Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how to code!"
In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)
Thank you! Learning something new is so intimidating but I really think the best way to do is to just dive right in. Sure, you'll suck at first but that's ok. Eventually you'll get better.
I couldn't agree more with @enraged_camel since I thought the same thing too! Jennifer has done an incredible job documenting her ambition. I wouldn't be surprised if a few companies offer her a developing position.
Responsive, built using Ruby on Rails, bootstrap, jquery, etc.
Any questions he had he could ask me and I would nudge him along, but it was 90% his determination that got him to where he's at now. Having a mentor helps. I hope at least someone is inspired by jennifer or my brother, it can be done and an insane amount of time! You just need the cojones.
I'd even say that having a mentor will make or break some people as learning programmers. I don't recommend going solo from personal experience. Similar effect as going to the gym with someone. They sort of remind you that you should commit to these things.
Got fed up with that and finally bought a rubber ducky.
IMHO she deserves kudos not just for accomplishing her goal (which really is impressive enough on its own) but doing so in the face of a community with such deeply ingrained sexism that some people thought it "suspicious" at the outset.
Obviously she's a strong enough person that this kind of stuff didn't derail her project, but one can only imagine what a different world we'd be in if projects like these were met with more encouragement and less derision.
Not that the haters are getting any satisfaction today.
It seems to me encouragement is the dominant response, both here and in the original post.
My criticism would be that in her post she highlights only the negative comments she got. When, on the whole, the community votes her posts up and the top comments are always positive.
"Most importantly, I’ve been able to overcome the fear of being judged. Whether you are making a piece of artwork, teaching yourself something new or building a business you’re bound to encounter some negative energy. People will say some pretty weird or just plain mean things to you when you’re doing something kind of crazy. Those comments sting a bit, but they’re most dangerous when you let them feed your self doubt. Battling your own self doubt is incredibly formidable."
This is above and beyond, the greatest lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur. Kudos to you Jennifer for finding the same.
Hmm... I read this and wanted more information about what happened in the last 185 days. There's a link to the YumHacker site but not much context there. Here's a post explaining it a bit more: http://blog.yumhacker.com/post/74733516768/yumhacker-i-built...
I was expecting this might be a polarising comment, hence some up and down-voting. There's too much back-patting here on YC, IMO, when people are claiming to be what they are not, or when they write some article about how they 'hacked' something that actually isn't that impressive. Sometimes the bar seems to be set pretty low indeed.
I believe part of it is that the general age demographic here is pretty young, and a lot of people have not so much experience working across a range of projects with a large number of people.
A year does not an 'engineer' make, in any field. Why should it be different in the field of software? It's not.
"That's because you aren't a software engineer, and if you are saying so then the feelings of being an impostor are entirely warranted."
At face value this assessment feels very unfair. Where do you draw the line? Experience -- is a year not enough? Deliverables -- is YumHacker not enough? Education -- is it lack of formal training that separates the engineer from the coder?
Is it the ability to build non-trivial software systems that makes a software engineer? And we should rely on whose definition of "non-trivial" to assess her engineering ability in that case?
I'm not saying you're wrong in stating she isn't a software engineer, but I doubt you possess the knowledge of her ability required to make such an assessment with any degree of validity.
I would agree that what she was doing in her 180 days project probably was not software engineering, but what about what she is doing with YumHacker? If that isn't considered software engineering, then a lot of us here are not software engineers.
I started to learn how to code back in August and got my first job as a developer at the end of February. I went through a bootcamp and didn't see anyone besides my girlfriend for 10 weeks.
It's definitely tough not having a mentor, and I struggled a bit for a couple months after classes trying to figure out what I should spend my time learning. I still struggle with it when working on personal projects and often worry I'm not doing things the "best" way.
I sometimes get overwhelmed because there's so much I don't know, and deep down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS degree. That being said, I'm very happy where I am and wouldn't change anything.
> deep down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS degree.
I stopped working to write this comment--that's how important it is to me that you know this is a belief that will only hold you back.
