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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

by zange 13y ago

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 deployed a couple toy web apps in the last month. I don't know too many people in town, so I'm wondering is Santa Cruz still a viable place to get into the professional world? Might you have any specific advice for getting started here? Thanks!

einarvollset 13y ago
Not OP, but in SC - email: einar@lcrnd.com
- maaaats 13y ago
  But, but, your name sound so Norwegian..??
cgcardona 13y ago
[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/ http://www.cabrillo.edu/ [2] http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/digitalmedia/index.shtml http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/digitalmedia/index.shtml [3] http://teacherjohn.com/ http://teacherjohn.com/ [4] http://brooktown.com/ http://brooktown.com/ [5] http://nextspace.us/nextspace-santa-cruz/ http://nextspace.us/nextspace-santa-cruz/

by zange 13y ago

einarvollset 13y ago

Not OP, but in SC - email: einar@lcrnd.com

maaaats 13y ago
But, but, your name sound so Norwegian..??

cgcardona 13y ago

[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/ http://www.cabrillo.edu/ [2] http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/digitalmedia/index.shtml http://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/digitalmedia/index.shtml [3] http://teacherjohn.com/ http://teacherjohn.com/ [4] http://brooktown.com/ http://brooktown.com/ [5] http://nextspace.us/nextspace-santa-cruz/ http://nextspace.us/nextspace-santa-cruz/