Today a programmer was born. And you are my mother.
I got a B+ in C++ in 2003. I read Why's Poignant Comic Book in 2005. I've followed web startups for years, and even played a business role in 2 of them. But it wasn't until 4:58am today, after a long night with fellow coders who helped carry me over the hill, that I wrest to myself the glory it is to be a programmer.
Proof?
I wrote a crappy program to help my friend Greg figure which trains are coming next at one of his Metro stops. Behold the breathtaking majesty: http://blazing-galaxy-7821.herokuapp.com/ If you figure out how it works, the FBI will add you to their potential X-Men shortlist.
And I'm on Github. Yeah, that's right. The Github. I have committed something: https://github.com/israelvicars/Over-The-Hump
I don't know what you think it takes to become a programmer. I don't care either. Most of you have forgotten more code after last night's bender then I've learned ever. But there are OTHERS who like me stared at the beginner computer manuals from O'Reilly. Stared and read and then got stuck. And stayed stuck.
I've been getting stuck on my own for years. YEARS, with a capital "Y am I a failure?"
My stack of programming books didn't get me there. They are still on my bookshelf. My top-billing university engineering education couldn't cut it. It gave me context but then left me at the alter. No, my friends. It took you. And your counter-parts sitting in this office with me tonight.
The programming community lifted this stray sheep out of the vast sea of Almost.
Thank you for your insightful comments and occasional threats here on HN. Thank you for bragging about that grossly complex web app you built over the weekend while I napped and played frisbee. Thank you to my mostly younger but way smarter programming compadres at the Code til Dawn Meetup I started in January to meet programmers in my community. Thank you especially to my buddy "exid3" for walking me through the endless bumps in the road that stood between me launching this app tonight and another evening of plodding through a tutorial.
And to those who wallow still in the sea of Almost, surround yourself with members of the programmer community. Set the right goal and don't give up. It may take years for you too. But damn it feels good to be a coder.
32 comments
[ 680 ms ] story [ 624 ms ] threadGood Luck for your coding and other endeavors.
Plus your overthehump link is broken (at the top of the GitHub page).
Neat, congratulations, this looks really useful. There's probably a startup in here somewhere if you could get bus and train times for a cohesive group of country-wide city and metro areas.
You might want to consider carefully how you change the time input. What you have now is the minimum possible input to specify a 24 hour range. You might want to take input like 115, 10 20, and put effort into parsing any input, rather than fixing the input at something that involves, say entering a colon (shifted character and harder to input on a phone), which might look more professional, but is actually a giant step backwards!
Congrats buddy!
Obviously, if you're writing code commercially, you may want either complete control over some code (write it), or you may want it now (use a lib), so writing all your own code may be an impossible luxury.
Here's a small example snippet I just did. I've been doing software since 1988, but often just gluing (MFC) api's together, and not doing stuff that really benefits me as much as it might. Anyways, here's a gist that implements a 'good enough to use' version of an iOS 4.0-only api as a category on NSData, allowing string searching of arbitrary data:
https://gist.github.com/1238869
I hope you continue to have as much fun and continue to get orgasmic pleasure at every tiny milestone.
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At my startup, our application is built in python and django. I originally wrote the function in python, but my buddy knew ruby/rails better and he could help me deploy it easier that way so I rewrote it in ruby.
I think ruby is fun and the community is very inviting. I'd like to keep doing python and ruby together as I learn, ruby because it's interesting and rails is really something. And python because it will make me a better contributor to my team and I know it has more recognition in academia (for my later pursuits).
I agree with what you said about the community. I am constantly amazed at the amount of work and help people put out there for free.
I remember times when it took weeks before the index is refreshed.
Welcome to the ranks. I always value one more person in this field that is driven to build something of quality.