Batman movies would be great for this list - he's one of the few superheroes that doesn't claim to have any actual super powers, but rather derives his power from kickass, well-engineered gear.
He derives his power from engineered gear, but he himself isn't an Engineer.
Also, the batmobile is rather poorly designed. With its underbody being so flat against the ground, it is incredibly vulnerable to IEDs, to say nothing of a stray bit of rubble.
Yeah, I don't know much about the comic, but at least in the latest Christopher Nolan movies the engineering is all behind the scenes by Morgan Freeman's secret division. No slight to the series, just saying.
CodeMontage's fee covers the cost of helping you find projects that are right for your level (perhaps you can navigate this on your own, but many people new to development and new to open source struggle with this), facilitating feedback and making sure you get code reviews, and helping you measure your improvement as a coder, not just asking you to volunteer without measuring your impact.
This is the first formal session of CodeMontage, and in the future we plan to make the whole platform and participation much more flexible than formal sessions. Hope that helps!
Hrm, are you a non-profit or have you considered that?
It seems odd to pay an unknown entity (you) and then perform a service (write code) all for a very high level idea alone (the good).
I feel for this to work there must be some sort of 'meet in the middle', like a non-profit, where you can actually track what the $500 expense is going to be used for.
Cool post! I've seen a lot of beginners learn to code (I started a non-profit to help bring more women into software development) and while we're addressing the issue of code literacy, there's still a huge skills gap between those who "can code"/ have done some tutorials and those who are ready to flexibly architect software.
I'm hoping to make the process of going from newbie to experienced easier and more meaningful with CodeMontage (http://bit.ly/CodeMontageLaunch) - you get to work on real, open-source and social-mission projects, you get feedback and code reviews from experienced developers, and you build a portfolio of open source, quality code that you can reference later or use to get a job.
It's also really nice for the experienced developers / experts in a language to be able to give code reviews on important projects - it's nice if you have a friend willing to pair on your side project, but definitely can wear on a relationship over time (and when all your friends are learning to code...).
Really great point re: ignoring self-proclaimed awesome anything. I automatically filter out meaningless words, but I also read through job posts quickly so sometimes I'm inexact and accidentally filter out the entire post. I guess it's up to the company if they want to read this post and improve, or risk getting ignored by busy readers?
Being any kind of founder is all about shipping - closing the gap between idea and execution. Melissa learned to code on the side, while running a business, and most importantly, she actually shipped that code.
This isn't about perfect code or Melissa becoming a software developer, it's about a kickass founder doing whatever it takes to see her vision become reality. So much respect for this lady! She is exactly the kind of non-tech founder worth working for.
1 - Everyone has something to offer! Maybe you can offer feedback on an entrepreneur's concept, in trade for hearing more about whatever you want to learn about their business?
2 - Ohours has the ability to cancel and send messages to people who request appointments, so I always say go for it! Let the host determine if there might be a better way to spend time. A no is better than missing the opportunity when they might have been thrilled to talk with you.
I think iOS shows something slightly different about the employer's motivation, since they're deliberately including iPad by saying iOS vs narrowly referring to iPhone.
Do you think charting them separately and also together would be better? Or just consolidate them and lose the subtle difference?
I think they should just be clumped together. There's no distinction between Android phones and tablets, so there shouldn't be for ios. Also, the development skills for the the two are largely the same.
Is it possible the company may not have more than 6 months of runway? 1000 hours couldn't possibly be a well-scoped amount of work. You're not being given the security or compensation a full-time hire deserves OR the finite scope a contractor deserves. Even if you believe in the company and think the 5% is/will be worth something, consider what specifically you're being asked to do and be very clear with expectations. I'd also break up the agreement into smaller projects, with both cash and equity if you want equity, so that you have the opportunity to part ways on good terms instead of an all-or-nothing equity lump.
I think the author probably meant this on a broad, business and marketing strategy level, but the concept holds for programming and database design as well. Until you have worked with highly scaled or long-lived programs, you probably shouldn't make calls on what kind of "hacks" are okay and what aren't. It's the knowledge of the rules and the experience of learning why they're the rules that really enables you to break them with little cost and sometimes huge advantage to your organization. I think this is true of NoSQL solutions in some shops - until you understand the purpose of normalization and the ways it affects data integrity, maintainability, performance, etc you really shouldn't be allowed to "break the rules" by denormalizing, using only unstructured document storage, etc. They certainly have a place and can be great tools, but all of their weaknesses and problems manifest when implemented blindly/without regard for "the rules" and where they came from.
