Pixelfed will be a year old in a few days.
I'm a high school dropout that has never taken any CS or computer classes.
Web development is just a hobby of mine, I work in the auto industry.
I'm so proud of this project, I never would have imagined that I could make something like this.
Thank you for helping me realize credentialism isn't so important as you think. ❤️ 
@dansup Its come a long way in one year! Congrats!
@dansup
Thank you 🥀 🤗
@dansup that’s awesome dude! thank you for building this🙏
@dansup That's pretty amazing. Thanks for contributing such cool, useful software for the world to use.
I urge you to consider continuing your formal education. You would obviously do well there. Higher education has been an incredible benefit to me, and has greatly enhanced not only what and how much I know, but how I think, my impact on the world, my career, and my life in general. It has made me a better worker, and a better person. Education has enriched my life in countless ways.
rant about formal education advice
@michelamarie
I urge you to consider that our current education system is not fitting for everyone.
If I can think back on my school time and higher education time: such a waste of time.
It fits some, others not.
If the advice would been directed towards me, it had the quality of 
rant about formal education advice
@paulfree14 @dansup Hi, there! While I respect you as a person, I disagree with you.
That said, I did already say in an earlier comment that some people do not want higher education and that I respect their choices.
I also think that even if some encouragement or thoughts may not suit or be accepted by everyone in every situation, it of course, still may be given. If others disagree with such encouragement or thoughts, they may simply discard them.
@dansup Not sure what you mean by credentialism, but this clearly shows you have a talent and a passion for what you do.
Credentialism is when no one treats you with respect or hires you because you don't have a piece of paper that costs tens of thousands of dollars (i.e. college degree) even though you know just as much or more than people with degrees. Been there, done that.
--Coming from a person who could never get a foothold in the IT sector for a decade until college. Graduated as a salutatorian not just in my class, but in the entire college with a GPA of 3.97.
@dansup
You made something amazing. That's pretty dang inspirational to a lot of us who didnt do CS in school.
@dansup
Its an amazing job you are doing. Please keep on going 😁
@dansup It's a real cool thing to learn. I hope it sticks with you. In every corner of the world there's people trying to justify themselves with credentials. Unfortunately, people are constantly changing the bar. And we strive on endlessly after what? Validation from others. You've done something you're proud of. That's so cool. Thanks for sharing. I really want to find pride in myself and not worry what others think. You're an inspiration.
@dansup congrats!
@dansup Congrats from this senior dev without a CS degree!
@dansup happy birthday 🎉
@dansup Technically, I only had gr7 when I moved into the world on my own at 15. All of gr8, but no french.
electronics hobbyist I talked my way into board repairs and field work at 17 and flew a lot for 10 yrs. Bosses said no one cared about paper.
Late 20's, did two years college. Challenged the intake. 1st year very boring. Took telcom.
Where's the paper? No idea. No one ever asked for it.
I have fav comp langs now, but don't know exactly how many over the years. I'm happy you pushed through.
@dansup I'm not a "real" dev either. We use the language best suited for us. We work with the environment we're given.
I have to work with IIS, PHP, and Microsoft SQL...
*weeps*
@dansup (I actually only weep because I'd much rather be running nginx or Apache. Microsoft SQL is great. IIS is...not great.)
@dansup I am a "real"* webdev, and I also use PHP. I have papers and everything and can program** in 10+ languages. Still use PHP.
(*Whatever that means)
(**Not necessarily _good_ programs, but working programs :P)
@dansup IMO, if you write code, you're a developer. Even if it's HTML. 😉
@dansup
php is cool.
@dansup I know a lot of CS students who wouldn't be able to do what you've done. I'm not a fan of PHP either, but it seems like you've done a lot of things right.
Pixelfed is amazing. Thank you :)
@dansup Don't let anyone tell you that you are not a "real" web dev -- even yourself. What you have done is fantastic. 👏
@dansup
In your situation: Don't worry about the school too much. Some of the more amazing coders I know have had little or no education, they just happened to love coding.
I often hated school, it was something I suffered through to get the job I wanted; as someone told me: "school is something you do to get a job so you can learn how it should be done".
Also education is next to free here so I didn't have to worry about the cost too much either.
🏳️🌈
@dansup
Bless you friend. As a fellow high-school dropout who's into wrenching as a hobby but stumbled into a career in PHP development, your project is an inspiration!
