
Advice from a 19 Year Old Girl and Software Developer - carlchenet
https://medium.com/@lydiahallie/advice-from-a-19-y-o-girl-software-developer-88737bcc6be5
======
lancebeet
It would be prudent to point out that not going to university when you are 19
isn't as much of a life-altering decision in Sweden as it is elsewhere; many
choose to attend university later (when they've worked for a couple of years
or when they have kids), and it's still possible to get into the top
universities.

~~~
heartbreak
If you have a safety net (wealthy parents, personal wealth, strong social
welfare), it's not really a life-altering decision anywhere.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, but I think the point is that in Sweden you don't need to have wealthy
parents or personal wealth.

~~~
gaius
... to go and live for a few months in a foreign holiday destination while
taking an expensive private course?

I call shenanigans. You need to be rich for that anywhere.

~~~
lancebeet
There are actually foreign destination coding bootcamps that are free (for the
attendee) organized by Swedish recruitment/consultancy firms. I'm not sure how
they're financed, it may be the steep fees they charge companies for
consultants.

That being said, the girl in question is probably rich given that ancient
Greek and Latin aren't part of the regular curriculum at public schools in
Sweden.

------
corpMaverick
Just a word of caution.

I see people in FB advocating against college and academic knowledge in
general. (E.g. Einstein flunk math(not true), Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg
didn't finish College, etc.)

Sure, If you are really, really smart like Gates, Zuckerberg, or Micheal Dell
and you have a killer idea. Don't waste your time in college. But for most
moderately smart people college is the best choice.

Also if high school was too hard for you, and you don't like school any way,
don't waste your time in college and learn a trade.

This woman seems very mature and motivated. She is growing without going to
college. So it may be the right choice for her. But it will not be the right
choice for most people.

~~~
gr3yh47
>But for most moderately smart people college is the best choice.

I just don't think this is true anymore, given the financial burden of modern
academic education and the fact that they teach so little useful skills

programming is increasingly a trade, and can definitely be self taught better
than any college will teach it.

the rest of the education may have other value but IMO not worth the time +
money + opportunity cost

~~~
andrepd
>given the financial burden of modern academic education

In many countries they have figured out that equal opportunities in access to
higher education are a crucial thing to have. That's why my M.Sc. cost me
grand total of 5000 EUR over 5 years.

>and the fact that they teach so little useful skills

I wonder why you feel this way. Can you elaborate on that? Do you think
university is obsolete?

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I'm not OP, but in my experience, university nowadays is less about learning
how to think and more about memorizing for tests. The bar for passing tests is
low too, and it selects more for persistence in study than competence in
study. They don't even teach to be competitive anymore, because they don't
want to hurt feelings.

~~~
andrepd
That's not my experience in the slightest. I imagine your experience will vary
a lot depending on location and area of study. I would be wary of making
blanket statements from your own (limited) experiences, though.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I didn't make a blanket statement, that's why I said "In my experience." Even
if just 10% of universities are like that nowadays, that would dilute the
value of a degree pretty considerably.

------
matte_black
When deciding whether or not you should go to college, always look at the big
picture and weigh your options. The kind of work you do in your early twenties
probably doesn't require a college education or a strong network of college
educated peers, so initially it will seem like you are getting by just fine.
But what about your 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond?

No one needs to go to college for coding because coding is a blue collar job
these days. In fact, when I went to university they didn't teach much coding
beyond a programming 101 class and you were simply expected to learn various
languages on your own time.

That class also certainly didn't teach you about the latest frameworks or
trends either, just straight C and Java, which in hindsight I think were smart
choices but at the time I didn't understand why they didn't teach more
practical stuff.

~~~
heartbreak
Computer science programs don't teach the latest frameworks and trends because
they're teaching concepts and theory. The implementation is a side effect.
That's why so many CS grads have never used git.

In addition, it seems pretty obvious that with 20+ years of industry
experience, a reasonably competent 40 year old candidate would be as
employable as one with a degree. Who cares about university degrees that far
removed from obtaining one anyway?

~~~
jorgeleo
"Computer science programs don't teach the latest frameworks and trends
because they're teaching concepts and theory. The implementation is a side
effect. That's why so many CS grads have never used Git."

