SeyelentEco

I've been a dev for awhile and I have a friend who's around 30 and wants to be a software dev. I started talking to him about it a few years ago and I helped him learn Android dev and basics of CS. If his path early on would've been different he definitely would've been a software engineer, just didn't get that opportunity and hes been an electrician (non-union) most of his life. He's got a family so can't just quit to do a boot camp, but based on talking to him I think he's got the aptitude to learn on the job quickly. Unfortunately I don't know how to help him break in. Are there entry level, junior engineer , or tester roles for non-recent college grads? I think he'd take a job making less than what he's making to break in but everything I see is asking for several years of experience or a degree.

He's looking for something remote or in Honolulu because that's where his family is.

Has anyone done this or helped anyone go through this? Do I help him just get good at coding interviews or help him create some Android apps?

I'm having an issue with a random individual who has built script/bot to scrape content off of my startup's site. We have a public API with the same content, but this individual is using private calls at a rate of 30+/sec and he's essentially taking down the site. I've blocked his IP via the firewall, but I'd like to figure out a system to prevent future individuals from doing the same thing.

So in your startups/api's how do you deal with bots/scrappers? I found that just blocking him at the backend didn't help since the requests were just coming faster and faster (less to parse).

Also, any recourse? Almost taking down someone's servers is not cool. Not to mention the costs incurred from having to serve 53,000 extra queries in a 4 hour block (bandwidth and CPU).