The high speed screen reader Zersiax uses when he codes

Zersiax's Screen Reader

Canadian software engineer Bill Sourour recounts a tragic experience early in his developer career when writing code for a pharmaceutical company. He explores developer ethics, the responsibilities developers have, and the challenges they face in sticking to their values. &nbsp; Written by and read by Bill Sourour: https://twitter.com/billsourour  &nbsp; Original Article:  https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of-e4c021dff55e&nbsp; &nbsp; The Future of Programming by Bob Martin:  https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc&nbsp; &nbsp; Business Insider Story: "Programmers are having a huge discussion&nbsp;about the unethical and illegal things they’ve&nbsp;been asked to do”  http://www.businessinsider.com/programmers-confess-unethical-illegal-tasks-asked-of-them-2016-11?op=1 &nbsp; CBC Interview  http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/stop-subsidizing-seniors-good-judges-can-make-bad-decisions-and-which-canadian-city-is-the-most-american-1.4028473/creating-a-code-of-ethics-for-coders-1.4028677 &nbsp; Code Newbie Interview  https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/the-ethics-of-coding &nbsp; Developer Ethics on FCC Guide  https://guide.freecodecamp.org/developer-ethics &nbsp; Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org &nbsp; Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q &nbsp; Transcript:&nbsp;  If you write code for a living, there’s a chance that at some point in your career, someone will ask you to code something a little deceitful – if not outright unethical. This happened to me back in the year 2000. And it’s something I’ll never be able to forget. I wrote my first line of code at 6 years old. I’m no prodigy though. I had a lot of help from my dad at the time. But I was hooked. I loved it. By the time I was 15, I was working part-time for my dad’s consulting firm. I built websites and coded small components for business apps on weekends and in the summer. I was woefully underpaid. But as my dad still likes to point out, I got free room and board, and some pretty valuable work experience. Later, I managed to help fund a part of my education through a few freelance coding gigs. I built a couple of early e-commerce sites for some local small businesses. By age 21, I managed to land a full-time coding job with an interactive marketing firm in Toronto, Canada. The firm had been founded by a medical doctor and many of its clients were large pharmaceutical companies. In Canada, there are strict limits on how pharmaceutical companies can advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. As a result, these companies would create websites that present general information about whatever symptoms their drugs were meant to address. Then, if a visitor could prove they had a prescription, they were given access to a patient portal with more specific info about the drug. The home page of edfactscanada.com circa 2001, via The Internet Archive One of the projects I was assigned to involved a drug that was targeted at women. The graphics and general style of the website made it clear that the client wanted to specifically target teenage girls. One of the features of this website was a quiz that asked girls a series of questions and recommended a type of drug based on their answers. Remember, this website was posing as a general information site. It was not clearly an advertisement for any particular drug. When I received the requirements, they contained the questions for the quiz, along with multiple choice answers for each question. Missing from the requirements was any indication of what I should do with the answers at the end of the quiz. So what rules determined what treatment the quiz would recommend? I spoke to the Account Manager about this. She emailed the client and got me the requirements. With those, I proceeded to code up the quiz. Before submitting the website to the client, my project manager decided to give it a quick test. She tried the quiz, then came over to my desk: “The...

