How to become a software developer

facilitated by Rabble and Lena

Intro

There's a computer science test in the UK to figure out who should be a developer through a series of mathematical questions.
People are told the need to score well, but there's no way to get it right.
Strategies from programmers - can you create a sufficient mental image to move forward?
- Random guessing
- Invent a fantasy world where each symbol has a meaning
- Try to figure them out one by one

People in ten-week developer programs:
- Have curiosity
- Experiment
- Find resources
Computer science degrees teach computation, not useful
Rabble hires CS-degreed people and self-taught people - considers them equal
However, design practices and engineering patterns (recursion) are difficult to teach yourself

Rabble rarely hires people who started programming after puberty.
You don't have to be a genius developer
The best programmers are better because they see the code better, write more elegant solutions.
You need people with different backgrounds.
"Become a programmer! (You just won't be great.)" -Rabble

The problems nonprofit developers solve don't need to be complicated, innovative, or new. Fit the needs of the org.
"We haven't even started our need for programmers. Software is eating the world. We really need more programmers."
Learning to code can mean being able to have an intelligent conversation.
"Disproportionate power of a programmer - programmers can drive and everyone else is walking."
When you build something, if you build it well, you don't have to build it again.

CodeAcademy for JS & Python
Learn Python the hard way
Coursera for data science
Hadebright's curriculum in GitHub
Learning a programming language isn't as hard as learning a human language.
- More like learning a dialect of a language you already know.
- Programming concepts are pretty universal.
- Doesn't matter which language you start with.
Javascript is the universal language for the web
For those doing self-teaching, are tehre common pitfalls or things to look out for?
- No, there are a lot of good tutorials.
Python is a good teaching language.
Start learning database MySQL
SQL is a useful language to learn - traditional databases use SQL.
Valuable to learn, there is a lot to learn.
At Twitter, everyone should have some working knowledge.
Get a mentor to check in with who can help you see your progress
Programming is like "yak-shaving" - you are trying to do something basic, but you get lost and start fixing other things and then forget what you initially wanted to do.
Pair programming - two keyboards, two monitors, and two mice. You work with a senior programmer to teach and share knowledge, save time, with two heads being better than one.
Programming is mostly de-bugging
Time is very important - so is flow.
- You get into a state, sot to interrupt a programmer is breaking that.
- This is why tech companies provide food service and laundry - you don't want to interrupt flow

Learn programming to better yourself!
Male developers play the alpha geek game which is uninclusive which is unfortunate
In sociology they tell you you can't fix anything; social change takes forever, unlike coding and software.
- You can have immediate impact and fix the world!
Developers can't estimate how long it is going to take.
Best software is buildt up from small pieces.