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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I started to learn to code last November at 37yo.

About 30 hours a week for two months I finished the Front End Certificate from freeCodeCamp (highly recommend the site for starters). Then I decided it was better to build my own projects with the tech I wanted to learn (mostly React) using official documentation and tutorials. This is what I accomplished in around 3 months: www.rodrigo-pontes.glitch.me

Then I started to apply to jobs. After around 4 rejections, last week I started as Front End Junior Developer (using Ember actually) at a funded fintech startup with a great learning environment for the tech team.

Very proud of my accomplishment so far, but I know the rough part is only starting.

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I've been clicking on your 'hacker news best comments' button for like twenty minutes now... you weren't kidding when you said 'basically a time waster' :P

Seriously, really good looking stuff for your early projects! I'm not surprised someone picked you up :)

http://www.opusnota.com/hnbc

Really addicting! Thanks for a great time-killer!

I'm curious how hnbc even works. AFAICT there's no way to see how many upvotes someone else's comment has gotten. Is the upvote number shown through the hn API?

Algolia's API show comments upvotes up to 2014 I think. So basically hnbc only shows old comments.

This is Quincy with freeCodeCamp. Congratulations on your new job, and your diverse portfolio.

Getting a job as a new developer after only 4 rejections is a great batting average. Sean Smith rejected 192 times before getting a job at Trustar. https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-learned-to-code-and-ea...

Sean Smith's story is so inspiring. It teaches us that if you can afford to work unpaid for 7+ hours per day, 50+ hours per week for a whole year and move to one of the most expensive cities in the world without a job, then you can truly achieve anything.

You forgot the /s, but it's pretty obvious;)

What is /s?

Sarcasm

Thanks.

Strange, I got down-voted for thanking :|

This is currently the wall I find myself staring at. I feel like I'm barely over the theshold, and I can't afford to keep doing it this way, I'll have to get permanent work soon.

I definitely can't afford to move to San Francisco.

You could learn to do coding by working remotely, but I think a key thing is finding someone to help point the way toward what you need to learn. In a cheap town without much going on, you might have more time to focus. But how do you connect with someone to guide you.

Thanks and congrats for your work Quincy. freeCodeCamp is something very very special. I consider it of similar importance of Khan Academy and Stack Overflow.

Unfortunately it does not receive proportional attention from more technical forums like HN. Mostly because it is basically designed for non-developers. That's why I particularly like the marketing strategy of students giving stars to freeCodeCamp Github repository. It brings awareness to developers of all kinds and ways of life about what you are doing.

I believe freeCodeCamp will grow to be an essential tool for improving society and individual people's life by democratizing knowledge.

I hope to learn enough to be able to give back to the platform. It's pretty overwhelming to be in the situation I am right now, but once I am more stabilished I will sure contribute somehow.

My experience was way closer to the 192 than the 4, but either way your program was pretty vital for getting my first 2 jobs. Thanks for what you do

Congratulations! This is awesome

> but I know the rough part is only starting

Yes and no. Getting the first job is a huge hurdle, you actually have overcome probably the most difficult challenge of the early years of your dev career, so well done.

Of course, the challenges keep coming, and quickly, but from here on it will look much more like a (possibly rather steep ;-) upward curve wrt time rather than a huge cliff (hobby projects/qualifications -> first job).

So long as you're expecting and prepared for that, which you clearly are, you're now in much more of a position to control your own success, which in relative terms is actually a lot easier, less stressful, and even fun!

Clickable: http://rodrigo-pontes.glitch.me/

Congrats on your achievement. :)

Thanks! (there is nothing fancy in my portfolio, btw, just wanted to share it so people in similar situation can have an idea of how an average output after 6 months of coding could look like)

Champion!

May I ask, what was your background prior to moving into coding? A different technical field or trade?

I graduated in Economics. The first ~7 years of my career was at non-profit organizations (as project manager and fundraiser). Then I went to the startup world, one year as a startup founder, two years working with growth marketing at another startup.

But I always had a good mind for logic and analytical stuff, I think it helps a lot.

I don't mean to be intrusive, but how much can one earn after this experience?

All depend of your location of course. I live in São Paulo, Brazil. I earn 4500 Reais per month (~ 1300 usd per month). This is actually around 30% higher than what I was expecting as an average salary for a junior web developer. Luckily I landed the job with the highest pay.

My expectation is to double that within two years. I believe my former work experience can accelerate my path to be a senior developer. And then keep going on a more linear growth.

Awesome, thank you. I wish you good luck!

I think you have accomplished the hardest part. Action is now your reward. :)

It looks like you've learned a lot, but a lot of people are going to criticize you based off your design skills. Frankly, it's ugly so you're automatically not going to be doing any product work. If you could clean up your demos to look more acceptable to the modern day reviewer, I think you would have better presented yourself.

I didn't downvote you, but I'll offer:

Frankly, it's ugly so you're automatically not going to be doing any product work

"Frankly, at the current level, without some improvement and time, you probably won't be doing much product work."

If you could clean up your demos to look more acceptable to the modern day reviewer, I think you would have better presented yourself.

"Clean up those demos to appeal to the modern reviewer, and you'll be better able to present yourself."

(Empathy also presents you better)

I didn't downvote you, either.

In this world, there're 10 types of people: there're good people who're half bad and there're bad people who're half good :)

This is constructive and honest opinion. Why downvote?

Exactly. There's this poisonous atmosphere in HN that dislikes criticizing honestly. In fact, throw in some compliments and you'll get a zillion upvotes. But complain about something, and fear getting banned...

that's just how people operate. If that indicates HN is poisonous then all discussion places are poisonous, which really means nothing.

Because it's unnecessarily tactless and bordering on hurtful. Learning how to give honest feedback without being so cutting is a skill the commentor should learn.

How do you define degree of tactlessness? It was so nice of him to call that website 'ugly'. It is totally unacceptable to downvote someone for telling the truth(no matter how ugly it is).

It's better than my first website.

I considered using a common framework, but I wanted to create some design from scratch. I know it is not good for some people, but I think it added to my skills doing that way. Someday I will try to improve it, but still using my own ideias, to see if it gets better. But with the job now and all I have to learn, it is not a priority.

If I were to create a product, I wouldn't try to be creative. I would just use some modern CSS framework.

I agree it is better to have a good grasp of css before using a CSS framework. If you haven't already, checkout this fantastic new CSS/layout tutorial/book:

https://www.learnenough.com/css-and-layout-tutorial/

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