This post was originally published on July 10th on Jordan Saxe's blog. Jordan will be joining the first cohort of HackerYou students this fall - we're so excited to have him! You can follow him on Twitter at @jordansaxe.
Most of you know and have seen various tweets of my wide-ranging pursuits of trying to develop a website/application for the last year. Everyone has ideas and everyone has designs that they think are good and could be the next thing sold for a kajillion dollars. I think the thing that separates people out are the ones who pursue the idea, and the ones who sit back and let that idea sit and do nothing while someone else does it.
I don't speak for everyone and can only relate to my experience, but I have had some difficulties in pursuing those ideas. I've invested in books to re-learn HTML and CSS, and deep dive into MAMP, and ultimately start out really invigorated. But things come up, and the interest is lost. I return to sitting back and wondering how awesome my idea could potentially be if I could only find that one missing person who believes in my idea enough to help. I have also invested in Team Treehouse and TutsPlus to learn. I honestly thought that maybe this is a better avenue for me to work in. I can watch the videos online, take the chapter quizzes and apply my knowledge. Again, the initial passion is there, but things come up and the interest is gone.
So my next pursuit is something more. Something bigger (and something I think will be really big in the future). I signed up for HackerYou, a startup run by a couple passionate ladies from Toronto who created the successful Ladies Learning Code workshops. I feel like I have scratched the itch of the Wannabe Entrepreneur. I plopped down the cash and time commitment (3 hours, 2 days a week for 3-4 months), and I can say that I have never been more excited to get my hands dirty and create. The tools included are like something I have never seen (and you can read more up on that here) and should provide a very interesting way to challenge typical learning experiences you get in high school, college and university.
I feel like this could be a very interesting experiment, not only for HackerYou, but also for me. I'm planning to blog about the experience week by week and update everyone on my progress. Why would I subject myself to some potentially stupid and hilarious public gaffes of a semi-new developer? For those reasons...its stupid and hilarious and I know I wont make those mistakes again. As well, it would be a fairly interesting way to showcase a side-project I have been meaning to create since I started trying to develop it.
Should be a wild ride.
-- Want to follow Jordan's lead and start learning to code for realz in 2012? Join us for an Intro to Web Development this fall, and learn how to build websites from scratch. Click here to learn more or to apply.