Getting great stuff for free

[yaw]

Hey guys,

It's me again. I thought I could share a couple of successes I've reaped in past. It's about getting great, high-grade, high-quality stuff for free. The simple trick is to reach out. I didn't discover it until ...

• I tried to buy this book on Rails programming. The authors include 2 Rails core contributors and Ryan Bigg, who has written a ton of the official Rails documentation. It's an expensive book. The cheapest you get is $39.99. But I was willing to make that investment. When I tried to place my order, it failed. Because (maybe you guessed it) Manning doesn't accept buyers from Ghana. I reached out to Ryan, explained what happened, and he gave me the book for free. It's not pirated. As if that's not enough he added me to the official reviewers. I've since contributed in both tangible and intangible ways: some words in the books are mine while other re-wording has been because I told him they concept was a difficult to understand. I reached out, and see what I have now!

• I signed up to practice tech job interview questions on Interview Cake. But you can only practice so far with the basic account. I had to pay money to access everything. Again, I was willing to make that investment. Before I did, I sent an email to Parker telling him about why I'm about to pay, and the extra help I'd need from him in order to get an interview. He responded. We had a great voice chat on Hangout, he asked me to clean up my LinkedIn profile, and he gave me full access to the site for free! I didn't have to pay anything. Parker is my friend now.

I think it all begins with a desire to invest in yourself. It's like deciding what to eat. There's the cheap tummy-filler foods, and the healthy ones. What do you choose for yourself? Be willing to invest in yourself. Be willing to buy the books you need, the videos you want. Be willing to exchange value (money) for value (skills you earn). It shows how much you appreciate the dude who spent sleepless nights compiling them. And if they see fit, they will offer it all to you for free.

Give back. Get into conversations. Expose your ignorance. I fear I'm the stupidest person on #postgresql and #python but I've learnt a lot by exposing my ignorance. I've tried to help only to give the worse solution any man throughout history could come up with. At other times my answer worked. I am mentioned, in the same breath as some of the internet's greats, in this resource on HTTP to HTTPS migration but God knows how many terrible things I said in the process. (For example, I challenged someone who said HTTPS reduces MITM attacks, only to find out he works on Firefox's security team. How stupid can I be?) I'm a moderator on StackOverflow and it's all due to an answer I gave.

And learn to write good emails. Seriously, that's the most important skill as far as the internet is concerned.

Regards,

Yaw

[Tenace Setor]

Hey Yaw,

Great stuff. It all starts with having the motivation to learn something new.

There is so much out there to learn. Never be afraid to ask or expose your

ignorance. 

You know yourself better. Never be an impostor. It is okay, not

to know something. What is not okay? Is not wanting to know. But it's all starts

with the epistemological question - how do I know what I do not know?

There is only way. I guess you guys figured it out by now. - Simple - By saying

what you know or think you know.

Regards,

Tenace

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DevCongress" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to devcongress...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to devco...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/devcongress.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/devcongress/1645cf49-3639-4031-a0d8-cc8f76eaabe2%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[yaw]

True. Without exposing what you know or think you know you'd never know what you don't know.

It wonderful how in the communities I hang out people are more than willing to correct your wrong thought

than laugh about your ignorance. Or boot you into the rookies room. #postgresql and #python IRC

channels are perfect examples. They literally teach you; but that's after you've exposed your ignorance.

Which brings us back to question: how did you expose your ignorance. Usually, you said what you knew.

[Kirk Saviour]

Thanks for the inspiration Yaw.

The issue is most times we feel we don't know much (inferiority complex) hence failure to contribute.

Contribution in the developer world comes in various forms not just code.

Devcongress github repository has some projects that needs contributions.

Regards,

Kirk Saviour. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/devcongress/0b73ee28-b6d2-4364-ab9b-e47b9304240a%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

                                                                    

@savekirk   savekirk  save...@gmail.com     www.zottech.com  ki...@zottech.com      

[Francis Addai]

Hey Yaw,

That's just awesome and inspiring. Thanks for sharing. 

Francis Addai
- http://faddai.com
- http://gh.linkedin.com/in/faddai
- http://twitter.com/faddai

Mob : 026 3 130 950

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/devcongress/CANMLZXq%2BAeH267JFyZ_bEoaDpnub%2BJv5teG-KD8ADAzVNw8CAQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[yaw]

Hey Francis,

Thank you. I'm still looking forward to working with you some day. That should be sooner :)

[Francis Addai]

Yeah, definitely. I look forward to that.

Francis Addai
- http://faddai.com
- http://gh.linkedin.com/in/faddai
- http://twitter.com/faddai

Mob : 026 3 130 950

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/devcongress/6159e4b2-e95f-4bf6-84b5-4d140189588a%40googlegroups.com.