Codementor Blog: User Stories

Learning Django Through Problem-Solving: How A Lawyer Built His Side Project

2021-02-19T09:15:17Z

“I’m not looking to be a programmer. I just want to build State of K, but at this point, I’ve probably already learned every topic in Django.”

Ingram, a full-time lawyer and creator of State of K, the Q-and-A website where users can answer their own questions based on academic studies, started his programming journey with a very clear goal and a very vague idea of how.

“For many years, I had the idea of a site that I wanted to exist,” Ingram explained, “There are certain types of questions — empirical questions — where the best available answer comes from published studies, rather than someone’s opinion. But there are too many obstacles to understanding what those studies say. I wanted to solve that problem.”

Under normal circumstances, someone with barely any programming knowledge would choose to hire an expert developer to build their product. “I would liken it to a work of art,” Ingram explained, “You can’t commission an artist if you don’t know yet what you want the drawing to look like.” He went on to share that as he didn’t have a clear image of how the question-answer website would work, he wanted the freedom to be able to play around with the code. And as he had no idea what he would ask the developer to do, Ingram figured it would be easier to control the budget by building it himself.

So only equipped with the basic HTML and CSS learned at the turn of the century, he tried creating a website mockup by making a table with HTML “Because that’s what people did in 2001.” It got the job done, but he also quickly realized that his knowledge was outdated, and certainly not enough to bring the idea he had in his head to life.

After lots of research, Ingram theorized a “very complicated way” to build the website and set out to find a mentor or senior developer that could give him feedback. “The first person I met on Codementor told me my implementation plan was totally wrong,” he laughed. Luckily, it wasn’t all in vain as the mentor pointed him in the right direction: to learn Django.

And so he did. But as a full-time lawyer with limited free time, Ingram needed a way to learn code that could fit into his busy schedule. But traditional teaching methods weren’t a good fit: “With bootcamps, you need to be physically on site or adhere to their teaching schedule.” Instead, he started teaching himself by buying a book, watching Youtube videos, and purchasing several Udemy courses.

After a while, he realized he was making decisions that would have a butterfly effect on future decisions. He figured he could either continue puzzling together advice from YouTube videos, or work with a mentor that knew what they were doing and could help him make better decisions.

He chose the latter.

Ingram chatted with a couple of mentors and eventually found Jessamyn, a mentor he’s been consistently working with for years now. They started out working together a couple of times a week before increasing it to multiple times a week as his project (and budget) increased.

One surprising takeaway was how helpful working with a mentor was for learning the most basic things.

“It was like my 10th session, when Jessamyn asked off-handedly where I was saving my code,” he shared. And like most non-technical people, Ingram saved the project on his laptop. In that session, he learned about Git, how to use it, and how a programmer would actually run a project. “Of course, there are YouTube videos on how to use Git, but if you don’t know that it exists, you wouldn’t know to search for it in the first place.”

“I’m not interested in becoming a developer. I’m just interested in building a specific project,” he emphasized when we talked about his learning journey. With traditional learning models, the foundation building, while critical, did not fit into Ingram’s schedule. “The problem with the foundation learning model for me is that I don’t understand why the content will be useful until many months later by which time I’ve forgotten the lesson and have to relearn it. ”

He uses a goal-oriented approach when learning. “I usually know what I want to create,” Ingram said about his learning process. He spends time going through online resources and documentation — “the free official documentation for Python and Django have been the most useful” — before coming up with an implementation plan he shares with the mentor. “I try to do as much as I can on my own, and get Jessamyn’s approval early on,” he shared, “It’s an iterative process. Usually, if I’ve put enough thought into it beforehand, the concept works out the first time, but sometimes considerations that I never even thought of pop up once I start implementing."

However, with a demanding full-time job, there are days when he tries to shortcut the learning process: “It’s usually after I’ve pulled a couple of all nighters at work, or I reasonably believe that I won’t encounter a specific issue again.” During these sessions, he’ll learn by watching the mentor code and ask questions as she goes, which is much less demanding. “But I have to say, in almost every case, I end up encountering the problem again and have to spend more money and time to master what she did,” he said, “It usually pays to just pay attention and learn it properly the first time.”

It’s been four years since Ingram started on his programming journey, and State of K is steadily growing its user base. While his learning process can be described as “problem solving”, at this point, he’s “probably already learned every topic in the Django library and could apply that knowledge to other projects.” This has been echoed by his mentor, Jessamyn: “Ingram showed incredible growth as a developer over the several years I was actively mentoring him. He went from a novice to being able to develop quite complex features.”

"Have I learned Django more slowly than someone else? Definitely. But I've also done it while working a full-time job, which I think is also pretty great."

Learn Python by building projects on DevProjects

His National Athlete Background Helped Him Learn Programming

2020-08-19T07:14:20Z

In this series, we're shining the spotlight on members of the Codementor community. They share their journey to becoming a developer — the highs, the lows, and the inbetweens. Our first story is from Mitchell Gould, a long-time Codementor user.

When I was 10 years old, my father came into my room and asked "how would you like to climb Kilimanjaro?" I, of course, jumped at the idea, not having the faintest idea what a Kilimanjaro was or where it was located. My father never mentioned the topic again. But the seed was planted and if you keep reading, you will find out how IT enabled me to conquer that mountain.

I have been asked to write about how my varied background in a multitude of careers has helped me at being an entrepreneur. But after developing an aversion to labels at a very young age, I don't really think of myself as an entrepreneur.

My family moved from New York to Toronto when I was very young. I wanted to fit in, so I decided I would become a hockey player. This was Canada after all. But as luck would have it, my mother watched a hockey match shortly before I asked. And jaded by the blood and violence of the game, she, in classic mother fashion, replied with four words: over my dead body.

Instead, I was enrolled in figure skating and conned into believing that all great hockey players took figure skating lessons. When the kids at school found out, I was teased, ridiculed, and frequently beaten. I learned that I had to hide risky labels if I wanted to be safe. By ignoring the labels, I found myself focusing on the skills and practices associated with them.

This rejection of labels has had the positive side effect of helping me to be less judgmental of myself and others. I also believe it has freed me to pursue a multitude of careers in completely unrelated fields such as (in no particular order):

international competitor on Canada's National Figure Skating Team
brain researcher associated with the Canadian Aerospace Medical Research Unit
a Cordon Bleu certified chef at the renowned Olive and Gourmando Cafe
write and produce movies, one of which won the National Drama Prize
CELTA certified teacher at 3 universities in Chiang Mai, Thailand
graduate from the Information Technology Institute and build my own IT projects
buddhist monk in Cambodia as part of a project to restart Buddhism in rural communities.

What I find most fascinating is how each of these careers surprised me with challenges to develop myself, gain new skills I never would have imagined, and how these skills translated from one career to the other.

For example, as a chef, you would expect to spend your time cooking things like Veloutés, Cassoulet, or Confit de canard. But I actually spent a great deal of my time solving problems. Like the time our food supplier missed our delivery, and I had to source and balance five boxes of portobello mushrooms while riding a bike in a Canadian snowstorm. Or when the water was accidentally left running in the espresso machine overnight and we had to deal with the espresso flood the next morning.

As a skater, I practiced how to throw my weight into the air to achieve enough momentum to complete 2.5 rotations and land safely. I had to overcome fear and have complete trust in myself. This turned into a life philosophy. I never would have predicted that doing a double axle would help me to confidently launch myself into so many different careers and projects.

My current project, code named 'ProvenWord', is a direct consequence of teaching English in Thailand for 3 years. I witnessed firsthand, the difficulty of learning to write in English, something I took for granted as a native English speaker. I partnered with a friend who has over 20 years of proofreading experience, to develop an application that helps non-native English learners improve their writing.

In competitive ice skating judges would immediately evaluate your performance and hold up a score from 0 to 10. I found that this kind of direct and immediate feedback to be very powerful (and, at times, painful). ProvenWord draws significantly from this experience. Our system instantly evaluates a client's writing, categorizes their errors (e.g. verb, punctuation, capitalization etc.), and presents the results in a visually stunning graphical interface. Clients gain a clear picture of where they need to focus to improve their writing are are provided with interactive learning tools designed for each error category.

