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I'm writing a book that teaches people coding using JavaScript, the book that takes you from 0 (no coding background) to getting a job as a JS engineer. 2 year

I'm writing a book that teaches people coding using JavaScript, the book that takes you from 0 (no coding background) to getting a job as a JS engineer. 2 years I ago, I had a hypothesis to see if anybody could learn coding if they tried. To test that, I reached out to random people with no coding background, most of them from underprivileged backgrounds. I figured they have fewer opportunities and are more likely to stay through the entire program. 17 of them stayed. As of today, 14 of them have gotten full time jobs (which was a high win for them, going from minimum wage to 130k+ per year). The remaining 3 of them are starting interview prep right now. I'm going for a 100% success rate. Everybody learns at a different pace. The slowest student took 2 years and the fastest around 6 months (I actively made them stay around to help out the slower students for as long as I could). I'm putting together a curriculum of all the pain points people face when learning how to code and come up with a comprehensive book. It will be free to all. The current rough draft is here: https://www.notion.so/garagescript/Table-of-Contents-a83980f81560429faca3821a9af8a5e2 https://www.notion.so/garagescript/Table-of-Contents-a83980f... To test the effectiveness of the book, I've just recruited a new student (my dad), who spent the last 30 years doing manual labor and barely knows any English. So far, so good.

atm0sphere 7y ago
That's actually really cool. Where are you located and was everyone learning from you/others in person?
- yjhoney 7y ago
  > Where are you located and was everyone learning from you/others in person? San Jose (Bay Area). Yes, everyone is learning in person. I plan to release a (free) book capturing what I learned and wrap up this project (or let someone else take over)
fhbdukfrh 7y ago
Is 130k realistic for someone with less than 2 years of not just experience but total exposure? I'm not aware of any market supporting that sort of value proposition; that's one hell of a book...
- jammygit 7y ago
  Depends where you live... where I live, that is a lot. Makes me want to move but my family is here
- ailideex 7y ago
  I generally take things which sound to good to be true with a pinch of salt. No exception here.
- yjhoney 7y ago
  YMMV. I don't expect everyone to get 130k TC, but that has been the case so far. A few things that helps: 1. Content must be lean. Learn foundations. 2. Really drill down those foundations. 3. Work experience: most of a student's journey is actually working together as a team to build / launch products. I role play as a project manager and run weekly sprints. 4. Relevant Technologies: I work as an engineering lead during the day, I make sure student's work experience covers all of industry trends (currently: GraphQL, React, Apollo Client)
  - rmdashrfstar 7y ago
    In what way did you determine that GraphQL and React are industry trends? Isn't GraphQL a fairly niche solution to relatively uncommon problems that benefit from using a graph database?
    - yjhoney 7y ago
      > Isn't GraphQL a fairly niche solution Everyone around me seems to be implementing a GraphQl layer, and most of them don't have a graph database. I'm still not even sure what the `Graph` means in `GraphQl`. Here's an overview of how Airbnb uses GraphQL: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-is-moving-10x-faster-at-scale-with-graphql-and-apollo-aa4ec92d69e2 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-is-moving-1...
jeanlucas 7y ago
Nice nice! Would love to test out, my brother-in-law is starting to learn js now, he could use your material as well. He has zero background in coding and just reached out to me to teach something.
- jeanlucas 7y ago
  Btw, have you ever seen freecodecamp and OSS (on Github)? They have really good content for reference. edit: OSS link - https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science
abrichr 7y ago
Do you have a mailing list to sign up for updates? Whatstthe ETA on the rough draft? Any chance for early access to the first few chapters? Thanks!
blacksoil 7y ago
This is really cool! Kudos! I know CS is a great way to help improve underprivileged kids' economic status. As long as the person has certain kind of "wiring", is willing to work hard, and not giving up easily, it can bring about a bright future. So great to see someone goes extra-mile to bring this "gold-mine" forward. Hope many more people can be blessed by your book. Would love to also buy your book!
fillskills 7y ago
Thats an amazing story. Congrats on making it happen for the 17 kids. This is why HN is an amazing place and also why I wish there was a heart button in addition for special cases :)
taneq 7y ago
> 2 years I ago, I had a hypothesis to see if anybody could learn coding if they tried. To test that, I reached out to random people with no coding background, most of them from underprivileged backgrounds. I figured they have fewer opportunities and are more likely to stay through the entire program. 17 of them stayed. You're missing some numbers at the start there, chief. How many people did you reach out to? How many responded favourably (first round of self-selection)? How many actually started the program (second round of self-selection)? Without these numbers it's hard to support your premise. Of course, none of this takes away from the fact that you got 14 people from minimum wage into high paying software jobs in just two years. That's a damn fine effort! (And as others have said, where the hell can you get a $130k job straight out of a 2 year Javascript boot camp?)
- andreigheorghe 7y ago
  > Without these numbers it's hard to support your premise. His premise is that "anybody could learn coding if they tried", whereby "tried" I assumed applies to only the people who passed those two rounds of self-selection you describe.
  - taneq 7y ago
    That's kind of like saying "anyone can run a marathon" and then qualifying it to "if they enter an organized event and complete the appropriate training for it".
    - yjhoney 7y ago
      > That's kind of like saying "anyone can run a marathon" and then qualifying it to "if they enter an organized event and complete the appropriate training for it". Yes. That was what I was trying to figure out is, if there was an organized event could anybody (who are motivated to complete the training) get a coding job? I would like to think so, but I work with many people in the industry who will say, 'nah they need the brains for it'. I try my best to motivate those who lose motivation but ultimately I don't have the bandwidth to inspire everyone who loses motivation.
gnicholas 7y ago
This is pretty cool. I took a couple CS classes in college, but then I went on to law school before eventually becoming a non-technical founder. After looking over the first several lessons, I'm going to give this a try and see how far/fast I can go. I probably still won't be a primary coder at my startup, but at least I'll be able to make more sense of the JS that our devs write.
dlhavema 7y ago
That's really good success! Weve had a few people come out of a bootcamp and try to apply for jobs, but none were even close to getting hired. I think their bootcamp was only a 2 or 3 months though
- yjhoney 7y ago
  2-3 months is really aggressive and the ones who do well are usually incredibly motivated and smart. Bootcamps that are 3 months long usually will involve an interview to make sure the student is motivated enough.
dawie 7y ago
This is amazing and inspiring! I would love to follow this and help in some way if I can. I would donate money to this cause. Please get in touch with me. My email is on my HN profile.
mikst 7y ago
Hi, could you teach me how to navigate hiring phase? I have more than 2 years of JS experience, python, shell and whatnot, still 130k sounds good for me.
- yjhoney 7y ago
  1. Foundations. How are your foundations? Given an array of promises, could you run them serially (instead of running them in parallel like Promise.all). 2. Do you have experience working with technologies that are trending? If not, start a side project using them. 3. How's your speed? Given the assets, could you build this in an hour? (this was an actual hands on interview problem) https://www.google.com/logos/2011/worldsfair11-hp.html?hl=en https://www.google.com/logos/2011/worldsfair11-hp.html?hl=en During the day our students do practice problems that drill these concepts.
  - mikst 7y ago
    1. Wow, never thought of Promises as a foundation. I was never a fan of them in the first place. 2. Trending technologies do not necessarily make sense. 3. If I'm not mistaken, this is just: on mouse over, switch CSS class. CSS jutsu would be... interesting though. Oh, and set position. Anyway, I am starting to see a lesson for myself here :) Thank you, sir!
- ailideex 7y ago
  I think maybe it is not USD
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hotgeart 7y ago
There's a form somewhere where we can put our email to be notified when we can buy the final book ? Nice project btw
galadex 7y ago
I am teaching myself JavaScript and have an open notebook on the web. May I have your permission to use your material in the ongoing notes?

