
I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115 - jenniferDewalt
http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/56319597560/im-learning-to-code-by-building-180-websites-in-180
======
sivers
There’s this great story from the book “Art and Fear”, that's very appropriate
here:

===

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class
into two groups.

All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on
the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its
quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his
bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pounds of pots
rated an “A”, 40 pounds a “B”, and so on.

Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot —
albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest
quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of
work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing
about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts
than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

===

Advance congratulations to Jennifer. This is amazing.

~~~
edw519
This is a great reason to do what is often frowned upon by us high achieving
Hacker Newsers: get a job.

I have worked on so many projects in so many jobs that I lost track long ago.
But it's always been the same: Get it done, good enough, on time! At first, I
was always frustrated that I wasn't delivering product up to my own standards.
But a funny thing happens when you do that hundreds (or thousands) of times:
You get so good from sheer repetition that "good enough" morphs into "pretty
damn good".

Don't be afraid to take what appears to be a boring, repetitious, or demeaning
job. You never know what you might become.

Thanks for the great story, Derek!

And thanks for the great post and project, Jennifer. You inspire me.

~~~
bennyg
Practice makes perfect. It's a tired adage, but it's absolutely true.

~~~
mscarborough
True, for sure.

But then perfect is the enemy of good, which for anyone doing software should
remember.

Until a customer or someone important actually cares about that 2px off CSS,
that refactor you want to do, or your caching/performance numbers, just don't
do it. Wait till someone asks and then get after it.

I love how OP put her work out there to prove her wide array of skills, or
more important, her ability to learn random skills. Who else has put out 180
sites for public review?

Awesome!!

~~~
bennyg
I agree - but I don't think the statement semantically means perfection. It
really means "practice makes greatness." Perfect just has a P.

~~~
mscarborough
Yes, you said it much more succinctly than I did.

------
wellingtons
I have to ask: How on earth do you find the time to do this?

As much as I'd love to do this in order to get my hands dirty on web
development and out of systems, I can't ever fathom having the free time
available every day consecutively.

I mean, for someone "learn(ing) to code" on Day 1 and by Day 15 doing
"Dropping Boxes", it just seems a little far fetched. Obviously you have had a
good portion of coding experience and are using -some- level of resources, or
you are a savant.

I don't mean to sound rude, I just feel like the readers deserve a deeper
level of explanation and cited resources, rather than believing you reinvented
Conway's Game of Life by day 108.

Edit: I have to add that this is all very excellent work and good on you for
sticking to your goals so far. Clearly you are a very talented individual.
Cheers.

~~~
ultimatedelman
seconded. day 46 you wrote a snake game using canvas manipulation? i call
shenanigans.

~~~
apalmer
I definitely see your point, but from her description she spends 10 hours a
day on this excersize. I could see that level of progress given those
constraints, 10 hours a day every days for a month and a half is insane
dedication.

On the other hand that level of dedication seems to indicate that apparently
she has some kind of OCD, no disrespect just wild speculation.

~~~
ultimatedelman
i'm not saying that this feat of creating 180 websites in 180 days is
impossible. it's highly improbable and takes a very unique mix of dedication,
intellect, funding, and, well, nothing better to do for half a year, but
that's for someone with a background in coding. my beef is that this person is
claiming to come from a completely non-programming background and has not read
any books or taken any courses. i don't care if you spend 24 hours a day
coding, you can't write a program as complex as MS Paint in canvas in a month
if you've never written a line of code in your life. There are just too many
intermediate steps missing and progress is just too fast.

I would love to be wrong about this, but seeing as I've been doing this for a
really long time, this just smells funny to me.

~~~
JackFr
Indeed -- I find it kind of hard to believe that someone with truly zero
programming experience knows what github or even knows what source control is.

I have no doubts about the main thrust, just some details seem as if they are
embellished.

~~~
wicker
Github and source control are the very first things out of my mouth when
someone expresses interest in programming. They were the first things that
were recommended to me. I basically say to go get set up on github and walk
through the tutorials, and 'follow' me while you're at it. Instant community
feeling and the new programmer can always Stack Overflow 'how to revert my
last commit'. It's low-hanging fruit to get set up.

Next, I usually suggest grabbing an introductory reference and a bunch of
small projects (usually my go-to is Project Euler) in the language of their
choice. What she's doing is exactly what I'd recommend if you were brand new
and wanted to get a feel for the landscape.

------
freyr
So many hurt egos in this thread.

If you think what she's done is impossible, have you ever devoted 70/hrs a
week to a personal endeavor for 6 straight months? Would you have the
willpower and perseverance to stay committed and focused?

