Managing Partner at Dragonfly. Effective Altruist. Airbnb, Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase) alum. Writer. Former poker pro. Donate 33% of my income to charity.
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It’s been two weeks now since I began the coding bootcamp at App Academy. The material has been blasted at us at a breakneck pace, and I’ve been learning a ton. Among the things I’ve learned: what “90 hours a week” feels like. The past 5 days, I’ve been at App Academy from 10AM till midnight, every single day.
It’s strange; it feels like just a few days ago that I first posted that I was going to move out here. But we’re already beginning week 3 of the academy. It’s all a flurry of building programs and trying not to under-sleep. That said, I’ve gained more confidence in my abilities as a coder. I’m starting to suspect I really have some potential for this.
I’m still an acolyte coder. Hell, I’ll still be an acolyte when I make it out of this program in 10 weeks. Coding is a mountain, and I’m standing at its base. Even with all this I’ll have barely climbed one step. But I like that. That’s exhilarating place to be for me.
Almost everyone I meet in San Francisco has some background in tech. And that means almost everyone I meet is further than I am. Everybody has something to teach me. It’s an amazing feeling. For most of my life as a poker player, I was the “master.” For every person I looked up to, there were 100 people looking up to me. It was my job to give answers rather than to find them.
But in coding, it’s the other way around. I am a student among students. Almost everybody knows more than I do. The impulse to learn, to get better, is irresistible. There’s something absolutely ecstatic about that.
I’m going to keep trying to update this blog, but while I’m at App Academy, most of my writing will probably be constrained to my coding blog I’ve made. You should read it: I write about my progress through App Academy, talk about the challenges I’m facing, and show the programs I’ve made.
Everything I’ve done so far has been pure Ruby (meaning, command-line programs), but they include fully-functioning Tic-Tac-Toe, Hangman, all the way up to Chess, Checkers, and currently working on five-card draw poker! Follow me if you want to ride side-car on my coding adventures.
(Don’t worry if you’re not technical, I’m going to continually do my best to explain things so that they’re easy to understand. And you’ll probably learn a few cool things along the way!)
Sincerely trying to get enough sleep,
It’s officially official. At week 8 into my 12 week coding bootcamp, I was whisked into a room with Ned Ruggeri, the co-founder of App Academy. He sat me down and told me that I was the top student in my cohort (40~ students), and asked that I come on as an instructor and help teach the bootcamp. With the position comes a competitive package, the opportunity to teach others...
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A new stage in my life began four days ago. I got out of a taxi on 7th and Market Street, with all of my belongings stuffed into a backpack and one suitcase. To my left, homeless men were peddling their wares and accosting passersby, and on my right, I could see the dizzying buildings packed with San Francisco’s most promising startups. I’ve never lived in a city like this...
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