetry 10y ago
It's a little annoying on mobile - if you read to the bottom, you have to press back ~15 times to cycle back through the sections get to the previous page.
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Oh no! That's definitely a bug. What device/browser are you on?
  - edsouza 10y ago
    i have same problem. android chrome
    - echelon 10y ago
      Ditto. Latest Android Chrome. Probably something to do with pushstate.
      - mxstbr 10y ago
        Super sorry about that, will get it fixed ASAP! (currently at a Christmas dinner with family...)
        mombul 10y ago
        Same issue on Chrome/Win8 :)

ggregoire 10y ago

Happy user of Styled-Components here. :) Thanks for your amazing work!

noonespecial 10y ago

>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. If you happen to be in a position of authority in a tech company in the bay area, I would personally contact this guy and ask if one of these companies was yours. If it was, you have some serious work to do because your hiring practices are costing you more than you can easily imagine.

mgkimsal 10y ago
might be as interesting to know what companies he applied at, and how he presented himself. Did he list his projects at this time? Did he email to info@? Do people hiring for tech positions (esp out in the bay area) still filter just on school/degree, and weed out folks like max before learning anything else about them? I'm not trying to "blame the victim" so to speak as much as figure out what steps he took. Did he actually talk to a real person, and did that person review his resume/repos, and still pass (or... as is the case with almost all companies, just go silent and never respond again)?
austincheney 10y ago
I am curious how you come to that conclusion. Framework lust, particularly in the JS ecosystem, is inflated and often not representative of technical authority, experience, or sometimes even competence. If I were a hiring manager and the candidate couldn't write very basic vanilla JS I wouldn't hire them either. I don't care that they have a bunch of github stars. The inability to solve simple problems without a framework is a liability.
- TAForObvReasons 10y ago
  Github stars mean very little. It is free to give one and many people just star every repo they see. The #1 repo by stars is FreeCodeCamp. I have not used the service, but if https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911647 is to be trusted then the count is inflated: > GitHub part is so flawed... because FreeCodeCamp inflate their popularity by requiring during onboarding for the user to star their repository yet keeping them at the top. It's like if I told everyone to vote up my Hacker News posts... and gave them the link to do it and GitHub has no remedy for that inflation. I'm also guilty of starring repos that seem cool but have not read the code or tried to use it. I've never used D3 in a project and can't speak to its quality, but I've seen some wicked cool demos and starred it as a bookmark of sorts.

aantix 10y ago

>My original plan was to find a job, but most of the companies I contacted didn’t even want to interview me. @mxstbr - Contact me at jim@techleads.io and send me your resume/cover letter/cold email that you used to approach these companies.. You probably just need a few tweaks with your personal pitch.

the_rosentotter 10y ago

This site messes up my browser navigation worse than anything I have ever seen before.

spinlock 10y ago
I thought about making the same comment but then figured I was just being salty because my 2016 was a failure :(
mxstbr 10y ago
Extremely extremely sorry about that, horrible bug on my side. It's fixed now, please excuse the horrible experience!

6stringmerc 10y ago

Great story, quite inspiring and a testament to new media being useful for professionals and innovators alike (e.g. his use of Twitter & HN connecting his work to how it was being used / viewed). For all of those who are now offering to hire the guy, could you be any more stereotypical? It's just like in music - every record label or tech company wants somebody to show up on their door already famous and/or already with a reputation of success - you know, basically the total package. Invest and develop new talent? Well, that's what unpaid internships are for - slave labor, and then we pick the best of the bunch...maybe! Same old song and dance. "Come back when you're famous." This example is truly good for him, because he invested in himself when big-time names and others wouldn't bother at first, and now I hope he takes his time to pick and choose his opportunities now that he's earned his industry status.