That is correct. End-user utilities like Git are left as an exercise for the
student, something that a CS graduate should be able, not only to learn to use
in a couple of hours, but understand its inner workings without reverse
engineering, and write its own version after.

The reason why Git is not tough in CS classes is that it is considered so
trivial that is will be a waste of time (and tuition) to do so.

"In addition, it seems pretty obvious that with 20+ years of industry
experience, a reasonably competent 40 year old candidate would be as
employable as one with a degree. Who cares about university degrees that far
removed from obtaining one anyway?"

It depends on what it will be writing; if it is another website that is just a
magazine on HTML sure, no difference. If it is optimizing a compiler in
assembler, correcting performance problems on a multiplatform system, or
evaluating code for security holes in a sizable institution, then you better
have your degree.

~~~
smokeyj
> If it is optimizing a compiler in assembler

So if you have a CS degree, you're qualified to optimize compilers and perform
security audits at large institutions? No way.

In practice these are two different and highly specialized jobs. Why would you
_not_ consider someone who has a proven track record of optimizing compilers?
Or finding security holes in code? I'd rather look at a portfolio than a
certificate any day.

~~~
jorgeleo
NDA

------
hvidgaard
I take a issue with her post. Let's break down her "daily life":

    
    
      * Streching 15m a day.
      * Watch online courses 2h a day.
      * Personal projects 4h a day.
      * Read 2 articles, let's go with small articles without too much techical detail, 30m in total a day.
      * 5 Code Wars Kata, for them to be of any value, 10m at least each, let's call it 1h a day.
      * Sleep is important, so we say 8 hours of sleep and at least 1 hour getting ready.
    

This totals to 16 hours and 45 minutes. Add a commute and a work day and you
are past 24 hours. And I haven't even mentioned the healthy food she wants to
make - getting groceries and cooking takes time. 1 hour every day is not
unreasonable either. So far this workweek needs to be less than 30 hours for
her schedule to work out, probably closer to 25 hours.

Lets put this into the context of a carpenter - do you expect them to spend
nearly 8 hours a day of their free personal time, to improve on their trade?
That is called personally funded education outside of work, and usually
rewards you a title.

This post, indirectly leads to stupid requirements at interviews and burnout.
Some of my best developers love to code, but they know not to spend every wake
moment coding or something related to coding. All developers that have called
in sick or left due to a burnout all worked on, and stressed over, big
personal projects to show the world. Developers need to learn the difference
between work life and personal life - the former cannot be allowed to consume
all available time.

~~~
kmbriedis
Agree except for the 'This post, indirectly leads to stupid requirements at
interviews' part. She did not decribe anything a decent developer should not
know

~~~
hvidgaard
She is advocating spending an unreasonable amount of personal time learning
and working on personal projects. There is a perverse focus on that part at
some interviews, and it's wrong on so many levels unless you do not want any
personal time.

------
jonheller
I'm shocked that there's an entire mini industry of sorts of pictures of
younger woman posing in front of Javascript code. Not just a casual picture
but with what looks like a carefully composed photograph.

~~~
Cthulhu_
What I'm shocked at is that she's got two displays there but chooses to write
code on the tiny screen in front of her. I don't get people that work on
laptops.

~~~
HuggableSquare
At work I have two external monitors attached to my 13" MBP, and I almost
exclusively use the laptop screen. I also use the trackpad and keyboard
attached to the laptop, which is probably the reason I use the laptop's screen
so much more than the others. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

------
llamaz
I live in Australia where by default, you don't have to pay for university
right away (you have to pay the government back slowly once you start earning
above a certain salary). As a result it's common for people to do double
degrees over a long time, and universities usually don't care how long it
takes you to do them.

I went down the opposite path than that described in this post - into
electrical engineering and math, and 5 years down the line I feel like have no
practical skills (there's an emphasis on theory and the fundamentals), and
feel that I'm wasting my twenties being stressed out, abusing caffeine, and
pulling all nighters every week.

