Sponsor Me, My Projects, or My Philosophy!

Introduction

After starting my own coding projects, I started to realize coding is an extremely complicated balancing act with a lot of frustrations. There are places you can go to get code help and support. For instance, Stack Overflow or word press blogs. However, guides are generally lacking in providing the sustenance that beginning coders need to thrive. Worse still, data science becomes increasingly noisy and disconnected from the coding enterprise. These barriers make it very difficult to get the right information in the hands of the right people - especially in a policy context. It can create reverberations that last lifetimes. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields are dominated by people that are excellent coders. But, they are few and far between and there aren't nearly enough of them to create positive momentum for the more than 7 billion+ people on this planet in desperate need of more thoughtful and creative coding practices. This centralizes "code" in the hands of a small in-group of like-minded individuals. These people are generally brilliant and they do not ever purposefully alienate others. They are driven by their own pursuits and singularly focused on accomplishing those pursuits. Sometimes, like Linus Torvalds, they don't even see themselves as visionaries! This is a big problem because it creates "barriers to entry." These barriers make it difficult for coding to become a passion, past-time, or even an occupation for others outside its bubble. Kids and adults need positive reinforcement. Any moment spent in conflict with restrictive licenses or having to create from scratch leaves them less and less likely to actually enjoy becoming a "coder." My hope is to change that with The Freedom Wrapper Project and my other endeavors.

Everyone should be a coder and society desperately needs people to start learning what code can do for them. In the same way people need to learn how to make minor repairs around their home, they should only call in the experts for jobs when necessary.

My Philosophy

My philosophical approach to coding is to reduce the uncomfortable-ness people have with coding and statistics, providing them with simple but non-reductive methods to increase their comfort levels over time. This takes a lot of work. You need to find a way to tap into people's passions and this takes way more human effort than money can provide successfully. My projects are not educational courses but neither are they just a mere repository to hold source code. There are plenty of those and no one needs to duplicate or re-create anyone's efforts on that front. This is about providing users an independent, self-directed study of sorts - with a higher likelihood of adoption and success. My projects are about providing value and not just rendering a good or a service.

My Projects

One of my most interesting projects is The Freedom Wrapper Project (TFWP):

• TFWP was created to get people up and running with an application to call their own in eight steps. I'd like to tell you there is more to it than that but there really isn't. They are not installing an application from a store. They are building it. You can ask any application developer out there: this is about as addictive of a process as it gets. The feeling of accomplishment pales in comparison to the notion you made something that functions as intended, provides you value, and can be repeated whenever and wherever you want. The Freedom Wrapper Project doesn't stop there, however. I intend to continue developing the project in order to provide more and more standardized development practices that will be completely free to use privately and commercially.

Thank you for your help and support! For more information, please visit my website at matthewbenchimol.com!