What do I do?

Senior Software Architect

Instructor

Mentor

I Just Love Hacking

We Love Hacking

How Did I Get Here?

When I Was Your Age

I actually didn't like sports

I actually wanted to be a doctor

These were my interests

But I also had ...

(Not my actual computer)

And a few books

But Why?

Question

Is there going to be more or less computing in the future?

When I Started ...

• Share my interests with other people
• Show my friends what I'm up to

Maybe that's not what you want to do

You can solve other people's problems

You can make the game you wanted

You can make $$$

The demand is high

Companies are looking for programmers

Whatever it is, when you pull it off ...

That's the best part

Sometimes, it's just getting something working

Most of the time, it's frustrating

But when it pays off, it's great

It Doesn't Take Much to Get Started

I just needed a computer and a couple of books

You only need a computer with internet access

I use this every day

So many resources online

Meet Other People

Make your own study group

Learn by working with others

Don't Get Discouraged!

You won't make Minecraft overnight

Tools of the Trade

http://rubyonrails.org

Sites that Use Rails

• Twitter
• Groupon
• Twitch.tv

Javascript

Game Development Tools

Sharing Your Creation

Servers in the cloud

• Create a public server for websites and applications 
• Can be as cheap as $5 a month
• Free options for certain types of sites

Domains

Maybe you want a fancy .com/.org/.ninja domain for your creation.

Start at $5 per year.

namecheap.com

Mobile Apps

Free to start

$100/year for iOS and $25/year for Android/Google Play

Less than $10/month

You don't need to spend money right away

Programming Isn't Everything

Writing and speaking skills are important

Many go into web design

People who can write code and design well are extremely rare

Math is important

Making games

Working with large amounts of data

Twitter sees up to 140,000 posts per second

Computer Science is Broad

• Cybersecurity
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer vision
• And much more

There's so much to learn out there

Build some cool stuff

Everything is at your fingertips

And it's not too early to get started