proud n00b

Join a community

Two stories:

Story 1: Knowble

When I had the idea for the research network Knowble back in 2005 or so, a local VC in Research Triangle Park- NC IDEA- gave me incubator space to get the project rolling. Because I wasn’t a programmer, the biggest hurdle I had was finding the funding to get the site built. One day Lister, one of the partners said,

“In the amount of time you have spent looking for the funding, you could have taught yourself how to program, and built the website yourself.” 

Story 2 : Vote function

The vote function for Buswheel has truly been a crash course in programming. After having a few of the brightest python programmers I know on it, we solved it 12 hrs after I started looking at it.

30 lines of code- 4 programmers - 12 hours. Doesn’t make sense to me either.

The lesson: GAE is sensitive to the placement of spaces. 

The moral of these stories is if you want to write code, you must become a part of the community. In 2005, I wasn’t a part of the coding community- I was an “entrepreneur.” The biggest hurdle for me was to swallow my pride, admit I am code clueless, and tell the world- “Yes I’m a n00b.”

You won’t get very far without friends to bounce questions off of, throw problems at, and to basically say dumb shit that you think sounds smart, but really labels you much better than a bumper sticker on your forehead ever could.

People will help if you admit you are stuck. Some enjoy teaching others, some like solving little puzzles, and others are just generally nice people that believe in karma.

If you want to join a programming community, here is my advice.

Blog & Twitterfeed

Blog about your journey, the process, your trials and tribulations. In the titles, put #hashtags that will be picked up on Twitter. Making sure you then tweet your posts. I use Twitterfeed to automatically tweet mine.

Twitter

Tweeting the journey follows the same rules as your blog. Just be open and honest. 

Stackoverflow

Post your problems on Stackoverflow. I have said this in the past, but if you put in the time to properly describe and tag your problem, you will get a lot of great feedback.

IRC

Get setup on IRC. For more immediate feedback, you can join the channel for your language, and instantly get feedback from people around the world. The Python channel usually has about 800 people in it at any given time.

Local meetups

Attend local meetups to find people nearby with similar interests. In San Francisco, I have gone to Py Web SF, a Python group in SF that I learned about from IRC. I’ve also attended a few classes at NoiseBridge, a nonprofit that is also a ‘hacker space.’ 

Good luck!

#share #books #1

I just shipped book #1 for my book give away. Offline I do this -  I give away books I’ve read because I hate to see them just sitting on my shelf. So I came up with the virtual version last week…

1. Follow me on Twitter 
2. I’ll randomly post a book I read that I’m giving away. 
3. You just need to @ reply with the reason why you should get it.
4. I’ll select a person, and even pay for the shipping (that includes internationally!)

The first lucky winner was @jaretmanuel from Toronto. It’s pretty cool to make friends in countries I’ve never been to! :)

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.  -Buddha

13,000 readers later - Lessons from Blogging

It has been 1 week since I quit my job, and jumped 100% into learning how to program.

This morning I received an email from a reader asking:

Questions:

1. How many people came back organically?
2. Did “narrative” posts work better than “technical” posts?
3. Anything else I should know about how to leverage the experience?

Answers:

1. Total 13,000+ (Yeah, it has blown me away too!) 300 per day organically.
2. I am not sure. It seems people are interested in the blog for a few reasons. 

Quick survey - Why do you read this blog?

• Interested in my story
• You want to quit your job or change careers too
• Are a programmer looking to help
• Other?

Please leave the answer in the comments! Thanks!

And to the final question- there is a lot to ‘leveraging the experience!’ Here are the lessons I’ve learned:

1. Google analytics doesn’t automatically track outbound links, ex. to Twitter. Solution here
2. #3 on Front Page of HackerNews brings over 7,000 visitors. Anywhere on the front page brings about 1,000 visitors
3. Make a link to your Twitter account very prominent - http://twitter.com/emilepetrone
4. There is also a Twitter account for just blog posts, but I do not highlight that account on the blog - http://twitter.com/proudn00b
5. Track RSS feeds with Feedburner
6. Things will break, just roll with the punches
7. Taking a big leap, does bring big traffic. 
8. After a link on HackerNews gets a lot of traction, you will have a big drop in traffic. 90% do not return.
9. Track your analytics with Ego (iPhone App $1.99)
10. People need to understand your blog instantly. Have a short description in the header.
11. Get into a posting rhythm - same time of day, with a certain frequency.
12. People will contact you in every possible way (Twitter, Email, Facebook, Linkedin, Comments, etc). So have all of those accounts up to date!
13. As for learning how to code- you will have interruptions. Just roll with them and go with the flow. (Friday got totally wrecked after Borders made me go all the way to Palo Alto to just return a book bc I didn’t have the receipt. Goodbye day!)
14. Breaks are good for (required) reflection. Took this weekend off to decompress & analyze the traffic, feedback, and take stock of where everything is. Changes to the design are coming & bought the CSS Cookbook for just that. 
15. Get out of the house! Go to grab some lunch or meet up with friends after a long day. Not having to go to the office, is a good & bad thing. You miss the social interactions that comes with.
16. Selfcontrol is a required app. It will keep you focused.
17. Setup multiple inboxes in Gmail to filter out messages from Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. It will keep your inbox organized when a post suddenly takes off.
18. Tweetie is great for maintaining multiple Twitter accounts & the @ messages to them.
19. Random lesson, but I go to the grocery store much less frequently. I am out of food! 
20. If you can’t post from your laptop, make sure you can post via your phone. Only for emergencies..
21. You will get haters. Just brush em off, and ignore their comments.
22. I wish there was a way I could track my blog comments, HackerNews comments, @ replies all in the same place. Any recommendations?
23. On learning, start with what you know. Get very broad & slowly work your way down to a niche. It will give you a base of knowledge, and open you to new ideas you hadn’t explored (or even knew about!)
24. If you don’t know something, just ask! IRC #python & Twitter have been great for fast answers.
25. Stay organized! This is critical. Ex. I have a folder for links, throw everything in there & read them at the end of the day.
26. Disqus is pretty great for managing comments. 
27. Design is critical. Initially I heard a lot of noise on the font used & way I displayed links. I learned that lesson! More changes on the way…
28. Blog posts take about 3 hours to write, review, and rewrite.
29. 1% of your readers will follow you on Twitter. Out of 13,000 readers, I’ve seen a bump of about 130 followers.
30. Strangers are awesome - if they find you, they will help.
31. If you are wrong, readers will let you know! Just learn each time!
32. Figure out a structure for each post. I haven’t figured that out just yet, but that is the goal.

And on that- yesterday I posted I will not be posting daily. After all of the feedback, let me make a small correction to that policy. I will post small, technical updates daily & save longer posts for maybe once a  week. Smaller posts will hold my feet to the fire, and keep me focused. The longer posts just take too long to do on a daily basis.

So there you go- I think 32 lessons is a good place to stop. Thanks guys for an awesome Week 1! Here’s to you guys! Oh, and if you could also answer the survey question too, I’d appreciate it :)

Follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/emilepetrone

Is RSS dead?

A question I posted to Quora here. I am looking at other blogs, and the only thing that is consistent is a link like, Follow me on Twitter here.

So does that mean RSS is dead?