Also, these are cool sites, infused with a lot of creativity and a refined
aesthetic sense, but it's not as if she's claimed to have written an OS or
compiler in 115 days. Much of the javascript code is covered extensively in
brief online tutorials. Maybe, given 10 hours, you couldn't ingest a tutorial
and put your own spin on the concept, but thinking that _nobody_ else could do
that is a bit arrogant.

~~~
petea
So let's see her repository
([https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt](https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt)).

This girl not only became a competent front end developer in 100 days, but
looking at the Gemfile, she knows how to use capistrano, redis, capistrano,
paperclip, omniauth and devise?

She knows the best practices for Rails perfectly. She not only grasped to use
MVC perfectly, but also organized asset codes perfectly in like 50 days.

I forgot to mention that she knew Rails from like day 1.

Additionally, she knew better to hide sensitive information about secret
tokens for maybe AWS in the config folder and other Rails environment info.

Really? Is Hacker News this gullible? If you really want to see what actual
beginner struggle with for 10 hours a day, go take a look at StackOverflow.
Beginners are struggling for hours to create hoverover effects and persistent
footer.

~~~
eieio
As far as I can tell this is an account that was created entirely to post
negative responses in this thread. How sad.

(it was created 1 hour ago and the only comments from the account are negative
posts about the article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=petea](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=petea))

To me it just confirms what the GP said: plenty of bruised egos in this
thread.

~~~
petea
I created a new account to avoid precisely people like you psychologizing
libelously about who I am. I feel reassured that it was a good idea to create
a new account.

~~~
rodgerd
It's interesting that you reach so quickly for the adjective "libellous" given
the tenor of your comments and the insinuations therein.

And, unlike the subject of the post, you don't even have the courage to stick
your identity to your work.

~~~
hollerith
>you don't even have the courage to stick your identity to your work.

Neither do you -- as far as I can tell by viewing your profile and googling on
your user name.

------
headcanon
I suppose the hardest part of doing something like this, at least for me,
would be coming up with a list of ideas of exactly what to create - not just
coming up with 180 things, but 180 things that I can reasonably expect to
accomplish in one day. Did you come up with that list beforehand, or do you
decide today what to do tomorrow, or something in between? Some other random
questions that come to mind - What's your daily schedule like during this
period? How many hours do you typically spend on a single project? Are you
also working during this period, or did you save up some money beforehand?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Before I started the project I freaked out and wrote down a list of every idea
I could think of. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to run out of ideas but I
usually get inspired by what I've been working on.

I spend about 10 hours a day working on the project which doesn't leave time
for much else. Most of that time is spent coding the day's website and I spend
about an hour at the end of the day writing the blog post. Monday's start with
me writing a bigger post about my thoughts from the previous week.

~~~
pdenya
I'm extremely impressed by how far you've gotten in this. I've seen a lot of
these "create something every day" quests but they're usually in the first few
days when posted.

10 hours a day spent on this seems like a huge commitment to me. I clicked the
link to your blog but didn't see anything more to the motivations of this
project. Have you posted any more details on what made you choose to devote
yourself to this non-profit full time endeavor?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
I had been thinking about how people communicate with each other on the
internet and I got really interested in how websites facilitate that
communication. I figured learning how to code would be a good way to see how
those websites work and maybe even get to help build them myself.

I wrote a little about this here -
[http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/53231496490/week-11-lets...](http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/53231496490/week-11-lets-
talk)

------
whbk
From her Facebook, September 2009: "If you don't know already, I've created an
iPhone app! I've been working really hard on this and have had lots of fun
taking pictures of myself and my friends. Oh, what it does is gives everyone
in the picture a HOT or COLD rating. The app is called ruHOT and is available
for download for the iPhone and Android phones. Check it out!"

So yeah, highly doubt this is truly her first rodeo. Cool project(s)
nonetheless and impressive dedication.

~~~
ryan-allen
Interesting sleuthing. Maybe it's just exceptionally well targeted self-
advertising. I know I'll get creamed by playing the gender card, but if this
were a guy, would we be so coy to call them out on the fact that 'this ain't
your first time'.

I think if anything this kind of misinformation regarding 'the possible output
for a beginner' is actually discouraging to beginning developers. I do think
this experiment it self-serving.

I have been doing web for around 10 years and it would be no cakewalk (albeit
not impossible, if I had the time) to come up with a new novel idea every day
for 180 days, and certainly as a beginner this kind of output is the most
improbable thing I have ever seen (I have taught a few smart people how to get
started and it takes a long time).

So, do we play along and misinform all the other true beginners or do we call
out this Red Herring?

If we want more women to be welcome in tech they have to be held to the same
kind of standards (honesty and ability). We can't let one individual get away
with this kind of dishonesty because of gender.

And if you don't think this kind of manipulation exists, you should go read
Reddit sometime (it's full of stuff like this, you can turn a picture of a
random puppy into massive attention by saying 'look at who I adopted from an
abusive home! I will love him for ever!').

Think about it people!

EDIT: The projects Jen has done are cool and interesting, no doubt. And the
'just f'ing do it' idea is even better. But can't possibly be programming
beginner.

EDIT 2: I probably shouldn't be such a bastard, but anyway. Good job. Just be
honest where you are coming from and you'll get deeper respect, I think is my
point.

