I Started Teaching a 40-year-old Dad How To Code (Complete Beginner) | Senior Developer

What qualifies me more than others is I know exactly where you are. Six, seven years ago, I didn't know what to do. I know where you are, and I know the steps you need to take to get to where you want to be and which is job ready. And, you know, you can go to the interview and you can tell them, hey, I can do this and this. If you don't need it, I don't want to work here anyways. If you do need it, I'm the guy, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, like, the attitude that I want to get you into, so.

So this is Shea. I actually took boot camp with him. You know, you can only learn so much in three months, right? You know, I feel like I really lucked out finding a job under Phil. Learned a lot from Phil and, like, what it takes, and there's a ton of things that you need to learn, but Phil has a really good system because he's, like, one of the success stories of a boot camp. Phil is very qualified in teaching and bringing people up. Not just coding, but, like, you know, even get a job in the future in coding. So literally save lives with coding.

Saving saves lives. Yeah.

Coding saves lives. Right? There's truth in it, because it's happened with Phil.

So my name is Phil, and I've heard a lot of good things about you, and I wanted to meet you for a long time. So I'm glad I. I can put a face to the name. And whatever it takes to help you, I want to help you. So it's July 8th, Monday, and we're doing a kickoff meeting. We're just doing some meeting, and then I'll figure out some kind of plan that'll be catered to you. I did hear that you're very. You do. You know HTML and CSS, but you feel a little bit weak in JavaScript, so that's something I can help you in, because I've been coding in node Js for strictly node Js for, like, a while now. What qualifies me more than others is I know exactly where you are. Six, seven years ago, I didn't know what to do. I know where you are, and I know the steps you need to take to get to where you want to be and which is job ready. And, you know, you can go to the interview and you can tell them, hey, I can do this and this. If you don't need it, I don't want to work here anyways. If you do need it, I'm the guy, right? And that's like the attitude that I want to get you into. So let's go. I mean at the bootcamp we did.

A week and a half of JavaScript, maybe a little bit more, but that was. But Minsu kind of misled you let. He did a week and a half. I was still on day one or day two of JavaScript. It just kept like piling on on top of that. So like, you know, that's where I'm at. Post boot camp I worked on a few projects but like I said, every time that I got to the point of Starting to use JavaScript or something like that, that's basically when the project stopped. And then I would get stuck, maybe throw the code in ChatGPT and it would throw out one line that would fix whatever I got going on. But I still wouldn't understand what's going on. But that was oh geez, Minsu, like almost. We're approaching our two year, two year anniversary of that boot camp. Yeah. So I have 2022. Yeah. Since then, like I have not touched JavaScript at all. And even just looking at some stuff, I know it's straight back to basic. Start from the start, from the beginning.

I'll teach you like my way from the beginning and I think that'll be a lot better. So at the boot camp maybe those teach a little bit of ES5 which. But a lot of things are like ES6 now ECMAScript 6 which is like let and const and using like map and filter and a whole bunch of different stuff that are really used in the marketplace now. And I think those are the things that I've been using in like React code and stuff. And I think that could help you. And so coding two years ago. And just one more question I wanted to ask is you did okay. Maybe you did like, okay, let's say a day of JavaScript or two days. Yeah, we can.

I'm rounding up from that from one to two. I don't know.

I know at the bootcamp they'll probably teach you and one of the like fundamentals you need is working and manipulating DOM with JavaScript. But have you ever done JavaScript in the server, which is no JS.

So no.

Basically I'll just explain this a little bit. You have JavaScript that runs in the browser on client side. So that's in like the Google Chrome engine or whatever it's called, like a V8 engine or whatever. And then there's the Node JS which runs in C land. And you know, they're very similar languages, but those are what I'm going to, you know, differentiate with you. Some things might work a little bit different and. But they don't run that like work that much different. But I just want to know your understanding of it. So there's client side JavaScript and there's server side JavaScript and we can get into both of it. And that's what I did with Minsu before we started with the server side and then we kind of like worked saw how the server could serve like client code and I think that it's really interesting if you think about it that way. Okay.

Yeah. Right on. A lot of those words that you said I've heard before but I still not a clue what I'm applying it to, so.

Okay.