Ep. 7 - The code I’m still ashamed of

We continue the story of Alvaro Videla, as travels to Montevideo, Uruguay for his first developer job interview.&nbsp; In this episode, Quincy tells the story of Alvaro Videla, who was living in poverty in Uruguay when he decided he wanted to learn to code. He had limited access to books and the internet. But he eventually got a job at Apple and other tech companies. &nbsp; Article by Alvaro Videla:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2AMqmfM Read by Quincy Larson:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/ossia Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q &nbsp; Transcript:  Getting the Job During December 2006 and January 2007, I worked hard to get my maps application up and running. While building it, I wanted to learn as many programming notions as possible, trying to cram all the knowledge that would get me ready for the job interview into my head. Out of all the concepts I could learn, I identified the main ones that I thought would be relevant for getting the job. This narrowing of focus is a very important step toward achieving goals, since we don’t want to be all over the place, trying to grasp a bit of every subject but then failing to reach deepness on any of them. For my situation, I understood that I had to learn about object-oriented programming, since that was one of the most important programming techniques in use. On the technological side, I had identified PHP as the key programming language that would land me a job, while learning Flash programming would be the skill that would differentiate me from other candidates. How did I know that? It was a bit of hunch informed by what I was seeing mentioned on the web, along with what the computer magazines were writing about. Even back then, before I had the job, I knew it was very important to learn to understand and analyze the market I wanted to break into, and finding the right websites and publications is a very important step toward this. This is because these resources often have information that points to the ideas, trends, and technologies that we should focus on. Once my app was done and I felt I was ready for the interview, it was time to build my resume. However, I had no idea what should go on a tech resume and what should be left out. I listed things like MS Word and MS Excel as some of my skills, together with Adobe Illustrator and some InDesign. Why not, right? Wrong. Just thinking about that first resume makes me blush. If nothing else, what was clear about it was the message it was signaling: this person is a complete noob. The problem is that as someone trying to break into a new field and start a career, it was difficult to have something to write down on my resume that made me look competent. I had no idea what to include, so I listed everything. Today, if someone presented themselves for a backend developer position listing MS Word as a skill, I’m quite sure that person would be rejected straight away. Even worse, I think I would be the one rejecting a resume like that. But of course, hindsight is 20/20. Once my resume was complete and I got a cell phone number I could be reached at, I applied for the position of PHP programmer at Live Interactive. You’d better believe I read and reread every input box on that online form as I went over a mental checklist. “Did I spell my name correctly? Did I type the right phone number? Let’s double check the email. I don’t want to miss this opportunity because I wrote the wrong address.” I was all nerves, but at some point, I had to hit that send button. Click. Done. Exhalation. “I’ve done it. I’ve applied for my first job.” Once my app was done and I felt I was ready for the interview, it was time to build my resume. However, I had no idea what should go on a tech resume and what should be left out. After I submitted my application, I lingered at the internet cafe, browsing the web for random stuff. To my surprise, about half an hour...

Ep. 2 - How I Went From Selling Food in the Street to Working as a Developer at Companies Like Apple Part 2 - The Interview

Quincy reads his popular article on how to choose your first programming language when you learn to code.  He discusses Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and C++ in terms of: - the job market for the language - the long term prospects for the language - how easy the language is to learn - what projects you can build while you’re learning (and share with friends so you can stay motivated) Read by&nbsp;Quincy Larson (https://twitter.com/ossia) Article link: https://fcc.im/2yCMatt Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q Transcript: Most people’s journey toward learning to program starts with a single late-night Google search. Usually it’s something like “Learn ______” But how do they decide which language to search for? “They always joke about Java on Silicon Valley. I guess I should learn that.” Or: “Haskell. So hot right now. Haskell.” Or: “That Go gopher is just so gosh-darn cute.” And then there’s the rest of us. We’ll probably search for something like: “Which programming language should I learn first?” Few questions are so commonly asked that they get the full infographic treatment. But this is one of them: Deciding on your first programming language can be a fun process — kind of like one of those “Which Quentin Tarantino character are you?” personality quizzes. But before you run off to learn Ruby because you enjoyed playing with Play-Doh as a kid, let me remind you: the stakes are pretty high here. It will take you hundreds of hours of practice to become even remotely competent with your first programming language. So you should consider the following factors: - the job market for the language - the long term prospects for the language - how easy the language is to learn - what projects you can build while you’re learning (and share with friends so you can stay motivated) Every year brings new programming languages, and with them, new academic papers. And new web comics. Seriously. Check out this gem from last month: When it comes to choosing a first programming language, there’s no shortage of options. To narrow it down a bit, here are the most common Google searches related to learning programming, over the past 12 years: Java has had its ups and downs. Python has gradually risen to become the most popular choice. But tucked away below these is the Little Engine That Could, slowly choo-choo’ing up in popularity over the past few years. And that engine is JavaScript. Before I talk about these programming languages, let me clarify: I’m not arguing that any one language is objectively better than any other I agree that developers should eventually learn more than one language I’m arguing that first they should learn one language well. And — as you can probably guess from the upside down text in my headline — that language should be JavaScript. Let’s kick things off by exploring how programming is currently taught in school. Computer Science 101 Universities have traditionally taught programming under the umbrella of computer science, which itself is often seen as an extension of mathematics, or tie-in to an electrical engineering degree. Of course, as you may have heard by now: “Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.” — Eric S. Raymond As of 2016, many universities still treat programming like it’s computer science, and computer science like it’s math. As a result, many introductory programming courses focus on low-level-of-abstraction languages like C, or mathematically-focused languages like MATLAB. And department chairs generally stay the course, pointing to annual programming language leaderboards like the TIOBE Index, or this one from the IEEE: Most of these leaderboards look virtually identical to how they were 10 years ago. But change does happen....