I could cite any one of thousands of articles that talk about dropouts who made it, but I suspect you know about those articles and it hasn't affected your belief.
So I'll just say this: If I had graduated with a degree, I would have never been able to bootstrap a tech company when I was 20 and sell it for over a million dollars when I was 26.
Don't look at yourself through the eyes of others, because you'll always find yourself wanting. I'm sitting here about to launch my new company (we're doing final testing of our new website right now.) I have no idea whether our site (which is kind of wacky) will convert. I don't know if we'll get any sales. And I've got everything riding on this company--I've put all my chips in.
There's enough in this world that will kick your ass. People haven't believed in my companies for the past 13 years I've been running them. People have laughed in my face, investors have turned me down over and over again, customers have quit, money has been lost (and, on a brighter note, much money has been made!)
Sometimes the only thing you can count on is your internal belief that you WILL make it, no matter what. That's what got me through my last company during its darkest hours. That's what's getting me through now. Enough people will throw shit in your face. Don't be one of them. You are better than that.
The world is full of possibilities. Don't count yourself out. Jennifer sure didn't. ;)
Bill Gates doesn't have a CS degree.
John Carmack doesn't have a CS degree.
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have a CS degree.
I bet they all wish they knew more than they do... and work at removing that lack of knowledge for themselves.
I am a big fan of education, even of the CS variety, but a degree is one way to get an education, not the only way. And 'change the world' isn't in the textbooks.
I apologize if the below seems like a rant, but hopefully it'll help you feel less "overwhelmed" at the amount of stuff you can learn in CS / IT.
Many years ago (Makes me sound old...) I dropped out of a CS degree to pursue archaeology, and then dropped out of that when I ran out of money and needed a job...
That job (and all the subsequent jobs) taught me a lot about people and business, and trained me with the discipline to finish jobs by deadlines, work with the people around you, remain calm under pressure (most of the time...) etc. All of the time I was working I was training myself. I bought O'Reilly books on algorithms, read RFC's, specs, source code and anything else curiosity led me to.
Recently I left a position, and had to interview, choose and train my replacement. The person who got the job wasn't the most qualified. On paper, they only had half of the job requirements, but during the interview process I realized that this person learnt quickly. This person picked up new concepts, procedures and entirely new skill sets during the 3 weeks of one-on-one training, and they're still doing well in the position from all accounts.
What I'm getting at is that, although "safe" hiring practice is to pick people with CS degrees, there are many people out there who recognize learning ability, passion and personal motivation to be sometimes more important.
Don't lose hope, be confident, be honest, and don't stop learning.
Great engineers aren't great because of a CS degree; they're great because every time they saw the mountain of stuff they didn't know, they climbed it. When they got to the top and saw another mountain, they kept on climbing.
If you keep going, there will be a point where you'll be excited to know that you always have more to learn.
There's a big difference between being a developer and being somebody with a CS degree. In my experience with hiring developers, I always value people being self-taught. This means you made things work!
To me, that's the difference between a developer and a programmer. A programmer might write technically better code, but often gets stuck when something does not work as intended as is often the case in web browsers. A developer will find a way to make it work, and make it work well for the user.
So don't sell yourself short and keep on learning. You may in fact be more desirable than somebody with a CS degree.
My girlfriend expressed interest in learning to code last weekend. You were my example of someone she should research and mimic to start off her journey.
What you've accomplished is extremely impressive and serves as a shining example of how someone can go from knowing morning to developing a true skill. Job well done!
This is the first I've seen of this project, it looks inspirational. But how did you choose the projects? I've often wanted to do a small project just for the sake of making something nice and pretty, and improving my skills at the same time, but I can never come up with anything. All your ideas are great - but I can't imagine being able to come up with one a day for 6 months!
Also, how did the project work out time-wise? Were you working at the same time? Roughly how long did you spend on each site?
What do you plan to do next to advance your skills and understanding of software making? How important was being in the spotlight to motivate you to go down this path?