Of all the careers, jobs, and projects that I have been a part of, ProvenWord has proven to be the most challenging. We literally had no money when we started this project. My skills in IT were quite limited and/or outdated. The scope of the project kept growing and went well beyond my pay grade. But this sounded like an awesome challenge to me, so I decided to up my IT abilities, and for that I needed help. A lot of help.

It took me quite a while to find the resources, learning platforms, and coding legends I wanted to learn from. I'm also a very slow learner, so I found myself taking many courses on the same topic from different teachers, exposing me to an array of coding styles and ideologies.

While courses and resources gave me a solid foundation, nothing was as powerful or effective as working with a mentor. I have to give a shout out to the people at Codementor for building this platform with access to so many incredible developers. That's not to say I found the right mentors the first time. It took me a few sessions until I connected with mentors with a good balance of patience, pedagogy, and expertise that resonated with me.

I initially worked with mentors to fix specific bugs, but more often than not, the mentor would point out the larger problem that needed to be fixed. Mentoring sessions went from 'bug fixes' to developing high level strategies and best practices that would take my coding skills to a whole new level. I learned how to take a step back to think about the problem, how the structure could be adjusted, and more importantly, I learned how to solve the problem when it came around next time. I remember there was one time I had to scrap my entire code after a mentoring session. Rather than band-aiding the existing code, my mentor asked what I was trying to achieve. He then took a step back and taught me how to look at all the other ways of writing better code with the same function. I finished that mentoring session feeling like Keanu Reaves in The Matrix, like I was plugged in and getting an upgrade. I was excited, fired up, and motivated to go back to work and apply this new found knowledge.

That's the feeling I get after every fruitful mentoring session. Finding the right mentor allowed me to up my game and skillset. They opened my mind and taught me things I didn't even request in the initial communication. Working with the right mentor can be highly motivating, but that doesn't mean I didn't prepare beforehand. I learned that to get the most out of mentoring, I needed to be clear about what I wanted from each session. This forced me to think deeply about each problem and document it precisely. Sometimes this preparation was enough for me to solve the problem myself. Other times, the document with code samples, pseudo code, and other information helped my mentor prepare for our session, and would be able to more efficiently, come up with a strategy or solution.

Thank you to my mentors and to Codementor for all your help.

Now back to the Kilimanjaro story.

I was attending the Information Technology Institute in Ottawa, Canada when I met Yvonne. She was a refuge from Rwanda and a truly brilliant woman. We quickly became close friends and helped each other get through the grueling course load.

We graduated just after the 2000 dotcom bubble burst and there were no jobs for freshly graduated IT students. With no choice and nothing to lose, we setup shop in a room of my Montreal apartment and built websites, designed business cards, fliers, and did whatever we could to get by.

One day Yvonne walked into the office and told me she was going to Nairobi, Kenya to see her family. A quick Google search showed me where Nairobi was: 4 hours north of Arusha, Tanzania - the staging city for climbing Kilimanjaro. Taking this as a sign from the universe, I contacted my friend, Adam, who was then working somewhere in Nigeria. Coincidentally he wanted to quit his job and was up for an adventure. So I booked a flight and fulfilled my childhood dream, only without my dad (he was proud of me anyway).

Thanks for your attention and perseverance in reading this article. I hope to update it in the near future with links to ProvenWord.com when it's launched. I've also included the list of resources I used. Hopefully, this will be helpful for you.

Here is a list of resources that you may find useful: - Ruby and Object Oriented Programming: - Any book by Sandi Metz and the this course - Any book by Avdi Grim, and the courses on his website, - Idiomatic Ruby - Ruby Beyond the Basics - Jordan Hudgens - Comprehensive Ruby Programming - LearnEnough.com - Jonas Schmedtmann - Advanced CSS and Sass - Scrimba.com - Kevin Powell - Responsive Web Design Bootcamp - Per Herald Bogan - Learn Flexbox - Frontendmasters.com - Mike North - SASS Fundamentals

Agency Founder & Marketing Veteran: Codementor Helps Build the Foundation of a High-Growth Company

2020-09-01T07:01:55Z

After 17 years of running marketing companies and building websites to help businesses grow, Justin Handley, President and Founder of Web Mission Control, needed help with building an app with a technology he wasn’t too familiar with. What started out from just needing to consult an expert, the collaboration between Justin and a Codementor eventually lead to building a web app that is now the foundation of a rapidly growing company. But what proved to be the greatest benefit of Codementor to Justin is that he was able to pick up enough expertise and confidence in other programming languages and a variety of frameworks to start taking on other projects and help more businesses take off.

The Challenge

About a year ago, I was looking to build a new app and was trying to decide between React.js and Angular. I wanted to talk to someone with deep experience with both applications and that’s when I first came to Codementor.

I found a mentor who was more talented than I had ever hoped for. Through a series of sessions, we not only decided on the platform, but I also learned how to code the application in React (the platform we decided on). I previously had been a PHP programmer and had done some Java, but other than simple tweaks on WordPress sites, I’d never done any serious JavaScript programming.

High-value learning while building real-world applications with Codementor

With the help of my mentor over several sessions, I began to build an application that I continued working on over the next several months. Every time I got stuck, I’d return for another session, and in this way, I learned an incredible amount.

I picked up how to set up Node, how to work with Firebase, how to write in ES6, among others. I also learned many JavaScript libraries deeply like Moment and Redux that enabled me to build the application I wanted.

With Codementor, I was able to get an application live in a language I’d never written a single line of code in, in under six months.

And even when my mentor had to leave town due to some family issues, I opened a new request, and have found many talented freelancers available to help me with issues as I need them. In this fashion, I built a web app that is now the foundation of a rapidly growing company. With Codementor, I was able to get an application live in a language I’d never written a single line of code in, in under six months. You can see the result at http://scaleapp.rocks

The web app that Justin, with the help of a Codementor, built

Going beyond coding

I love the approach, as I fully understand every line of code in my application — so I’m not at the mercy of a freelancer who wrote code that is way over my head. When I need code to be written that goes beyond my skill level, now instead of hiring it out, I watch someone write it and have them explain it to me in real-time so that my knowledge base constantly grows.

I get to feel confident in taking on a job because I know if I’m stuck, I am just a click away from getting the help I need.

At this point, I’ve started writing JavaScript applications for several clients who love my work, and I get to feel confident in taking on a job because I know if I’m stuck, I am just a click away from getting the help I need.

Tutors near me & beyond: Teen dev finds global mentor

2025-05-05T04:36:10Z

Keivan is a 17-year-old high school student from New York who was first introduced to programming when he was in sixth grade. Since then, he has expanded his skills and has already developed several apps including an Apple App Store Top 100 Free Sports Game, Tap2Row, which has users in over 80 countries.

Not showing any signs of slowing down, Keivan took to expand his development skills even further and launched a project that is relevant to him as a student. He pursued an Independent Study that would modernize the outdated course selection system in his school called Courselect. To help finish his project efficiently, he needed access to a far-reaching network of mentors when there was no one in his area he could turn to for more help—and that’s when Codementor helped him connect with programming tutors and app development experts across the globe.

Challenges on finding a local mentor as a student

With the help of my mentors, including a project manager at an app development studio, and a CS-initiative leader working for the NYC Department of Education, we created a curriculum that focuses on the real-world process of developing an application. Through my Independent Study, I decided to modernize the currently antiquated system of course selection at my school.

Upon starting the project, I realized that I would be able to work more efficiently if I had a dedicated mentor who can guide me through the development process more closely than my other mentors could. I began to search all over for mentors in my area, though all of my leads brought me to dead ends. Finally, I discovered Codementor.

Unlike services that put you in touch with local tutors, Codementor allows users to tap into a much larger, international talent pool.

Finding tutors near me and beyond

I have had an amazing experience working with my mentor, Christoph Wagner. Christoph has been very professional and has displayed a strong understanding of web development. He has been an excellent mentor, because he guides me in the right direction, rather than simply providing answers. During our sessions, we tackle larger concepts that are applicable to what I need to work on, which I can do on my own time. When we are not meeting, Christoph takes our mentorship a step further by providing me with great online resources or even typing up guides of his own. I recently completed the first stage of my project, a course search engine, and I am looking forward to finishing the project in its entirety.

