

Week 23: Changes - jaf12duke
http://blog.jenniferdewalt.com/post/60799862146/week-23-changes

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talmand
As someone with a design background and now work mostly in development,
something I learned about myself is that I am now convinced that every single
'web designer' in the known universe should be forced to make a full HTML site
(tools of their choice!) that is compatible back to IE8 (bonus points for IE6)
and 'mobile friendly'.

Plus accept that web pages are not the same as printed pages.

Wait, that's not all about me learning about myself though. Maybe my
background and my current job has given me a less accepting attitude towards
'web designers' that don't learn the canvas they are attempting to paint on?

Sometimes I do feel bad about it though.

Oh! I also should have done more coding in college.

~~~
derleth
> every single 'web designer' in the known universe should be forced to make a
> full HTML site (tools of their choice!) that is compatible back to IE8
> (bonus points for IE6)

But they only pass if it's backwards-compatible to Lynx as well.

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usea
I downvoted your post on accident. I'm sorry. This meager apology is my only
recourse. I hope you are able to regain the karma I recklessly took from you.

~~~
ternaryoperator
Upvoted him for you.

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prutschman
She says: "The thing I was missing is that math is just a bunch of symbols
that you manipulate to get new symbols out. Coding is basically the same
thing. The meaning isn’t in the math or the code itself. The meaning comes
from the interpretation of the mathematics or similarly, what your code is
doing for someone."

This is, I think, the most important thing to understand about mathematics,
and failure to understand this leads to the travesty that is K-12 mathematics
education in the US. I find it impressive that she came to this conclusion on
her own, having started as someone for whom "Math was never [her] favorite
subject".

~~~
girvo
I taught myself to program when I was 11, using GameMaker, which had this neat
scripting language called GML that hooked into the editor to control things
above and beyond the simple actions built in.

Learning about functions and variables made algebra ezpz when we learnt it
later on. Matrices were multidimensional arrays (I know, not quite the same in
terms of maths, but hey I was young).

More importantly, programming taught me how to approach logical problems the
correct way. I'm super thankful for it :)

~~~
derleth
> Matrices were multidimensional arrays (I know, not quite the same in terms
> of maths, but hey I was young).

In math, if something has all the properties a kind of object is defined to
have, it _is_ that kind of object. Mathematics is based on definitions, so
things are what they are defined to be, no more, no less.

In fact, you can implement mathematical structures in terms of other
mathematical structures, as Peano did when he defined numbers and basic
arithmetic in terms of set theory:

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

~~~
girvo
Hey, set theory is neat although I never got to study it.

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danso
I check in from time to time and am continually impressed with her cycle of
innovation and release...amusingly, if you check her repo, the way she's
structured the app is basically batshit crazy (creating a controller for every
new app, even though each app is mostly static HTML and JS)...but hey, it
works, and it works well, and just goes to show how imperfect implementation
isn't the end of the world.

(her controllers directory in the repo:
[https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/tree/master/app...](https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/tree/master/app/controllers))

And yet, not knowing exactly how to structure things is enough to hold back
novices and experts alike. The OP just plowed through -- devoting a half year
of her life to this -- and will have made more web-sites (or thingies) than
I'll make in a lifetime, and doing it for self-enrichment. If only more people
had that same attitude.*

* Yes, she's lucky that she has some situation where she can devote a huge chunk of her life to exploring web dev...but it's not as if everyone has to do the half year route...Doing a simple web-page/widget/app a week, or every two weeks, is a manageable commitment for people who are already in the online/web industry.

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jack-r-abbit
I can totally relate to her thing about typing. I've been coding
professionally for nearly 20 years and can't type for shit. My theory is that
typing code is not like typing words in sentences in paragraphs in [whatever].
Code is not structured the same (not always " _word_ [space] _word_ [space]
_word_ [punctuation]"). Code is not as linear as an email or story (well.. not
the same kind of linear anyway). Code uses a totally different ratio of
symbols/numbers/letters/etc (I type more dollar signs and under_scores in a
_day_ at work than in a whole _month_ not at work). Well... that is my theory
anyway.

~~~
finnh
I've noticed this myself as well, with a similar timeframe. In college, right
when I started coding, I would regularly type up a 8-10 page paper (for non-CS
assignments), find 2 typos in spell check, and then just ... turn it in. No
grammar snafus, no syntactic boo-boos, no problems at all.

Nowadays even a short email can't measure up.

I think it's because I edit code much more "interactively" than I used to
write prose: editing a previous line as I think through the current one,
deciding to change a variable name or edit a loop construct or what-have-you.
That habit has transferred to writing prose, and I think it's for the worse.