Ep. 6 - Which Programming Language Should You Learn First?

Beau talks about his year of incredible productivity, during which he a degree and certifications, and taught himself to code - balancing his studies against an active family life. Beau's original article:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2j0vxBr Read by Beau:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/carnesbeau Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q Transcript:  “The standard pace is for chumps. The system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than ‘just anyone’ — you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life — not just school.” — Derek Sivers, founder of CD&nbsp;Baby Learning to code can be challenging — especially when you also have a job and a family with small kids. Despite those things, I decided that the standard pace was not for me. My goal in writing all this is not to brag — though I am extremely proud of these accomplishments. My goal is to convince you that the standard pace isn’t for&nbsp;you, either. I’ve done a lot in the past year. I earned two Oracle Java Certifications, two CompTia Certifications, and freeCodeCamp’s Front End Certification. Each of these take most people many months of preparation, but I did them all in three weeks each. And last but not least, I completed all the coursework necessary to earn a second Bachelor’s degree in software development from an accredited university, in less than six months. I did this all while working full-time, spending time regularly with my wife and two young kids, and volunteering in my community. One of the keys to accomplishing all of this was an amazing and supportive spouse. 😍 But there were also some other things that helped. What’s Your Motivation? After being a K-12 teacher for five years, I realized I did not want to teach in a school the rest of my life. I loved the teaching part of teaching, but I hated the forcing-kids-to-do-things-they-don’t-want-to-do part of teaching. Classroom management in my urban school district was very stressful for me. I was also becoming disenchanted with the whole educational system. We seem to be preparing students for&nbsp;jobs that will no longer exist. I had always been interested in coding and even sometimes taught my students basic coding using Scratch and Code.org. I decided it was time to learn enough to do it full-time. Wanting a new job was great motivation. Everyday I spent at my teaching job was an incentive to keep pushing myself towards my goal. Research, research, research It’s important not to rush into learning. Not all schools or learning resources are equal, and the wrong choice can make a big difference in your ability to meet your goals. I tried to determine what learning method would work best for me and my family. While I know there are many ways to break into the tech industry, I decided on a somewhat traditional route: a Bachelor’s degree. I knew I had some classes already that would transfer into a new program. I looked into many school options but I decided on&nbsp;Western Governors University&nbsp;for the following reasons: It is all online so I would not have to take time from my family for transportation. You can work at your own pace, so I knew I could finish very quickly. As soon as you finish all the assignments and exams for one class, you can go immediately to the next class. The cost is low — about $3000 per six months. It is reputable, accredited, and has been recommended by&nbsp;President Obama and Bill Gates. The degree included industry recognized certifications. I knew those would add to the credibility of my education. Beating ambitions goals At first, my goal was to finish my entire Bachelor’s degree in one year. One month into the program, I decided to revise my goal and finish in six months. It was at this point that I did what helped me most in my goal to finish quickly: I made a schedule of the exact day I...

