admin, Author at Remote Coder

Fast.ai Live 2018: Lesson 1

October 30, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

Screen Shot 2018-10-30 at 12.25.22 PM

Last year’s version of the course started with the Dogs vs. Cats notebook. V3 starts with a notebook that pits multiple cat breeds against multiple dog breeds. Instead of separating the data out into discrete folders, representing classes, the file name structure includes both information on the meta-class (species), as well as the sub-class (breed).

Also apparent from Lesson 1, is that great pains have been taken to make referencing and interacting with the library’s documentation, significantly simpler. Those who took earlier versions of the course will likely remember using Shift+Tab to access information about the method in question.

V3 features the additional resources of help() and doc() methods. The help(<function_name>) method displaying the method in question’s docstring and the doc(<function_name>) producing a link, inside of Jupyter Notebook, to the documentation for that function. And get this, the documentation for V3 has all been written inside of Jupyter Notebook!

If you’d like to check out the code for V3, you can clone the git repo here. If you’d like to start coding as fast as possible, in a working environment, then you might want to check out Salamander.ai. To stay abreast of all V3 updates check out our Fast.ai Live post.

The Blink Response in Software Development Hiring

June 29, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, a New York Times best-selling author, maintains that most top professionals make most of their decisions in the blink of an eye. His conclusion seems to be a fact of life today, especially in this age of information overload.

To understand how this process applies to your job search, let’s consider the life cycle your resume may take from initial posting to offer letter. Imagine you throw it up on a site such as Monster, and it sits there, on the cloud, not causing any response, until a recruiter or some HR rep has it, along with a host of others, usually based on an extremely focused set of search criteria.

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Software Development, Thomas Szasz, and the Struggle for Definition

June 27, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

The famous Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, one of the founders of the anti-psychiatry movement, pointed out decades ago foundational issues in the field of mental health that still plague the industry to this day. One of his most enduring contributions was in the area of family systems, where Szasz coined the term “the struggle for definition.” He used this term to describe the process whereby family members define labels and then develop narratives based on those labels to lower the position of certain family members in the domestic pecking order.

According to Szasz, this is often done by a parent to maintain power or to elevate the status of a favorite child. In this way, roles that can last a lifetime are programmed and defined.

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Bioinformatics vs. Computer Science Degrees

June 9, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

This post was written in response to a question about the /r/cscareerquestions subreddit.

Would a specialized cs major (bioinformatics) negatively affect chances for general cs jobs?

I don’t think so in the least! Think about it this way. Programming is one of the few fields where you don’t need to have a degree to land a high-paying job. People these days can get hired on the strength of a GitHub profile alone.

A CS degree is a “feather in your cap”–an added bonus. In our economy today, we pay more for specialization. I would try to use a CS degree in bioinformatics to my advantage in a couple of different ways.

First, when interviewing for a non-bio-specific role, I would point out how rare bioinformatics degrees are compared with the already highly competitive CS degree. Second, I’d do some research and create a list of target companies in the bioinformatics space.

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Recruiters Can Be Shady, Here is Why You Should Use Them Anyway

May 16, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

One of the great benefits of using recruiters during your job search is that they are some of the world’s best salespeople. As soon as I start talking to one of them about a position I’m actually interested in, I’ll ask, “So what did you like about my background?”

This question is actually “magical” across the board in all interview situations, as we will demonstrate later. It will cause most interviewers to give you valuable information they might have never mentioned otherwise. Recruiters, as a group, almost never hesitate to answer this question.

Since they have little resistance, they are a great group to start practicing on. I’d strongly suggest getting in the habit of asking this question each time you speak to a recruiter for the first time. This will start them down the path of telling you a narrative about yourself.

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Combating “Never Ready” Syndrome When Looking for Remote Development Jobs

April 15, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

The “Never Ready” syndrome is a horrible malady that affects software developers and is closely related to “Impostor” syndrome. Basically, it means that for whatever reason developers often feel there is always one more thing they absolutely must do before making their next significant career transition.

In this case, we are talking about transitioning to remote jobs. Developers with a year or more of experience in a brick-and-mortar setting may feel they need to learn some new framework, complete a new GitHub project, or have spoken at a local Meetup before they can feel personally validated enough to start looking for a remote gig.

The baseline standard we use here at Remote Coder for transitioning into remote jobs is either one year of work experience in your chosen programming language or two years of development experience in another language and at least six months of project work/training in the area you’d like to work in remotely.

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The Fast Track to Your Ideal Remote Job

March 8, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

One of the main problems that software developers often face when looking for a new opportunity is managing the signal-to-noise issue. Once we put ourselves “out there” and actively start searching, we can be bombarded by so many opportunities that it becomes really difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This situation makes some job seekers dread hearing from recruiters and HR professionals. Since most opportunities will not be appealing, they often cringe whenever an HR rep contacts them. So what options do we have? Are we supposed to just “grin and bear it” every time we hear about a new position?

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Welcome to Remote Coder!

March 2, 2016 By admin Leave a Comment

Welcome to Remote Coder. We help software developers optimize their lifestyle engineering. Those who write code for a living work in some of the most in-demand fields on the planet. The skills they’ve built took years of time and effort to develop. These are areas that many have tried to enter only to wash out.

For these reasons among others, developers should be in high demand. Why is it then that even in these highly selective and specialized fields that so many coding professionals are dissatisfied? Some love their jobs, of course, and some are able to literally live the dream, coding from a laptop on the beach, professionals who are so specialized that industry wage standards don’t apply to them.

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