cwdegidio

I did the hike from Pokhara to Ghorepani (Poon Hill is breathtaking btw) and a few other small villages (about a week and half of backpacking). This was after a month in Kathmandu before and a month after. My absolute favorite parts of the whole trip were the teahouses and the roadside food stands. The food was excellent. The hosts were always extremely kind. This was back in 2009. It's now almost 20 years later and I've been itching to go back. Nepal will always have a place in my soul, there is no place like it.

There was 18F which was a group within US Digital Services. But as mentioned they got DOGEd. They managed the USWDS (US Web Design System), which was making great efforts to create a unified design and accessibility framework for government websites. I was working pretty closely on a contract project until, well, shakes hands wildly all this. They were great people, great designers and really cared about what they were doing.

As for enforcement of adhering to 508 and a11y compliance, US digital projects were guided by executive order M-23-22, "Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience", but from what I can tell that is kind of up in the air at this point... we are following it until someone tells us otherwise, but I don't think it is being enforced anymore with any passion because of the current confusion.

Just moved back to Cleveland after being in Houston for 20 years, grew up here and left for college. Don't regret the choice at all. For what I paid for my house, which is one of the nicest communities just out side of downtown, I got 2-3x the house I would have gotten in Houston. Enough room that my aging parent that I take care of pretty much has a massive apartment with their own entrance. I'm 15 minutes from downtown, but in Houston, the same house would have been about an hour outside of town.

Now I have multiple friends in Houston who have taken an interest in the area and keep visiting to check things out. Even with the winters, they are just over the 120 w/ 100% humidity summers.

Even the access to the outdoors is within 20 minutes of downtown.

Cleveland has always taken a lot of sh#t over the years... but it really is a great place to live affordably.

Sad to hear. Johansen, Sylvain Sylvain, and Johnny Thunders just oozed "cool" in the most New York way, I think only the Velvet Underground and Ramones are on the same level, but I'm probably super biased. Crossed paths with Sylvain many times opening for him when he would be out on the road and always loved sitting around in the green room listening to his stories about the Dolls. Definitely feeling my age today... but I guess we all do when we start seeing the artists we grew up with pass away.

I've worked closely with 18F staff. They are/were some of the most dedicated folks I've ever had the pleasure to work beside. Based on my interactions, they were very dedicated to web standards that made the web open and easy for all people to use. Some of the best a11y researchers & advisors who had real empathy and compassion. Anyone who picks these folks up for their org is going to be the real winner here.

Not OP, but I think it was worth it. Within a year of getting my BSCS, I added almost 25% to my salary. It gave me the leverage I needed to push for more. For someone coming into it with no experience I can’t say how well it will play out, but for a degreeless developer, I think it just checks that one box and helps.

WGU BSCS grad here as well. Regular brick & mortar schools never worked for me, but WGU clicked and let me finally get my degree. Now I’m working on my MSCS with CU Boulder, which although being managed via Coursera has the same feel overall as WGU. In some ways I can see how some think EdTech failed… but I do think there are players in the space that are doing good things

Soft skills should be much higher on the list. Software engineers, depending on the org, will be asked to interact with a lot of non-engineering, non-technical types that are in a position to make decisions. If you can't explain a problem or proposed solution in a way that they can understand, things are going to be harder than they need to be. Sometimes you'll need to extract requirements from these individuals for a feature because BAs and PMs are coming up short in getting the right details. Learning how to talk with people through their idea and not make them feel stupid but instead make them feel like they are a partner goes a long way.

Gatekeeping... some folks just need a gate to feel superior.

Didn't you post almost this exact same gripe the other day? News flash... the world is online right now. I got my BSCS online, doing my MSCS online... neither say they are "online" and the sun still rises every morning. If others getting their online Masters is ruining your day, you may want to recalibrate.

I don't know anyone doing good 1-5 day bootcamps, but I did recently do the multi-week live Kodeco (formerly Ray Wenderlich) iOS / SwiftUI bootcamp and really enjoyed it. I believe they also now offer an at-your-own-pace version as well.

May want to start with a search on LinkedIn for government contracting firms. Another place to look would be https://www.usajobs.gov which is mostly direct hire into an agency if you have the skill set they are looking for. Sadly I can't give much more information than that as I was brought into my firm by a random recruitment email on LinkedIn. You may be able to also find some leads on the GSA contractor directory, although a lot of these firms have kind of generic names so it may be a bit of a needle in a haystack.

Aren't cooties the imaginary "bugs" that young boys and girls give each other at recess?

May want to consider government contracting roles. After spending about 15 years in what has come to be known as "martech" as a web developer, I realized how soulless and unsatisfying the work is. By random chance I was scouted by a small consulting firm that does work for the fed and couldn't be happier. I'm on a project now that helps countless people everyday, has some interesting domain problems, and nobody tries to convince me I'm part of a corporate family with the expectation that I will lie to my dev team about rewarding them for long hours to make some director look good.

I get to touch a lot of things tech wise, as we take on new projects there is the chance to move around when a project finishes or I've done enough time on it to convince them I'm bored and want to try something new.

Sure some firms specialize in defense... but there are many firms that do work with the EPA, NASA, etc.

Was very confused by this. I thought the Python package for handling message queues was getting a huge influx of financial support!