Ep. 5 - How I got a second degree and earned 5 developer certifications in just one year, while working and raising two kids

Cecily Carver, a developer at Google, recounts her coding journey and the many lessons she learned along the way. Read by Ava. Cecily's article:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2A5kphQ Read by Ava:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/avasond Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q &nbsp; Transcript: Before you learn to code, think about&nbsp;what&nbsp;you want to&nbsp;code Knowing how to code is mostly about building things, and the path is a lot clearer when you have a sense of the end goal. If your goal is “learn to code,” without a clear idea of the kinds of programs you will write and how they will make your life better, you will probably find it a frustrating exercise. I’m a little ashamed to admit that part of my motivation for studying computer science was that I wanted to prove I was smart, and I wanted to be able to get Smart Person jobs. I also liked thinking about math and theory (this bookblew my mind at an impressionable age) and the program was a good fit. It wasn’t enough to sustain me for long, though, until I found ways to connect technology to the things I really loved, like music and literature. So, what do you want to code? Websites? Games? iPhone apps? A startup that makes you rich? Interactive art? Do you want to be able to impress your boss or automate a tedious task so you can spend more time looking at otter pictures? Perhaps you simply want to be more employable, add a buzzword to your resume, or fulfill the requirements of your educational program. All of these are worthy goals. Make sure you know which one is yours, and study accordingly. There’s nothing mystical about&nbsp;it Coding is a skill like any other. Like language learning, there’s grammar and vocabulary to acquire. Like math, there are processes to work through specific types of problems. Like all kinds of craftsmanship and art-making, there are techniques and tools and best practices that people have developed over time, specialized to different tasks, that you’re free to use or modify or discard. This guy&nbsp;(a very smart guy! Whose other writings I enjoy and frequently agree with!) posits that there is a bright line between people with the True Mind of a Programmer and everyone else, who are lacking the intellectual capacity needed to succeed in the field. That bright line consists, according to him, of pointers and recursion (there are primers&nbsp;here&nbsp;and&nbsp;here&nbsp;for the curious). I learned about pointers and recursion in school, and when I understood them, it was a delightful jolt to my brain — the kind of intellectual pleasure that made me want to study computer science in the first place. But, outside of classroom exercises, the number of times I’ve had to be familiar with either concept to get things done has been relatively small. And when helping others learn, over and over again, I’ve watched people complete interesting and rewarding projects without knowing anything about either one. There’s no point in being intimidated or wondering if you’re Smart Enough. Sure, the more complex and esoteric your task, the higher the level of mastery you will need to complete it. But this is true in absolutely every other field. Unless you’re planning to make your living entirely by your code, chances are you don’t have to be a recursion-understanding genius to make the thing you want to make. It never works the first&nbsp;time And probably won’t the second or third&nbsp;time When you first start learning to code, you’ll very quickly run up against this particular experience: you think you’ve set up everything the way you’re supposed to, you’ve checked and re-checked it, and it still. doesn’t. work. You don’t have a clue where to begin trying to fix it, and the error message (if you’re lucky enough to have one at all) might as well say “fuck you.” You might be tempted to give up at this point, thinking that...

Ep. 4 - Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I was Learning How to Code