~~~
James_Duval
I created a game in Actionscript 2.0 back in 2009.

I started to program in around November of 2011.

Being able to cobble together an app or what-have-you is very different from
programming, I think. I would not call what I did back then programming.

I even wrote a couple of follow-up games which used a tile-based map system
and pathfinding but didn't store nodes on the map as variables - the game
calculated the location of the nodes each time they were to be used. That's
hideous.

I'd also point out that the vastness of the internet's resources should not be
underestimated. I could create something awesome in 10 hours using Codecademy
as a reference and generic tutorials I found using Google.

The problem for me would be finding 10 hours to do this in.

I do not think that this is a deliberate attempt to deceive as much as it is a
sense the person feels that the person is 'not a proper programmer'. Hell, if
I created a similar project now, after completing coursera/proglang and
coursera/algorithm-design-and-analysis and working with web design for about a
year and a half, I would _still_ call it "teaching myself to code", because
there is so much to learn I'm barely dipping my toe in the water.

------
cocoflunchy
This one is awesome:
[http://jenniferdewalt.com/song_machine/page](http://jenniferdewalt.com/song_machine/page)

~~~
zerr
Interesting how that is implemented. Didn't quite get from viewing page
source. I mean, where is js?

~~~
ultimatedelman
at some point, she learned about minification and http requests and
concatenated all her scripts into one "application" script.

~~~
cgcardona
It looks like the site is built with Ruby on Rails.

Rails has a feature called 'The Asset Pipeline'[1] which handles
concatenation, minification, and compression

[1]
[http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html](http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html)

------
jbp
This kind of dedication is inspiring.

From
[http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/51616616313/day-58-explo...](http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/51616616313/day-58-explosions)
:

"Tomorrow I head to Pennsylvania to host a bridal shower and bachelorette
weekend for my sister. Between the pre-wedding festivities and visiting with
family, I’m going to be pretty limited on time for building websites. But, the
show must go on and I am excited to see what kind of goodness I can create
under pressure."

Congratulations Jennifer.

------
eat
These comments are infuriating, but not unexpected. So many people who have
likely wasted their last 115 days attempting to find every fault with someone
who clearly hasn't.

OP: Excellent work, and keep it up. I hope you take the criticisms and
disbelief for what they truly are: incontrovertible evidence that you're doing
something _very_ right.

~~~
bsklaroff
If I were Jennifer I'd be flattered by the comments. It must feel great to
have produced so much quality work that HN naysayers tell you what you did is
impossible after you've already done it.

~~~
unimpressive
This, when I used to make Halo maps I would often be accused of modding the
game to make them. I always took this as a compliment.

------
mehulkar
This is awesome. Reminds me of the girl who learned to dance in one year by
recording herself every day. Also reminds me of Seth Godin who recommends
starting the day by producing rather than consuming and follows the practice
by writing a new blog post every day, without fail.

Consistency is so hugely important. Quality is born from quantity.

~~~
it_learnses
"Start the day by producing instead of consuming." Sounds wonderful. I'm going
to try and live by that. Thanks for this :)

~~~
garybizzle
but i love breakfast.