I've been working hard on academics since I was 16 (I'm 22 now) this blog post
reads like a fantasy of mine.

~~~
alexkavon
It's a possibility, have you tried taking a few years off and testing the
other methods you have in mind?

------
Lon7
I think an important thing your average non-cs grad developer can learn from
her story is the importance of networking. Maybe networking isn't the quite
the correct term. But she put herself out there starting at 15, wrote and
shared what she did. I'm sure she made a lot of contacts, even if only through
the internet. She created an image for herself. Without that there is nothing
to set you apart from everyone else in your situation. So it's not surprising
that she had multiple recruiters reaching out to her during bootcamp. Good for
her.

------
peterwwillis
I followed pretty much an identical path 14 years ago. Here's what I've
learned.

Yes, she's right that you don't need a lot of school to develop the trade
skills of programming or other tech work, and people will hire you. However,
it can easily replace the time when young people normally used to develop
social skills and potentially critical future relationships (personal and
professional).

It's also easy to fall down the rabbit hole of learning as much as you can
about technology and abandon all other pursuits, because you no longer have
the outside influences found in a traditional education system. This limits
your exposure to alternative ways of thinking, which at the very least limits
effectiveness in your career (a creative one) to say nothing of stunting
personal growth.

My biggest regret is not learning more about the ancient Greeks and Romans,
and Myceneans and Minoans, and Egyptians and Chinese, when their foundational
achievements could have inspired me in both my personal and professional life.
Learning languages is great too as it exposes new kinds of culture and
different ways of thinking.

I'm not saying this is a bad path to take - it worked for me! - but I wish
someone would have told me all the things I was missing, or provided some sort
of path to experience the rewarding parts of it.

~~~
jlebrech
you can learn about greeks and romans quite easily in your spare time, they
wrote a lot of books.

~~~
peterwwillis
Yes, I've been aware of that for a long time, but thank you for the
information.

------
danso
A great post and great discussion; how is this post already off of the front
page despite having ~80 votes in 1 hour?

I was reading this post on my phone and missed the subhed "My daily life
(outside of work)". When reading her habitual to-do list (read 2 tech
articles, solve 5 CodeWars Kata) I had assumed it was her weekend list, or
maybe week list. Maybe she has an extraordinary amount of energy, or maybe
I've totally forgotten how much energy you could have as a teenager (or both).

Something she wrote reminded me of a fragment of a story I heard on NPR about
women coding:

> _I started coding when I was 15 years old. I had a booming health &
> lifestyle blog on Tumblr and gained tens of thousands of followers in no-
> time. This is when I started creating my own responsive layouts with the
> regular HTML, CSS and jQuery, as I didn’t like the themes that I could buy,
> so I decided to just try it myself! From there on, I kept on improving my
> skills, gained more knowledge, and my interest in developing grew._

Here's the piece that I apparently caught a bit of on NPR:
[http://latinousa.org/episode/tech-industrys-leaky-
pipeline/](http://latinousa.org/episode/tech-industrys-leaky-pipeline/)

There's not a transcript unfortunately, but there's a bit where someone is
talking about how, in the age of MySpace, kids had an opportunity to be
exposed to coding because customizing MySpace profiles required writing raw
HTML. Sure, it often looked ugly as hell, but we don't seem to have a similar
mainstream entry point for the average Internet user to get sucked into coding
-- that is, coding not for coding's sake, but just because coding was a way to
improve your daily life (yes, even social media profiles count as "daily
life").

IMO, the coding -- including the language that you have to figure out -- isn't
important compared to the revelation that digital entities can be _hacked_ and
changed to your liking. These days, I can still impress a classroom of people
by seemingly defacing nytimes.com using the web inspector. It's not the sight
of HTML being typed that's impressive, but the revelation that webpages
somehow are _mutable_.

(not sure how many of those people realize that I didn't change anything on
the actual nytimes.com server :p)

------
brailsafe
A very level headed and motivating post. I hope she keeps the momentum going.

I think there is a bit of irony however, in that while she received inquiries
from recruiters in the states, without a degree she wouldn't be able to work
there, or anywhere outside the European Union that doesn't have a very comfy
work permit. Not that it's necessarily restricting though. I'd love to live
and work where she's from. Unfortunately for the same reason, I can't.

Personal Anecdote: I see a lot of myself 5 years in how she describes herself.
In some ways I miss that time, in some ways not. Particularly in her attitude
toward school, both secondary and post-secondary. Now though, having returned
to University in Canada—for the reason I outlined above—I'm finding myself
with an intense curiosity about everything unrelated to programming and love
being at the University with a community of people just trying learn and do
better for themselves.

------
jorgeleo
This is a very good article, and certainly has a lot to say about being self-
taught.

I started developing like this but I went for the college degree after, and
there is a lot to learn in academics that self-studies will not bring to your
attention, so you cannot really say that you don't need to go to college if
you don't know what you missed.

There is coding, and there is coding. There is a huge difference between
javascript and websites and embedded programming or compiler building and
optimization. There is a big difference between a program that runs, and a
program that runs efficiently. There is a big difference between my portfolio
website and a bank customer service website. And there are many more
differences if we slice software development in many other contexts.

------
paulus_magnus2
There's plenty of "coding" work that's essentially gluing frameworks together,
hacking around with CSS + JS, adding one more feature to CRM. You don't need
CS degree for these the same way you don't need economics degree to do basic
accounting. Also if you have a degree and are in a job like this, look around.

CS degree gets you open door to "real coding jobs" \- AI / ML / DL \- data
science / BI \- multithreading, performance sensitive development etc \- Big
Data

Can you learn everything yourself / from online material. Probably yes.

------
Chromus
The thing that's so odd to me here is that she's giving advice as someone
currently in the situation she's advising on, in fact, just embarking on this
path. This article might be totally different for her if she was a 25 yo dev
who skipped school, or 30 yo, etc.

It's a well reasoned article, and I don't know how useful having a degree is
for CS. It doesn't seem like she's in a position to have the self-awareness of
her position, let alone to advise others on it.

------
gaius
_After I decided to not go to university, but give my 110% to programming
instead, I went to a coding bootcamp for 3 months in Tampa Bay, Florida_

Is this another success story where the secret is, be born to wealthy parents?

