Government girl goes geek.. well kind of. But that’s the name of my new blog. This is the beginning of my 30 (or more) day challenge, where I take my previous code knowledge, which is basically nothing, and learn a whole new skill. This is where I’ll chronicle my ups, downs, frustrations, and wins as I embark on this new hobby.
Like many other 20-somethings, my desire in life is to do what I’m passionate about. For me, that’s city planning, and working for the Housing Department in a major city. In the meantime, between my current full-time government position, volunteer work, and trying to live life, I decided to learn how to code. Programming first piqued my interest when Code for America (the peace corp for geeks) recently launched their partnership with Oakland. And following Jennifer Pahlka (the CEO of Code for America), on Twitter, has been incredibly inspiring. But what really pushed me to do something about this interest was the recent viral marketing video from code.org featuring Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, and will.i.am. Code, or, programming, has always been incredibly intimidating to me – as if it was only for nerds, which I’m clearly not (I wish I was a nerd). I had this assumption that you had to be an expert or go to school to code. But that video told the stories of all of these successful people that didn’t initially get formal training – they just, picked it up. And that’s when programming became less intimidating, and more accessible, to me.
The code.org video was so inspiring, that I knew I had to do something about this interest to learn how to code – so I turned to my friend, Google. The problem was that the internet has an overwhelming amount of information – should I check out code.org? Or codecademy.com? What about Skillshare? Or Khanacademy? Perhaps Coursera – the list goes on and on. I started somewhat blindly by googling websites people have referred to me. After extensively researching (read: scanning the homepage of each site while browsing Facebook) each of the sites listed, I decided to use codeacademy.com. It seemed the most user friendly for someone who has very little experience programming. I also signed up for “Teach Yourself to Code: One Month Rails” by Mattan Griffel on Skillshare. I’ll document my experience learning to program, so wish me luck as I embark on this journey and attempt to use my government and programming knowledge to change the world (yes I know, overambitious)!
I love it!
Nabihah, I’m excited to read about how the next month goes for you! I found out about your blog from “So What’s on Your Plate”. I’m also taking Mattan’s class this month and was inspired to finally learn to code after working on strategy and customer acquisition for several tech startups in NYC and LA. I was also really intimidated for a long time, but I’m ready to dive into it now and learn a new skill, and it’s nice to know there are more and more women moving in this direction as well!
Melissa! That is awesome, so glad you read this and contacted me. I’m mostly going to blog about my experience in that class. Lets keep in touch via FB– loving the SWOYP support!
Yayy! Proud of you for learning something you’re intimidated by, but are interested in. Better to try, fail, figure out why you failed, then try again, than to never even attempt to try. Also check out http://www.codechix.org/ and there’s a Google Group called DevChix that you should get on – introduce yourself once you’re in, and why you’re on DevChix, and then you can probably ask for help on there if you’re stuck on stuff.