mkwenhua

That's awesome, I had a mentor that guided me when I decided I wanted a career change and I am extremely grateful for that. I actually started doing classes at a local outreach program and I was quite upset when I learned that the people in charge were more interested in superficial appearances than providing useful skills. For example they wanted me to have a class where they essentially build a website using more template and a jQuery UI library, and when I told them that the students need to begin with the basics, they disagreed since they said it would "look bad".

But anyways, I still went along with it because I am hoping someone who was like me will show up, and then I can teach them. But I feel that the actual classes they have are more like motivational feel good TED talks as opposed to being actually useful.

What city do you live in? Have you ever considered mentoring or teaching someone who really wants to start coding?

Currently there is a lot of charities and NGO's that do classes for people to get tech skills. But I personally believe if you really want to make a sure impact, find and pick one individual that you know is dedicated and willing to learn, because in my experience coding isn't something you can casually learn, it's a huge commitment and the only way to make an impact is to give someone a second chance, or allow someone to prove themselves.

That's what Mr. Miyagi did

Yeah I went to a Javascript meetup and it was amazing. Unlike the ruby meetups that were mostly just bootcamp people, it was all industry professionals and people there because they love JS, and it worked out great. Also you're right I went to a open university Hackathon and just spent hours trying to get my team to build anything. I was building out a Node/socket.io api to work with both a rails Web app and an Android and these students didn't even know how to parse a json string in Java, and I kept on telling them that there is just a simple function for that. Anyways long story short after 12 hours they had noting working, and I was unable to finish the Android app in time.

the weird thing is, they are all getting offers for entry level positions and these companies wont even consider me as a possibility.

Well I am going to a hack-a-thon competition tomorrow which is similar to a meetup in my opinion.

Thanks rnovak, I really appreciate the reply. I would definitely say a downside of my CV website is it focuses on those silly D3 things I made, but actually 98% of the site is a social network I made that is centered around finding top music and getting news feeds around the world, you can auto sign in and try it out if you like. Now this particular app I don't think is for me personally a "Passion" project but more like "How many things can I cram into this site in order to get a job type app". There is an old app I made that is a precursor to an app I am going to make: https://youtu.be/rL5WeKeYKWY?t=1m43s . I started recently a app that is a real time tutoring module that will be open source(maybe Khan academy would like it). And it uses Nodejs Socket.io the data that I record for the draw is instead sent to the other person.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get started since writing out cover letters and getting rejected for entry level positions has been all I had time to do since I started applying.

Well I guess what I am saying is not that they don't exist it's just not many. For example I went to 4 Ruby meetups and Chicago and while fun, they're essentially Dev Bootcamp events where people learn things like writing blocks. The weird thing is, I went to a Ruby meetup in Ann Arbor, and there it was all industry professionals and coders. I tried to find other non ruby meetups, but they're few and far between.

Also you're 100% correct about the D3 data structures thing. The reason I did it was I fear as a self taught guy people will have certain assumptions about me. And about the working for free, I agree that it opens me up for exploitation. But id rather be exploited and have a company profit off me if it means I can start working. Spending hours writing out cover letters to only get ignored completely destroys my self confidence. Anyways my email is MKwenhua101@gmail.com

oh the only copy and pasted code is $('#video1')[0].contentWindow.postMessage('{"event":"command","func":"' + 'stopVideo' + '","args":""}', '*'); which is a command to tell a youtube iFrame to stop playing the video. Also generally I mix vanilla JS and jQuery a lot since I read that vanilla JS is faster, but when it comes to finding a certain element in a div I use jQuery.

Well I am in Chicago, and I just can't seem to find any good networking events. But I going to go to a Hack-a-thon this weekend. Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it!