atm0sphere 7y ago

That's actually really cool. Where are you located and was everyone learning from you/others in person?

yjhoney 7y ago
> Where are you located and was everyone learning from you/others in person? San Jose (Bay Area). Yes, everyone is learning in person. I plan to release a (free) book capturing what I learned and wrap up this project (or let someone else take over)

fhbdukfrh 7y ago

Is 130k realistic for someone with less than 2 years of not just experience but total exposure? I'm not aware of any market supporting that sort of value proposition; that's one hell of a book...

jammygit 7y ago
Depends where you live... where I live, that is a lot. Makes me want to move but my family is here
ailideex 7y ago
I generally take things which sound to good to be true with a pinch of salt. No exception here.
yjhoney 7y ago
YMMV. I don't expect everyone to get 130k TC, but that has been the case so far. A few things that helps: 1. Content must be lean. Learn foundations. 2. Really drill down those foundations. 3. Work experience: most of a student's journey is actually working together as a team to build / launch products. I role play as a project manager and run weekly sprints. 4. Relevant Technologies: I work as an engineering lead during the day, I make sure student's work experience covers all of industry trends (currently: GraphQL, React, Apollo Client)
- rmdashrfstar 7y ago
  In what way did you determine that GraphQL and React are industry trends? Isn't GraphQL a fairly niche solution to relatively uncommon problems that benefit from using a graph database?
  - yjhoney 7y ago
    > Isn't GraphQL a fairly niche solution Everyone around me seems to be implementing a GraphQl layer, and most of them don't have a graph database. I'm still not even sure what the `Graph` means in `GraphQl`. Here's an overview of how Airbnb uses GraphQL: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-is-moving-10x-faster-at-scale-with-graphql-and-apollo-aa4ec92d69e2 https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-is-moving-1...