I want to build a modular Mastodon clone in PHP, just to show off how much faster and more efficient it can be than Ruby and Node. 
I'm making it my next personal project, and your willingness to build this with the tools you had is largely to blame. Thank you! 
@dansup just found it now and it looks awesome! Congratulations!
When the reality is people are brainwashed and most educated people are part of it.
Education goes on all your life. Skill development do not require going to any place but a proper equipments and good tutor.
Disappointed to be part of the Education system. I should through my degrees in bin.
"Brainwashed" is also a bit too strong, but yes, it fits that pattern. I would just leave it at culturally programmed into a way of life without freethinking and objective decisions about what is right and wrong about the system itself.
Schools have a tendancy to crush people who are slightly "other" in any way to the power structure. This is a tragic deviation from Pareto Efficiency of society. People who could have been world class thinkers in society get crushed down into ditch digger status because the gatekeepers didn't like something about them.
@dansup congratulations! I still haven't posted anything but I just have to get around to it. It's the only thing resembling Instagram I've even thought of using!
@dansup Congratulations on this project. I'm working to launch an instance soon to join your community.
@dansup congratulations!
I'm a self-taught programmer too (finished my high-school exam from home). I haven't used PixelFed yet (waiting to set up my own instance) but your project gives me confidence that I can build something too!
👏 👏 🎉 
👍
@dansup not having a degree doesn't imply you can't have a future in a specific field. If that really bugs you, you can always try doing a MOOC : it's not necessarily expensive and you could continue to work at the same time. I tend to think that in the field of web dev, the practical skills and past accomplishments would be more valued than a diploma without experience.
@dansup This is amazing work! Thank you!
@dansup your tireless and relentless work on this libre open source federation platform is a huge example to be looked up to! Thank you for contributing to a better world with this!
@dansup Thank you so much for all of your hard work and dedication to making pixelfed such a wonderful project. We are indebted to folks like you, because when one contributes to open source privacy-minded solutions, we ALL benefit. I have been working in cloud architecture and kubernetes for 3-4 years now. If I can ever be of help to you, drop me a line!
@nubd Thank you for the kind words! I will likely take you up on that offer in the near future 😉
@dansup
Pixelfed is great and so are you! Thank you so much for your tremendous contributions and most importantly your vision and dedication!
@dansup Also a high school dropout here, working as a senior software engineer. It all comes down to actual experience that you can demonstrate, at which point a university degree is mute. At least in Europe.
🇳🇱
@dansup Awesome, be proud of your accomplishments!
@dansup Way to go. Credentials ain’t $#&%. All that matters is how you treat people and what you put into the world. Keep it up!!!
@dansup Thank you for building this! All the best.
@dansup I just saw a link to it on privacytools.io. I came back two days ago after getting an email from Etesync about a bunch of privacy groups being on here. I saw this post and remembered when you started working on it. It's impressive to see what you've done!
@fullywoolly Thank you! 😁
@dansup This is inspiring to me as one who didn't go to college. Congrats on a great open source project. I clicked your profile cause I recognize you from cjdns. I'm very happy to see you're up to great things. Good luck in the future!
@capitalisnn Glad to hear and thank you!
@dansup I really like pixelfed. But I don't understand why the pixelfed.social/discover/ section is closed.
It's the biggest node, bigger than all the others put together.
And as I understand it, it contains the largest amount of user-generated content.
But as a user of another node, I don't have access to it because I don't know the links to users.
It seems to me that this keeps the network from grow up.
Users register on other nodes, see that the content is not there, and stop using piixelfed.
@narF You're right. But when a new person first hits the fedivers, an empty node. He sees emptiness and leaves. The essence of social networking is content sharing. No content - no users.
@gotomars Ah, yeah, but that's a problem of the fediverse in general, not just Pixelfed.
Mastodon solves that problem by having a catalog of open instances on the project's website. They are all full of content. I think Pixelfed has the same but i'm not sure.
You're right that it's a big barrier of entry. It's important that the community discuss this and search solutions.
@dansup There's also a problem with usability. I can't go to the user page of another node and give likes/comments.
P.S., I still love pixelfed and I want the community to evolve.
Server run by the main developers of the project 
It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!
I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support I've received from this post.
I used to be very self conscience of the fact I'm not a "real" web dev and still use php.
This community is amazing and I'm glad I can contribute back in some small way.