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People learning to code would be best advised to find a volunteer group who need code writing (even if they don't know they need code writing), or an open-sourc
by ptaffs 12y ago
People learning to code would be best advised to find a volunteer group who need code writing (even if they don't know they need code writing), or an open-source project. I agree learning to write code is only half the challenge, dealing with constraints like capacity, users, deadlines, hosting, stubborn colleagues, unsolvable problems it's easy to work-round or ignore with theoretical exercises. You only get those in a real-world job or real-world volunteer effort. The student may also find a mentor there.
- sanderjd 12y agoYou allude to the solution in your last sentence, but I think "find an open source project" is pretty bad advice for someone who is really brand new. Most open source projects have very ad-hoc project management. There is typically a big bucket of stuff that needs to be done, but very little direction on how to decide which things you can and should actually do. More experienced developers can go in and muddle around semi-blindly until they figure out a reasonable starting point, but that's really hard for less experienced people to do. It really takes a mentor willing to do that triage - "maybe this would be a good place for you to start" - but few open source projects seem to be forward-looking enough to provide that level of mentorship.
- ebiester 12y agoI'd go so far is to buy the time (through money or barter) of an existing senior web developer in your target language for 4-8 hours. There is nothing like pairing with someone who has already done this to get over so many of the introductory hurdles.