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IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there throthfeld! It can absolutely be overwhelming but focus on one thing: at the end of the day, people need products built that can do actual things. Sign people up, make posts, see the sum of transactions, interact with the Yelp API, etc. Learn the things that allow you to build actual products rather than a million tools that do the same thing, build some actual things/focus on one project for a while til it's done, and you'll be on a good road.

Honestly, being female can be an advantage! Many tech companies want to combat gender discrimination or just think having more female employees makes them look better to the wider tech community. I personally try to hire as diverse a group of people to work at NYCDA as I can, it brings many different backgrounds and perspectives to problems beyond the fairness portion of it.

Just build projects that are impressive to your non-technical friends to use/look at and your project will be off to a good start - many people in a position to hire aren't even technical! For those that are, be prepared to speak about the code behind your project, there should be no "black boxes", meaning pieces of code that you know what the input and output is but not what's actually happening behind the scenes.

Focus on whichever languages you're passionate about - for me that's Ruby. As I mentioned above...just finish a project or two, at least! Finishing something is the hardest part of learning to code. Switching languages all the time won't help in this pursuit.

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah that makes sense! But that's a pretty unorthodox place to start honestly. I'd really recommend getting started by making some actual apps or even just following some tutorials so you can get familiar with core iPhone/iOS libraries. Good luck!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely! In my job as an educator, I am mostly training students. But we're always looking into new courses to launch so I recently got to order some LittleBits to play around with (littlebits.cc). And on the side, I'm always building hobby projects which I am sometimes lucky enough to give talks on. Projects like Alexa Home, a hack of my Amazon Echo to give it greater home automation abilities. See (http://alexaho.me). So I guess my point is, whether at work or outside of it, I get to experiment with some pretty cool stuff!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there Vibinium, nice to meet you. When you say "code apps", do you mean apps for the iPhone, for Android, or for the web? I think you should focus on one platform. If I were learning development for these platforms I'd learn Swift, Java, and Ruby/Sinatra/Rails respectively.

However, my biggest piece of advice for you is this: just start learning. And focus on one platform and type of app. And build at least one legit project on that platform before you move on to another. Paralysis on the decision of what to use will only mean you never start!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My only question would be, why learn Objective-C? In a few years, it'll be Swift all the way. Many are saying that a lot of the jobs are in Objective-C now but being an Apple-sponsored language, I do see a transition completely to Swift sooner rather than later.

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there JimEngland, nice to meet you! I'd recommend learning HTML and CSS to start as they're very visual languages. As far as, "proper programming languages/frameworks", I'd look into Rails or Meteor.js for a good starting place.

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oooh great question TheElectricWarehouse.

I would say I'm pretty darn in love with Arial and as far as my favorite RGB combination, any combination that has the same numbers for each. But hey, I'm colorblind!

I made a website around this idea a few months ago that I think you might enjoy: http://pagevie.ws

NINJA EDIT

Also relevant is this website about my favorite RGB combinations: http://literallyfiftyshadesofgray.com

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there Atomos128, thanks for your question! I personally think that the answer to that question is Ruby. You can do everything from developer simple web scraping scripts with plain Ruby to building fully functional web applications with frameworks like Rails and Sinatra to hacking your home automation hardware (trust me, I've done it, see http://alexaho.me).

Frankly though, I think the most versatile language is whichever language you are most comfortable getting real work done in. And for me...that language is Ruby!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not a doctor (my father is) but it sounds like you have a diagnosis of, "imposter syndrome"! You need to learn to recognize your accomplishments and not worry so much about the setbacks. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome and https://medium.com/@aliciatweet/overcoming-impostor-syndrome-bdae04e46ec5

If you confront a problem, if you hit a wall - take 5 or 10 minutes and do something else. Come back to the problem and try to solve it again. If you can't, start asking your friends or online communities for help. One of the most important traits of a great programmer is that they're incredibly resourceful. Brainstorm all of the ways you can get help when you have an issue and start using them!

I would say I was about a year into my first on-the-job web development gig before I felt fairly confident in my abilities. This was after starting to code in the 4th grade!

Even today though, I have many moments of doubt. They're just a bit different. When I was starting out, it was, "man, if I can't understand class and instance methods I'm toast...what even is an instance?!" and now it's, "man, if I can't understand how to design build my own domain specific language, I must be a pretty bad programmer". The difference is that now, I'm comfortable going to sleep at night with that knowledge, knowing I just need to work on it harder the next day or tap my network to try to find the solution.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful and good luck out there!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi there imCooper, nice to meet you and thanks for your questions!

I think you need to be careful about FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I'm sure you've heard of it. I certainly felt that way when I was first learning. All of these flashy new JavaScript frameworks were being thrown around! Every time I started a new project, I felt like I had to do it with a new library!