~~~
jimhart3000
Then cook it before you eat it.

~~~
garybizzle
genius

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But don't "consume" any energy cooking it?

------
ekr
I'm going to ignore all the malicious comments about how fraudulent this is.
This is an amazing achievement, and it reminds me of a much better way of
improving your skills.

Last time I wanted to build a ray-tracer, I starting using the PBR book, and
then started learning about Fourier series and transforms, about signals etc.
This of depth-first aquisition of knowledge is not very adequate for the
average human mind, whose curiosity and motivation are much better served by
achieving many short and tangible results, a so-called feedback loop.

Seeing Jennifer and her progress, I'm determined to start a similar project: 1
demo (not necessarily 4k/64k) coded in asm/GLSL per week. That's after I
actually finish writing my hobby OS, which is being done in the same DFS
fashion (started reading Tanenbaum's book on Minix, it has plenty of
references).

------
jqueryin
This is great and all, but I do have to call BS on no previous coding
experience. Perhaps she had plenty of HTML experience and wouldn't regard that
as coding experience. If you look at her early examples, even on something
like day 3, you find the following in the source:

    
    
        * Inclusion of a CSS reset stylesheet
        * Inclusion of jQuery 1.9.1
        * Usage of HTML5 footer tag
        * Inclusion of the HTML5 shiv JS
    

If this wasn't boilerplate HTML being used, I have no idea where a beginner
would know these three things on day 3. Perhaps just stumbling upon the right
project?

Also noteworthy is the inclusion of an external JS file for loading Google
Analytics. Most people have no idea what this is or how to set it up

------
ansdkfus13
This story indeed is very inspiring. I'm a business major turned front-end
designer. I worked as a financial analyst for a semi-conductor company for two
years and realized I want a career that fosters my creative side. Working with
Excel, though I got very good at it :P, all day long made my day very dull and
monotonous. I got my husband to teach me how to code (he's a CS major, working
as a product manager for a SF company). Now I am fairly proficient in
Photoshop, Illustrator, CSS, HTML, and Javascript. Then I made a Python
program which analyzes the proper excess inventory to keep for the
semiconductor company I worked for, which got me a lot of recognition (the
program was prob elementary level and messy but got a credit for being a
financial analyst that can code). I quit my day job and I'm working on my
startup, for which I'm doing all the front end coding and some of back-end
coding as well. Also relocating to SF to pursue this new found passion. I wish
the best of luck to Jennifer and other people like her.

------
txutxu
I take my hat off by personal challenge and the technical side of the project.

But I put more kudos on "publishing it".

I'm a self-taught which now can say I'm more than a decade in the industry,
but I think I could never publish my "learning" projects because maybe I'm
ashamed of their quality.

I think what you have do is nice, and more important is well presented for
others to see. So you maybe encouraging others to do the same.

That is the spirit. Great.

------
keiferski
Wow, this is really inspiring. I see that she's hosting them all on her
personal domain, but I have a question, if anyone has an answer. What's the
easiest/most cost-effective way to host a _large_ number of sites on different
domains?

Learn how to use a VPS? Static pages with NearlyFreeSpeech? I've got a zillion
ideas (and after seeing this, will be building them soon) but they need to be
on separate domains. Paying $5/month or whatever for each is obviously not
optimal.

~~~
bluedino
You can buy a large number of domains but don't want to spend $5/month for
them?

~~~
yatsyk
Some domains are free. Why limit yourself to second-level domains?

------
booop
In a similar vein, here's a thread of a complete rookie starting from scratch
who turned into a fantastic artist by drawing a sketch every day :
[http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870)

I guess this works for learning programming too.

~~~
jianshen
I've always loved that thread because there's such a huge history of progress.
It'd be interesting to see the OP come back in a year to implement one of
these exercises and compare the quality of the code from where she started.

------
jmtame
I looked through your comment history to see if you already answered and
couldn't find it. What happened when you got stuck? I'd suspect there were
points where you couldn't figure something out; it tends to happen when you
become frustrated and you have to take a break. You mentioned that you had no
previous programming experience. How much time did you spend learning before
you created the first app on day 1?

I ask because this goes against the pattern I've observed in most students. I
was involved in starting Bloc, which is an online programming bootcamp. I
think the #1 value proposition is having a person there to help when you get
unstuck. It's fascinating to see you overcome the learning curve on your own
which affects most people trying to learn.

Just so I can fully understand: did you have any human interaction or
assistance during this entire time? That to me is the most impressive part of
this. A lot of us had TAs, professors, group projects where we worked closely
with others. I don't know a single person in my own network who has learned to
program on their own without any human help.

Hope it doesn't come across as if I'm belittling what you've done or seem
skeptical, this is really impressive!

------
DanBC
This is amazing. It's inspiring. I like the rules you set for yourself - a
blog post to accompany every website, and releasing the code on github.

It's important that people know the WWW is not out of their reach, and that
they can create stuff. This post, and Neocities, strongly feed that
"democratisation" of the Internet.

Next it might be a nice idea to do 4 websites, one a month, but polish them so
they're standards compliant, as accessible as possible, etc.

------
stevewilhelm
In the next couple of weeks you might want to look at secure authentication
and authorized resource access, scaling, sessions, cross-platform issues,
internationalization, adaptive design, etc.

Also might want to revisit some of your existing websites to get some exposure
to refactoring, bug fixing, prioritizing feature requests, test based
development, performance profiling, etc.