Unlike services that put you in touch with local tutors, Codementor allows users to tap into a much larger, international talent pool. Beyond providing users with excellent mentors, Codementor has created an environment that makes meetings more convenient, unlike “local” meetups one might have to do with other services, which can get inconvenient sometimes. The live code editor and seamless video calling make for an all-in-one environment that allows users to make the most out of their time. When it comes to finding a mentor or tutor for programming, there is only one place that I will point people to — Codementor.

Find a Programming Mentor Now!

Back-end Developer: Codementor Helped Me Become a Full-Stack Developer

2025-05-05T04:40:24Z

As a developer with 20 years of experience, Aaron made the tough switch from Oracle proprietary software to a modern web stack a few years ago. He stumbled upon Codementor when he needed help badly in a short amount of time, and he lacked the understanding of even what to search for.

To Aaron, Codementor is “a real game changer”, as it allows him to take on projects and succeed with technologies he had never touched before. It has also reinvigorated and turbo-charged his learning.

How Have You Used Codementor?

I have used Codementor to ramp up for interviews. I mined the internet and compiled a list of 50 ruby and rails questions and and spent hours asking these questions to various mentors and getting all kinds of great explanations and resources.

I have also used Codementor for help with my daily work. I am a backend guy who was recently thrust into a full stack job that included a lot of Backbone and Marionette, which I had never even heard of. I was on a 6-month contract to hire and wasn’t picking up the new stuff fast enough, so I was continually delivering late. I found Yuriy on Codementor and started working with him up to an hour a day. He showed me so much and made so much come clear.

The best part is I was no longer afraid of hitting a problem that I couldn’t solve. There would be no more long afternoons of furiously searching Stack Overflow, and no more impending dread that if I didn’t figure it out I was going to lose my job. He really saved me.

After that, I vowed to stop wasting time on problems I can’t fix and just get help. This has allowed me to be more efficient, much faster, and ultimately pick up extra side work.

I took the same route when interviewing for another full-stack position with a React front-end, which I have also never looked at. I went straight to Codementor to get a partner on my side to supervise and inform my React journey so I won’t sound like a numskull when my interview comes next week. If I do get the job, I will tap that same person to help me heavily with my front end work until over time I can do more and more of it on my own.

The money that I pay to my mentors is negligible in the big scheme of things. I will gladly give up a couple hours of my pay to avoid days of wasted effort.

Can you please describe in details a few sessions you’ve had?

I had a session where I was up against a deadline to create a presentation on mobile design. I worked with my mentor for a couple of hours to finish out the content, then he suggested moving it from powerpoint to reveal.js (because it looks awesome). This was just one more of the many tools I had never heard of until my mentor suggested it.

I’ve had sessions with mentors who were in the top 1% of all stack overflow answerers. I’ve had instant access to some of the best practitioners of various technologies that you can find.

One time I had a particularly good but expensive guy who turned out to be unfamiliar with the particular JavaScript framework I was working with. We decided to try the session anyway. Every time there was something that he didn’t know and had to look up, he would pause the session while he did the research for me. By the end of the session we had been on the phone for 2 hours and he charged me for 45 minutes, very cool guy.

What do you like the most about Codementor and would you recommend Codementor to others?

I love that I can get instant relief with any of my issues without having to wait for a friend to make time for me. I like that I can apply and take jobs where I don’t know the entire stack.

With Codementor, I will never again have to be afraid of getting hopelessly stuck on something that I don’t understand and can’t figure out.

Find a Programming Mentor Now!

Novice Android Developer: Codementor Helped Me Find a Job

2025-05-05T04:45:40Z

Tony is a novice Android developer looking to find a job in the field. He decided he wanted a career change about a year ago, and had always wanted to learn to program. He fell in love with the Android platform, and having a little Java experience already, he enrolled in an online bootcamp for Android development. He ended up taking a break from it when he realized the pace was a bit too fast-paced, as he felt he needed some help reinforcing the fundamentals with some guided practice opportunities and a bit more 1:1 instruction.

As of now, Tony has found a job as a junior Android developer, thanks to his mentor, Ryan Simon, who recommended Tony to his company. Ryan continues mentoring him as the senior developer at the company.

Tony’s Codementor Experience with a Long-term Mentor

I chose Ryan Simon as my mentor, and after a few sessions in which he helped me develop my apps for the bootcamp, he quickly identified my needs and we developed a custom curriculum in order to tackle what I’d need to do to become qualified for a job as a junior Android developer.

In a typical session, we will start out by addressing any questions or concerns regarding the “mini-app” homework that Ryan assigns me the week prior. I’ll explain my code to him and describe my logic step-by-step, and he’ll help me work through any problems I have. He’s really good at making me think for myself about what is going on in the code rather than just giving me the answer outright. I am also working through an Android programming guide book that Ryan chose as the textbook for our custom course (it’s fantastic), and it provides a structure for the course that the “mini-app” projects he designs for me can work off of. So, we will also work together in solving some of the challenge problems at the end of each chapter. The 1:1 work we do is not only great for helping me learn the information I need, but also the meta-thinking that I need to be a good programmer. One of the key takeaways I’m getting from this is “How do I approach problems like a programmer so that I can think of a clear, logical solution?”

What I like about Codementor is that it seems like all the mentors are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about teaching others to code.

I really like the Codementor longterm mentorship program – it’s affordable and flexible. Also, I like that it’s basically open to whatever type of help I would need. I got a lot more than I expected to, in a mentor that takes my own goals as seriously as I do – so with his help I feel really confident that I’m going to get where I want to be. So yes, I’d definitely recommend this to others!

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WordPress Developer: Codementor Helps Me Deliver Better Solutions for Clients

2020-09-01T07:01:55Z

Khary Reynolds is a WordPress developer who provides a variety of web solutions for companies including custom themes & plugin development. Although he’s well-versed in a variety of programming languages and frameworks, he considers his technical skills secondary to the value he offers clients throughout the WordPress development process.

Khary’s Experience with Codementor

What Have You Used Codementor For?

I have used Codementor to learn a variety of technologies and frameworks from creating custom plugins for WordPress or developing an eCommerce site using Python & Django.

In regards to my growth as a developer, Codementor is the first place I turn to when I need to solve a specific issue or learn a new skill.

I like the the efficiency of being able to speak to an experienced developer who can quickly assist me with project specific issues. Codementor allows me to learn new technologies at a faster pace.

How did your Codementor Sessions Go?

In general, all of my sessions have gone extremely well. I have always been able to resolve my issues and have gained more insight on how to solve future problems that may arise.

My mentors have helped me to get over many challenges that I come across in my day-to-day coding. I have also learned how to be more efficient with my code and have benefited from gaining more experience in WordPress and other technologies.

Any key takeaways or learnings from using Codementor?

I’ve learned that the best way to quickly increase your skill as a developer, you definitely need a good mentor who can help guide you down the best path to meeting your objectives and accomplishing your goals.

What do you like the most about Codementor?

What I like most is the fact that Codementor has a large talent pool of mentors, which are ready to assist with a variety of languages and frameworks. I would definitely recommend Codementor to any developer or entrepreneur looking to become a better coder.

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Self-Taught Programmer: Codementor is a Great Alternative to StackOverflow

2025-05-05T04:36:52Z

David is soon to turning 47 and has tried his hand at many different kinds of work. He started out as an elementary school teacher, but has spent the last seven years or so as an EKG monitor reader in a hospital. About two years ago, David had an idea for an app which he though had real potential, so he decided to learn web programming with the help of books and websites along with endless trial and errors. For David, it was a very steep learning curve to go from knowing nothing to building a full scale web app. “At times I’ve described the process as either a mountain climb or wrestling match,” David says. Finally, David realized that this app needed full time attention if he was going to get anywhere soon, so he took a year off work and lived on savings and credit cards all the while immersing himself in the app. Although his full-time programming sabbatical is ending soon, he hopes to launch his app in six months at 1000Miles.com

What Brought David to Codementor

I think many people would describe the process of learning and doing web development as a roller coaster of frustration and elation – with frustration the most common! When you’re learning anything new – especially something as complicated as web development, there will be many moments frustration. Not only are there a million different technologies and approaches, but everything changes in the meantime.

