New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
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New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
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Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#2> A good percentage of the attendees had some exposure to HTML/CSS and several had experience in PHP, Java, C and Python. Two of our students had worked as developers for mainframe computers, writing PL/I and IBM assembler.
Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of MVC and then the interaction between each part of MVC...nevermind, for those who just know only HTML and CSS, the fundamentals of programming (variables, the difference between "1" and 1, loops, etc), and even how to use the command line.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#3> A good percentage of the attendees had some exposure to HTML/CSS and several had experience in PHP, Java, C and Python. Two of our students had worked as developers for mainframe computers, writing PL/I and IBM assembler. Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of…
I share those concerns & agree that MVC is a lot to swallow in an introductory workshop. But it's also very motivating! A lot of people want to build real websites instead of toy programs. We're trying to harness that awesome source of motivation & it seems to be working despite the drawbacks.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#4Reminiscent of LLC: http://ladieslearningcode.com/
I was a mentor for the Ruby class and absolutely loved the experience, students of all backgrounds were so eager to learn and understand programming.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#5> A good percentage of the attendees had some exposure to HTML/CSS and several had experience in PHP, Java, C and Python. Two of our students had worked as developers for mainframe computers, writing PL/I and IBM assembler. Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of…
I share those concerns & agree that MVC is a lot to swallow in an introductory workshop. But it's also very motivating! A lot of people want to build real websites instead of toy programs. We're trying to harness that awesome source of motivation & it seems to be working despite the drawbacks.
Yeah, it's a difficult line to walk between teaching what is comprehensible and enabling people, with magic, to do something concrete, even if they know nothing about how anything works. The former bores people because it's too abstract, and the latter...well, I feel there's the risk that when there's too much magic involved, the students feel as if being a "wizard" is an inherent trait, rather than something you eventually build towards after plugging away at the fundamentals.
I've toyed with teaching a workshop that entails: teach enough programming to turn a non-flat-file dataset (maybe a json of their tweets) into a decent visualization (by plugging into Google Charts, perhaps) and uploading a static page, with Twitter Bootstrap, onto a free hosting service, or even a blog service such as Wordpress.
But even that is a lot to teach in a day:
1. Command line and file system basics 2. Fundamentals of programming (enough to open a JSON file, parse and aggregate it on some conditions, and spit out HTML) 3. Basic HTML and DOM, including what you need to know to 4. Basic webserver/uploading stuff
Most workshops struggle with getting 3 and 4 done. #2 is not easily achievable over even several days.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#6This is an important effort with a powerful effect on the Boston tech scene. This and similar outreach efforts (like the Python workshops) have increased diversity not just in the Python and Ruby groups, but more broadly in all tech groups. This was most noticeable at BarCamp Boston 2012, which had a lot more women participants than the previous 6 years. It's great to know that the tech community can be welcoming to all sorts of people.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#7I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#8This is an important effort with a powerful effect on the Boston tech scene. This and similar outreach efforts (like the Python workshops) have increased diversity not just in the Python and Ruby groups, but more broadly in all tech groups. This was most noticeable at BarCamp Boston 2012, which had a lot more women participants than the previous 6 years. It's great to know that the tech community can be welcoming to…
Boston Python really led on the diversity outreach front in 2012, and now we (the Boston Ruby community) are very gratefully following their lead. Boston Python is so awesome.
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#9Reminiscent of LLC: http://ladieslearningcode.com/ I was a mentor for the Ruby class and absolutely loved the experience, students of all backgrounds were so eager to learn and understand programming.
It's a wonderful thing. Folks should make this happen everywhere, in whatever language. It also was a great experience to help out with the event.
In Boston there was a python workshop for women which provided much inspiration for this Ruby one: http://bostonpythonworkshop.com/
There was a similar event some years ago also sponsored by the Berkman Center, with some TAs participating in both: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/genderandtech/2009/10/20/post-w...
And then there is the Ada Initiative, which I think is fantastic: http://adainitiative.org/
Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
#10I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?
Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view.
Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of 98 men and 2 women. Let's say we work to increase our diversity such that now 50% of our community are women. How big is the community now?
That's right -- 200 people. It's not like adding 50% women removes 50% men... if we increase the number of women in our community, we increase the number of people. Now I've got twice as many contributors, twice as many users, twice as much activity, etc. Open source projects live and die on the strength of their communities. Increasing diversity is often actually the easiest way to increase membership, full stop.
[Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. But the point is that even if you don't give a shit about those sorts of ideals, there are still coldly calculating economy-of-scale arguments for why diversity is important.]