Rather than having a complete sentence planned out before I start it, I find
myself getting partway through and then thinking "huh, I'd rather rephrase the
beginning like so". And so I change the beginning and go back to the end, but
often a conjunction or phrase-transition gets messed up in the middle and I
don't notice it.

 _EDIT: typo!_

~~~
fold
I do this all the time on anything longer than a couple sentences.

~~~
yannis
You can both benefit from adopting the Halmo's Spiral technique
[http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/36521/963](http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/36521/963).

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Tycho
Maths is like programming with terrible variable names.

~~~
girvo
And a very-not-context-free grammar!

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tiger10guy
Math isn't the symbols, it's the ideas. The symbols are just a crude way of
communicating the ideas.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
We cannot even think about ideas, leave aside communicating, without involving
symbols. Language is a necessity for thinking. So what you said above, doesn't
really say anything.

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Aqueous
I'm amazed by the creative ideas she comes up with day after day. You're
almost there!

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mcchen
Definitely impressed by her tenacity and creativity. But if I were to do the
same for self-enrichment reasons, I might go a different route. I'd rather
build one or two full-blown apps in 180 days so I can dive in a deeper depth.
After all, quality is better than quantity, isn't it?

Though she definitely has inspired me to do something similar.

~~~
samsolomon
I would argue quantity is better than quality for learning. This is why in art
classes teachers have you constantly making new things instead of spending the
entire semester on one painting, sculpture, whatever...

When I was learning Ruby on Rails I built iterations of the same stupid app
dozens of times—I found that more helpful that the more in-depth app that took
more than a month.

EDIT: wording

~~~
mcchen
When you build iterations of the same app, you are essentially working on just
one app, refining it, probably making it perform faster, look nicer or just
architect it better. That, to me, indicates quality over quantity. That's
pretty much what I meant in my original comment. The lady who posted this is
building 180 different small apps in 180 days, many of them aren't refined or
related to each other, that's quantity over quality.

~~~
sejje
I still think that quantity over quality is the way to go, though I would opt
for a little more depth than these are.

There's a lot of "one-time" stuff that's important in web-dev--primarily
server & app config--that can be a big obstacle, for instance. Getting it down
pat is a huge step in the right direction.

Anyway, for beginners, I think this is a great way to do things.

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estavaro
I was a bit overwhelmed by the many samples that I clicked on.

Someone else posted a link to her GitHub repo and I was glad to check it out
some. I chuckled at her using of Ruby/Rails. I was amazed at her using of
jQuery.

It pains me to note that what the industry might consider sound software
engineering is so detached from the creative tools that she has employed to
get this going.

On one hand the industry demands greater quality from their tools. On the
other hand the industry seems eager to provide the creative tools used by
amateurs-alike to help to get people trained in the tools that the industry
might need.

JavaScript really is a puzzle that the industry has been trying to solve.
Because JavaScript is far away from what the industry might consider sound
engineering principles. But users of JavaScript could make for great
employees, so the industry has been trying to figure out a way to create a
bridge between the two.

Keep up the great work! I liked playing the Hangman.

Cheers.

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sailfast
I have not unfortunately experienced the typing thing (my typing speed is
getting faster), but I can definitely say my appreciation for compact
functions and mathematics has increased a great deal.

I would also add to the list: 1) In my day-to-day life, precision has become
more important. It's tougher for me to accept imprecise statements as they
often reflect incomplete knowledge which, as we all know, will lead to "bugs"
or lots of head-banging 2) Logical problem solving skills have increased right
in line with my debugging effectiveness. 3) As walls of abstraction get torn
down through application of technology and programming, I find it harder and
harder to identify and describe technology to non-technology users without
cringing (see number 1)

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civilian
I learned to code 3 years ago-- I've worked professional in it for 2.5 years.
A couple of changes I've had (that occured fairly early on) were:

1\. A nitpicky eye for detail. Even in my non-coding life I seem to be just a
bit more detail focused than I usually am.

2\. Tenacity and willingness to 'jump in'. I think this was always a strength
for me but now, as long as I'm not totally stumped, when I find something (a
bug, or a new thing I'm curious about) I will just dive in and explore.

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frozenport
Scrolling on `Day 162` is shaky and often misses final position when moving
the mouse rapidly.

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realrocker
She is like an unrelenting ant!

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nickthemagicman
Women are crazy.

~~~
tnorthcutt
What could this comment possibly add to the discussion? Why did you post this?

~~~
nickthemagicman
Oh I think you know.

~~~
dwaltrip
It is like you _want_ to be downvoted. Exploring yourself to find out why
could be useful.

~~~
nickthemagicman
You can't control me with your threats.