------
carlosgg
Bravo!! I really liked this: "I think the best way to learn is to solve
problems that you actually have. This is the primary reason I decided not to
follow a course or textbook. By following my own path, I can tackle new
concepts and problems in the most logical order possible, which is precisely
when I have them. When I have questions, I look them up on Stack Overflow. If
I need to make a big jump, like starting a new language or platform, I’ll
bootstrap off of a textbook only until I get off the ground."

~~~
it_learnses
I've started many times to do projects or follow books or lectures, and it's
very hard to stay disciplined. However, once you start on your problem, I
agree that it's probably a good idea to look at some lectures/books/blogs to
take a look at what's available in terms of technologies and practices to save
you time and money.

------
rdouble
Did you pre-plan the ideas for the websites?

When doing art, I used to set goals like "do 30 drawings in a month." However,
I've found that I just draw the same stuff over and over again if I leave it
at that. I have to actually make a theme (draw 30 plants) and even get a
detailed list (draw a jade plant, a hydrangea, etc) in order to actually make
any progress.

I am curious if you did any planning like this regarding the choice of sites
you made?

------
alcuadrado
To be honest, as soon as I read the title I thought "but if you force yourself
to deliver something new every day you want have enough time to actually learn
new stuff in between", and you proved me wrong. Congratulations!

------
ValG
An additional anecdote comes from Jerry Seinfeld, (comedian). He says that his
goal when he got into comedy (and still to this day) is to write jokes every
day. Create a chain of joke writing and keep track of it in a physical way (in
his example, a calendar that he marks off with an X every time he sits down to
write). You create momentum that you don't want to break, and even though you
might not be writing good jokes (good code, etc...) every day, there is still
improvement going on. [1]

All anecdote, but it seems to point to the fact that the value of iteration on
DOING is more valuable than iteration on PLANNING. (i.e. plan a little bit,
and do a lot).

[1] [http://www.writersstore.com/dont-break-the-chain-jerry-
seinf...](http://www.writersstore.com/dont-break-the-chain-jerry-seinfeld/)

------
akurilin
Basically, work a lot. Make sure there's always a chunk of work that's new and
challenging, a form of deliberate practice. Also make sure there's a chunk of
work that's reinforcing what you already know until it becomes second nature.
Rinse and repeat. Kaizen.

------
cgcardona
Really great idea Jennifer! This is the kind of initiative and creativity that
will surely land you multiple job opportunities.

It reminds me of the steps which I took to transition into working on software
professionally full time.

I came to programming relatively late in life when I was 26 and found out that
my wife was expecting a baby.

The sudden change facing my wife and I made me take a hard look at my skill
set to decide how quickly I could provide for us.

I decided that my interest in setting up wordpress installs as well as
tinkering with Photoshop/Illustrator was the surest, safest, and quickest path
to a successful career and decided then and there that within 6 months I would
have a job as a junior web developer.

To help accelerate this I signed up at my local community college for courses
related to getting a web design certificate. Ultimately I took 2 semesters (1
of which was a compressed summer semester) of classes including CS-1,
Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, HTML/CSS, PHP/MySQL.

Soon I began to get the feeling that school was moving too slowly. I had
joined the W3C HTML5 Working Group and was also participating in the WHATWG
and started to realize that I was learning much more by hacking on code in the
evenings than I was in class.

During this time I started to create a portfolio showcasing new HTML5 APIs as
they would become available across different browsers. Mostly I did this out
of my own passion for web standards and wanting to understand the most cutting
edge APIs as soon as they dropped. However this portfolio soon became
incredibly valuable with regards to landing a job.

During the second semester I got the chance to interview for a local android
dev shop (this is in Santa Cruz, CA). I got the job but didn't find Java to be
a good fit for my skills at the time and after a couple of months transitioned
to another local dev shop.

This company was a rails shop building an app for Walmart's internal network.
I got the job based on my HTML5 knowledge and soon found myself learning
rails.

Around this time I made the decision to quit going to school and to focus full
time on my job. I was at this job for about a year until the company
unfortunately went out of business.

Since I left that job I've spent a year and a half at trulia.com where I was
on the mobile team building m.trulia.com, Trulia's native windows 8 app, and
the suite of webservices powering Trulia's native iOS/Android/Windows apps.
Currently I'm at cardfree.com where I'm working with ruby on rails.

The reason I posted this tale is to encourage you to continue what you're
doing! When I look back at my short but exciting career I notice that though I
feel fortunate to have gotten a couple of semesters of training at a junior
college it was mostly always the projects and initiatives which I undertook in
my personal and spare time which ended up being the most valuable for me.

There is _so_ much opportunity and demand in the consumer web and electronics
space right now that showing this initiative and creating such a strong
portfolio will surely land you multiple job offers if that's what you are
looking for.

Either way excellent work and I wish you the best of luck going forward!