We conclude the tale of Alvaro Videla, who learned to code, got a job as a developer, and is now facing his first week on the job in Montevideo, Uruguay. He eventually went on to get jobs at Apple and other tech companies, but this is where he got his start. &nbsp; Article by Alvaro Videla:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2zJX3gN Read by Quincy Larson: https://twitter.com/freecodecamp Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Music: "Sounds of Wonder" by Vangough:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2yQOq0q &nbsp; Transcript:&nbsp; The Technical Interview The programmer who was interviewing me explained how things would go, that I was going to walk right into their offices, get my own desk, and program at one of their computers, with everybody else just doing their jobs, since “that’s how it’s going to be if you join us.” I thought that was pretty cool already. And just like he said, once I got into the office, everybody said hello and continued doing their jobs. Even though I wasn’t close to getting the job, I was already starting to feel like a part of something. The test consisted of building a website to list books for an imaginary library. It seemed simple enough: connect to a database, fetch a list of books, and display them on a webpage, with the buttons for the usual actions for adding books, deleting them, and updating their information. “I can do that,” I thought. While I was focusing on the test, behind me were programmers who were splitting their time between working on their tasks and playing with tennis balls in a very particular way: they were throwing them at each other, with a lot of force, up to the point where one shot hit the reset button of one of the computers and one guy lost what he was doing on his editor. “That’s a strange way to work, but it’s kinda cool,” I thought. I had expected a more formal working environment, but was pleasantly surprised at how relaxed the environment was. Meanwhile, halfway through my implementation, I got stuck. I couldn’t get my code to print the list of books, and nothing was showing up on the screen. “How do I get out of this one?” I wondered. I tried to debug it by adding print statements here and there, but that didn’t work, and I had no idea what was&nbsp;going on. The clock was ticking away, and I was starting to get really desperate.&nbsp;“Come on,” I told myself. “I can’t miss this opportunity because of this problem. What do I do? Should I ask for help? What if this disqualifies me instantly?” I thought about it some more. “I guess they help each other during work,” I reasoned. “OK, whatever, I’m going to ask for help.” I called the interviewer over and talked him through my problem, trying to explain everything I had tried so far, so he wouldn’t think I was cheating him into giving me an answer. Lucky for me, he also had no idea what was going on, so he told me it was fine and that I could leave it as it was. Unfortunately, I had used too much time on this debugging session so I didn’t have enough time to complete the second part of the test. Later on, I would value this lesson, since I saw that asking for help earlier would have saved a lot of time later — time that in this particular case was critical for me. And in the future, it could be critical for the company I would end up working for. I didn’t want to ask for extra time to try to solve the next problem, since I thought that wasn’t fair. I wanted to play by the rules, because I felt it was the right thing to do. As we’ll see later, I think that decision paid off. In the meantime, I had the second problem in front of me and I had to do something about it. I skimmed through it and saw that it was about parsing URLs out of some log files, so I gathered some courage. I put my most convincing face and told the guy that while I understood my time was up, the solution was a matter of just “splitting these lines by these characters, and then going with...

Ep. 3 - How I Went From Selling Food in the Street to Working as a Developer at Companies Like Apple Part 3 - First Week on the Job

Quincy explores Felix Feng's journey from bootcamp grad to professional developer, and how he went from getting $60,000 job offers to $125,000 job offers through sheer practice and persistence.

Article by Felix Feng: twitter.com/felix2feng

Read by Quincy Larson: twitter.com/ossia

Article link: fcc.im/2iX0LtS

Learn to code for free at: www.freecodecamp.org

Intro music by Vangough: fcc.im/2APOG02

Resources mentioned:

www.interviewcake.com

www.hiredintech.com/classrooms/syst…esign/lesson/60

www.educative.io/collection/56425…5679846214598656

www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestio…_tech_interviews/

github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Deve…Interview-Questions

leetcode.com

The email tool Felix uses: rapportive.com/

Ep. 8 - I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here’s what I learned