I always tried to figure out problems on my own, and a certain amount of this is necessary for learning. The trouble is that this process can take up to a week – and you may not even have the knowledge to resolve it. I felt that with my limited, concentrated time to finish my app, I couldn’t wait that long. Sometimes I was just plain stuck and couldn’t figure a way out on my own. So I finally made the break and started a session with my first mentor.

How David Used Codementor

Since I began my project, manipulating HTML with pure JavaScript or jQuery has become old-fashioned, and frameworks like React are taking the lead. MySQL and PHP are losing ground to NoSQL databases like Mongo and server-side JavaScript with Node.js. In addition, a new version of JavaScript came out! So just when a newcomer like me starts to get comfortable with some of the basics, a new set of basics comes along! This is where Codementor has been invaluable for me. I don’t care how many books you read, web tutorials you do, or videos you watch, you’re going to run into difficulties when you either try to set up software packages or write your own code. You’ll run into many situations that weren’t “covered” there. You have a few common options: ask a question on Stack Overflow or some other forum or post an issue on GitHub. The trouble is that 1.) you may not get an answer, 2.) the answer may take a while to come, and 3.) the answer may not help you. With Codementor I just broadcast my problem, and I get help within the hour! The best part is that the help is not general – it’s specific to my code, and you talk to a real live person so you can ask questions and get all kinds of professional pointers along the way. In addition, you can build relationships with a few special mentors who become your “goto” people for certain issues or technologies.

David’s Experience with Codementor

One of my first great mentor experiences was with Jon Tewksbury. I was trying to learn my first JavaScript framework – Backbone.js with Marionette, and was running into difficulties. I instantly felt comfortable with Jon. He uses these frameworks every day and was able to solve my two main problems in about 15 minutes! Not only that, but he told me about how so many Backbone sites were now converting to React and that the development experience was so much better. Many of the old Backbone headaches were gone. I decided soon after that to switch to React and I haven’t looked back. It really is awesome and so completely different from the “old-fashioned” way of doing web apps. I still use Jon as my main React mentor to this day and he’s even given me his personal email where he answers my shorter questions! I’ve used many other mentors for different problems – working with people as far as India, Taiwan, and Latvia!! It’s always been a positive experience even when we can’t solve my issue.

What David Likes about Codementor

Obviously I’m a big fan of Codementor.

I would recommend Codementor to anyone who is learning a new software technology or just needs another pair of eyes to look at their code.

It can save you countless hours and teach you things that you wouldn’t see on your own! What I like most about Codementor is the instant connection with people around the world who are experts on your issue. But the thing that makes this all possible is the great web interface. You can see and talk to your mentor in real-time while sharing your screen, and even your mouse if you like! The mentor can also type code in the Codementor window to show you different examples. Many also will send you links to places to look further. The other cool feature is the message service. There I can easily contact my previous mentors to send a quick note or ask for their help again. Now that I’ve “taken the plunge” into Codementor, I wouldn’t go back to my old days of solo “plugging away” at code problems.

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IT Support: Codementor Helped Me Change My Career

2025-05-05T04:43:37Z

Tovah Kirkman has been involved with IT support for about 15 years and has always wanted to move over to the development side. As a hobby he has been working with Ruby/Rails for the past few years and thought it would be a great time to change his career. Most of his knowledge about programming has come from books, tutorials, videos, and katas. Although these methods were great for teaching him coding practices and high level concepts, they weren’t very helpful with assisting him in applying these skills in his projects. What Tovah needed was hands-on experience and pairing with a senior developer.

And so, Tovah came to Codementor to pair with an experienced JavaScript/Ruby on Rails mentor. Since working with Codementor, Tovah has been able to be hired as a developer.

Tovah’s Experience with Codementor

What drew you to use Codementor?

What drew me to Codementor was that I would have the opportunity to get all my questions answered by an expert in the field. I would literally spend hours online looking for answers to technical questions that I had, and would not know how to gauge the accuracy of the answers I received. Just because an answer works doesn’t necessary mean it is the solution to my particular case. Also, it is great to have someone with more experience watching me code to ask me why I am taking a particular approach and advise me on how they would implement a solution.

How did you use Codementor?

I have used Codementor to level up my skills and build out my portfolio. When I initially started, I was learning best practices for Ruby and Rails but quickly realized that I had a bunch of gaps in my understanding of associated technologies such as JavaScript, AJAX, etc. To become a full stack developer, I needed to acquire new skills and continued to use Codementor to code with experts to resolve this.

Since working with Codementor, I have been able to be hired as a developer. I’ll also be launching my new app, Timeworthy shortly as well.

Can you please describe in details a few sessions you’ve had?

I worked with two different mentors on Codementor. Han for Ruby/Rails and Mehran for JavaScript/Reactjs.

Typically if I was learning a new concept, the mentors would describe in detail the overview/big picture of the topic and then dive into the specifics.

If I was working on a particular project, I would open the project and work through my sticking point with the mentor to help me resolve it. The main thing that I got from working with the mentors from Codementor, is perspective from a senior programmers eyes. I am able to learn the next steps to do without spending years of banging my head against the way.

Any key takeaways or learnings from using Codementor?

My key takeaways or learnings is that “you don’t know what you don’t know”. What this means to me is that I had no idea what skills I needed to improve on without someone from the next level providing the guidance and feedback. Once I became aware of improvement areas, I was able to build a plan to fill in the knowledge gaps.

What do you like the most about Codementor?

The thing I like most about Codementor is the monthly mentoring program. I can fill out the form on what I need to learn and then get matched with someone with the necessary skills to help me level up.

I would definitely recommend Codementor to anyone who wants to upgrade their coding skills or wants to find a career as a programmer.

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Coding Beginner: Unlike Video Tutorials, Codementor Lets Me Learn What I Want to Build

2025-05-05T04:38:18Z

2 years ago the term ‘coding’ was unfamiliar to Jenny. She first heard about it while exploring the internet, looking for ideas for work she could do from home. She then discovered Team Treehouse and did their 2-week free trial. It interested her, so she kept going with their courses. She also learned at Code School (and later, Laracasts), and from working on her own projects. Over time, coding grew on Jenny. Now she loves it and aims to become a professional web developer.

What drew you to use Codementor?

Sometimes I would spend ages stuck on a problem, and forums didn’t always help. I thought it would be much better if I had access to a coach, but I didn’t know if that was possible from home, and traveling was difficult for me.

Later, I reached my most discouraging, desperate point in my coding journey. I’d been trying for ages to figure something out, and without success. I’d asked on a forum, and I’d asked the customer support for the software I was working with. Customer support lead me down the wrong track, and as a result, I did something in the command line that made my projects stop functioning. It felt like a mess, and I didn’t know where to find help.

I’m really grateful for that desperate time, because it was then that I had the idea to search for online private coaching, which is when I discovered Codementor and Val, my mentor.

How did Codementor Help You?

Val helped me get out of my mess, and I began to see the huge potential in working with him. That potential soon became a life-changing reality. No longer do I need to go through the frustration of spending hours stuck on my own – just knowing I can get help if I do get stuck has been a huge relief!

Val has been my mentor for around six months, and within that time I have spent over 100 hours on Codementor with him, and it was a lot of fun!

We have focused mainly on PHP and Laravel, where he is an expert and his knowledge has impressed me. However, the areas he has impressed me with have not been limited to PHP and Laravel. He has also helped me with areas such as the command line, Git, building a RESTful API, database design, Composer, Vagrant, Gulp, JavaScript and CSS, and more.

In the earlier sessions, I remember dealing with errors, and he showed me how to implement login throttling, something I had received insufficient help with on forums.

Then he reviewed the code for web applications I had made. We started with one of my simpler apps and later moved on to my most complex app, which is an app that will help you keep track of your budget.

Val helped me do a lot of refactoring, and I think it was a really effective way to learn.

