HN Explorer

Will pair for food

35 points by ianaroot ↗ HN
Hi HN.

I've spent the last 6 months picking up Ruby, Rails and JS. Been doing over 80 hours a week and I think I'm at a place where I can be useful to a professional software development team.

Anybody out there in the bay area working with a good team that's interested in taking me on as an apprentice? I'm eager to learn, and happy to survive on ramen (as long as you buy me a burrito every now and then)

http://github.com/ianaroot

18 comments

[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] thread
vra
okay join us.
macarthy12
What ?
vra
sorry,I just want join your talk,but my english is not good.
_sabe_
"six months of Rails and JS" sounds like the average HN reader. There's probably someone building a Saas with a REST-api for converting text betwen upper and lower case. Join them, post the link here and get your 10 remaining minutes of fame.
vra
Is't too rude for you to say that?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
invalidOrTaken
Perhaps you missed the part where he was talking about apprenticing?
noname123
Yes, OP is rude but he is also trying to teach the youngster a lesson, that Rails and JS is nothing. Don't believe the hype or the cult of PG.
ksikka
Don't underestimate the power of simple JS and Rails
frozenport
It will find you work and happiness, but you will never impress a grizzly C++ programer like me.
lvturner
My bank balance and mental well being doesn't care.
jsherwani
If you and a prospective partner are interested in doing this remotely, try using Screenhero. Many users have found it's the best way to code together remotely.

Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of Screenhero :)

philip1209
Check out AirPair - they just graduated from the latest YC class.
pairing
Ian if you're honest about the 6 months works and 80 hours a week you are really underselling yourself. Your situation reminds me a lot about when I first started out. I worked on personal startups for 6 months with insane hours, and after 3 months I started applying nonstop for opportunities to grow as a developer.

I can say that 1 month of mentorship at my job was equivalent to those 6 months, so I'd recommend you start applying for Junior Developer positions to further grow as a developer. I took a brief look at your github page and I think the next area you should work on is rspec and testing as I see a lot of empty spec/ directories.

I see a lot of people saying to pair remotely and I'm going to go against the grain and say that I think that would be a poor decision for a newbie looking for mentorship. At my current job, we don't really do pairing so I can't help you out but there are plenty paid pair programming opportunities in the Bay to choose from (Pivotal Labs and their clients are a good place to start).

jedanbik
Want to be taken seriously as a developer? Get a job doing it. First of the month is just around the corner, and you have plenty of time to spruce up the README files on your github page to prepare. :)
gexla
Dude, just go build stuff. It's cheap! If you were able to spare the 6 months of 80 hour weeks to learn Ruby, Rails and JS then you have the spare to start building things on free or very cheap hosting.

And you probably overshot a bit. I'm sure most of the interesting bootstrapped tech businesses out there were probably started by people who could barely code. Don't focus too much on the tools, focus on the end results.

As for pairing, what is it that you are really looking for? Are you looking for a job? Just looking to be a great programmer first and then figure something out later?

Don't pair for free. Get paid. If it's a job, then you should be fully on the team as an equal to everyone else. Otherwise you are probably just dead weight.

Better yet, build something! FFS, what I wouldn't give for 6 months just to block out to build something. I haven't been able to do something like that since high school. That's why I roll my eyeballs when somebody posts on there that they are 14 and they built X app. If I had the spare time that I did when I was that age and access to the stuff people have today, I would be flying on a rocket to Mars by now. ;)

Edit: Okay, building rocket ships isn't cheap.