~~~
zange
Are you still based in Santa Cruz? I'm also starting up programming slightly
later on while going to a community college (possibly the same one that you
went to??), as I first started tinkering with some PHP around a year ago (my
age now is 22), then tried a bit of RoR but they ended up being false starts.

I've in the last few months started back up with Python (primarily Flask) and
JavaScript (mainly AngularJS), and deployed a couple toy web apps in the last
month.

I don't know too many people in town, so I'm wondering is Santa Cruz still a
viable place to get into the professional world? Might you have any specific
advice for getting started here?

Thanks!

~~~
einarvollset
Not OP, but in SC - email: einar@lcrnd.com

~~~
maaaats
But, but, your name sound so Norwegian..??

------
espadagroup
Finally someone posting a challenge they're undertaking when they have at
least accomplished already some of it. I hate seeing people announce that they
are about to do something. This is much much better.

------
jorgecastillo
I am really impressed this gal sure has a promising future as a software
developer. I must also say this made me a little sad, she has done in days
what I haven't been able to do in years.

------
donaq
You are super awesome. I have been programming for years and I still don't
know how to do some of the stuff you've done for your websites. I'm sure I
could easily learn how to, but then it's easy for me because I have the
advantage of years of experience. To be able to get to where you are within 3
months is astounding to me and that tells me something about the validity of
your approach, so I'm gonna shamelessly rip you off the next time I need to
learn a new skill.

Somebody hire this person!

------
kenster07
I have mixed emotions, not about the author, but the implications of this
thread. It is great that she shows such dedication to the craft. But has
dedication to a craft really become so rare that it is worthy of 900 plus
points on hacker news? I know countless software engineers who work their
tails off every waking hour, myself included. Do we all deserve hacker news
posts? Or should we elevate our expectations?

~~~
nrivadeneira
I don't think there's any real value in HN points, so you're basically asking
if it's worthy of something worthless. It's just an indicator of interest by
the HN community, not a gift of any worth. That being said, I'm sure a decent
chunk of the 900 votes were from software devs, many of whom are probably ones
that work their tails off. It's possible there is something more intriguing
than the dedication alone. One thing I find interesting is the head-first/all-
in nature of the project.

------
karolisd
This is inspiring and I'm not sure why. It's not technically impressive,
there's far more impressive tutorials and snippets a single Google search
away. It's something about the persistence and a desire to learn and improve.
It's about the beginner's mind and artistic whimsy. I get to see someone's
thought process expressed through a hundred tiny websites.

------
anishkothari
Brilliant. Good for you! Suggestion: add some contact information in your
profile

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks for the tip! I added my email address.

~~~
anishkothari
You're welcome - let us know what happens after this!

------
fnbaptiste
This is awesome. When I read the title I was expecting a bunch of exercises in
layout with different slick UIs and such. I was very surprised by how creative
each of these were. They're very fun to go through. And in the end, when it
comes to getting a job, this kind of stuff looks way better than "went to
school, got this degree".

------
dataduck
Jennifer, you mentioned you weren't following any kind of course - how did you
decide what to build on the next day?

------
t0dd
Very impressive. It reminds one that complaining about "too much work" is
often just a poor excuse for petrifying in a niche of self-satisfaction and
comfort. I can't read all of this, browse what you've accomplished in so
little time, and doubt the feeling great things are destined for you.
Congrats!

------
throwaway3030
I'm a software engineer. I love this style of learning.

However, if the idea of building 180 different websites in 180 days sounds so
unappealing to me I actually winced when I read the title, should I find
another career? (real question)

I'd rather do the opposite thing, sell my laptop and do 180 drawings or
sculptures in 180 days.

------
jbranchaud
Jennifer, I've skimmed through a handful of your projects and they are all
very creative, fun and thoughtful. I'd be excited to see what you could do
with d3.js ([http://d3js.org/](http://d3js.org/)). Check it out if you haven't
already!

------
eagler
Congratulations! I'm impressed how you just got started rather than waiting
for "the perfect moment." Your persistence and progress are inspiring. Also,
your work doubles as a collection of engaging content ideas for teaching
beginning programming :) Thank you!

------
pwelch
As someone else mentioned, I think the hardest part is coming up with idea.

Most of these are really cool! Awesome job.

------
javadi82
Thanks so much for posting this. This is the most inspiring "show HN" I've
seen here.

------
Tycho
I've thought of doing this before. Make one attempt every day, and see it
through. Not just for websites but for other skills like songwriting, drawing,
short-story writing, and also other types of programming. Needless to say I
never went through with it, but it's good to see someone who has.

Taking songwriting as an example, what's interesting to me is that basically
anyone can try it. Sit down with a note pad, think of a tune, and make a
verse-chorus-verse-chorus song (chords and riffs are optional extras). No
doubt people like Paul McCartney do try this every day, but then there's the
vast majority of people who never make the attempt once in their life, despite
their being no real barriers.