He also helped me start one of my other apps, which I think was a big help, because I was then building on a better foundation than I would have had if I’d started on my own.

You can play around with the demos of the apps I’ve built at https://jennyswiftcreations.com/.

What do you like the most about Codementor?

The screen sharing. I can share my screen with mentors when getting help. I have found attempts to get help on forums frustrating and limited. Screen sharing makes so much difference!

I love that I can get my code reviewed by my Codementor. I haven’t received this anywhere else! I’ve found it valuable, important, and a really effective way to learn. And it helps with my confidence.

In addition, it’s really interesting to watch Val code and problem-solve live. I find it a lot more realistic than video tutorials because I get to see the whole process, not just the code the teacher has prepared for the video that already works. It’s also heaps better than video tutorials. The problem with video tutorials is I can’t interrupt the tutor, asking them to further explain something they just said that I didn’t understand. I can’t tell them exactly what I want to learn. What’s more, it can take a long time to watch through a series of videos, only to find out at the end that it didn’t cover the specific thing I wanted to learn! Learning with Val has been so much faster, and the solution to those problems.

Finally, I love the flexibility of Codementor. I can often get help soon after I need it, and Val is often available for long sessions. I don’t need to travel to get help and I can learn from the comfort of my home.

Startup Founder: Codementor Helps Us Fast Track Our MVP Development

2025-05-05T04:42:29Z

One day Brett Brockway walked into a local automotive shop to get his tires changed. The manager was being lambasted with phone calls and drowning in a sea of paperwork, when all the while he was doing a hell of a job keeping up with orders. Seeing this, Brett started to think that this problem couldn’t exist in isolation, so he and his friend researched. They visited a series of small businesses and started to make a mental note of all the technology that looked like they came from the dark age, and saw an opportunity.

For two years, Brett and his co-founder ironed out a plan for a light-weight cloud based resource planning software devoid of tech talk. “We’ve noticed that tech jargon is as annoying to a small businesses owner as sobriety is to Charlie Sheen,” he said. Soon, they came up with CloudB2B, a startup that would allow business owners to focus on building the products they love by reducing touch points and increasing transparency.

How Will CloudB2B Help Small Businesses?

CloudB2B aims to connect the small business community through a fully integrated supply chain. Small businesses could us our services to:

Reduce product returns, phone calls, paperwork, and outstanding debt.
Find and establish new relationships with the click of a mouse
Order products at a discount with the rest of the network

What Challenges Have You Faced in CloudB2B’s Development?

My co-founder and I worked on CloudB2B for two years and foundSpree Commerce as a solution we could use to build our product. We thought it was our salvation.

And it was, for a while… Until we had to work in the abstraction of spree_commerce. We had a hard time figuring out what anything meant. We didn’t really have a “software engineer” and thus had some misfits hacking code together.

We can’t forget how we found Codementor－we were struggling with getting our MVP together to show to our client, tapping on every resource we knew to get help. Unfortunately, each person responded with something like: “Oooh, yeah… Spree commerce… that gets complex.” So we hit the internet for help.

How has Codementor played a role in CloudB2B’s Development?

We’ve used Codementor to be a bit more like Buzz Aldrin and break through barriers (quite literally.) When we can’t figure out how to do something, we will consult one of the mentors on the Codementor network to bring us to the next level.

Our sessions have been incredibly informative and productive. We’ve used Codementor to work through building a better UI so that we could mass update products. One of my mentors, Andy Maleh, was patient and more than willing to walk me through how things behaved and even help me think about the unknown, which as an entrepreneur is priceless.

I learned that you can get an MVP going with a minimal amount of money and a solid mentor.

Andy really helped us fast track the development of our platform, and help us make our app better.

Anything Else You’d Like to Add?

I like the quality of the candidates on the site. I also like how the mentors have dealt with many of the exact same problems you have had. Let me just say that we are sleep deprived, overworked, excited and ready to empower small businesses. Thank you Codementor!

Crowdfunding Platform Pioneer: 1:1 Mentorship the Most Efficient Way to Learn Programming

2025-05-05T04:44:58Z

Brian Camelio is a musician, composer, producer, public speaker, educator, and an entrepreneur. He is the founder of ArtistShare, the internet’s first crowdfunding platform that also operates as a record label and business model for creative artists. The first ArtistShare fan-funded release won a Grammy award, and became the first album ever to win a Grammy that was not available in retail stores.

Brian fell in love with coding in the mid- ’90s and started his first internet business in 1998, which was an online fundraising portal for non-profit groups. As a trained composer, he found the processes of music composition and coding very similar as they both take a finite language and create great things with them. Brian found the instant gratification from both processes very exciting.

Between his job as CEO of ArtistShare and his music producing, Brian was left very little time for study. As such, one on one code mentoring was perfect for people like him.

How Was Your Codementor Experience?

I first tried out another online platform, and learned pretty quickly that although they “pair” you with a developer, there is no real vetting process. Paying a higher rate does not mean you are getting a more skilled developer. I found it to be a little misleading and my more expensive “expert” developer ended up introducing some bugs into our company’s code. We didn’t realize until a few days afterward and the customer service was not helpful.

With Codementor, I can reach out directly to programming experts, where I would have a free introductory period with each developer to make sure the mentor was a good fit before doing a full session.

I’ve used Codementor for helping me get up to speed on the latest coding trends, mostly around learning AngularJS. I then use the skills I learn to either write code or oversee a coding team for new projects.

One of the Codementors I worked with, Long Le, was a true expert. In 5-6 hours of mentoring I learned enough to create a fairly complex project on my own. Le taught me the basics of AngularJS, and, more importantly, walked me through best practices as we built part of the project together.

What I like the most about Codementor is the software, as it is superior and easy to use.

In addition, Codementor’s customer service is very friendly and responsive. Most of all it is there at a moment’s notice. Keep up the great work!

Get Help from a Codementor Now

How a Non-CS Major Jumpstarted Her Career as a Web Developer

2025-05-05T04:25:57Z

Erica Porter originally received her Bachelor’s degree in law at the University of Cambridge and then went on to receive her Master’s degree in psychology. However, Erica had always been interested in tech, so while she taught herself coding basics through online tutorials, she realized it was something she wanted to do as a career.

While taking a 12-week web development immersive in London, Erica knew she could benefit from having a dedicated expert to mentor her over a long period.

With that in mind, Erica purchased a Codementor Monthly plan (now discontinued), which allowed her to get an hourly 1:1 mentorship from an expert mentor online every week. Codementor’s team hand-picked her mentor for her – MIT-Educated Senior Rubyist with 10+ years of programming experience, Joel Beasley.

After 2 months of working together with Joel, Erica applied for a job at a startup called Motivii. After Joel heard about Erica’s job application, he personally sent an email to the company outlining his experience mentoring her. Thanks to Erica’s initiative to seek outside mentorship to become a better programmer, she stood out from her classmates and got the position as a junior web developer.

Erica’s Codementor Monthly Experience with a Mentor

The first few sessions were spent revising the core principles of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. It worked well to use some of the assignments and projects I had completed in class as the basis for our lessons. From the first session, I was amazed by Joel’s ability to explain concepts in such an easy to understand and easy to remember way. He very quickly had a grasp of what I understood and what I didn’t.

Also, from the start Joel stressed the importance of writing well structured and clear code and has taken time to demonstrate the difference this makes in the context of a work environment. This was not something we were able to cover in much depth on my course although I know it will benefit me greatly as a developer.

I intend to continue my Codementor sessions for the foreseeable future given how much progress I have made and I believe this to be an important time in my career to continue to learn as much as possible.

I have no doubt that I would not be the position of having my dream job right at this moment if it had not been for my Codementor sessions with Joel!

I have had such a great experience with Codementor that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to others. I have always found the staff at Codementor very friendly and quick to respond to queries and that personal touch has really added to my experience.

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Front-end Developer: Codementor is a Fantastic Resource for Fullstack Development

2020-09-01T07:01:55Z

If you have friends all over the world, Gifty is a service that recommends great gift ideas and makes sure they are delivered to the right place. Gifty’s algorithm will generate 3 gift ideas based on your friends’ public Facebook content. You are able to select the price range to ensure only the most suitable gifts are displayed for any budget.

