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Took me ten years to learn to code by myself. From playing around with gorillas in QBasic to pretending to know C to learning HTML visually to getting CSS and

Took me ten years to learn to code by myself. From playing around with gorillas in QBasic to pretending to know C to learning HTML visually to getting CSS and DOM to trying to remake PacMan in C++ to finally learning Python and Django and Flask and the point of OOP to finally now realizing the modern day shift towards EDP thus how powerful JavaScript really is. Ten years of sucking. To realize I'm not meant to be a programmer because my code is not as efficient, compact, or beautiful enough like the "pros" that keep pushing to GitHub. And that internal chasm, that lack of confidence is what kills it for me. And if I were to do it all over again I would have definitely done all this on other people's time and money instead of my own. But I just keep hacking away because programming is art and until the day I can bring about all the crazy things I know I see in my head that will change the world I will suffer for my art.

mnicole 14y ago
Are you me? Which way's the support group?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
jjsz 14y ago
Would you've considered using the money you've generated to launch a local devbootcamp to teach yourself among 'pros'? In these 10 years you haven't stayed out of touch since you know EDP, some people are stuck in OOP. Putting up a MVP together and using those connections you would've gained in the bootcamp to find a partner sounds better than the loner route. That's what I'm assuming. I lurk here, but comments like these puts reality down in a summary I can comprehend. I wish there was a shortcut to all of this. You know finally landing on a legit niche and outsourcing it. Outsourcing can be an art for people like us who aren't pros. [Edit] One of you guys in here should launch an old school way of learning how to hack hub. For Generation Y.
- alaskamiller 14y ago
  A lot of bootcamps are popping up in the bay area. To me it's weird and speaks more about how broken our immigration laws are than that the bootcamps are fulfilling a market niche. There are huge leaps between the introductory levels (covered by CodeAcademy or Udemy reinventing the ...for Dummies series of the 90's) to the intermediate levels to the expert Google/Apple/Facebook levels (trained by the traditional college systems or just talented enough to self-learn). That intermediate level is a big opportunity and I can see the pitch of the bootcamps being able to launch candidates from intro levels to get as close to the intermediate level as possible. Yet, that's a big jump. Things like knowing about message queues, tasks queues, server provisioning, or creating REST APIs are still a lot of information to learn. If I were a funded business organization my options are to: - hire internationally and relocate them (thus far expensive) - setup offshore (expensive but cheaper) - hire a 12-weeker (cheap) In my experience of working at big corps and startups, there's just not enough introductory work to go around to make hiring a 12-weeker worthwhile. It's even worse on the startup scale since there's just not enough money to keep a newbie around long enough to make good use of them or provide technical training. Not to mention how often people jump from companies to companies these days and OTJ training just doesn't work anymore. I don't know how to fix that. I keep hearing that DevBootcamps are pretty successful at placing people into work though I would love to have a deep dive with the employers to know what's going on because to me they just don't seem efficient enough.
  - joshdotsmith 14y ago
    I'm working directly with a DevBootcamp grad and would be happy to talk about the experience some.
    - jyu 14y ago
      In what capacity are you working with the devbootcamp grad? What kind of hiring / working experiences have you had with other developers? On a surface glance, it seems like you develop rails MVP's via coder.ly?
      - 14y ago
chewxy 14y ago
EDP and OOP are not mutually exclusive. Javascript is popular simply because it's really really really underpowered. see: atwood's law
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  Is popular because is the only language allowed in the browsers; any other assertion is purely speculation. Just be glad is not COBOL or C (imagine any amateur's code causing memory leaks in the browser...)
- reissbaker 14y ago
  Underpowered? I suppose it doesn't have a static type system. You can do OO just fine in Javascript, though.
  - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
    There are fixed-sized intArrays and buffers in JS nowdays.
    - reissbaker 14y ago
      Yeah, but that's a far cry from a full-on static type system. Don't get me wrong, though — JS is one of my favorite languages! (Most) Lisps don't have static type systems, either, and not many people call them underpowered. Same goes for Ruby, Python, etc.

mnicole 14y ago

Are you me? Which way's the support group?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

jjsz 14y ago

Would you've considered using the money you've generated to launch a local devbootcamp to teach yourself among 'pros'? In these 10 years you haven't stayed out of touch since you know EDP, some people are stuck in OOP. Putting up a MVP together and using those connections you would've gained in the bootcamp to find a partner sounds better than the loner route. That's what I'm assuming. I lurk here, but comments like these puts reality down in a summary I can comprehend. I wish there was a shortcut to all of this. You know finally landing on a legit niche and outsourcing it. Outsourcing can be an art for people like us who aren't pros. [Edit] One of you guys in here should launch an old school way of learning how to hack hub. For Generation Y.

alaskamiller 14y ago
A lot of bootcamps are popping up in the bay area. To me it's weird and speaks more about how broken our immigration laws are than that the bootcamps are fulfilling a market niche. There are huge leaps between the introductory levels (covered by CodeAcademy or Udemy reinventing the ...for Dummies series of the 90's) to the intermediate levels to the expert Google/Apple/Facebook levels (trained by the traditional college systems or just talented enough to self-learn). That intermediate level is a big opportunity and I can see the pitch of the bootcamps being able to launch candidates from intro levels to get as close to the intermediate level as possible. Yet, that's a big jump. Things like knowing about message queues, tasks queues, server provisioning, or creating REST APIs are still a lot of information to learn. If I were a funded business organization my options are to: - hire internationally and relocate them (thus far expensive) - setup offshore (expensive but cheaper) - hire a 12-weeker (cheap) In my experience of working at big corps and startups, there's just not enough introductory work to go around to make hiring a 12-weeker worthwhile. It's even worse on the startup scale since there's just not enough money to keep a newbie around long enough to make good use of them or provide technical training. Not to mention how often people jump from companies to companies these days and OTJ training just doesn't work anymore. I don't know how to fix that. I keep hearing that DevBootcamps are pretty successful at placing people into work though I would love to have a deep dive with the employers to know what's going on because to me they just don't seem efficient enough.
- joshdotsmith 14y ago
  I'm working directly with a DevBootcamp grad and would be happy to talk about the experience some.
  - jyu 14y ago
    In what capacity are you working with the devbootcamp grad? What kind of hiring / working experiences have you had with other developers? On a surface glance, it seems like you develop rails MVP's via coder.ly?
    - 14y ago

chewxy 14y ago

EDP and OOP are not mutually exclusive. Javascript is popular simply because it's really really really underpowered. see: atwood's law

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
Is popular because is the only language allowed in the browsers; any other assertion is purely speculation. Just be glad is not COBOL or C (imagine any amateur's code causing memory leaks in the browser...)
reissbaker 14y ago
Underpowered? I suppose it doesn't have a static type system. You can do OO just fine in Javascript, though.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  There are fixed-sized intArrays and buffers in JS nowdays.
  - reissbaker 14y ago
    Yeah, but that's a far cry from a full-on static type system. Don't get me wrong, though — JS is one of my favorite languages! (Most) Lisps don't have static type systems, either, and not many people call them underpowered. Same goes for Ruby, Python, etc.