jdcarter 10y ago

Does anybody know the font used in the screenshot [1]? It looks like a pretty typical monospace coding font but has fantastic pseudo-cursive italics. I can't figure out what it is, but I want it! https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1 https://twitter.com/mxstbr/status/786478628829814784/photo/1

niftich 10y ago
It's Operator Mono [1][2]. It was asked and answered further down the thread. [1] http://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-operator http://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-operator [2] http://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/
- jdcarter 10y ago
  Thanks! I didn't see it mentioned here or in the HN comments, and looking at a bunch of font samples didn't turn it up, either. However I did stumble into Fira Code [1], which has some awesome ligatures for programming! [1]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode Edit: ouch Operator Mono is $199 and up. I've purchased quality fonts before, but that's well above my impulse-buy threshold.
pcunite 10y ago
I want to think it is Consolas. But the author says it is "Operator Mono". The editor is Atom. Fonts can look different on Mac vs. Windows, I think.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

petetnt 10y ago

What a great story! As a fellow React developer (amongs other things) I really appreciate the stuff you have given back to the ecosystem (and in a really short time to boot!) Keep up the good work!

jventura 10y ago

> I tried (again) to study Computer Science at the local technical university, but my joy of programming was (and still is) sadly not accompanied by a joy for converting numbers from the binary to the decimal system and back (much to the dismay of my parents). As a teacher on a local technical university, I completely understand what you're talking about here. However, the purpose of technical universities is to teach broads concepts on computer science (or computer engineering). Therefore, we have to start somewhere, building from basic concepts such as the need for digital "codification" up to the dozens or hundreds of concepts which will provide students with a better understanding of the field. In your case, you pretty much decided that you would want to do frontend web development, so you made a choice. Where I teach, students only have one course which they will ever learn about html/css/js, and on a very basic level (there's a lot of information to fit into 3 years!). Assuming that most technical universities are like this, I think you made a good choice for you. However, if someday you decide to switch to backend development, making your way down the stack for DBs, or eventually up the stack for higher-level things, such as data analysis, ML, etc., you may probably find difficulties related to the lack of breadth on your understanding of the field. All in all, just to say that you made a good choice for you, but that technical universities can provide students with a breadth of information which allows students someday, after some years of experience, to grok the similarities between most CS subfields..

lkrubner 10y ago
"the purpose of technical universities is to teach broads concepts on computer science" Which might be a fine way to teach in those nations where college is free, but even there, ignoring the interests of the student, and sticking with a standard canon of course work, undercuts the uniqueness of each student. And in those nations where college is not free, then the cost of spending time on broad topics needs to be balanced with the student's ability to pay for it. The style of teaching that you describe is criticized by Paulo Freire in his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". "In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. However, he argues for pedagogy to treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed This is a model of teaching that can work well if the student is affluent enough that they don't have to worry about money for several years, but it is a style of teaching that really breaks down for 2 important groups: 1.) adults who need to learn a new skill 2.) just about everyone who lives in a poor country Freire developed his ideas while he was teaching adults to read and write. There is a teaching style that caters more to the full circumstances of the students, taking into account their age and their economic situation and their interests, so that the teaching empowers them with knowledge, without also disempowering them in other ways (such as crushing them with debt).

nickstefan12 10y ago

While I am happy for his success, a part of me can't help but wonder: "Is being popular on twitter a big part of front end development these days?: JS, CSS, HTML and Twitter Followers"

runbmd 10y ago

That's awesome and everything, but why can't I back out of your site??

alexdgg 10y ago
my thoughts exactly, lol
- mxstbr 10y ago
  Tracked it down and fixed it, should work fine again now – sorry about that!
mxstbr 10y ago
I've been trying to replicate this bug for ages now, I have no idea what's going on! :( Massively sorry for the troubles! Which device/browser are you on?
mxstbr 10y ago
Finally tracked it down and fixed it, should work fine again now! Extremely sorry about that, totally my fault.

tenementfunster 10y ago

gazes at navel for hours on end

jumasheff 10y ago

"Books read: 40" WOW. How did you find time for this?

NoWhiteHorse 10y ago
Airports visited: 24 Airport visits: 76 Airplanes boarded: 62 Kilometers travelled: 323,877
mxstbr 10y ago
Travelling includes lots of waiting, at airports, counters, etc., so I just get my Kindle out and read in that downtime! It sounds like more than it actually is.