thumbtackthief

I know I read it somewhere--it was a fairly well-known name in programming, and went along the lines of "In order to be ten times better at programming, help ten other programmers learn how to be better." Looking for the exact quote and source

After working at my current position for nearly two years (having been a programmer now for nearly four) I am frustrated with our lack of onboarding and training. To their credit, my supervisors have heard my complaints and want to meet with me to talk about improving (or implementing at all).

I'm looking for ideas and experiences from people on what's worked to train programmers and what you've liked. Not necessarily on teaching Python basics, for example (although that's always helpful too) but more about the day-to-day business specific stuff.

For me, I feel like I waste hours or even days trying to figure out a problem or using some new technology or third-party software, and I feel like there are already people on my team who know how to do it and could both save me the headaches as well as making me a more productive member of the team. While they're quick to provide feedback/criticism when I make a mistake, there's not so much before-the-fact assistance to help me do it right the first time. I'd like to work on improving this but I'm not sure how.

An associate has asked me to build an iOS app for him. I am a new iOS developer and this would be my first freelance project of any kind (I am a full time Python/Django developer with 3-4 years experience). I have no clue what would be a reasonable fee to charge him. I want to skew to the low-end since I have a personal connection with him and would be learning as I go, but I want to be fair to both him and me. I would assume a flat rate is better than hourly given the slow speed with which I will program. He's looking for an app that would get a user's location in the city we are in (so, limited to just this Metro area), provide a route somewhere else via Google Maps and our local bus transit's API, and pop up with interesting trivia along the way (that he would provide me). The project seems interesting and at the right level for me, skill-wise, but I have no idea how to estimate what that's worth.