But yeah. Yeah, I'm ready to go and get.

Get back into it and like me my opinion. We'll start with data types like strings, integers, floats, booleans, you know. And then we'll work on to like working with if conditions, else if, else and then we'll see. And then we'll have if and else and we'll have switch case which runs a little bit faster in my opinion and it makes your code a little cleaner. And then we'll go into for loops and then we'll, we'll do the other stuff. So I think I will install the fundamentals as much as I can.

Right on.

Yeah.

Didn't mean to tell you what you're getting into. Like.

No, I wouldn't talk down about yourself like that or like I'm gonna just, you know, if I can do it, you can do it too. I sincerely believe that. I really want you to watch this video in like, like four weeks. And you said, I've heard of those words, but I don't know what they are. I want you to confidently be like, dude, right? That wasn't. You know. And I wanna, and I want you to like see that growth and I want to see that smile on your face.

So.

All right, all right.

That's. It'll be sick. I'm a dad too and I heard you are too. So I think we can really like what is this? Like relate and I, I'm glad we chose this time because my kid goes to sleep and this is like the only time I have any.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I know like this time is like sending the kids to bed and, and that stuff because it's the like I think one of the first videos you had where you said I don't want to. I. I can't see myself teaching ESL as a 40 year old. And like, right now I'm like, I'm like, I'm. I'm working right now at one job and it's like things aren't panning out. I'm like, am I really thinking about going back to teaching esl? I don't want to. Not, not at all. But so Mintu said, like, hey, this could work out for, for all of us. And so, yeah, I'm glad. Thanks for the chance.

Amazing. I'm so happy. And like, I think most of the tutorials or lessons, we won't have to show our face. We'll just do the screen recording. Okay. Right. And I think you can come like unshaved and, you know, shirtless, whatever. It does not matter. You know, just come as comfortable as possible because if you're uncomfortable, I'm going to be uncomfortable teaching you. Right?

That's right.

Pants optional is what you're trying to say.

I don't have pants on right now. I saw you got tattoos and stuff. What kind of tattoos do you got?

Basically it's kind of a love letter to my daughter in my hometown. It's got some references to my small hometown that I grew up in and some a heart with my daughter, like kind of floating away and. And then it ends with a portrait of her on my shoulder here, so.

Oh, amazing. Pretty cool. Where's your hometown?

New Plymouth, Idaho. So it's a small like. And I say town like loosely. I think I've. Because I taught ESL so much, I realized like city, town, metropolis all has a population to it, certain population amount. So technically I'm from a village, I think, because it's like under like 5,000 people or something like that.

So.

Oh, yeah, I'm from a village in you.

Okay. I'm just gonna say like the thing now that I probably want to ask you, did you eat a lot of potatoes growing up?

That's the best. It's the best stuff. Like here I was like, it's crazy. I was like, who's paying for potatoes? Yeah, potatoes suck here.

They're like small and like the meaty Idaho potatoes that you make French fries with, those are, you know, I'm used.

To like counting how many people are eating tonight. Three people. Only like two and a half potatoes or three potatoes because they're so like. But here it's.

It's just. You need the whole 10 bucks in the whole bag.

Yeah.

So I'm from East Bay area, San Francisco, like Oakland, California. I grew up there and I Came here maybe like 2012. I was teaching English until like 2017, 2016, 2017. And then I went to the boot camp. Completely went like, like diving head first. And I did everything I could and I scratched and I crawled and I worked my first job for like what they call ramen money, where you can only eat ramen breakfast, lunch and dinner. So that was like 5,001. Living on 5,100, you know, a day. Yeah, like an, like an angel investor asking my CEO, how much do you guys absolutely need to at least live.

At work that's got paid, like just, Just enough to stay alive.

Exactly. And then that, you know, I did that for, you know, a year. No, no, not a year. Like six months or so. And then I got the company got invested actually, and my. And my pay went like, it went up a lot, so. And then from there. Yeah. And that investment was really exciting. And I don't know, I don't know if Minty told you my story, but I've done a lot of startups actually. I even made like a coding card game. If you have kids, I'll share it with you.

Okay.

