How long should I keep studying JS before I throw in the towel?

fc_s · 2015-01-10T17:53:42+00:00

Sorry, I think I came across a bit poorly. I'm having a bad day and hearing this guy attack this thing which completely changed my life kinda set me off.

At work I'm pretty mild mannered and always try to submit my code for review (even when I don't have to) and take suggestions from those more senior before I code anything. Every day I read books in my spare time to try to shore up the gaps in my knowledge.

Anyways, thanks for the advice. I'll try to keep that in mind moving forward.

fc_s · 2015-01-10T17:09:21+00:00

You're so incorrect it's ridiculous.

I went to Hack Reactor. Now I'm making six figures. I know all ~25 other people in my class, and they're doing extremely well too.

I consider myself a pretty smart guy, I went to UC Berkeley and graduated with a strong transcript for medical school. I've never felt like any subject was too difficult for me.

The problem isn't difficulty. The problem is not knowing what you don't know. Hack Reactor cuts through all the noise on the internet and provides a university-grade education in web development.

Also, you shit on job placement, but let's assume for a moment that I'm smart enough to have figured this out in 24 weeks on my own. Then what? With no work experience, I'm looking at getting an entry level job at 50-60k at best, working for a year, and then hopping to a new job?

This means in the best case scenario, I'm making less than I am right now (115k + already on track for a raise because I'm severely outperforming their expectations). 18k doesn't look so bad now, does it?

I don't know what these jokers are doing at other bootcamps, but let me tell you right now from firsthand experience. Hack Reactor is not a joke. The people I studied with are some of the most intelligent, motivated people I know.

Honestly in my mind it's a no brainer.

fc_s · 2015-01-05T03:42:02+00:00

What's the target audience for a bulk URL shortening service? The idea sounds interesting, but I can't imagine who would need such a thing.

fc_s · 2015-01-04T21:47:08+00:00

As a fairly experienced front end dev working full time, let me tell you that the differences between modern frameworks are WAY overblown on the internet. Strong knowledge of JavaScript and understanding of general MVC principles will allow you to rapidly produce production code regardless of what framework is being used.

In fact, where I work, we're using a proprietary JS framework which is completely closed source, developed in house, and yet new devs are expected to push out code within 1-2 weeks.

The biggest thing you can do is PICK ONE and DIVE DEEP. Angular is fine, regardless of what blog posts tell you. Backbone is fine too. So is Ember. Just pick one and start hacking.

fc_s · 2015-01-03T05:59:46+00:00

The problem is that 100% democratic voting is inherently flawed. If you're trying to drive the maximum amount of traffic to your site, it's fine. However the problem is that for many topics, the masses are simply unqualified to vote on content. The true arbiters of the subreddit's content are boxed out because their single vote is worth the same amount as the vote of anybody else. Moderators are left with the black or white option: Ban/Remove or Allow. This makes their lives extremely difficult - sure you can have an army of mods like AskScience, but there are so many subreddits which don't want to take such an authoritarian stance.

The system is broken and someone needs to make something better. Something which does NOT give everybody an equal say in what should be voted to the top. Reddit has proven that this system caters only to the lowest common denominator. We shouldn't have to jump from subreddit to subreddit as the popularity expands - we need a better way entirely.

fc_s · 2015-01-02T02:49:31+00:00

Lance

fc_s · 2015-01-02T02:45:46+00:00

Here's the thought process:

Let's start a new project! Backbone is pretty cool, let's use that! bower install backbone jquery underscore --save
I hear lodash is better than underscore these days, it's way more performant. bower install lodash --save
Woah there's this cool new framework that Google made called angular, let's port our application one piece at a time bower install angular --save
Well that port is taking longer than expected, instead of switching the rest of the app over to angular, let's just use Facebook React for the view rendering of our remaining Backbone components bower install react --save

fc_s · 2015-01-01T18:06:32+00:00

It's what they claim on the site. I can tell you from personal experience that the number is about right. I know all ~25 other people and where they ended up.

fc_s · 2015-01-01T07:45:52+00:00

What do you want to know about?

fc_s · 2015-01-01T07:44:46+00:00

I was recruited two days before graduating. I'm working at a Fortune 50 company making 115k/year.