~~~
_nalply
No, in Sweden you don't need to be rich to afford this. Perhaps the secret is,
be born in Sweden.

~~~
andrepd
Globally speaking yes, she is very rich.

~~~
gaius
I am English. Aged 18 could I or my parents have afforded for me to fly to
America and drop $20k on an unaccredited course + more for living expenses?
Not a chance. I don't want to come across as envious or anything (since I went
to a good college here, before Bliar's government introduced tuition fees) but
let's call a spade a spade shall we? This is someone who is highly privileged
pretending that they earned it like a regular person.

~~~
andrepd
But that's precisely what I'm saying.

~~~
gaius
I am agreeing with you :-)

------
danesparza
Solid advice. I've been in this business 25 years (also didn't finish
college!), and for folks just getting into software development, this is the
article that will be recommended reading.

Sidenote: I was surprised by the absence of a Github reference in the article.
I like to follow influential devs on Github.

------
kyleperik
I'm 20 years old, and my story is pretty similar. I never wanted to go to
college, because I didn't like the atmosphere and I never liked school
anyways. Then I got interested in programming and basically obsessed over it
and it was all I did. Then I got an internship at 17 for web development with
some friends. Just recently I moved on to a larger company that I prefer more.
I have enough money to support both my wife and I and more, no plans on going
to college.

I know college is right for some people, and statistically and practically
you'll get more money. But I didn't want to throw a ton of money and 4 years
of my life down a hole when you can enjoy life just fine without college.

~~~
Tepix
It's spelled college.

------
commenter1
The degree rule by me: Get one if its required to work on the field e.g. MD or
if it's too hard for you to learn on your own e.g. math.

Spending money you don't have on a degree you don't probably never need is
silly. You can learn history, women's studies and all that jazz on your own if
you only put the time in.

------
vletrmx
This is an impressively aware article. I do find myself wondering though,
whether all this should be a requirement for entering the software industry.
Why is it that software rarely seems to offer apprenticeships like other
engineering disciplines?

------
jlebrech
Being able to pick up languages and frameworks that are not garbage is a huge
advantage.

Being young means you can undercut on salary and live with parents, while you
gain experience.

Being female means you can cut out on garbage socialising sessions and be more
picky.

------
Accacin
How does she find time for all that and having a job?