Right on Kickstarter and stuff. So I just like to just take every opportunity and really try. And I'm seeing this as an opportunity to teach you and like, it'll grow, obviously, it'll like, help both of us. So I think that's amazing.

So, yeah, yeah, definitely. I. I got an understanding where you're coming from as far as, like when I first came here, like, teaching wasn't in the books. And then I kind of got a friend of a friend, needed a favor. And then I end up teaching like kindergarten kids and this type of stuff. And then I kind of went on the same path as you are right now. Where I was, I needed experience teaching adults. And so then I kid up. Everybody who I knew that was Korean that wanted to do English lessons, and I did like probably a three or four months straight of just free English lessons to like, get up to speed on teaching adults because, you know, they don't need the ABCs and this type of stuff, phonics, and they just want conversation, that stuff. So like, I, I get, I think I get kind of where you're coming from.

And yeah, just go from, you know, scratching, crawling those first few steps to get. Get into the door. And then once you're in the door, I think you'll, you know, fly. And I think, I know you have that grid, the first parts of programming, and, you know, it's not going to Be easy. It's not going to be, it's not going to be given to you on a platter or anything. It's going to be really, you, you know.

Yeah.

And I do have, you know, a project in the works right now that is going to help your resume as well. So I don't know if Minzu told you. It's. He's one of my friends and he asked me for a website today, and he's, he's basically like, you know, pretty popular marketer. He's ex CMO of IKEA Korea. Oh, yes. It'll like, really, you know, if you put that on your resume and you say you built it, it'll help you a lot, I think.

Yeah.

So we'll do that together. And he might, you know, have some other opportunities. So it's all about networking, in my opinion. So that's something I had a meeting this morning with, so that should, you know.

Okay.

Dang.

That's, that's, that's awesome. I thought, I thought for real, we were just. Mintu is setting us up just to do, like, the face off for the boxing match, and then that was it. Like, when he was gonna cut, he.

Was like, obviously, like, I went to the same boot camp you did, and it, you know, I, it gave me a lot personally, and I should give back too, you know, much appreciated.

And I, I, I'm definitely gonna take advantage of this opportunity. The plan is to be doing it until I got a job. Right. And so that's kind of what's up.

After you get the job. It's longer too, so.

Yeah. Yeah.

So wait. Thank you for your service, by the way.

It was paperwork, but it was good stuff. But that's, you know, that's the only thing I can say as far as, like, what the, the time I'm going to be investing, you know, and, you know, truly take advantage of this opportunity because I know it's, it would be expensive if I was looking out, you know, out on the economy for this opportunity. So I know it doesn't come cheap. And time is. Time is what you're offering, and I hope to double that back, you know.

So, you know, we're going to get there. And, you know, basically you can think of me as like your coach, your mentor. I want you to be as comfortable as possible. Never feel like you can't ask a question. Never feel like I'm gonna, like, look at you a certain way, because I will explain it and I will explain it so long that you'll be like, oh, Maybe I'll look it up myself before I ask this next question.

That's great to hear. I think my experience, like, post bootcamp was a lot of not necessarily pushback, but it's. It got to the point where I was, like, afraid of asking any question because I knew, like, oh, it's just time. You just need to make something. You need to keep going. And then I'm stuck in this loop of just constantly looking up stuff. And, like, I found out that, you know, the CHAT GPT was the only nice teacher out there. So it's not. Turns out it's not the best teacher at all.

So I'm gonna ask you to not use ChatGPT while we code or. Because. Because I've worked with people that just GPT everything, and I quickly lose respect for them for some reason, because they don't have, like, the deep knowledge. You know, it's like a shallow knowledge. And then I ask like, okay, why did you do that? Why did you copy paste that? Why? And they can't really answer. And I'm just like, okay, well, it's not in the same coding style that we're doing at the company. It's causing bugs, and you can't even explain the code. So let delete it or reference it or write it in your own way, and that's the way you're going to understand it.

So I won't use ChatGPT. Like I said, I ran into my issues with it, just with small things. I was like, ah, this is not what I want to do. And the outcome was not spitting out stuff that was way above my knowledge. And it sounds like coming from you that it's not even something.