Madison tells her story of how she went from being a fashion model with no college degree to full-time software engineer in just one year. She used free online resources including freeCodeCamp, and worked for free at a startup until they hired her. Written and read by Madison Kanna:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/MadisonKanna Article link:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2ApFnXO Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: fcc.im/2APOG02 Resources mentioned: https://discoverpraxis.com/ https://www.freecodecamp.org https://www.udacity.com https://frontendmasters.com/ Transcript:  In 2015 I knew almost nothing about coding. Today, I’m a software engineer and a teacher at a code school for kids. When people find out I work as an engineer, they often ask, “How can I get a job as a software engineer coming from a nontraditional background?” Well, you can’t get more nontraditional than me. I was homeschooled growing up, and I’m a college dropout. When I dropped out, I signed with an agency and modeled for fashion brands. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but my sister was a software engineer and she loved it. So one day, I took Udacity’s “Intro to Computer Science” course. And I loved it. Coding became my biggest passion. I knew I would become a software engineer. I also knew it might be the hardest thing I ever did. But I resolved to see it through. I was going to make this happen. If you love to code, and keep working toward your goal of becoming a developer, you will get there — no matter where you come from. Here’s how I did it. Figured out how you learn best. After months of teaching myself to code, I knew I needed that next step, so I applied to several coding bootcamps. Yet I realized that I learn best not by studying, but when I am working. Figuring out how I learn most efficiently was a huge help. For you, maybe you need to immerse yourself fully at a bootcamp, or take a part-time online program. For me, I realized I would learn best by jumping headfirst into an engineering internship. But… how could I get one? Build your personal brand. I knew I wanted real-world experience. So I enrolled in Praxis, a program that places young people into apprenticeships at startups. But Praxis focuses on marketing and sales roles, and I was determined to become an engineer. So, I decided to find myself an engineering internship and use Praxis to help me build my personal brand to increase my chances of being hired. I worked with Simon from Praxis, who helped me prepare for interviews and create my online presence. My mom, an entrepreneur and brand expert, encouraged me to blog about coding, speak at meetups, start a YouTube channel, and continue to build my GitHub portfolio. I kept sharing whatever I was learning about. Eventually, when you Googled me you could immediately see that I was passionate about coding. Google yourself. What do you see? Work for free and love the work. While originally I had hoped to get a paying internship, I quickly realized I had a better chance of getting experience as an engineer if I did free work. I found a startup I wanted to work for and pitched myself to them: I’d work for for free as an engineering dev for a few months. Then they could either promote me or let me go depending on how I did. They agreed, and I spent the next few months working harder than I ever have. I relished every moment I spent just fixing one little bug in the app. Later on, I realized that although I didn’t have a ton of technical skills going in, my passion to learn and my excitement to be a part of the team shone through and got me the internship. Even though I was working for free, I loved the work and the team more than any paying job I’ve ever had. Make your nontraditional background a strength, not a weakness. At first, I didn’t want to highlight just how nontraditional my background was. I feared I already stuck out enough just being a female...