I've been working a website called YumHacker since I've finished the 180 project. It's a restaurant discovery app using Rails as an API on the back end and Backbone.js on the front end. I learned a lot with the 180 websites project and working on a full scale app has been really great for taking my skills to the next level.
Making myself publicly accountable was definitely a great motivator but my biggest take away was getting over the fear of being wrong/judged.
Reading some (probably hard technical) books is the hardest way there is to start this thing. Especially with C++ where it’s hard enough just to see your results. If you want something to be done, give them something where they can see their results ASAP. You can of course achieve this with C++, but then you should get them a working IDE, debugger and maybe some easy graphical library to play around with.
I pulled lots of bits and pieces from all over the place but some of the big helpers have been Stack Overflow, MDN, HTML5 Canvas Tutorials, Rails Tutorial, GitHub, jQuery docs, and the Rails docs. I read tons of blogs and demos as well.
The internet! I spent most of my time googling, searching Stack Overflow, reading online demos, tutorials blog post and poring over docs to find the answers to my questions. There are tons of free resources out there.
[+] [-] enraged_camel|12 years ago|reply
In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevrone|12 years ago|reply
To me this is not a story about programming or gender, it's a story about grit.
[+] [-] gknoy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpop2027|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coconut12|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|12 years ago|reply
Responsive, built using Ruby on Rails, bootstrap, jquery, etc.
Any questions he had he could ask me and I would nudge him along, but it was 90% his determination that got him to where he's at now. Having a mentor helps. I hope at least someone is inspired by jennifer or my brother, it can be done and an insane amount of time! You just need the cojones.
[+] [-] FLUX-YOU|12 years ago|reply
Got fed up with that and finally bought a rubber ducky.
[+] [-] m_mueller|12 years ago|reply
edit: Really? Could the downvoter explain to me what's wrong with this comment? Are we supposed to just leave banned accounts to rot now?
[+] [-] curbenthusiasm|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] readymade|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155
IMHO she deserves kudos not just for accomplishing her goal (which really is impressive enough on its own) but doing so in the face of a community with such deeply ingrained sexism that some people thought it "suspicious" at the outset.
Obviously she's a strong enough person that this kind of stuff didn't derail her project, but one can only imagine what a different world we'd be in if projects like these were met with more encouragement and less derision.
Not that the haters are getting any satisfaction today.
[+] [-] kbajorin|12 years ago|reply
My criticism would be that in her post she highlights only the negative comments she got. When, on the whole, the community votes her posts up and the top comments are always positive.
[+] [-] mbesto|12 years ago|reply
This is above and beyond, the greatest lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur. Kudos to you Jennifer for finding the same.
[+] [-] jere|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mb_72|12 years ago|reply
That's because you aren't a software engineer, and if you are saying so then the feelings of being an impostor are entirely warranted.
'Coding' is one thing, 'engineering' is something different altogether.
I'm afraid this falls into the 'you don't know what you don't know category'.
[+] [-] mb_72|12 years ago|reply
I believe part of it is that the general age demographic here is pretty young, and a lot of people have not so much experience working across a range of projects with a large number of people.
A year does not an 'engineer' make, in any field. Why should it be different in the field of software? It's not.
[+] [-] hootener|12 years ago|reply
At face value this assessment feels very unfair. Where do you draw the line? Experience -- is a year not enough? Deliverables -- is YumHacker not enough? Education -- is it lack of formal training that separates the engineer from the coder?
Is it the ability to build non-trivial software systems that makes a software engineer? And we should rely on whose definition of "non-trivial" to assess her engineering ability in that case?
I'm not saying you're wrong in stating she isn't a software engineer, but I doubt you possess the knowledge of her ability required to make such an assessment with any degree of validity.
[+] [-] hablahaha|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motoford|12 years ago|reply
and then there is also that bit about no such thing as a "software engineer" …
[+] [-] stickperson|12 years ago|reply
It's definitely tough not having a mentor, and I struggled a bit for a couple months after classes trying to figure out what I should spend my time learning. I still struggle with it when working on personal projects and often worry I'm not doing things the "best" way.