I mean, later on, okay, because basically just I use copilot and I use, like sometimes, you know, or I use Copilot every day with my code, but I won't use it if I don't understand it, because later on, if it breaks, you know, what, are we gonna get in trouble? And let me tell you, I'm your new ChatGPT.

Okay? That works easy.

Even if you feel like sometimes it's slow, just bear with it. Because everything has a purpose in the end. Like, even I was teaching Minsu, right? And one of my other developers, he was there and he was like, oh, why don't you just run this server and then this on a different server? And then he was like, talking about connecting it, and I was like, whoa, whoa, hold your breaks there. I'm like, there was a reason why I was setting up this express Server. And there was a reason why I was serving the client HTML with one server. It's like an old way to do it, but I remember this specifically. And then it's had this plan and I didn't want him to. The quotes thing, remember? And then he was like, why don't you run it on live server? And I was like, no, we're doing it this way for a reason. And I love it when, you know, you don't understand why, you know, you're learning this and this and this. And then by like week three, week four, you're like, oh, oh, it's all coming together. That's. Yeah, that's like the best kind of feelings that I'm trying to, you know, provide. Okay, so. So I do see us meeting like, I don't know about your schedule, but like twice a week, if it's cool over the week. And then around like 9pm after my baby goes to sleep. And those lessons will be at the shortest, probably like one hour. And at the longest, I don't know.

Right now I'm living away from my family a solid two and a half hours to get back home. And so I'll get back to the house like right before nine, nine something. I maybe can hang out with my kids for like one or two hours before they gotta go to sleep, and then I'm up and out before they are awake. So like I said, that's why I'm. I'm really trying to take advantage of this opportunity because, you know, that schedule's not. Not really for a parent who wants, you know, for a parent who wants to be active in their kid's life.

So I'm thinking Mondays and Thursdays, but we can keep it open. How does that sound?

That sounds good.

And then kind of Monday, it kind of kick. It kicks your week off. And then that Tuesday and Wednesday, maybe there's some stuff to maybe like read up on on your free time, like on your phone. And then on Thursday it's like another one. And then you have like Friday, Saturday and Sunday, whenever you have free time, you look stuff up on your phone. And then we kind of have this system. And then nine to like, you know, at least 10:30 or whatever. Right, nine to 10:30. And then I'll set out some GitHub that I'll share with you. Please share your GitHub information. And then I'll put like a. Whatever we code that day will. Will upload it and I'll teach you all about like, you know, the version control, like get you know, like, commit, get push, and all this kind of stuff. I see like, at least three hours a week that we're together, and then obvious. I think I. I will have to give you, like, stuff to, like, study, you know, and that's on your own time.

Okay.

And I'm not going to take, like, time away from your kids or anything. That's not, like, what I'm going to do. I'm. I'm expecting it's going to be like five hours a week.

Okay.

You know, like three hours together. And then you're gonna have, like an hour of some kind of work and an hour of some kind of work on from Monday to Thursday hours. I'm gonna work to Thursday to Monday.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, that works. That makes sense. And it works. I can definitely. I got more than five hours to spare, so.

So I do see you, like, after the first month, you know, after you put in that 20, 25 hours, you will see a difference, and that's what we want to see in the beginning.

So.

Okay.

All right, then I'm ready. I'm ready to happen then.

Amazing. All right. Let's get it done, dude. And, you know, our first lesson is going to be on Thursday, by the way. Okay.

And is there anything you want me to do between now and Thursday, or are you gonna send that?

We're gonna. We're gonna do it all together. Okay.

Okay.

You know, if you have, like, a code editor. I mean, because it. It does take some install time. Like Visual Studio code.

Yes.

Yeah, that'll be. I mean, that's all you need to be honest. And then. Do you have Node on your computer? We'll get it done together. And if I see your Mac is a little bit slow or things are not configured properly, we might have to do, like a Brew install or. Do you have homebrew?

No.

Okay. I'll get that installed on your computer. It'll help you with your installations and keep all your things in one place and. Okay. You know, it's like a package installer. Like, it'll. When you download stuff and install stuff online, you might install some on your desktop or your documents, you know, but Brew will keep everything in one folder in one place. So it's easy to remove. It's easy. All right. We. We are really out of time. We have less. We have a couple seconds. Bye.