
Instagram Founder’s Girlfriend Learns How To Code For V-Day, Builds Lovestagram - kloncks
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/09/awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww/
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blhack
Dear Everybody:

The most wonderful thing you can ever give somebody is your time.

No matter who you are, no matter how much money you make, most people have
roughly the same amount of _time_. In this sense we're all equal.

So yes, some of us could off and spend enormous amounts of money on each other
for gifts...but if I spend a week building something, and Bill Gates spends a
week building something, the gift is the same temporal size.

It's like saying "Yes, I could do anything at all with this week of time, but
I decided that that week of time would be best spent building something that
will make you happy."

There's something that I find profoundly beautiful about that.

This is an absolutely fantastic gift. She should be really proud of herself
for learning that quickly, and I'm sure he's over the moon about this as a
gift.

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danso
According to the article, she started in December from basically scratch. She
used Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way and learned enough Python to then
figure out Django and deploy to Heroku herself.

More importantly, she learned enough to gain this insight:

 _“Learning to program isn’t the hard part. The biggest challenge is figuring
out how all the moving parts of a web application fit together. There’s no
book for that,” she said."_

~~~
dmragone
As someone who recently started learning to code, I would agree with that
statement wholeheartedly. Learning how the pieces fit together is the most
difficult part, by far.

~~~
NinetyNine
The skill of learning how pieces fit together in a project you've never
touched is one of the most valuable skills in a programmer. Everyone can learn
it, it just takes a lot of practice reading code. It also helps if you're
strongly familiar the libraries/framework the code was built on as well.

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jfarmer
Kaitlyn spent the last 2-3 months learning Python just to build this, with no
prior programming experience.

What's your excuse, Mr. Non-technical Person? :P

~~~
loumf
More importantly, what's your excuse Mr/Ms Technical Person who can't seem to
get your project released.

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asreal
There seems to be this recurring theme in tech media that "gee, wiz! anybody
can be 'coder'!". I call bullshit - this article smells like a PR gimmick.
While I have no doubt that she picked up the rudiments of programming within
this time, I think it's fairly clear that she had "spilled the beans" in order
to take this project to the extent that it is available today.

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vigilanteweb
I think the biggest part of this is the effort that she put in to have
something in common with her partner. I think that it's a good reminder to
everyone with a partner/spouse that putting in the effort to get your hands
dirty in something they're interested is a great gift.

~~~
MartinCron
My wife's father is a retired mainframe programmer. As a child, she thought it
was sad that her mother couldn't follow (and didn't even try) what it was that
he did all day.

Just before we were to be married, my wife had dabbled in both programming and
graphic design and was facing the choice of which to specialize in. She chose
to go the programmer route as that would give us more common ground.

And yet, I have no interest in learning how to knit. Maybe I should try.

~~~
kragen
Knitting, like programming, runs the gamut from boringly easy to beyond human
mental capacity.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
It's like real life spaghetti code.

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crntaylor
On one hand, awwwww. On the other hand, this makes me feel terrible. I've been
learning to code for about a year, I have a job which involves plenty of
coding, I have a PhD, and I'm pretty sure that I couldn't build and deploy a
web app right now. Very well done to her!

~~~
manish_gill
Same. I've been jumping between C, C++ and python for god knows how long, and
I still can't make something as awesome as she did. Kudos to her.

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willhines
As someone currently sitting in class being lectured on a strictly theoretical
view of computer science, I cannot agree enough that actually working on
something tangible and interesting is the best application and way to learn.

In my free time I'm currently developing an app, and whilst the theory is
extremely useful for understanding, it only comes into its own when I'm
working my way through the everyday problems that projects provide. Kudos to
Kaitlyn, more people should dive in at the deep end!

------
matdwyer
This is cool, and a great advertising story for instagram (which is almost
more of a present!)

I think my valentine gift will be "why didn't you make the reservation
earlier?! Where are my roses???"

~~~
ilamont
I think it's an even better advertisement for Learn Python The Hard Way.

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smhinsey
Wow, we should all be so lucky.

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dmor
The URL slug says it all: awwwwwwwww

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achompas
Man, this is so awesome. So _soooooo_ awesome.

I ranted about abstractions below, but this woman _shipped code._ Dedicated to
her boyfriend, no less! I'd be incredibly flattered if I were him, and kudos
to her for launching something.

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uladzislau
Love the URL for the story :)

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willyum
Is this related? there's even a link to how to make a heart.. but I feel like
it's too recent:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/phimd/lear...](http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/phimd/learning_python_as_a_surprise_for_my_programmer/)

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rdg
Am I the only one who doesn't believe this? It's way too strange...

~~~
zedshaw
No, it is true. People learn to code from absolutely nothing all the time with
my books. Depending on their motivation they then go on to make all kinds of
stuff.

~~~
quadhome
Do you have a collection of links to things people have made? I'd love to see
them!

~~~
runjake
They're not public, but I used LPTHW and went on to work on a few Django apps
dealing with GIS and criminal intelligence analysis. Aside from the web front
end, the projects involved a lot of analytical code, and LPTHW was great for
getting me thinking in the Python way _.

_ I'm not a language zealot, Python just had the robust GIS, math, and other
libs I needed.

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apricot13
this was lovely, until you get the the last part, which just completely ruined
the story.

Trigger suggests creating classes specifically for women who want to code as a
possible solution to this particular digital divide, the trick is to not be
intimidated ,“[Code] is something that nobody should be afraid of. “

~~~
marquis
Why do you see this as a bad thing? It's been discussed on HN hundreds of
times that it's hard for women to know where to start, how to jump in and find
out if they even enjoy coding. I'm a complete outlier in my field as a woman
in technology, as an actual developer I rarely engage with other women on my
level. I was recently at a dev conference and there was another woman there -
it was really nice to feel that the space was opening up (and to find out
she'd been in the industry longer than me made me even happier).

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donky_cong
This is news ?

~~~
pandeiro
Seriously.

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purplefruit
Please don't take this the wrong way, but does this really belong on the front
page of Hacker News? This is like celebrity news for nerds. I care about what
Angelina got Brad for Valentines as much as I care about this.

~~~
pavel_lishin
It's more like one of their kids starting a successful startup, helping people
out, and making money while doing it.

Ignore the fact that it's an e-lebrity's significant other; celebrate the fact
that someone went from zero to fully functional app with no prior experience
in less than three months.

