Working full time as a developer again, I’m trying to apply my years of thinking about learning to my programming. Learning in school is one thing, it’s supposed to be the point of school after all. Learning at school became even easier for me once I reached the all important “learning matters far more than grades” conclusion. Learning while working full time is very different though. You have to explicitly decide to learn, to take extra steps to learn, otherwise learning stagnates and you find yourself stuck at the same skill level for years. I’m determined to not let that happen, so will be making every effort to keep up the pace of my learning. Of course, there are many ways to practice “continuous learning”, but the one that I’m going to be attempting is just reflection. Sure, learning “the hard way” and other techniques may be more effective in the short run, but using them while at the same time producing as much good work as possible is hard. Using reflection as a tool for learning has the benefit of not taking time away from other important tasks and is arguably a more sustainable learning habit to create. So the learning plan is as follows: Every day after work, I reflect on what happened. Where did I make mistakes, where was I brilliant? what did I learn? At the end of every week I can review the learning and summarize it. I will try and post these summaries here every week. Some of it will be new learning, some of it will be things I’ve forgotten some will be things I didn’t do because of lack of sleep and some will be pure guesses as to what will help make things better. I will break things into sections, general programming and language specific learning. Week 1 General Programming: Much of this week was spent refactoring old code, in order to make a new set of features easier to implement. The process took me much longer than it should have. Here are some ways that I think can make the process of refactoring less painful. Always make the minimal amount of changes to go from working to not working. My method was to first change the main attributes to be named correctly, then to watch for where things broke when they called for those attributes. Terrible idea. The last thing that one should do is rename badly named variables and attributes. The first thing to do should be to DRY up the code as much as possible, only after everything is working and the code is as elegant as possible, should you worry about renaming old bad names. a “rename_column” migration is a hell of a lot cheaper than hunting through bad code for all references to a badly named variable/attribute. On the subject of renaming attributes never use “find and replace all”. Check each instance of something that gets replaced. If there are too many of them, then it means that you haven’t...
Ironically, as I prepare to teach my first “for profit” online course on Matygo I was sent this guest post by Marina Salsburg with some very legitimate concerns on for profit education. I think that Matygo is one of the few companies that is offering education online with the right intent, disrupting the very notion of accreditation. Take it away, Marina: Online education is often touted for its convenience and flexibility. Students dream of being able to work on their own timetables under their own direction, and web-based education can make that possible. However, as with everything, there are both good and bad online learning options. Online education is the wave of the future, and as it continues to grow, educators must find ways to make it better. One common concern is quality. In some cases online classes for college are taught by the same faculty who teach the conventional campus-based versions of the same courses, and are of equal caliber. However, it’s often true that web-based classes, especially in a fully online university, are not taught by full-time teachers. Part-time instructors often work for relatively low pay, without benefits, and sometimes don’t even have their own offices. As a result, it may be difficult to employ quality instructors in such positions, and those who do take the jobs may have to teach an inordinate number of classes simply to survive. Traditional colleges and universities can address this by actively encouraging full-time faculty to take on online classes as part of their teaching loads, perhaps by offering increased pay or other incentives. Another solution would be to incorporate online components to existing classes, so that students taking an online class simply view lectures and submit assignments remotely, but along with the classroom-based students. The huge number of for-profit online schools are also a common concern. These schools rely heavily on mass marketing to entice students to enroll, but the quality, adequate academic support, or even fundamental goal of actually providing sound education may simply not be there. Many of these schools are essentially diploma mills, taking tuition from students, providing perfunctory education, and awarding degrees that may or may not be of any real value. Even well-established and relatively well-respected online schools like the University of Phoenix have been accused of predatory recruitment, regardless of quality of education. Kaplan University, for instance, made almost 90% of its 2009 revenue from collecting taxpayer-backed financial aid. One particular problem has been the targeting of military veterans by the recruiters at such schools, motivated by the lucrative financial aid benefits the veterans bring with them. Donald Overton, Jr., executive director of Veterans of Modern Warfare, claims “These schools are after the monetary gain of a healthy benefits package, not necessarily what’s in the best interest of students.” As it stands, existing online schools that really have this mindset have no incentive to change. One way to correct that would be to have greater regulation of federal education aid funds, particularly those earmarked for...
I am going to be co-teaching a course soon, titled “Learn to build a sexy website” with Andrei Pop. It’s going to be offered online, on Matygo and it’s going to be kick-ass. So why am I teaching a course despite the hecticness of my imminent move to New York? Matygo is an awesome company run by awesome people. I think that their model is definitely going to be step in the right direction for education and I want to be a part of that. Programming is not a mystical force, it’s just a skill that can be learnt and the world will be better off if more people understood it. I’m tired of making websites for people who are smart enough to make them for themselves . I spend so much time mouthing off about better ways of teaching and learning that it really is time I put my money where my mouth is and do some teaching myself. The next question I guess is what is this going to look like? The course will run for 6 weeks. It will be taught in Matygo, which has some elements of an LMS (without many of the downsides). It will be limited to 9 participants, as the live, interactive parts will happen on Google Hangouts. Hangouts will happen at 7:30 to 9:00 PM on Tuesday evenings starting on October 27th. After the 6 weeks, if you complete all the course material that you will be able to build a great website in WordPress and have a deeper understand of how the internet works and be able to write and hack basic programs. So if you want to learn to code (and hang out with me online over the next 6 weeks) go check out the course page!
On the surface, watching this video is incredibly inspirational: How Bad Do You Want It from Greyskale Multimedia LLC on Vimeo. However, as I watched it, there was a rush of conflicting thoughts and feelings. One part of me was saying, yes he is right, Andre, you need to be better. Work harder, cut out more distractions, become great. The other part was asking, is that really the way? Will I accomplish my goals in life through single-minded perseverance, or is it in the moments of relaxation, in the serendipitous conversations and in allowing the heart and mind to wonder to where it wants to go that will get me there? Or, is it simply the right balance of both?
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