~~~
danso
I don't find it particularly unusual when someone with a 9-5 job spends 5-6
hours at home working on their passion project. But I don't think I could have
the discipline of the OP, to spend 4 hours daily on a personal project, and
also completing coding exercises and reading tech articles, on a daily basis.

~~~
Accacin
True, she does say that she _tries_ to do these things. At first I meant she
does all that _plus_ her day job.

------
krisives
A lot going on here if I said anything I would get torn to shreds, so I'll
just smile and nod and say "cool"

~~~
andrepd
Yet you opted to say nothing of value. Might was well have not said anything,
if you were not going to contribute positively to the discussion.

~~~
daxorid
There are plenty of people on HN who know what the parent is referring to, but
simply can't comment with sentiments that belong to the class of "things
you're not allowed to say".

Dogwhistling is often less dangerous in terms of karma annihilation than
actually expressing the thought.

------
bitwize
Advice for a 19 year old girl and software developer, from a guy who's coming
up on old coot status all too rapidly:

* Subjects like ancient Greek and Latin help you build your future by giving you a better view of the past. Seeing where we've been gives us better knowledge of where we're going.

* Consider university. I'm not going to tell you to go if you really don't want to, just consider it. You're in Sweden, not the USA, so higher education is free or reasonably priced and won't saddle you with crippling debt. Anything that broadens your mind and expands your horizons makes you a better developer. Science, math, philosophy, music, history, literature, art. It's worth it to learn them all, so if you decide not to go to university, set aside some time to read up on these.

* Follow the old-school, BASIC-ASM-Pascal curriculum. The first language a beginning coder learned in the 80s was BASIC. This taught them to write high-level instructions for the computer. The second language they learned was assembly -- how to code in the CPU's own language, meaning you had to worry about word widths, memory locations, pointers and the like. Finally they were ready to embrace Pascal and synthesize the knowledge they got from their previous experience. They could write high-level code while remaining cognizant of low-level concepts like pointers.

Modern programmers will learn JavaScript, Python, or Ruby instead of BASIC and
C instead of Pascal but the principle is the same. Start high level, go really
low level, and end up somewhere in the middle, able to think in terms of both
abstraction _and_ machine-level details.

* Look out for your future self. Plan for her arrival; she's coming sooner than you think. When I was your age, I was chugging down Cokes and pulling all-nighters learning how to write X11 programs from the man pages. I can't keep up that lifestyle anymore. I need sleep and balance in my life otherwise I get cranky. There are lots of things I could've done then that would have given me a huge career boost now, like being more aggressive about networking and seeking out internships at major companies. Had I done that I could have been a manager or architect in my thirties. I'm still trying to make it as a developer, having to deal with an interview process and workplace environment that's tailored to people your age.

* Speaking of, the workplace is tailored to people your age because the system is rigged to exploit young, enthusiastic people like you. Do you read the Bible? Matthew 10:16. You're like a sheep among wolves out there, so be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove. Meaning always be honest and offer your talents in good faith, but be shrewd and know what you're up against so you don't get screwed over. Another thing I wish I'd known at your age.

~~~
heartbreak
> Look out for your future self. Plan for her arrival; she's coming sooner
> than you think. When I was your age, I was chugging doen Cokes and pulling
> all-nighters learning how to write X11 programs from the man pages. I can't
> keep up that lifestyle anymore. I need sleep and balance in my life
> otherwise I get cranky.

Did you read the post? She's discussing stretching, yoga, meditation because
of their benefits for someone learning to code.

~~~
bitwize
It also sounds like she's cramming a lot of coding-related stuff into each
day. Her photo is even captioned to the effect of "Look, you can meditate
while coding, too! ^_^" It's a fairly typical, 19-year-old enthusiastic coder
attitude, but it's a fast path to burnout if you're not careful. Meditation
helps but you have to seek balance in the large, too.

~~~
heartbreak
That photo caption was a joke.