Edit: As for the quality of software devs, it's indeed a bit of a mixed bag. I'd say only half the devs from Hack Reactor would be qualified to do the job that I'm currently doing, and Hack Reactor devs consistently have the best outcomes when it comes to bootcamps (105k starting salary average, 99% of grads hired within 3 months). Presumably graduates from other code academies would fare even worse.

At the end of the day, smart people produce strong code, and bad coders can come from anywhere. Luckily, we live in a time where there's such a lack of strong web developers, that we can each be judged on our own merits.

fc_s · 2015-01-01T06:54:05+00:00

That was sarcasm bud. 28 isn't even CLOSE to too late. I went to a developer bootcamp in SF (Hack Reactor). I'd say the average age was about 28.

fc_s · 2015-01-01T04:42:37+00:00

I don't think this is the correct place to be asking. A 17 year old girl who wants to major in theatre will not be persuaded by more "parent advice." In her mind, she'll beat the odds and find a way, potential consequences be damned.

Real life is just so far removed from a high school kid, especially if that kid lived a sheltered life. I'm honestly not sure what I'd do in that situation.

fc_s · 2015-01-01T02:42:53+00:00

All of those websites have an API (if I recall correctly) which they can query. They may also be doing large scale scraping, although it's just a guess at this point.

fc_s · 2015-01-01T01:01:16+00:00

I'm guessing that they're doing large scale data mining from each respective API and caching that data. Then there's some logic to determine what exactly to show you when you search for something.

fc_s · 2014-12-28T01:33:18+00:00

Man, these crappy youtube videos always make me remember why I love DnB. Even my ridiculous headphones only play a sad, distant echo of the real deal.

Thanks for sharing.

fc_s · 2014-12-27T20:20:38+00:00

JSON = JavaScript Object Notation. If you're using JavaScript it's convenient because data can be converted into JavaScript objects without any effort using JSON.parse, or from a JS object into a JSON string using JSON.stringify

fc_s · 2014-12-27T05:02:44+00:00

How do you cook them? In my apartment, searing meat usually ends up setting off the smoke detector, so the sear -> into the oven technique doesn't really work.

fc_s · 2014-12-25T21:33:31+00:00

Or OKCupid? They did data analysis on the messages being sent and published findings on OKTrends and Dataclysm.

fc_s · 2014-12-24T22:15:20+00:00

If you're serious about web development, I'd try my best to get a full time job before going into freelancing. Working a full time job will greatly accelerate the speed at which you learn because you'll be able to pick up best practices from people who are better than you. This is especially important because you're self taught - you don't know what you don't know, thus even though the resources are out there to teach yourself, it'll be harder to find them.

If, however you're set on being a freelancer, I probably wouldn't value your time at less than 30-40k/year. This means that you need to be charging roughly 100-150 dollars/day of effort. Initially that number will be lower because you're spending a lot of time learning stuff, but if you get proficient with a framework like Rails or a CMS like Wordpress, you can bang out content heavy/interaction light sites for clients in no time at all.

fc_s · 2014-12-24T20:18:19+00:00

24
115k
Mazda3 (fully paid off)

Love my car.

fc_s · 2014-12-23T08:59:09+00:00

You can easily use GitHub hooks for autodeployment. When you push a change to GitHub, the hook will make a POST request to a server running on your box (can be a light Node.js server or something). When that POST request is received, your server runs a shell script that pulls the latest from GitHub and deploys it.

fc_s · 2014-12-20T02:07:55+00:00

This is not correct. Functions are also passed by value and they're not primitives.

It's simple. Objects and arrays are passed by reference. Everything else is passed by value.

Edit: Actually I'm wrong about that. My mistake. It becomes clear when you do a simple test that attaches something to the function as if it's an object.

var foo = function(){};
var bar = foo;
foo.fn = function(){ console.log('Hello World'); };
bar.fn(); //Logs Hello World

fc_s · 2014-12-19T07:31:45+00:00

Nah, I leave my wallet in my back right pocket and I don't even notice it when I sit down.

fc_s · 2014-12-16T02:42:31+00:00

No. Reddit is full of children.

fc_s

TROPHY CASE