Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

let’s all learn how to code at the same time

The people you love will change you. The things you have learned will guide you. And nothing on earth can silence the quiet voice still inside you. And when that voice starts to whisper, “Moana, you’ve come so far.” Moana, listen, do you know who you are?

People who say bi erasure doesn’t happen need to realize Freddie Mercury is known as the most famous homosexual man when he identified himself as bisexual. If that’s not bi erasure I don’t even know.

“Protect bi girls who are into men!” ….From whom

Mainly from lesbians who like to call us things like “dick worshipers”, “basically straight”, “bihets”, “cheaters”, “untrustworthy”, “breeders” and “traitors”. 

from men asking if we’re into threesomes, from men who think we can’t say no sex bc we’re promiscuous, from the biphobia that we’ll inevitably face w/n our own relationships

And from you, apparently.

concept: casual lgbt+ representation

a man taking off his shirt to reveal a binder underneath. he settles down, has a beer, watches tv. no tragic backstory about his transition, no negativity. just a trans dude being a trans dude. 

a businesswoman talking on her cellphone while she stops by the pharmacy to pick up her estrogen.

people asking for pronouns without a second thought, using they/them even when the person isn’t in the room.

a woman getting hit on at a club, getting respectful responses when she says she’s ace. 

two men holding hands, three women in a healthy polyamorous relationship. a pan man living with his nonbinary datefriend. 

romcoms, sitcoms, slice-of-life stories.

not everyone is cishet; media should represent that. 

look at this fat bastard

alexander. i have to leave. ALEXANDER. look AROUND look aROUND, at how lucky we are to be alive right nowHELPLEEESSS they are ASKING me to lead look AROUND - isn’t THIS enough he will never be SATISwould it BE ENOUGH he will nevTO BE SATISFIIIIED SATISFIIIED sISTORY HAS ITS EEEEEEYES OOOOONNN YOU ASSUME YOU’RE THE SMARTEST IN THE NOOOOONNNN-STOP YOU WILL NEVER BE SATISWOULD IT BE ENOUGH SATISFIED BE ENOUGH FII-IIII-I-IIIIIEEED RUNNING OUT OF TIME WHY DO YOU WRITE LIKE HISTORY HAS ITS EEEEEYYYYYYYEEEESSSS OOOOOOONNNN YOU i am NOT throwing away my JUST YOU WAAAIT i am NOT THROWING AWAY MY JUST YOU WAAAIT I AM ALEXANDER HAMILTON!!! HAMILTON !!!! JUST you WAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT

I AM NOT THROWING AWAY! MY! SHOT!!!!!!!!

Earlier today, a friend remarked: “I don’t understand. The way you are reacting, it’s almost like you knew someone in the club.”

Here’s the thing you need to understand about every LGBT person in your family, your work, and your circle of friends:

We’ve spent most of our lives being aware that we are at risk.

When you hear interviewers talking to LGBT folks and they say “It could have been here. It could have been me,” they aren’t exaggerating. I don’t care how long you’ve been out, how far down your road to self acceptance and love you’ve traveled, we are always aware that we are at some level of risk.

I’m about as “don’t give a shit what ANYONE thinks” as anyone you’ll ever meet… and when I reach to hold Matt’s hand in the car? I still do the mental calculation of “ok, that car is just slightly behind us so they can’t see, but that truck to my left can see right inside the car”. If I kiss Matt in public, like he leaned in for on the bike trail the other day, I’m never fully in the moment. I’m always parsing who is around us and paying attention to us. There’s a tension that comes with that… a literal tensing of the muscles as you brace for potential danger. For a lot of us, it’s become such an automatic reaction that we don’t even think about it directly any more. We just do it.

And then… over the last few years, it started to fade a little. It started to feel like maybe things were getting better. A string of Supreme Court decisions. Public opinion shifting to the side of LGBT rights. Life was getting better. You could breathe a little bit.