I sometimes get overwhelmed because there's so much I don't know, and deep down I know I'll never be as good/desirable as someone with a CS degree. That being said, I'm very happy where I am and wouldn't change anything.
[+] [-] ericabiz|12 years ago|reply
I stopped working to write this comment--that's how important it is to me that you know this is a belief that will only hold you back.
I could cite any one of thousands of articles that talk about dropouts who made it, but I suspect you know about those articles and it hasn't affected your belief.
So I'll just say this: If I had graduated with a degree, I would have never been able to bootstrap a tech company when I was 20 and sell it for over a million dollars when I was 26.
Don't look at yourself through the eyes of others, because you'll always find yourself wanting. I'm sitting here about to launch my new company (we're doing final testing of our new website right now.) I have no idea whether our site (which is kind of wacky) will convert. I don't know if we'll get any sales. And I've got everything riding on this company--I've put all my chips in.
There's enough in this world that will kick your ass. People haven't believed in my companies for the past 13 years I've been running them. People have laughed in my face, investors have turned me down over and over again, customers have quit, money has been lost (and, on a brighter note, much money has been made!)
Sometimes the only thing you can count on is your internal belief that you WILL make it, no matter what. That's what got me through my last company during its darkest hours. That's what's getting me through now. Enough people will throw shit in your face. Don't be one of them. You are better than that.
The world is full of possibilities. Don't count yourself out. Jennifer sure didn't. ;)
[+] [-] pjmorris|12 years ago|reply
I bet they all wish they knew more than they do... and work at removing that lack of knowledge for themselves.
I am a big fan of education, even of the CS variety, but a degree is one way to get an education, not the only way. And 'change the world' isn't in the textbooks.
[+] [-] Intermernet|12 years ago|reply
Many years ago (Makes me sound old...) I dropped out of a CS degree to pursue archaeology, and then dropped out of that when I ran out of money and needed a job...
That job (and all the subsequent jobs) taught me a lot about people and business, and trained me with the discipline to finish jobs by deadlines, work with the people around you, remain calm under pressure (most of the time...) etc. All of the time I was working I was training myself. I bought O'Reilly books on algorithms, read RFC's, specs, source code and anything else curiosity led me to.
Recently I left a position, and had to interview, choose and train my replacement. The person who got the job wasn't the most qualified. On paper, they only had half of the job requirements, but during the interview process I realized that this person learnt quickly. This person picked up new concepts, procedures and entirely new skill sets during the 3 weeks of one-on-one training, and they're still doing well in the position from all accounts.
What I'm getting at is that, although "safe" hiring practice is to pick people with CS degrees, there are many people out there who recognize learning ability, passion and personal motivation to be sometimes more important.
Don't lose hope, be confident, be honest, and don't stop learning.
[+] [-] teacup50|12 years ago|reply
If you keep going, there will be a point where you'll be excited to know that you always have more to learn.
[+] [-] theflyingkiwi42|12 years ago|reply
To me, that's the difference between a developer and a programmer. A programmer might write technically better code, but often gets stuck when something does not work as intended as is often the case in web browsers. A developer will find a way to make it work, and make it work well for the user.
So don't sell yourself short and keep on learning. You may in fact be more desirable than somebody with a CS degree.
[+] [-] andygcook|12 years ago|reply
What you've accomplished is extremely impressive and serves as a shining example of how someone can go from knowing morning to developing a true skill. Job well done!
[+] [-] aurumpotest|12 years ago|reply
Also, how did the project work out time-wise? Were you working at the same time? Roughly how long did you spend on each site?
Keep up the good work!
[+] [-] null_ptr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
Making myself publicly accountable was definitely a great motivator but my biggest take away was getting over the fear of being wrong/judged.
[+] [-] carrotleads|12 years ago|reply
They have got C++ & Unix books on their shelves but as far as I can tell, it hardly been read.
Hoping your story gets the ball rolling.
[+] [-] kirab|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowglow|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshdance|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wglb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NAFV_P|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] neovive|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hpriebe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenniferDewalt|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshbert|12 years ago|reply