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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Jennifer, I was going through the top 10 stories, saw the jenniferdewalt.com domain, and thought, "oh, it's that girl who sat down and taught herself how to code!"

In my mind I've sort of associated the brand "Jennifer Dewalt" with ambition, dedication and inspiration. I send your posts and websites to my sister to encourage her down a similar path. Keep up the great work! :)

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Thank you! Learning something new is so intimidating but I really think the best way to do is to just dive right in. Sure, you'll suck at first but that's ok. Eventually you'll get better.

I agree 100%. The experience I've gained working on personal projects of my own has brought me further than working on class assignments. Not being afraid to fail will take you a long way.

My lil sis is your fan!

+1 I've been coding professionally for 6 years and I am inspired by this.

To me this is not a story about programming or gender, it's a story about grit.

Gwit. Twue gwit ithz wut gathwers us here twoday.

Sam, come on. No crap comments on HN, please.

(I edited this to make it less harsh.)

It's not an especially crap comment, it's just a joke you didn't get. Jokes don't do well here admittedly.

Ok, fair point. I thought it might help to make a public comment in this case because repeated private requests don't seem to have worked.

The jokes thing is a tricky one for HN. I love comedy and I love wit. I'm sure most of us do. But when you're optimizing for signal/noise ratio, as HN tries to, there are tradeoffs. On the whole, I think the community habit of downvoting most (not all) jokes is reasonable for what HN is trying to be.

It's not a mean comment and it made me laugh, maybe it's my childish sense of humour

Or just an appreciation of the Princess Bride...

I absolutely agree. Jennifer's work and courage are inspiring, and basically make me willing to read pretty much anything of hers that is posted here.

I couldn't agree more with @enraged_camel since I thought the same thing too! Jennifer has done an incredible job documenting her ambition. I wouldn't be surprised if a few companies offer her a developing position.

I did the same thing! Was like wait, I remember reading about this girl last year. Great job such an inspiration.

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