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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?

by freyr 13y ago

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 javascript code is covered extensively in brief online tutorials. Maybe, given 10 hours, you couldn't ingest a tutorial and put your own spin on the concept, but thinking that nobody else could do that is a bit arrogant.

lostlogin 13y ago
The solid-block-of-learning strategy is way less impressive to me than the person who works a 40ish hour a week job then comes home and does many more hours of their own project for moths or years. The want to zone out is strong and after a day of crappy and mind numbing work, beating the laziness is harder I think.
- freyr 13y ago
  > The solid-block-of-learning strategy is way less impressive to me than the person who works a 40ish hour a week job then comes home and does many more hours of their own project for moths or years. You might also say the guy who uses a lawnmower is way less impressive than the guy who cuts his grass with a nail clipper. But I don't want to be the guy with the nail clipper. Believe me, I know the feeling of wanting to zone out after a long day of work, a long commute, etc. I let it sideline my ambition for a decade. She found a way around it. I certainly wouldn't discredit her for that.
  - mindrag 13y ago
    If I could ask, how did you find your own way around that feeling?
    - noAlchemy 13y ago
      I know I'm not the GP, but might be able to be some use here. Context: always wanted to do a maths PhD, but ended up stuck running a small business (50-70 hrs/wk) for a number of years. Managed to keep studying through this and have just landed a PhD. Suggestions: 1. You'll be working while you're tired. So your work won't be as good, you won't make optimal decisions 100% of the time, sometimes you will just underperform relative to you at your best. Accept this - your work is still better than all the work you weren't doing before. Slow progress is always better than no progress. Key here is creating space that's just for work. I have a table which is just for studying, and a logon that's only for studying, which actually really helps. 2. Pick a course of study and stick to it. There's a tradeoff here - for a given area of study, you want to choose the best course for you but don't want to waste time trying several different things (likewise languages, frameworks, etc). Pick 2-3 and whittle down quickly (I choose 2-3 MOOCs or textbooks, then whittle down using the first chapter over a week or two). There may be a slightly better course out there you don't know about, but it really won't make a difference. 3. If your intention is to become a professional, pick a specialisation quickly (even almost randomly if you have to). No-one would give me the time of day when I was just generically interested in 'maths' but as soon as I picked a sub-area and started to learn about it, people took me seriously. (Obvious caveats apply about over-specialisation) 4. Start talking to other people. You really need to have done 2 & 3, otherwise you won't have any progress to show, and nothing to talk about, but once you've done enough to talk sensibly to others (which might be less than you think) then you'll be more engaged and less likely to drop out/quit. 5. Accept your limitations. Sometimes work/life will take over - sometimes you can make sacrifices and continue to get work done, sometimes doing this would be too painful and you'll need to take a break to get things in order. The thing here is just to show up. If I had to choose one sentence from all of this to give as advice, it'd be the last one. Just show up.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    I had no intention to discredit! Reading what I wrote it sounds like I did, but that's the last thing I meant. I was just thinking about the things I have learnt and the rare times I have had a chunk to time to learn something (all when I was younger and family-less) which are less impressive to me than the ones I have managed while sleep deprived and working etc.
petea 13y ago
So let's see her repository (https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt 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 to mention that she knew Rails from like day 1. Additionally, she knew better to hide sensitive information about secret tokens for maybe AWS in the config folder and other Rails environment info. Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? If you really want to see what actual beginner struggle with for 10 hours a day, go take a look at StackOverflow. Beginners are struggling for hours to create hoverover effects and persistent footer.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  that being said her little pages are great to inspire a budding web programmer.
  - petea 13y ago
    You betcha. She's gonna get book deals and invitations to talk at conferences in no time with this internet theatrical.
- eieio 13y ago
  As far as I can tell this is an account that was created entirely to post negative responses in this thread. How sad. (it was created 1 hour ago and the only comments from the account are negative posts about the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=petea https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=petea) To me it just confirms what the GP said: plenty of bruised egos in this thread.
  - petea 13y ago
    I created a new account to avoid precisely people like you psychologizing libelously about who I am. I feel reassured that it was a good idea to create a new account.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> 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? I did. In secondary/high school. God, I miss those times. I've also seen friends pulling stunts like these off, gaininig significant increase of skills over short periods of time [0]. I wish I had even 10% amount of that willpower now, but unless it's something I'm really excited about, it's not happening (probably related to some personal issues). I also think what she's doing is a more structured (and arguably better) version of what most self-taught programmers I know (myself included) did around high school - have a project idea that you grow, and keep applying what you learn to it every day. It's fun, it helps to get intimate with what you're learning, and it also facilitates fast progress. That's why I think exercises in programming books are a good idea. [0] - I had a friend who went from "I wonder what this instruction does" to a quite competent C++ programmer and at the same time from total newbie to kicking my seasoned arse in StarCraft over a single summer. Oh, and he works in Google now. Focus + time works wonders.