A good place, in my opinion, to start would be something like https://roadmap.sh/frontend. It lays out a good tree of knowledge that you may start following. Really, at the start, your looking to dive deep into topics such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Also you'll want to start getting a good foundation of how the internet works in general (stuff like HTTP, SSL, etc.). This stuff becomes your bedrock that all your other Frontend skills will build upon.

You can also look to some guided courses that may help if you just need some direction. Odin Project is a good one and free. Colt Steele has a good one (my nephew worked through it and liked it) on Udemy called the "Web Developer Bootcamp". Don't pay full price though for that one, clear your browser cache, go into incognito mode, etc and you should see it discounted to like $20... if a sale isn't already running.

I can't emphasize enough... learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript deeply. They are the foundation before things like React, Angular, etc. Don't fall for the "get rich quick" promise of frameworks. Nothing makes a senior developer more insane than when you come in as a "React whiz" but don't understand the fundamentals at all.

And finally... BUILD BUILD BUILD. Build and abandon a thousand projects. See something on a website or in an app you like? Try to recreate it. Learn to pull it apart and see how it works.

If you have never done anything like this, your going to hit rough patches. The pain you feel is "learning". I'm the lead dev on my team and they act like I'm some genius. Truth is, I'm a slow learner but I'm not afraid of being uncomfortable and experimenting all the time. Best of luck!

I've always found these types of roles working with external recruiters. Places like Robert Half, etc.

I appreciated finally having a seat at the table in regard to project decisions and team direction. I got to introduce a lot of ideas I had to improve developer experience and really went to bat for my team addressing the gripes I knew they had.

What I didn't like? Finding out "how the sausage was made." I found out very quickly that decisions weren't made on real metrics like we were always told. Everything was literally just "X screamed the loudest this week and I need to impress them for my next promotion so this is now a priority." In more than a few meetings I found out that a lot of the non-technical managers just looked at the dev team as an assembly line of labor to be pushed to the breaking point just so they could pretend the needle was moving (which often led to a lot of shoddy code that was just made to 'get it working now').

I made it a point to still be a hands on developer by taking non-critical path items on our projects... but even then I eventually had to step back for a while as I discovered in some orgs, any empty space on your calendar will be filled with another inane meeting where nothing is actually discussed or solved.

Going back to being a senior developer in a new org in a few weeks and looking forward to it. I am leaving my team in a good place, got a lot of farewell messages thanking me for always going to the mat for the team and showing them my appreciation even when upper management wanted me to chop heads off. I knew how hard they were working, the long hours they were putting in, and how exhausted they were.

I like leading and mentoring, but I will never ascribe to the school of dictatorial / machismo fear-based leadership. A good leader is a servant that reduces friction and clears the way. A good leader has empathy and compassion. My management above me wanted to beat that out of me and it left me burned out and exhausted. Don't sell your soul to the company... remember your team is made up of people.

Reminds me of "Principia Discordia", this is going to be a fun rabbit hole.

I actually moved over to Linode because of similar anomalies. I had a container I was running my personal site from. Paid my bill on time every month. Got distracted with work and hadn't updated it in a while. One day I go to check on it and the site is down. Head to DO to restart it... and it is just gone. Like it never existed. Didn't even bother trying to communicate with them I was so angry. Been really happy with Linode.

My first paying client when I was 19 (so around 1998?) commissioned a local high school graphic design student to hand paint this crazy village scene with stores. She then had it professionally scanned and gave me the files... which I then used to create an image map for each of her little "store fronts". She couldn't accept payments online (they didn't teach me that in my community college HTML course), still had to print out an order form and send in a check. I will never forget the horrid repeated plaid background she made me use.

I miss the early ugly web lol.

I used to use NetNewsWire, so I redownloaded it. I'll check out Feedly... never afraid to evaluate new tools.

Not a bad idea! I'll look into it :). The temptation is real all the time.

Getting away from time wasting things like mindlessly scrolling Reddit. I realized about a month ago it has slowly grown into an addiction... nothing to do? Pull out the phone and scroll.

Now I'm limiting myself to consuming content differently. Checking HN once or twice a day. Using RSS to subscribe to blogs I find interesting instead of having my content fed to me. With the time I'm getting back, I'm putting a lot more energy back into personal learning and finishing my MSCS.

Also fell of the "staying fit" wagon near the end of the year so I plan on getting back to the gym and getting outside more.

I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that the average Chinese student isn’t a daily victim of insane “culture war” political BS and actually are encouraged to learn. I’m aware this is more complex, but to me it seems like lately certain political entities are ok with dumbing down our education systems.

Paw is always an option if you are on a Mac... I don't know if it available on PC

Maybe make a list of fields or areas that interest you... and then see if anyone in your social network or friends group are in those fields? Buy them a cup of coffee or a beer and pick their brains. See what the like or don't like about it, how they got started, what they would do different, etc.

It makes sense. It is an array. When you remove the first element, all elements in the array have to shift to their new indices "left" (one less than their previous index). When you unshift, all elements must move their indices up by 1, to the "right". In theory it is staying at the same memory address (unless unshifting causes the array to double in size to account for further growth... then it will be given a new memory address).

When I need to create diagrams for anything (systems, code architecture, component design, etc) I reach for OmniGraffle on macOS. I've tried to use other tools, but it has served me well for years.

I am a certified PADI scuba instructor. Probably one of the funnest things I have ever done.