As someone who has studied and worked abroad in banking, Andrea Stone, now a freelance web designer, has many friends located around the world. She needed a service to help manage her international network so she never missed another birthday! Andrea couldn’t do it alone, so she built Gifty with Codementor’s help.

How Andrea Used Codementor

I took the ‘Programming for Non Programmers’ course at General Assembly in London. Complimented by numerous hours of online tutorials at Codecademy and some freelance projects, I still consider myself to be a beginner to intermediate front-end programmer. I have a basic foundation of coding skills but there is obviously so much more to learn.

When building my project, I ran into several programming issues and eventually came across Codementor and was immediately satisfied with the help I received.

Codementor is the best platform in the market to find an instant, reliable solution for a programming problem.

I’m a hands-on learner, so I used Codementor in the ‘Share Screen’ mode to see how mentors would fix my CSS, JS and HTML problems. This way, I would be able to instantly troubleshoot the issue and learn how to fix or avoid those problems in the future. All in all, Codementor was a fantastic resource for both the front and back-end development in launching my product.

Experienced Product Manager: Codementor Sure Beats Paying $10k+ for a Bootcamp

2025-05-05T04:39:53Z

Donnie Wang is an experienced product manager and marketer who spent the past 10 years working in companies such as HP, Ubisoft, and Raptr. He studied entrepreneurship in college, but never “took the leap” to try to build something of his own, mostly due to not knowing exactly where to begin, especially in tech.

Despite having attended numerous in-person crash courses at local bootcamps and having tried all the online courses under the sun including Codecademy, CodeSchool, Team Treehouse, Udemy, and SkillShare, he never knew exactly how to apply those learnings to the specific ideas he wanted to build for an SMS automation iOS app called Snapvite.

He originally mapped out four to six months to learning how to code and build the app, but his product management course instructor at General Assembly, Carlos González de Villaumbrosia, recommended Codementor to him as a way to assist and speed up his development. After evaluating his priorities of learning as much as he could while building what he wanted to build, he decided Codementor was worth the try.

What does Snapvite do, and why did you want to build it?

Snapvite: Your Scheduling Robot

As an avid tennis player, I’m always working to improve my game, and a big part of that is hitting with the best players possible. I’d generally invite friends in a specific order of priority, which I’d end up spending a lot of time on. So I built Snapvite to automate that process and help get responses back in a timely manner.

Snapvite is an iOS app that sends fleeting invitations via SMS that expire after 30 minutes. Once an invitee replies “out” or their 30m runs out, the scheduling robot will invite the next person on the list until you fill your activity.

Along the way I found that this mechanism could apply to many scenarios:

Finding the best tennis match
Extra tickets to the game
Dinner reservations
Golf tee times
Maybe even to get a date?!

How has Codementor played a role in Snapvite’s Development?

I came to Codementor with a simple prototype that I put together using Omnigraffle (wireframing tool) paired with InVision (prototyping tool that allows you to create clickable hotspots). This made it really easy to discuss my project with potential mentors and get an initial feel for the approach and how much work lay ahead.

Codementor basically helped bridge the gap of not having a technical co-founder to work alongside. Since I had zero experience with actual app development, I leveraged Codementor’s service heavily early on to get my project off the ground when I was learning the basics of iOS development and Xcode. I would schedule meetings with one of my mentors, Bridger Maxwelland Ramzi Benna, ~3x/week, in which I learned anything from a basic walkthrough of the Xcode interface, the fundamentals of iOS development—all the way to how to build custom table views, implement Parse backend SDK, and integrate the Twilio SMS API.

Bridger and Donnie meeting for the first time in-person after many hours working together via vid chat/online

I used my off days to hack on my own and break things. I think “breaking things” was the key to my learning and easily gave us plenty of things to work on each session.

Can You Give an Example of How Your Sessions Would Go?

Since I was starting with no prior experience in iOS development and Objective-C, my mentors basically guided me through the entire development process. We would pair program through sharing my computer screen, which was a comforting factor knowing that all of our work/code resided locally on my computer (and my git repository of course).

A session Donnie had with Ramzi Benna

At the end of each session we would discuss “homework” assignments for me to work on by myself. Then I’d report back in the next session and we’d pick up wherever I left off.

I ended up relying on Codementor consistently throughout my project, which took ~3 months, and I believe my Snapvite appis evidence of the quality instruction I received. It was approved for the App Store on first submission and in only 4 days!

What Were the Most Valuable Things You’ve Learned from Using Codementor?

I’ve learned that development is hard and there’s no way I would have been able to develop my first app alone as a coding beginner. I also got really good at prioritizing and managing scope creep now that I understood the amount of work that goes into each little feature request.

Is There Anything You’d Like to Add?

I really like the value prop Codementor offers for someone like me who wants to build something, but may not know how yet.

I’ve been telling everyone using Codementor sure beats paying $10k+ for a bootcamp with only the hope that you’ll leave with the necessary skills to build what you want. Codementor is the most direct way for entrepreneur types to get something built and learn at the same time.

I do plan on using Codementor much more once I figure out the next features I want to build. If you happen to care about reading more of my ramblings, I’ve been blogging about my journey @ www.donniewang.com

Accomplished Entrepreneur & Musician: Codementor Complements My Learning at General Assembly

2020-09-01T07:01:56Z

Marc Plotkin is a saxophone player, an entrepreneur, a songwriter, a Grammy-shortlisted Producer, and an artist. He also co-founded DecisionDesk, which is a company that modernizes the process of applying to colleges and currently manages the application process of 200 universities around the world. His work there landed him in the Bloomberg 2010 BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs list.

Recently Marc has started a company called Wifi Music School, which is an online music education platform that pairs students up with world-class private teachers via Skype. Despite having worked at tech companies, Marc had only been part of the idea & business development side and never gotten his hands dirty with the code, which was something he really wanted to do. Thus, he signed up for a three month full-time course to learn Ruby at General Assembly NYC’s Web Development Immersion program. However, despite enjoying what he learned at the course, he felt something was lacking.

What Brought You to Codementor?

I’ve been doing a combination of learning online at sites like Codeacademy and taking a fulltime course at the General Assembly in New York. However, I was having some trouble with the class I took at General Assembly. It was a 30 person class, which meant they couldn’t stop for one person, and while the classroom setting works for a lot of people, it wasn’t working for me because it wasn’t filling in the specific gaps in my knowledge.

I eventually found Codementor, and I really liked the idea of how it worked. As a musician, I am very familiar with 1-on-1 lessons, since private lessons are integral to learning an instrument, so applying that thinking to coding felt like a better fit for me.

What Are Some Ways Codementor Has Helped You?

The biggest advantage that stood out to me was the screen sharing aspect of Codementor, where the people I had sessions with actually got to see the code I wrote. The programs I was writing would typically run just fine but it wasn’t until a CodeMentor actually looked at my work that I realized it was far too sloppy and redundant to be buyable. Indenting properly and following DRY (don’t repeat yourself) is hard when you’re getting started and no one is checking your specific work. This is something that would have gone unnoticed in a classroom setting, so this was extremely valuable.

I usually use the prompt from my General Assembly homework as a starting point for my sessions, and then the mentor and I will discuss how to approach the problem and strategize together. Afterward, I would start writing and they’d watch me code. If I made a mistake, my mentor would jump in, not just to correct any of my errors but also to ask me why I wrote something. Then, based on my answer, they’d know if it was just a one-time mistake or if I didn’t understand a concept as a whole. If the latter, we would leave the homework and the mentor would help me better understand a concept before we got back into completing the prompt.

You and a world-class teacher, when and where you want

I haven’t brought Wifi Music School specifically to Codementors, but what I’ve learned is indirectly helping me. I’m planning on rewriting a lot of my site and adding more functionality based on the knowledge I’ve gained. In the past, I didn’t know how to fix the things I wasn’t satisfied with, but now I’m slowly starting to pick these skills up from Codementor.

Is There a Mentor You Particularly Like to Work With?