ceol 13y ago

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.

jimzvz 13y ago
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 brilliance and dedication [1][2][3] and when their claims don't really match reality [4], nobody cares. The marketing has already succeeded. It is exactly the kind of marketing that is taylor made for social media and if we don't want to be inundated with it in the future, we need to question it every time it appears so that only the truly deserving reap its benefits. Extraordinary claims (should) require extraordinary evidence. [1] - http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/meet-the-internets-newest-boy-genius/ http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/meet-the-internets-newest-boy-g... [2] - http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/22/18-year-old-invents-under-30-second-phone-charger/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/22/18-year-old-invents-unde... [3] - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2335195/Meet-Madison-15-year-old-Houston-entrepreneur-set-teenage-millionaire-signing-deal-Macys-fish-flops.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2335195/Meet-Madis... [4] - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-17-year-old-yahoo-paid-30-million-did-not-build-his-startups-app-or-invent-its-technology-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-17-year-old-yahoo-paid-30...
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Is she selling something that I'm not aware of?
  - jimzvz 13y ago
    Herself, as most of us are. This kind of thing will make it a lot easier to get media attention for her projects like Grapefeed [1][2]. [1] - http://grapefeed.com http://grapefeed.com [2] - https://angel.co/grapefeed https://angel.co/grapefeed
- ceol 13y ago
  > 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.
  - hackinthebochs 13y ago
    I completely agree. I've always wondered what the obsession about "outing" liars on the internet is about. If the person can craft an interesting enough story to keep people engaged for a short period of time, who cares if its "true"? This is the internet, the value is derived from what is communicated, not what actually happened on the other side of the terminal. Now when someone is asking for donations or whatnot, skepticism is warranted. But this? Just take it for what it is; enjoy it or move along.
    - jimzvz 13y ago
      Maybe you two enjoy consuming bullshit but don't be surprised that other people don't.
      - hackinthebochs 13y ago
        The benefit I get out of these stories is gaining a new perspective, motivation, insight etc. 99% of the time its inconsequential whether the story is bullshit or not. Spending mental energy trying to determine veracity is utterly useless for everyone involved. You win no points for determining its fake and yet you miss an opportunity for self-reflection and growth.

Dn_Ab 13y ago

Not gullible, just giving her the benefit of the doubt. It could turn out that she had some guidance, or has worked with people (though not as a programmer) and is smart + good enough memory to osmos some good practices, or took some class a long time ago that stuck better than she thought. Perhaps she had a power up period of non committed grazing and chose day 1 as the for real now point. Or some combination of above. To be honest I don't care. She's done something few can: keeping to a goal when she could easily have slacked on sites like hacker news, completing something not at all trivial, doing it well and sharing it. How long she's been programming wouldn't move my opinion in any direction. And even if there is more to the story, I still accept her day 1 as valid. My least generous interpretation is she came with at most a scattered modicum of knowledge, gleaned from informal trifling and lacked confidence enough so, that saying she is new is a rounding error compared to how good she will get.

goblin89 13y ago
> 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 myself. I'm still pondering that.
- freyr 13y ago
  > 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.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    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.
    - will_work4tears 13y ago
      I've had a twitter account since May of 2008 and have less than twenty tweets. It just sits there, aging.
      - ZoF 13y ago
        Cry every time