Ep. 9 - How I went from fashion model to software engineer in 1 year

Written and Read by:&nbsp;Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton Follow him on Twitter:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/jhsolor His full article on freeCodeCamp's Medium publication:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2BAhnm6 Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 &nbsp; Transcript: “You will never be able to understand any of what I’ve created. I am Albert F***ing Einstein and you are all monkeys scrabbling in the dirt.” And so our resident genius, our Dr. Jekyll, explosively completed his transformation into Mr. Hyde. He declared this in front of the product design team, developers, management, and pre-launch customers. One of our project sponsors had the temerity to ask when the problem crippling our product would be fixed. Genius is a fickle beast. Sometimes you have the good fortune to work with a mad genius. Other times you are doomed to work with pure madness. There are also times when it is hard to tell the difference. This story is about the fall from grace of an extremely gifted team member with a deep understanding of our product’s architecture. He had an uncanny ability to forecast future requirements, and a ton of domain-specific knowledge. He was our top contributor. He was killing our flagship project. We’ll call this person “Rick.” Rick was universally recognized on the team as the top talent. He was the lead developer and architect of our software projects. Any time anyone had a question about code or needed help with a task, they would go to Rick. Rick had a giant whiteboard installed in his office used only for this purpose. It was always cluttered with the ghosts of past discussions that wouldn’t quite erase. Any time there was a particularly challenging problem, Rick would handle it. Rick had a server with the same specs as our production server installed at his desk. He used this to run the entire application stack independently and troubleshoot every layer at once. Rick didn’t need anybody else. Rick preferred to work alone in his private work-space. Rick didn’t need anything anybody else built. He built everything he needed from scratch because it was infinitely better than the paltry offerings of mere mortals. Soon, Rick stopped attending meetings. Rick didn’t have time for meetings any more because there was too much to code. Rick closed his door. His whiteboard lay fallow. Rick no longer had time to train anyone because he had too much to solve on his own. A backlog grew behind Rick. Bugs were popping up in old tools he’d built. They sapped his attention from meeting commitments on new product development. Of course, these bugs were happening because the users had misstated their assumptions. Of course there wasn’t any problem in his work. Of course. On our project dashboard, green flags changed to yellow. Yellow changed to red. Red lights started blinking. One by one, task statuses changed to “Impeded.” Everyone was waiting for Rick. The project manager got a six-month extension from the sponsor. At the end of the six months, production-readiness was estimated to be seven months away. At the end of a year, production-readiness was two years out. Rick was churning out code faster than ever. He was working seven-day weeks, twelve hours a day. Everyone knew only Rick could pull the team out of this mess. Everyone held their breath and waited for Rick to invent the miracle cure that would mend this crippled project. Every day, Rick grew more belligerent and isolated. The mask was coming off. Jekyll was becoming Hyde. I participated in my first meeting with the project team about two years after the original agreed release date. I’d been aware of the project for a while, because it had grown infamous in my organization, but hadn’t been assigned to it. I was sent in to see if we could save it. My first meeting on the project was the aforementioned “Albert Einstein” meeting. Hmm. I dove into the source code. Rick was right: no-one...

Ep. 9 - We fired our top developer talent. Best decision we ever made.

Roger explains why everyone should learn to code, even if they don't intend to go pro. "Learning something difficult, however, is beneficial in and of itself. The process is the prize. Struggling with code, while frustrating, is medicine for the mind." Written and Read by Roger Collier:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/RogerAFCollier Original article:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2keLLrU Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript:&nbsp; It was far past midnight. My wife and kids had long gone to bed. But sleep was not an option for me. I had to figure it out. So I tweaked the code again, for the googolth time, and hit run. Hmm, looks promising. If I click here, the program should call the “compute next move” function. Yes. And if I click here, that function should call itself. Good. Now, if I click here, I should get…not that. Argh. More tweaks. More errors. More hours tick by. Learning programming is hard, I thought. My next thought? Yes, and that’s why I like it. How programming became my hobby I began to learn how to code using JavaScript four months ago, starting with freeCodeCamp’s front-end curriculum. For me, programming became a hobby. Over the past few years, I had become disappointed with my creation-to-consumption ratio. Too much of my free time was spent consuming. Netflix, podcasts, Twitter, magazines, televised sports, Facebook, blogs, Medium, newspapers, novels — the list goes on. There is nothing wrong with any of these activities, but they are all pure input. Even reading a great book is an act of consumption. Sure, I was generating plenty of output in my job as a journalist, but I could no longer accept the fact that hard work was something I did only when it would result in a paycheck. With a family and a career and other obligations, I had only so much free time. I was spending far too much of it scarfing down media. And I felt like a pig. So far, my programming hobby hasn’t result in all that much output. I made one simple app, which I wrote about in a previous article. I’ve completed all the front-end challenges and projects on freeCodeCamp. But it’s a start. My goal is not to create amazing things to impress people. It is simply to immerse myself in the act of creation, to challenge myself, to attempt something difficult — if for no other reason than to finish it. Harder is better In my home province — Ontario, Canada — there is a movement to improve physical health called Make Your Day Harder. The basic premise is that making small tweaks to daily routines to increase physical activity can add up and improve health. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Get off the bus one stop before your destination. Take the parking spot farthest away from the entrance at work. I couldn’t agree more. Those elevator-hating far-parkers are onto something. Of course, sitting in front of a computer writing code isn’t going to improve your physical health. JavaScript is great for building apps, not abs. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, though, to suggest that learning how to program is healthy for your brain. Healthier, at least, than bingeing Iron Fist or thumbing through celebrity Instagram accounts. For me, even after I started coding, the default during downtime is still too often leisure. This month, for instance, I have already spent dozens of hours watching genetic outliers throw a ball at a metal ring. This is otherwise known as the NBA playoffs. Since I’m a Toronto Raptors fan, you could also call it self-induced torture. Does watching so much basketball — alone, in my basement — benefit me in any way? Well, I drink more beer when I watch sports. I eat more nachos and wings and potato chips. Mike and Ikes have made several appearances. Oh, and I often stay up late to watch the West Coast games, so I’m getting less sleep. In other words, watching sports, for me, is a vice. I enjoy...

