This attitude is a great starting point, but take caution to curate a future for yourself that you find interesting.
Whatever work you do, you will forever be the person who has done that work. Next time something needs to change in that domain or language, you might find yourself talked about as a specialist!
The moral is to choose and pick your projects carefully. Vocalizing your experiences with your manager goes a long way for shaping your future: like “I liked working in X and I want to do that more” and “I am glad I got to try Y, but I really didn’t enjoy it.”
This was an entertaining survey of whats out there and what problems aren't solved yet. Im sold that we can do so much better than what we have now and Id love to see more explorations!
The frontend is nice, but complex (probably due to time constraints, working with what was available).
If I forked this for a project, I would just reuse the test site data and credit Oscar (generated to covid19-testing/javascript/test-site-finder/static/data/sites.json)
disclaimer: I work for Oscar (but not on this project)
Safety becomes a big issue for this kind of thing. It might make sense to start by leverage a platform like couchsurfing which has a personal review system.
However, Oscar's hackathon is the second healthiest hackathon I've ever attended.
- It's closed to employees only.
- It's opt-in only.
- We get 2 workdays dedicated to the projects and there's no expectation to stay after work.
- There's catered healthy food as usual (via soripe.com)
- The deadline is soft and you can do work ahead of time. If you don't finish your project this hackathon, you can pick it up in the next one.
- You're encouraged to work on passion projects that are not directly related to your team
- There are prizes for not just Judges #1,2,3, but also People's Choice, Best Design, Best Product, and Best Engineered.
Any competition can be good, bad, or rotten.
I agree with you! It is quite incredible that a health startup like Oscar Health would actually encourage hackathons. And it's more incredible that Oscar seems to be doing it right.
If he wants to learn then he's halfway there already. The best practice for learning is to pick a project you're interested in, figure out what tools you need, and DO it.
Want to make a super simple video game? Making pong in python.
Want to make a website for your family? Getting "hello world" running on Ruby on Rails in Heroku is an amazing start.
Want your own drone? Buy a quadcopter or robot kit and make some moves.
Teamtreehouse has motivating tutorials and are a great way to start.
Stack Overflow should solve any problems a beginner might run into.
The documentation for each language and tool is hugely important and often will help you get started.
Of course, the best motivation in life is to do what you love.
Whatever work you do, you will forever be the person who has done that work. Next time something needs to change in that domain or language, you might find yourself talked about as a specialist!
The moral is to choose and pick your projects carefully. Vocalizing your experiences with your manager goes a long way for shaping your future: like “I liked working in X and I want to do that more” and “I am glad I got to try Y, but I really didn’t enjoy it.”