All of the codementors I’ve had sessions with were very good, but I especially liked my sessions with Carlos Ramirez. Other than helping me solve my problem, Carlos always wants to make sure I understood concepts outside of my problem’s context. I really appreciated his way of teaching because he shows that he has a long-term investment in my knowledge of things.

What do You Like Best about Codementor?

I would definitely recommend Codementor to other people like me, and not only because coding is currently a hot skill to learn.

Right now there are two extremes happening in the way people are learning to code: one is going to school and learning in the traditional way most people were brought up to learn things, and the other is to learn everything online for free through places like Codecademy.

The problem with the former is that I think some people will be like me and suffer from the lack of personal attention to see where their coding is at, and they would have gaps in their knowledge while learning big concepts. The issue with the latter is sort of the opposite in that the only way to proceed to the next step in interactive sites such as Codecademy is to write the exact answer they are expecting. However, as most programmers will tell you, you’d know there are actually countless correct ways to solve a problem.

Therefore, in my opinion, Codementor’s one-on-one approach is the best way, since there will be eyes on your code and you’ll know right away if you made a mistake, but you’ll also have the advantage of understanding the varieties of different ways you can proceed with a problem.

Learning how to code is just like learning how to master an instrument. Just as musicians need a private teacher to help them sound better, programming students also need a mentor’s guidance to write elegant code.

Self-Taught iOS Developer: Codementor Supplements My Learning

2020-09-01T07:01:57Z

Barry Gray has enjoyed a stellar career in semiconductor marketing and business development. Having a degree in EECS from Berkeley, software development has always been one of his interests.

So when Apple announced the first iPad, he decided to try his hand in developing iOS apps, figuring it wouldn’t be that hard. However, things were not as easy as he would have liked.

The Challenge

I’ve done some programming in Fortran and C (a long time ago!), so I figured I’d just pick up Objective-C like any new language for embedded systems. Wrong! Reorienting myself to object-oriented programming was a much bigger challenge than I expected, and while Apple’s Xcode is (at least for me) an awesome IDE, I was overwhelmed with what I needed to learn just to get started.

So, I spent a lot of hours going through on-line courses, books, and so forth, to learn Objective-C and iOS development. And I started developing my app, which was recently released on the App Store: Dev Cards. Development was slow as I ran into stumbling blocks.

Dev Cards provides a convenient and fun way for you to practice and grow your knowledge of app development as you sit in the coffee shop or the train.

I spent a lot of time on Ray Wenderlich’s website (and his books), since it has lots of iOS tutorials and learning resources. Although Ray introduced me to people on his team who would be interested in providing mentorship/consulting to me, I felt that I needed to spend more time on my own to learn. I didn’t want to shortchange my learning by leaning on others too much, and it wasn’t clear to me how we would work together.

At around this time I found out about Codementor. At first I wanted to spend more time on my own to learn and wanted to wait until I was really stuck. And finally, that happened!

I wanted to have a progress bar display while a rather large database summary was processing. The view that would display that summary was getting hung and displaying strangely. Man, I really checked the code so many times, looked all over Stack Overflow, etc, and could not figure the problem out.

I knew then I was at the perfect time to try Codementor. My code was presentable enough for an expert, and I looked forward to learning by working side-by-side with a pro.

Enter Codementor

My app has over 650 questions and answers in a big flat file. The questions are all categorized, and as the user displays and answers them, I update metadata in the file so we can exclude questions from immediate use and so forth. The user can select which category(s) they want to focus on, and from this, the total number of available questions changes. So, each time the user changes the category selections, the database is scanned to create a summary and totals of the questions that will be available for their next quiz.

This led to a couple of problems: - The database scanning took a couple of seconds and I wanted to have a progress bar to show the user that the app was busy doing something. I just could not get it to work.
- The view for the database summary is in a navigation controller, and for reasons I could not understand, its behavior was not consistent each time it was displayed.

My mentor first advised that I needed to create another thread for the database scanning, and that it should be outside of the main thread. However, when he was showing me how to implement this, we discovered some errors in my code. I implemented those changes without him. The next time we met, we found that the thread changes made improvements, but they weren’t working perfectly. So, my mentor went offline and investigated it a bit. We then got back together, made the final updates, and voila! It all works great.

The Impact

I am feeling more confident that I can trust my instinct on when I need outside help. It’s fantastic to know that the help is there when I need it, and that adds a lot of confidence in building new apps.

I would definitely recommend Codementor to others. The website and service is well thought out and works very well. For example, when starting a new session, the first few minutes are free while the connection (video, audio) is being set up. So, while we both want to get things going quickly, there is not as much pressure to make it happen.

I liked it that my Codementor and I quickly developed a rapport, almost like we were working on the project together at a company.

It was not only great to get my issues resolved, it was also fun to work with my mentor and I look forward to finding more opportunities.

Graphic Designer: Codementor Increased Our Revenue by 150 Percent

2025-05-05T04:37:38Z

Dhruv Patel is a graphic and UX designer. As co-founder of web design firm Omazing Creations, he’s spent five years honing his skills in conversion optimization and user experience.

When his work started to demand JavaScript and backend expertise, Dhruv needed a way to expand his company’s capabilities while e learned the necessary skills. Thanks to Codementor, he’s been able to take on a much wider array of projects, turn them around more quickly, and boost his revenue by 150 percent.

Omazing’s newest project, Convrrt, is a landing page creation tool that helps even the least tech-savvy users create marketing campaigns for the web.

How’d you come to need Codementor?

When you’re coding something, it’s more logical thinking than creative – it’s a left brain/right brain issue. I can be creative, and put blocks and pieces together, but when it comes to coding it in a certain way, it doesn’t come naturally to me. I tried a few online learning programs, which taught me the basics, but when it came to implementing what I’d learned I was still clueless.

One of the latest websites I did the frontend and UI for was Higgle.com, an e-commerce site which was just featured on TechCrunch. In March, I found out about Codementor and set up my first mentorship session. I got help from a gentleman based in Delhi who was really resourceful – he helped me solve a JavaScript issue that wasn’t working the way I was planning, and I picked up some really cool techniques to fix what I’d been doing wrong.

I liked the service immediately. After a few sessions, I learned to browse the mentors and pick the exact one with the skills I was looking for.

You’ve used Codementor extensively over the past few months – are there any mentors you’ve formed a close working relationship with?

Sam Saccone and I have had about 20-plus mentorship sessions. Once a week, for an hour or two, he helps me with Convrrt, because it requires a high level of JavaScript manipulation. It required some expert-level skill – just one hour of Sam’s time would save me four or five hours of figuring it out on my own.

Now, any time I need a session, I ping him through Codementor’s matchmaking system and we start our session the next time our schedules line up, which is a week at most.

My relationship with Sam has even gotten me work. He’d seen my design work, my principles of user experience, so it was a no-brainer for him to have me to do some work for his company – they actually hired me to do a design guide and style guide for a new frontend JavaScript testing tool they’re coming out with.

What are some specific challenges that Sam has helped you solve?

Sam helped us build Convrrt, a landing page creation tool, which helps create marketing campaigns for the web. It’s made to be simple, so it’s usable even by people who don’t know anything about technology.

The project required me to learn more about frontend coding. so I started to teach myself frontend design and began moving towards a new role as a frontend developer. I already knew everything there was to know about HTML and CSS, but JavaScript was something I lacked.

What I wanted was for everything to auto-save, so that we could remove the manual “save” button from the interface. It was great to get Sam’s understanding of how it’s done, which took just forty minutes. It would have taken me another four hours to get it implemented and figured out, or more, if I ran into errors. Once I understood it, I was able to implement that same principle in four or five parts of my interface.

Another place where Sam’s mentorship really shined: inside our interface there were a lot of popups. But for mobile apps, popups are a really bad practice. I had an idea how I wanted those screens to look, and I needed help implementing them.

Because our app is built in Coffeescript, it uses things like require.js and backbone.js. Because whatever you see in code drops is basic JavaScript, the implementation is completely different when it’s implemented inside an app. I had no clue how to do it. But if you asked me now, I could tell you exactly how to do it, and I could teach ten other people, because of Sam’s help.