------
tourbillonfunk
Wow, a huge congratulations to you! I'm just starting my journey to become a
programmer and am dedicating the same amount of time. You're dedication,
patience and work ethic really inspire me! Awesome job on all of your
projects.

------
thejacenxpress
I was leaving the film industry and unemployed for a year. I only did about
4-5 hours a day (had $$ saved) and got far enough to get a great job, but wow.
I like that you're not just BS-ing 180 days, but actually challenging
yourself.

------
sanjkris
Just made my middle-school kids' summer break more interesting. If you take
all this js knowledge and add android/ios skills, you can increase your hourly
fees by 10X. I myself would hire you for my mobile suite of apps.

------
zaph0d
Kudos to you Jennifer. I hope your path inspires many other aspiring
programmers.

------
DarrenMills
It's a great way that learning to code can produce a ton of content and
experimental innovation. Code Academy (and others) listen up: What if everyone
produced content while learning to code?

~~~
miguelindurain
that's a great idea! It's actually similar to the idea behind duolingo.com
People produce translations while learning a language

------
dantheman
Super Impressive, dedicating the time to accomplish this remarkable.

------
j45
How admirable, good for you. I don't have anything more to add than my sincere
appreciation for seeing what you're doing, it's a fantastic example.

------
valokafor
Great Jennifer, you have just greatly inspired me. I will get started, maybe
do one site a week instead of a day since I have this thing called full time
job!

Keep it up

------
styrmis
This is really great! There are quite possibly many better ways to spend 180
days if you wanted to make money (#1 would probably be completing every Rails
tutorial available) but I don't think that is important here. Rather, I find
her approach inspiring and it's something that can be applied to any
endeavour.

One nice thing that she will have, even if she doesn't make it through the
full 180 is a record of her earliest creations through to her latest. Like
when keeping a journal she'll be able to refer to it when she's feeling low
and see the progress she's made, and she'll have a record of what she's done
that transcends her memory.

At my first job I was lucky enough to report directly to the Technical
Director of the company who took the time to mentor me on what it means to be
a good software engineer. The first thing he had me do is to keep an
engineer's journal. The benefits of this would only become clear a few weeks
down the line but clear it was: I would encounter a problem I knew I had
solved before but couldn't quite recall the solution to; I would flip back to
find my notes and there it would be. Fast forward a few months, then a year
and the value received from this simple act of keeping an organised journal
far exceeded my expectations.

I have since kept the habit going but I feel that more can be done here. On
one level you can keep notes for yourself and improve your own productivity. A
level up would be to write those notes up on an internal wiki. One level up
further and you've polished them into material you can publish to a wider
community. One level up again you can inspire others to do the same through
your efforts. One such effort that I have seen (outside of Jennifer's) that I
think is completely worth anyone's time to explore is Journey of an Absolute
Rookie: Paintings and Sketches
([http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870)),
10 full years of recorded progress of a beginning artist that blew my mind.
Warning: you may lose a lot of time to that forum thread!

There is something beautiful and powerful in things that have been worked on
and tended to for years, things that cannot be rushed no matter what: the only
way to have 10 years of recorded progress today is to have started 10 years
ago and to have kept it up for the duration. What a present to give to
yourself!

------
mjhea0
i'd love to hear more about the resources you are utilizing. plus - how do you
find time to work on this for 10 hours/day!?

~~~
mjhea0
you could really help a lot of people out by writing a basic curriculum!

------
zwieback
Fantastic and I'm also glad to see that most of the comments are positive. I
was almost afraid to click on the comments link.

------
zinssmeister
This is pretty cool, but I think spending a bit more time with a bigger
project instead of doing 180 small ones would be more beneficial. But maybe
her goal is to jump into bigger/long term stuff after the 180 days. Either
way, congrats for getting out there and building stuff!

~~~
freyr
Keep in mind, she's starting from scratch, and her goal is to learn
fundamentals of programming, not project management. Managing an large,
interconnected project is a formidable task in itself.

She's made a pretty strong case for starting small, managing scope, and
keeping realistic expectations.

------
iguana
This is awesome, humbling, and inspiring at the same time.

(There were 180 comments on this story, now there are 181)

------
bencollier49
Incidentally, does that remind anyone of the "Cascade Cassette 50"?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_50](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_50)

The work is of profoundly higher quality, though, I just mean in terms of
volume!

------
calebhc
This is so awesome! Thanks for sharing your work. :) I really love the Window
Master!

------
auggierose
So many envious comments here, ridiculous. Jennifer, this is really inspiring
stuff!

------
franze
i like day 114
[http://jenniferdewalt.com/image_palette/page](http://jenniferdewalt.com/image_palette/page)
was looking for an online quick to user color picker just yesterday

------
exizt88
Ah, but note that Mondrian uses stripes of varying width -- it adds a lot to
the piece. Consider trying to make the width individual stripes changeable.
This might even provide even some insight into Mondrian's art.

------
xmmx
I want to learn from your code, but it looks like it's all hidden somewhere?

------
cheez
Good on you, your progress is amazing. If you want a job, you'll get it.

------
sonabinu
This is inspirational ... find time to dedicate to learning something new

------
realrocker
Wow. Unimaginable patience.

------
shire
Wow this must really time consuming. Really great work. Inspirational

------
happypeter
Amazing story, love it. Yes it's all about building wonderful things. I've
been doing one screencast per week since 2011, I have to say it's really
really lots of fun.

