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Comment by thomas_moon | Hacker News Reader

While I think its comical that the author casually recommends people to go "speak at conferences", theres some really good advice here.

I came out of a Hack Reactor and started pumping out React code for a small startup. After about 6 months, I was bored and decided to take some Bradfield courses just like this article recommends and the experience has been invaluable. Seeing how some "black boxes" work in details has been super illuminating and helpful at times. The core concepts and even just the code I was exposed to moved the needle in terms of my progress quite a bit and also showed me other areas of software engineering I didn't know existed when I got started.

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> While I think its comical that the author casually recommends people to go "speak at conferences"

Why's that comical? If you have something interesting to say, go for it! Even if you don't, there's no harm in applying.

Most people are way more interesting than they think they are.

TIL that you can apply to speak at conferences. I always thought it was an invite only kind of deal haha. Thanks!

For example use https://www.cfpland.com/conferences/ to get a list of CFPs (invitations to submit a talk.)

I worked at Uber too. Turns out if you work at the right places, it opens doors for you. But yes most conferences have a "request for proposal" system.

Yep, the larger and more prestigious conferences may be harder to break into (as they have so many people submitting) but there are smaller conferences that are probably desperately hoping for more people to submit proposals. Or they were before COVID. I'm not sure how the transition to all (or mostly) virtual has affected the conference scene, but that's the way it was in the past.

Based on my own experience, I'd say that you can always start out by speaking at local user groups or Meetups, build a resume of talks you've given, then apply to smaller / regional conferences, do a few of those, and ... well, that's where I stopped. All Things Open is the most prominent event I've presented at. But the point is, bootstrap and work your up the ladder.

Look at the whole thing holistically too: blogging, putting content on Youtube, open source projects, etc, all go towards building your overall image and presence "out there".

Most conferences will accept almost anything even tangentially related to their focus. Because nearly all proposals will come from companies trying to market their crap in conference talks disguised as something else, when they get applications from people with something really interesting to say which is not related to something they're making money on, they will almost certainly accept. It may b e hard for the first couple of talks as you don't have any experience doing it, which means you may suck at it, but you can start by talking at local meetups or even internally at your company, which is less challenging and will get you some experience to get started.

First time I am hearing about Bradfield courses.

What makes them better than the online MOOC courses at Stanford, MIT, etc?

I'm biased because I've become great friends with the bradfield founders (Hi Myles and Oz!) since I took all their classes years ago, and recently guest lectured as part of their databases class, but they're basically targeted at working bootcamp graduates that have huge C.S holes in their knowledge. More of a practical focus than what I would imagine you get from online MOOC courses (plus live instruction), but to be honest I haven't taken a lot of MOOC's personally so I may not be the best to compare.

Richie -- absolutely absolutely stunning and incredible!

I thought I was making strides. I've taken two BradfieldCS courses and have had some personal mentoring from Myles even before Bradfield was born.

If the original question asker is reading this thread, I can lend some more insight having done MOOCs and Bradfield.

First off, Oz and Myles are behind teachyourselfcs.com, one exceptional and concise site which their curriculum is sort of based off of. Oz is also the author behind, "You Are Not Google" that was HUGELY popular on here a couple years back.

The thing that Oz and Myles brought was their incredible enthusiasm coupled with their passion for mathematics and computer science. They were practitioners teaching at it from a practitioner's perspective with the goal of providing another practitioner the CS most applicable to their jobs. These courses were in-person in San Francisco for a while (but no longer). Look up either Myles or Oz on Twitter and you'll notice that they're very much still engaged in technical conversations and the computer science and how to teach it today.

The one thing I always always took away from the teachyourselfcs.com site is the section under, "Why learn computer science?"

> There are 2 types of software engineer: those who understand computer science well enough to do challenging, innovative work, and those who just get by because they’re familiar with a few high level tools.

> Both call themselves software engineers, and both tend to earn similar salaries in their early careers. But Type 1 engineers progress toward more fulfilling and well-remunerated work over time, whether that’s valuable commercial work or breakthrough open-source projects, technical leadership or high-quality individual contributions.

I have an inkling that Richie, right here, is EXACTLY what they were talking about when drafting this. This blog post exemplifies this.

I've learned so much from the both of them, but I can honestly say, Richie, if you're reading this, this was a f*ckin' gem! Would love to grab coffee with you some time once the pandemic's over.

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