Have you tried Codecombat.com? I think this is a great way to get started, have fun and at the same time learn the basic concepts of computer programming.
Once he understands this, you should encourage to hack into Minecraft hacks.
Later you can ask him about start their own projects and help him when he got stuck.
Programming should be fun and using a language only a tool for their mind, so help him become passionate about build things for himself.
Mexican here too. Please send me an email at [email protected], I'd love to connect you with a friend, he did exactly the same steps you're trying to achieve few years ago.
>> As my Google friends say, it's like already half retired.
This is very interesting. Few employees I know at Google are very busy and working in several things at the same time.
>> I just did not want to do that in my late 20s.
I'm 26 and I think the same too. I have the need to build something where every line of code matters, making people's life easier instead of working in a big company.
I think recruiters get paid by the number of positions they can fill, even if they get a "bad performance" for having few candidates.
I think this recruiter just was doing follow up after few months and trying to re-connect. Last year happened to me the same with a Pebble recruiter who later went to Greylock.
Without real experience in Javascript nor the framework, I created a Google Hangout face tracking app in five days. You can still try it here: http://cocacola-hangout.appspot.com/
Why Mexico City does not have BattleHack? I was lucky to organize AngelHack last year and our winners also won the finals in San Francisco. Overall, we have plenty of talented hackers down the Bravo river, so I think it would be a great choice.
That makes sense. In a personal note, I think doing monkey-patching code is okay in a discovery mode, but now we have a small revenue stream, we should focus on make the platform more reliable, and probably taking our users as the proxy to understand where the product lacks quality.
I completely agree. I recently started looking for this topic because the feeling I get is that everything is messy and its becoming a nightmare just to think about it. In my case, I'm taking more responsabilities and I think we need to start implementing best practices with our engineering team. Does that makes sense to you?
I agree with that. In the more general sense, do you think is a good approach doing monkey-patching, for a startup whose already made their first sales? Lets say we just raised money from an accelerator and no taking outside investment than that.
My main doubt about that is, do you think is a good approach to keep doing crappy code even if we're already doing money with this? And if not, when would be a good moment to start refactoring?
>> I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, especially for the HN crowd, but it's relatively easy for any developer to write a bot to auto-register them-self. One could even use Selenium.
Well, I'm not completely sure if it is that easy. Last year they had a first queue to get a ticket which did reset every time you opened a tab in your browser or entering via another device. After that, you had another queue to access your personal data, and finally you needed to use Checkout for buying the ticket. Not sure if they're going to do the same, but I'd love to hear some kind of programming challenges to get yours.
>> Conversely, not pounding F5 until I get a ticket makes me feel powerless.
Actually, last year they implemented some kind of IP-based persistence for each potential attendee: you could try to get on queue for a ticket on your smartphone or laptop and every time you access the timer did a reset.
> Don't you think it'd be just a 'founders conference' in that case?
That's right, but its seems YC is looking to find an open space for aspiring female founders and, at the same time, still remain open for male atendees. What I said was because in the application form you can say if you are male or female.
> a new engineer, we'll call them Jerry, joined the startup I work at in a critical position.
No matter if he's the CEO, he should not be an asshole with their team.
> recently incredibly high demands and time constraints were imposed, and combined with failure for the company to meet revenue goals, have created a very stressful place to work.
So stress comes from not being able to make money. If you are just doing what your boss says, Jerry should not make it personal.
> My boss already knows how Jerry acts and hasn't done anything.
He's responsible of solve this issues, if he's doing nothing, you should leave ASAP.
Please, drop me a line at my personal email (look at my profile), I'd love to help you find a new job.
I cannot say I have a "successful life", because my definition of successful could be different than yours.
I dropped out on my last semesters of CS BEng, and in retrospective, I think I made a great decision: After dropping out school I launched a community of Android Developers in Mexico, which a year later helped me close a 1 year contract with Motorola advocating about Android SDK. During the same year I did consulting gigs for Google here in Mexico also, which led to became the youngest ever Android SDK contractor in LATAM, at age 24.
This could sound great for you, but being totally honest, the main reason I dropped out was because I didn't feel passionate about the stuff I was doing there. On the other side, I fell in love with Android because I saw an opportunity of doing code and make a living, in a year where no one knew about that technology.
Once he understands this, you should encourage to hack into Minecraft hacks.
Later you can ask him about start their own projects and help him when he got stuck.
Programming should be fun and using a language only a tool for their mind, so help him become passionate about build things for himself.