~~~
ngoel36
happypeter: Would love to hear about what type of screencasts you're building,
my company ([https://www.bitcast.io](https://www.bitcast.io)) is looking for
the best screencasters we can find. Feel free to reach out at nikhil at
bitcast.io.

------
Abundnce10
It looks like the majority of her Github commits are happening during 6pm-12am
[http://imagebin.org/265513](http://imagebin.org/265513)

------
chatmasta
Wow. Impressive dedication, and even more impressive creativity.

------
barlet
This is great. \- she is learning to code \- she works hard \- she is creative
with her ideas - everyday \- and she is communicating very well - and getting
better at it.

------
gabeguz
Wow. This is inspiring. I've been programming for years, and don't think I'd
be able to create something new every day for 180 days. Major props.

------
gnus
Jennifer, you are just plain amazing. You are my inspiration.

------
vickytnz
Great idea. One minor quibble though: it's 180 web _pages_ or web _apps_ for
me at least. I'd say that websites require full infrastructure etc.

------
atmosx
Congrats, it's amazing what you have achieved.

------
abinop
Dear Jennifer, something tells me this will be the most difficult of the 180
days. If all this buzz does not distruct you, nothing will.

------
bobwaycott
This is awesome, Jennifer. Keep up the good work!

------
circa
Great job! Will stay tuned for the 65 days left!

------
austinrory
this is super smart. also, it gives me a good guide for ideas for the sites i
want to build as i'm learning to code. THANKS!

------
apathetic
Hi, what day-to-day tools did you uses to create these? I wish I did something
like this too instead of just playing all day :(

------
jaekwon
I tried to splode a bacon bit, but it would not splode. Very disappointed. But
love the execution. Good job and keep going!

------
jumby
Is fizz buzz broken? A random number is nice, but what if not divisible by 3
or 5 - what do I enter? Example: I got 559.

------
tdd1
Cool! That's DEF fun and creative!! :D

------
alexdowad
Awesome stuff, Jennifer! Congratulations!

------
rubyclown
It's 180 HTML & Javascript PAGES, not 180 WEBSITES! Big Difference.

Nevertheless, congratulations on your dedication.

------
wcy
My plan is to learn how to code by reading the code for 180 of Jennifer
Dewalt's websites in 180 days.

~~~
adrian_pop
Not a good plan.

------
devgutt
I wish I had time to do similar approach solely to learn new things using HN:
Hacker News University.

------
ab21
Reminds me of [http://danceinayear.com](http://danceinayear.com)

------
akivabamberger
Great idea. Way to go, Jennifer.

------
keefe
180 iterations of the same website in 180 days and you have a company :]

------
progx
Cant wait until Number 180 when you build a complete Web Framework ;-)

------
maxmem
Who has the time or money to teach yourself to code in 180 days?

------
kavithag
Very inspiring! Keep up the good work!

------
RakshaC
Really Wow! Quite inspiring.

------
ron1986
Great Work! Keep Going !!

------
vinhnx
Way to go, Jennifer.

Best wishes for you!

------
maxisnow
How cool! Keep it up!

------
smooradian
I have a new hero.

------
dwdwzzz
i'm curious what kind tools are you using.

------
mrcactu5
execution

------
amerika_blog
I wouldn't launch this kind of project without some kind of ace up my sleeve.

I'd either prepare it in advance, vamp it all from the "tutorials," or have
some backup code somewhere.

That would be necessary to avoid having a mundane interruption cause the
project to fail.

------
marincounty
Steven King vs. Vladimar Nabrakov

------
hydralist
this is inspiring

------
lucb1e
I thought you said "websites". You mean pages with a single purpose.

It's a good idea though and you probably learn a lot from it, but I wouldn't
say that I'd made 180 websites after completing this.