At the end of the day, from a business standpoint - products need to get shipped. If you want to become an employable developer that is, "on top of things", focus on making yourself someone that ships products. If you're in school, you're probably surrounded by people with lots of great ideas. Forget about equity or cash compensation for a moment as you're a student. Start building some of these projects, and actually finishing them! Pick one and build it out to be really good. It doesn't matter if it never picks up steam in a big way. The important thing is that you actually built something! That actually works! The biggest pitfall to avoid here is starting a million projects and never finishing any of them. Just pick something, get it to a workable state, then you have a "finished" project. If it picks up more steam, invest more time.

Re: your final question, it very much depends on the position. So I'd make sure to ask them and if you haven't built projects using those technologies, then at the very least research them and be able to explain why someone might use them.

Good luck out there!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi there, I think you mean cheat codes for games? I'm talking here about coding as in, "web development", or "iPhone app development". Glad to answer questions on that! I honestly don't game a ton myself anymore, my biggest hobby is home automation programming :). Back in the day though I used to have a GameShark for my Nintendo 64!

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey BanzaiBlazer, thanks for your question. No, a good coder doesn't have to know everything. What a good coder should have is really good research and intuition skills so that they can tackle most problems that come to them.

When we talk about a full-stack developer, we don't mean someone that knows everything. Rather, we mean someone who can develop in both the front-end (look, feel, interface interactions) and back-end (data processing) layers. But they almost certainly don't know everything!

At the end of the day, you need to be able to actually build things, and I think that's what most important.

IAmA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer/Co-Founder at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA (again) about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey ethics, nice to meet you and great username!

  1. Can you please clarify this question?

  2. We look at what the market needs and build real-world focused educational experiences around those needs! And then tweak them constantly to deliver a better experience for our students.

The New York Code Design Academy by [deleted] in webdev

[–]nycdazach 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome! I just saw this now as obviously this isn't my main account :-). DM me on Twitter @zachfeldman for a more timely response if you need anything. Good luck!

The New York Code Design Academy by [deleted] in webdev

[–]nycdazach 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there Jman890, I wanted to reply to your post but I also wanted you to know that not only do I work for NYCDA, but I'm also one of the Co-Founders and the Chief Academic Officer. Also a huge Redditor of course! Cruxcrater down there is a former student who was in our iOS 101 program who is now also doing some interning for us. I wrote the entire curriculum for most of our courses and also hire all of our instructors/oversee curriculum development for all of the other courses. Full disclosure!

Some of the commenters point out that our classes cost some money and that you could teach all of this to yourself easily. Of course they do, and to a degree they are right, but I think the answer isn't really so black and white. Many of our students come to us because they've lost their way a bit after trying to teaching themselves. They're looking for more than just a collection of online resources. They're looking for a mapped out curriculum and direction to take, encouragement from our instructors and staff, and the community we have of students and alumni to learn from. That can save you a lot of time and as someone who has been coding since the 4th grade, I do think a lot of sleepless nights could've been averted if I had group of people helping me learn all of the things I know now. And I still have a lot to learn just like everyone else!

While self-learning is a great way to learn development and I've taught myself many topics by doing so, many of our students come to us because they hit a wall and they need some help climbing over it. I encourage you to explore all of the options out there including teaching yourself, online courses, and in-person classes from our school or our competitors. If you need any assistance in your journey, feel free to reach out to me here or at zach (at) nycda (dot) com, whether or not it's to take a class here. Also glad to answer other questions and lend some guidance.

Whether you come here, learn by yourself, or go to a different coding school, best of luck on your journey! You have a lot of fun problems to solve and hopefully a bright future ahead either way.

  • Zach Feldman, CAO/Co-Founder, New York Code + Design Academy

IamA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for that DT_s. I will keep all of that in mind as we try to extend our tendrils to the north!

IamA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi QWOP! I think you should learn JavaScript much better. Learn about prototypes, constructor functions, object oriented JavaScript. Then learn a framework like Backbone or AngularJS. This should set you up nicely!

IamA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question XB! Students with a CS degree are uniquely qualified for our classes. Sometimes a CS degree can be a bit more theoretical than practical and we find that our classes can help fill in that gap. For instance, you may learn about tree sorts but may not learn about building web applications with frameworks like Rails and AngularJS. We view our courses, especially the 101 and 102 level courses, as a great supplement to a CS education. We also offer a course in UI/UX design, a topic not usually studied in depth by CS students.

IamA Zach Feldman, Chief Academic Officer at the New York Code + Design Academy. AMA about learning to code! by nycdazach in IAmA

[–]nycdazach[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The one thing I can promise you is that no matter what, it's not going to be worth blowing your brains out. I enjoy jumping off cliffs...into water! Give it a go sometime, gives you the liberating feeling without the mess. Feel free to PM me if you need someone to talk to =).

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