What happened with this event is dramatically demonstrated by how Matt and I are reacting to it. Matt came out fairly late, during the golden glow of the changing tide. He’s never dealt with something like this. It’s literally turned him inside out emotionally because all that stuff he read about that was just “then” became very much “NOW”. For me, I’ve had some time to adjust to the idea that people hate us enough to kill us. Matthew Shephard was my first real lesson in that. So this weekend was a sudden slap in the face, a reminder that I should never have let my guard down, should never have gotten complacent… because it could have been US.

Every LGBT person you know knows what I’m talking about. Those tiny little mental calculations we do over the course of our life add up… and we just got hit with a stark reminder that those simmering concerns, those fears… they probably won’t ever go away. We’ll never be free of them. Additionally, now we just got a lesson that expressing our love could result in the deaths of *others* completely unrelated to us. It’s easy to take risks when it’s just you and you’ve made that choice. Now there’s this subtext that you could set off someone who kills other people who weren’t even involved. And that’s just a lot.

That’s why I’m personally a bit off balance even though (or because, depending on how you look at it) I live in Texas and was not personally effected by this tragedy. Don’t get me wrong: nothing will change. I will still hold my husband’s hand in public. I will still kiss him in public. We’ll still go out and attend functions and hold our heads high.

But we will be doing those mental calculations for the rest of our lives. Those little PDAs you take for granted with your spouse. They come with huge baggage for us. Every single one is an act of defiance, with all that entails.

So do me a favor. Reach out to that LGBT person in your life. Friend, co-worker, or family. Just let them know you are thinking of them and you love them. That will mean the world to them right now. I promise you.

i just found that people massacred a gay bar in veracruz mexico that left 7 dead and 12 injured and nobody in this country even talked about it 

english version for anyone who wants to read up on it. spanish version 

Oh hey it’s back on my dash perfect!  I was just thinking of this the other day!

OHOHOHO wow the Korean alphabet is awesome. The people who designed it were geniuses and were obviously incredibly schooled in the morphology and phonology of their language. HNNGGG

wow

여러분 모두 한국어 쓰세요 한국어 좋음  

한국어, 한글은 보면 맨날쓰는거지만 볼수록,쓸수록 예뻐요..참으로 곱구나’3’♥

ㅇ어머 (감동

짱 이쁜 한국어 쓰세요 여러분

굳

신기하게 가르치는군요 보고 신기했다 

FUN FACT!

IT WASN’T JUST ANY OLD DUDE WHO DECIDED, “HEY I WANT TO CREATE A KOREAN ALPHABET.”

IT WAS KING SEJONG, WHO ORDERED HIS ROYAL SCHOLARS TO CREATE THIS ALPHABET SO READING AND WRITING COULD BE ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE, EVEN THE PEASANTS. IT WAS PURPOSELY DESIGNED TO BE EASY TO LEARN.

SO SHOUT OUT TO KING SEJONG, WHO REALIZED BEFORE MANY OTHERS THE IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSAL LITERACY.

YOU GO KING SEJONG, FOUR FOR YOU KING SEJONG

Never trust someone whose favourite character of OITNB is Piper

The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))

What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?

Endemetriosis

Vaginal Thrush

Menorrhagia

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Fibroids

Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.

Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.

Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.

Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.

Chronic pain is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and women are less likely to be taken seriously or given treatment by medical professionals. I went through two years of diagnostics to finally find out I had occipital neuralgia; I felt doubted when I described my pain at every step of the way, but was lucky to have a partner who was persistent in helping me get treatment.

Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.

Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects. 

This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!  

Sources: Nature, Nature, Medscape, Biomedcentral.

Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.

Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?

Except that’s not right at all.

Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis - and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.

Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.

And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.

Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.

Then look up PCOS and diabetes.

Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed. Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.

I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And that’s not even unusual - that’s the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.

HERE’S TO ALL THE PEGGY’S OUT THERE

“what do you think about when you daydream or get distracted?”

nothing. my head is just a running loop of the hamilton original cast recording

VERY GOOD.

I don’t get why people hate immigrants so much… Like they’re literally just… People… From another location….