I am currently attending Hacker School and fall in the less experienced camp and can honestly say that the experience has been nothing short of fantastic. The environment is incredibly conducive to learning, no question is seen as too basic and there is always someone that can help with working through a problem. I have grown tremendously as a programmer over the last couple months, much more so than I would have been able to working on my own, and I attribute that to the other programmers I have been able to work with at Hacker School.

You can do much more than just changing the column numbers or width, you can alter any styles.

Very cool, love the visualizations. Is there a way to select multiple subgroups when looking through the data (such as 18-24 and 25-34) or to compare groups?

Sadly, there is no way to do this. We may roll this out in the future -- but you're the first person to bring it up. If we see a higher demand, we'll definitely consider it.

The Eloquent Javascript book is excellent, thanks for the heads up. Definitely helping to expand my mind as I work through it. For anyone else here trying to learn I have also been using it conjunction with this tutorial here http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/ that has lots of interactive examples but not so much on explanations.

That is definitely the type of role and organization I would like to join. I am in NY right but will be back in the bay area soon and would be interested in an interview. I am certainly open to an internship, do you know if internship opportunities are paid?

Yeah, internships are definitely paid. Shoot me an email, kenneth@chartboost.com

Thanks for the insight. I agree ropeadopeandwink.com is an ugly design I will go in and clean it up shortly, font sizes especially need help. Comparing it to the blogs you suggested I honestly do not think my design is that far off from those but definitely needs improvement.

Thanks for the feedback but perhaps you can give me more insight into what is dreadful about my site/portfolio. When you say site/portfolio, which are you referring to? Is it the design, usability you find dreadful or did it crash on you? Developing a web application requires many different skills and this is where I am trying to get some feedback on. I appreciate your feedback that it is dreadful but perhaps a bit more insight into what would make it less dreadful beyond improve it.

Thats a great idea. I am a big believer in/user of open source technologies and would love to contribute.

Thanks for the insight, you really hit upon several things I have been thinking about, namely my shortest path which I also think is javascript/frontend. Been looking into javascript alot more and am developing some couchapps as they let me use javascript/html/css. I am also building some bookmarklets for which I need to use plain javascript as opposed to jquery. I am also interested in mapping/gis so have been putting effort in learning that. Do you think that can be useful or should I focus on javascript right now?

If you want to go this route, I strongly recommend you focus on javascript. There's enough going on in the frontend that it'll take you a year or two of solid effort before you're good in a number of them. By focusing heavily on one area, you'll get yourself marketable much quicker.

Now, the context in which you learn javascript and demonstrate it is up to you. If mapping/gis is your passion, then go with that. There are plenty of good mapping projects in the browser on github that could use help. If you would prefer a personal project you could, say, do some d3 visualizations using the geo facilities and have a great demo piece.

Thats where I spend most of my time. NY right now for the holidays.

I'm curious if you've considered work that isn't 100% dev focused, but a combination of tech/people focused. e.g. systems/sales consultant? Do you like to travel? Can you talk to people? Do you desire to be deep in dev, or more surface level?

Funny you should ask. I come from a sales/marketing background and can talk to people. I do not need a 100% dev role but also do not really like sales however something that included consulting and really providing value I could be interested in.

You can be very technical and still involved in the sales process and add value! In fact, the combination of people skills and tech skills is very rare and commands a pretty good salary. If you're totally turned off by the sales process, you can go into professional services and be much more technically involved, but still work with people. Professional services requires almost 100% travel, and isn't for everyone. Let me know if you're interested in either of these and I'll reach out to you.