HTML500: Canada's largest learn to code event

We wanted to share with you the news of our community partnership with Lighthouse Labs’ HTML500, and an interview with Johnny Hsiao, who we have recruited to Clausehound.com from the Lighthouse Labs program!

First, the news! Clausehound.com is a community partner to Toronto’s HTML500 on February 18th, 2017, brought to you by Lighthouse Labs! The HTML500 will also be taking place both in Toronto and in Vancouver, BC on March 11, 2017. In addition to the HTML500, Lighthouse Labs will be running the HTML150 in Ottawa, Saskatoon, London, Calgary and Victoria.

About the HTML500

The HTML500 is a free, one-day crash course in HTML & CSS that brings together 500 attendees to learn to code from Canada’s top technology companies. At this massive celebration of digital literacy, participants will learn how to create their own landing page while networking with fellow attendees and the 100+ developers who are giving back to the community by donating their time, expertise and resources.

In 2017, the HTML500 will be taking code all across Canada from Victoria to Halifax and Ottawa to Saskatoon. Not only will Lighthouse Labs be bringing the original HTML500 back to Vancouver and Toronto, but they’ve also partnered with community organizations to host a series of 150 person learn-to-code events aptly named the HTML150, in 10+ cities over the course of 2017 which is Canada’s 150th birthday.

About Clausehound

Clausehound.com provides entrepreneurs with employment agreements, shareholders’ agreements, customer agreements and many many other business law documents. “Annotated Contracts for the Price of a Coffee”: Clausehound includes a database of contract explanations and variations for DIY legal drafting. It is the most affordable “augmented” legal library on the internet. Clausehound, HTML 500 and Lighthouse LabsWe have gotten to know Lighthouse Labs who is the primary sponsor of HTML 500 because (among other reasons), two members of the Clausehound.com software engineering team are from Lighthouse.

We have profiled Johnny - one of our Lighthouse alums- below

  • Profile Name: Johnny Hsiao
  • When did you attend Lighthouse Labs? February-April, 2016
  • What motivated you to start coding? I started coding for the same reason that many of my peers at Lighthouse Labs started, and that was to develop games. I am really into mobile gaming and have played a lot of games on my iPhone. After talking to a couple of friends of mine who are software developers, I was determined to make the next hottest game on the App Store.
  • Did you experience any surprises when you were learning to code? Tons! One surprise that I encounter frequently is that the code I write doesn’t always behave the same way that I intended it to. There are often factors that one would forget to consider until runtime, and I still experience this to this day. I am still learning to write code, and with software development, I believe it’s one of those things where you can never really stop learning.
  • What was most difficult or challenging? What did you do to deal with these challenges? This is a tough question. Implementing new features can be pretty challenging at times. Some features are pretty straightforward, but there are features that are really challenging. To tackle the more challenging problems, I normally check out online resources to start, such as StackOverflow and documentations for developers. There are a lot of online resources to help out developers. And of course, there are people in my dev team that I can go to to ask for help. If all else fails, I work on something else and somehow magically figure out a solution at 3 am.
  • What was most rewarding? The most rewarding part about coding is when you solve a problem. It’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle or a crossword puzzle.
  • What languages do you code in? At Clausehound.com, I mainly write JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and PHP, but I also know some Ruby, Python, Swift, Objective-C, and Java.
  • Favourite part about working for a start-up? I am fairly new to the start-up scene, but I think what really makes a successful start-up is the team. I find myself learning a lot from working with the Clausehound.com team over the past few months, both in software development and other roles within the start-up including content and business development.
  • Favourite part about working in software development? This is an easy one. Definitely the satisfaction of solving problems and being able to come up with elegant solutions to problems once in a blue moon. But most of the time, it’s just a combination of for-loops and if-statements.

To learn more about The HTML500 and Lighthouse Labs, please visit http://www.thehtml500.com/ and https://www.lighthouselabs.ca/, respectively, for more information.


Written by Rajah. Rajah Lehal is Founder and CEO of Clausehound.com. Rajah is a legal technologist and technology lawyer who is, together with the Clausehound team, capturing and sharing lawyer expertise, building deal negotiation libraries, teaching negotiation in classrooms, and automating negotiation with software.