Ep. 11 - Programming is hard. That’s precisely why you should learn it.

For Haseeb's first software developer job, he was able to negotiate a total compensation package of US $250,000 for his first year at Airbnb. He believes negotiation is a skill that can be learned, just like any other. And it isn't particularly elusive or hard to understand. In this episode, he explains how anyone can negotiate effectively. Written and Read by Haseeb Qureshi:&nbsp;https://twitter.com/hosseeb Haseeb's original article:&nbsp;https://fcc.im/2FiLq0v Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Transcript:&nbsp; When the story of how I landed a job at Airbnb went viral, I was surprised at how infatuated people were with my negotiations. Media stories portrayed me as some kind of master negotiator — a wily ex-poker-player who was able to con the tech giants into a lucrative job offer. This is silly. It’s silly for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that in reality, my negotiation skills are nothing special. There are lots of job candidates who are better negotiators than I, to speak nothing of recruiters and other professional negotiators. It just so happens that most people don’t negotiate at all, or if they do, they negotiate just enough to satisfy themselves that they did. Worse yet, most of the advice out there on negotiation is borderline useless. Almost anything you read on the subject will be a vague and long-winded exhortation to “make sure you negotiate” and “never say the first number.” Beyond those two morsels of advice, you’re pretty much on your own. I thought to myself: why is there so little actionable advice out there about negotiation? I suspect it’s because deep down, many people believe that negotiation is inexplicable, that it’s something some people can do and others can’t, and that there’s no real way to break it down so anyone can learn it. I say that’s BS. Negotiation is a skill that can be learned, just like any other. I don’t believe it’s particularly elusive or hard to understand. So I’m going to try to explain how anyone can do it. Three caveats. First: I’m not an expert. There are people who really are experts at this, and when my advice contradicts theirs, you should assume I’m wrong. Second: negotiation is tricky to generalize about because it’s deeply intertwined with social dynamics and power. The appropriate advice for an Asian male in Silicon Valley may not be appropriate for a black woman in Birmingham, Alabama. Racial, sexual, and political dynamics accompany you to the negotiating table. At the same time, I want to caution against overemphasizing these factors. Being afraid to negotiate out of fear of discrimination can often be just as deleterious as discrimination itself. Ceteris paribus, negotiate aggressively. Third: I’m the first to admit that negotiation is stupid. It’s a practice that inherently benefits those who are good at it, and is an absurd axis on which to reward people. But it’s a reality of our economic system. And like most collective action problems, we’re probably not going to be able to abolish it any time soon. In which case, you might as well improve at it. So here’s my guide to negotiation. It’s going to be split into two parts: this first part will be about conceptualizing the negotiating process, about how to begin the process and set yourself up for maximal success. The second part will be advice on the actual back-and-forth portion of negotiating and how to ask for what you want. Let’s take it from the top. What it means to “get a job” In our culture we call entering the employment market “trying to get a job.” This is an unfortunate turn of phrase. “Getting a job” implies that jobs are a resource out in the world, and you’re attempting to secure one of these resources. But that’s completely backwards. What you are actually doing is selling your labor, and a company is bidding for it. Employment is just...

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