Originally posted here by FullStackAcademy “Until my tenure at Twitter, I strongly resisted being ‘the Black guy,’” writes Mark S. Luckie, an author, digital strategist, and former Twitter employee. “I didn’t want to be the sole representative of a multifaceted group of people or be siloed into focusing on Black issues.” That perspective makes total sense. Wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable if everyone in the office expected you to speak for millions of other individuals for no other reason than that you were seen to share the same skin color and
This article was originally posted here. Written by Jennifer Opal It is the end of British Science Week where we celebrate all things STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths). As we celebrate incredible pioneers in science, I thought, “Why not share how you became a Junior Software Engineer?” (When I say you, I mean me! Haha!) Let’s start with my background… So what was I doing before I discovered coding? Well, I was previously working with a Young Offenders Team of a Council back in London & volunteering with young
Still assuming you need a degree, have to spend $$$ on coding boot camps or need work experience to get in the game? Fake news! The industry standard model behind the ‘coding boot camp’ is changing. With so much untapped potential talent [and revenue streams] some boot camps realize that charging upfront is not optimal. Several companies are now experimenting with how to offer their courses for free or very cheap to prospective customers. Everybody is racking their heads over how to take a slice in the big higher education pie
When Brittney Ball was pregnant and homeless in Washington DC, she never imagined she would be a successful software engineer, public speaker, and mentor just six short years later. But with hard work and determination, she has proven that your past doesn’t have to define your future. When Brittney found out she was expecting, she knew she had to get off the streets. The Salvation Army, Turning Point Center, opened their doors to provide transitional housing for Brittney and later her son, Liam. While there, she enrolled in Year Up,
“From a young age, I always learned to look at the situation that you’re in and consider what a faster, more innovative approach is.” This mindset has guided Fereshteh Forough on a pretty remarkable path, launching Code to Inspire, the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan. While a deep passion for rebuilding Afghanistan drives Fereshteh, she was born in a refugee camp in Iran. Her parents were forced to leave Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in the early 1980s, and the first time she stepped foot in her home
In the first installment of this series, we talked about strategies for learning to code when you’re starting out. Now we’ll move on to a topic that has been the source of blood, sweat, tears, and flipped tables for many a developer… Debugging, also known as the “why the $#!%* isn’t this working?” phenomenon. Stuck on a Coding Problem? It’s impossible to describe just how demoralizing it can be to try and fail at bug fixing. If you haven’t yet, at some point, you will feel like a prize idiot despite
Coding is damn hard. When you’re just starting out, coding is hard as hell. There’s just a lot of stuff to learn in web development. Front-end or back-end? React, Angular, Ruby, .NET? AJAX, JSON, SQL, MySQL, noSQL?? You may feel at times that you’re drowning in technobabble. Thanks Data, that helps a lot. The good news is, you can get good at coding. The bad news is, you are not going to master it in 12 weeks. Sorry if you’ve been told otherwise. Now, you can certainly pick up some of the
I recently attended a coding workshop hosted by the wonderful Node Girls in London where I was asked to give a talk about my journey into the technology industry. I gave a fairly honest and humorous (or so I’m told!) account of how I started learning to code, things I struggled with and a few tips and tricks that worked for me. After I got over my I-didn’t-do-Computer-Science-at-uni-so-I-will-never-become-a-developer phase, I finally took the plunge and started learning how to programme. This was almost a year ago and overall this experience has been
I decided to write a blog post on 4 things I have learned in my 7 months as a junior data engineer to document my learning and in the attempt to help others. These points are in no particular order and can be applied across engineering roles. When you have an idea, build it! There was a time when I raised my idea for a project, then waited for validation before I built it. I was told my idea was okay, and it remained in the backlog of tickets to do
I’ve been working on the CodeNewbie Challenge (aka #CNC2018) for months. It’s a project to help coders do one of four things: start coding, code more, blog more, or get a job. You pick a challenge, and over the course of 5, 7, or 9 weeks, you get a weekly mission with reading, research, and a homework assignment to help you reach your goal. It’s based on powerful questions, guided research, and curated resources to help point you in the right direction. You can learn more and sign up here