We’ve seen a 150% increase in revenue overall … We have a lot more opportunities now, because we have this whole new set of capabilities we can provide to companies. Now that we can also do front-end engineering, we’ve added a third big piece to our business.

Has your revenue increased?

Big time – I’d say we’ve seen a 150% increase in revenue overall. Until now, our core business was in two places: conversion optimization and user experience. We were self-limiting because of our expertise in only certain things…there was decreasing demand for design experts, because of increasing use of browser-based tools.

We have a lot more opportunities now, because we have this whole new set of capabilities we can provide to companies. Now that we can also do front-end engineering, we’ve added a third big piece to our business.

The cost of the Codementor sessions was always baked into the hourly rate I charge my customers. I’m always very transparent with my customers – I just explain, “This is something I’m stuck at, this is the service i’m using to help, this is how much it costs.”

It helped me reduce the time i was spending on something, and getting mentored on something makes you an expert and helps reduce the time you spend on it later. I was able to wrap up things much faster. Over the last few months I’ve been moving from project to project on a monthly basis, instead of spending three months on a single project.

How do your sessions with Sam usually go?

Often, I’ll wake up with an idea to improve something, and I write it down. When I have a few, I’ll share them with Sam, and he tells me which things he can help me with immediately. He explains in a screenshare session how it could be done, and then I spend my time working toward it. When I need help, I reach out to him for another session. Because we’ve worked together so much, he knows exactly what I’m looking for and how he can help.

What would you have done without Codementor?

We have a developer who we’ve hired locally, but we can only use him for about 15 hours a week, and I didn’t want to disturb his workflow. I knew I had the ability to get these things taken care of myself if I could get some help, but I didn’t know any route to get that help. I needed someone who could help me learn how it’s done, instead of just doing the work for me.

If I’d simply hired someone, I wouldn’t have learned anything – I would have ended up spending more money and more time, and probably not gotten it right.

You’ve also signed up as a mentor. What led to that decision?

I’m already an expert at UX, HTML, and CSS, and I’m actually teaching a class on UX and frontend September 29 for a local bootcamp called Phoenix RockIT. So I signed up as a mentor myself. More than earning money, it’s a great opportunity to give back.

Technology Consultant: With Codementor, No More Project Delays

2025-05-05T04:47:02Z

StudyManager is a successful Life Sciences software company Bruce Schatzman built from scratch, and after growing the company for 18 years, he sold it to Merge Healthcare in 2012. Afterward, Bruce started another company, Path9, which does custom consulting with a primary focus on the healthcare field.

One day, a large health system in New York asked Bruce to take over a project that was originally written in PHP. About three months into the project, the team decided the code was going in the wrong direction, since the health center used Drupal for all of its projects and wanted a Drupal app.

The Challenge

I’m a PHP developer with years of experience, but I have never worked with the Drupal framework. After contemplating whether or not to drop the project, I decided to continue on, since I don’t like leaving things unfinished. However, this meant I needed to learn Drupal in order migrate the project from a straight PHP app to a Drupal one. Eventually, I realized I have underestimated how tough this process would be. Although Drupal is also PHP, it had some drastic difference with the conventions I was familiar with, and its steep learning curve was only making things worse. I ended up running into walls all the time, and it was driving me nuts.

One day, I was so frustrated with an obscure error code I kept getting, I googled something like “online coding support” and found Codementor. The first thing I noticed was that Codementor had some Drupal experts, so I was intrigued. After comparing Codementor’s services with other competitors, I found it the best match for my needs, thanks to the combination of technologies I used and the reasonable price some mentors offered. I decided to pick one of the Drupal experts for help and see what happens after I connected with one of them. I didn’t have any expectations for Codementor to be of any help, but after I tried out the services, I was blown away.

Enter Codementor

My first session was with John, who goes by the name NanoDano. This guy was so unbelievably helpful and knowledgeable about Drupal, he helped me breeze through walls that I would have spent weeks just trying to get through. In an hour I was way beyond where I would have been without him, where it would have taken me months just to conquer the Drupal learning curve, much less migrate my client’s project to a Drupal one.

A great example of the things he helped me with was building data entry forms in Drupal. In HTML, there’s a set methodology where you just put the form tags in. In Drupal, there’s a form API you’d have to code to, and it’s not HTML, so you’d have to learn a whole new paradigm for building data entry forms. Although every PHP and HTML developer can do this, it would take them about 2 weeks to learn the nuances on their own. John, for example, could answer this question in fifteen minutes. All in all, it would be much easier to just get a Codementor and have them walk you through how to do what you want to build.

The Impact

Codementor is a great time saver and also prevents you from experiencing the usual frustrations when you code.

Ultimately, I make much more money whenever I do consulting work because I don’t have to dilute my project fee over dozens of wasted hours trying to figure new things out.

Every developer has days where they just totally hit the wall: some error happens, they’re asked to do something they’ve never done before, etcetera. You have a choice: grind through all by yourself, or find and pay for help. Most developers will choose the former option, and maybe they will taking hours up to days to solve their problem—you have no idea how long it’s going to take. In the meantime there are a lot on your plate to do and you really can’t afford to be bound for a day dealing with this one thing. In contrast, the amount you pay on Codementor is a fairly reasonable fee that will save you an entire day of development.

My customers are happier because project delays don’t happen whenever I hit a wall.

So, instead of beating my head against a wall for hours whenever I get stuck, I just connect with a mentor, who usually helps me solve my problem in less than 30 minutes. Rinse and repeat, and pretty soon I realized that I could complete projects weeks before I normally could by coding in an isolation chamber. It’s a great model.

Serial Entrepreneur: Codementor Can Help Attract More Women to Coding

2020-09-01T07:01:57Z

Alicia Morga is a serial entrepreneur based in San Francisco. She is the founder & CEO of No. 8 Media, and previously founded Consorte Media, a digital media company focused on the Hispanic market which was acquired in 2010.

Alicia advises numerous start-ups, and has served on the boards of technology companies. Fast Company named her as one of 2011’s Most Influential Women in Technology and Women 2.0 named her as one of 2014’s Nine Must-Watch Women of Color Who are Rocking the Tech Startup Scene. Alicia Morga has also developed iPhone apps Gainful and gottaFeeling. Gainful provides daily professional development and coaching for employees and entrepreneurs. GottaFeeling allows users to identify, express and manage feelings and emotions.

I’m an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. I’m just technical enough to be dangerous – all self-taught and I believe I should know what developers are doing. So I often take on parts of the tasks and try to learn. I was drawn to Codementor because I thought it could support my learning – not necessarily do the work for me.

The Challenge

I have been building one of my projects using Parse. One day I was trying to extract data out of the Parse API using cUrl via the command line on windows 7. I wanted to set up an automated call of the API so I can download the data for custom analytics. I was looking for a way to get an entire dump of the data without having to call each class separately using cUrl in the command line. I saw this as an opportunity to try out the services of Codementor at the time, so I signed up and was connected with one of the mentors.

Enter Codementor

My Codementor, Eugene, took a look at my issue with Codementor’s screen sharing via TeamViewer and actually saw how the Parse setup was the source of my problem. He showed me how I could get around the system and achieve my goal. I learned more about APIs and cURL along the way, and I love how the mentors can see your work and quickly address issues while they teach you things.

With Codementor I can code a discreet project and when I run into issues that a Google search or Stackoverflow doesn’t address, I can turn to another developer. It’s the best of peer learning – you’re the one driving, but have a coach in your ear helping you.

Codementor Can Help Attract More Women to Coding

I think a lot of women are more technical than they think they are and they just need a little help when they get stuck. All the tech jargon can be intimidating and the getting-started process can seem like a high barrier.

Women, in general, are cautious about failing (the “good girl/good student syndrome”). However, coding is all about failing and learning. Women are great learners, and if women can overcome the fear of failing, they will do very well.

I think Codementor can make an impact by attracting more women to the profession. Codementor can help women who are new to coding address their questions, no matter how basic, in real-time without the attendant feelings of fear or embarrassment. It’s really cool to get questions you think are dumb (they’re not) answered and learn that coding is mostly making mistakes and finding answers – which is something anybody can do, especially if they have mentors!