Level Up Template

Hey guys! It’s been a while since I’ve released something, so I decided to push something out quickly. Either that, or I switched from using a Non-braindead Scheduler to using a shortest job first scheduler. Which bodes darkly for me, since this bundle of markdown/html/css took me around a day to build, and I have much bigger fish to fry the rest of this Thanksgiving break. Nevermind…

Idea

After seeing the “How to level up as a developer list” make the rounds on Hacker News and other circles a few months ago in August, soon forgot about it. I only remembered it after seeing my friends clone gists containing the list, allowing people to edit the gist to serve as a crude tracking mechanism. I thought this was not optimal: just by going through the list, you can say “yes, I’ve done this” or “huh, maybe I should get to doing that at least once some time” in a few seconds. There’s little reason to self-track, and as a signaling mechanism it’s of limited use: no one trusts your self-reporting on a gist.

One thing I saw the gist lacking were backing stories: how did you learn assembly? Oh, you wrote that book? Hey, we both fought for Lisp in the lambda wars! And on and on. People sometimes complain that they don’t know what to do when they plop in front of an empty IDE, and having lists with attached stories would help combat that, since they’re full of what other people have done in their own growth.

Example

Without further ado: my own Level up as a Developer List

Making of

The idea of a fuller story-driven list had rattled around my brain for a while, but it’s only once I found out about (or rediscovered) github pages that I figured I could do this while also making it easier for other people (ie. not forcing them to edit a HTML template). Then, I learned how to use Jekyll, applied what I already knew of markdown, and applied elbow grease. Then more than a few hours later TADA! A template that I think should be useful for other people.

Download

Okay, so there’s no download. If you want your own list, then you should follow the USAGE instructions. MIT Licensed, for those of you that are curious (was tempted to make it public domain, but went with MIT in interest of avoiding litigation from the person that gets a paper cut from a printout of the HTML).