jeanlucas 7y ago

Nice nice! Would love to test out, my brother-in-law is starting to learn js now, he could use your material as well. He has zero background in coding and just reached out to me to teach something.

jeanlucas 7y ago
Btw, have you ever seen freecodecamp and OSS (on Github)? They have really good content for reference. edit: OSS link - https://github.com/ossu/computer-science https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

abrichr 7y ago

Do you have a mailing list to sign up for updates? Whatstthe ETA on the rough draft? Any chance for early access to the first few chapters? Thanks!

blacksoil 7y ago

This is really cool! Kudos! I know CS is a great way to help improve underprivileged kids' economic status. As long as the person has certain kind of "wiring", is willing to work hard, and not giving up easily, it can bring about a bright future. So great to see someone goes extra-mile to bring this "gold-mine" forward. Hope many more people can be blessed by your book. Would love to also buy your book!

fillskills 7y ago

Thats an amazing story. Congrats on making it happen for the 17 kids. This is why HN is an amazing place and also why I wish there was a heart button in addition for special cases :)

taneq 7y ago

> 2 years I ago, I had a hypothesis to see if anybody could learn coding if they tried. To test that, I reached out to random people with no coding background, most of them from underprivileged backgrounds. I figured they have fewer opportunities and are more likely to stay through the entire program. 17 of them stayed. You're missing some numbers at the start there, chief. How many people did you reach out to? How many responded favourably (first round of self-selection)? How many actually started the program (second round of self-selection)? Without these numbers it's hard to support your premise. Of course, none of this takes away from the fact that you got 14 people from minimum wage into high paying software jobs in just two years. That's a damn fine effort! (And as others have said, where the hell can you get a $130k job straight out of a 2 year Javascript boot camp?)

andreigheorghe 7y ago
> Without these numbers it's hard to support your premise. His premise is that "anybody could learn coding if they tried", whereby "tried" I assumed applies to only the people who passed those two rounds of self-selection you describe.
- taneq 7y ago
  That's kind of like saying "anyone can run a marathon" and then qualifying it to "if they enter an organized event and complete the appropriate training for it".
  - yjhoney 7y ago
    > That's kind of like saying "anyone can run a marathon" and then qualifying it to "if they enter an organized event and complete the appropriate training for it". Yes. That was what I was trying to figure out is, if there was an organized event could anybody (who are motivated to complete the training) get a coding job? I would like to think so, but I work with many people in the industry who will say, 'nah they need the brains for it'. I try my best to motivate those who lose motivation but ultimately I don't have the bandwidth to inspire everyone who loses motivation.

gnicholas 7y ago

This is pretty cool. I took a couple CS classes in college, but then I went on to law school before eventually becoming a non-technical founder. After looking over the first several lessons, I'm going to give this a try and see how far/fast I can go. I probably still won't be a primary coder at my startup, but at least I'll be able to make more sense of the JS that our devs write.

dlhavema 7y ago

That's really good success! Weve had a few people come out of a bootcamp and try to apply for jobs, but none were even close to getting hired. I think their bootcamp was only a 2 or 3 months though

yjhoney 7y ago
2-3 months is really aggressive and the ones who do well are usually incredibly motivated and smart. Bootcamps that are 3 months long usually will involve an interview to make sure the student is motivated enough.

dawie 7y ago

This is amazing and inspiring! I would love to follow this and help in some way if I can. I would donate money to this cause. Please get in touch with me. My email is on my HN profile.

mikst 7y ago

Hi, could you teach me how to navigate hiring phase? I have more than 2 years of JS experience, python, shell and whatnot, still 130k sounds good for me.

yjhoney 7y ago
1. Foundations. How are your foundations? Given an array of promises, could you run them serially (instead of running them in parallel like Promise.all). 2. Do you have experience working with technologies that are trending? If not, start a side project using them. 3. How's your speed? Given the assets, could you build this in an hour? (this was an actual hands on interview problem) https://www.google.com/logos/2011/worldsfair11-hp.html?hl=en https://www.google.com/logos/2011/worldsfair11-hp.html?hl=en During the day our students do practice problems that drill these concepts.
- mikst 7y ago
  1. Wow, never thought of Promises as a foundation. I was never a fan of them in the first place. 2. Trending technologies do not necessarily make sense. 3. If I'm not mistaken, this is just: on mouse over, switch CSS class. CSS jutsu would be... interesting though. Oh, and set position. Anyway, I am starting to see a lesson for myself here :) Thank you, sir!
ailideex 7y ago
I think maybe it is not USD

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hotgeart 7y ago

There's a form somewhere where we can put our email to be notified when we can buy the final book ? Nice project btw

galadex 7y ago

I am teaching myself JavaScript and have an open notebook on the web. May I have your permission to use your material in the ongoing notes?