A Summer full of Code
Hello from the Code_Padawans
I’m 28, living in Berlin since Oct 2011. After obtaining degrees in Psychology(MA) and Cultural Studies(BA) in Poland I’ve been working mainly in cultural management and non-profit sector in London and Berlin. While in Tactical-Tech Collective, 2013, (organization teaching online security, targeting especially human rights advocates), surrounded by researchers, developers and hackers I became familiar to some security tools, gained some more insight into the technical world, its importance and various implementations in a range of fields. There I also had my first peer-to-peer HTML and CSS classes. Nov 2013, I joined Rails Girls Berlin organizers team, finding the idea behind Rails Girls worth supporting. Also, although I still thought of myself as being far from the programming world, I wanted to get closer to it. I participated in Rails Girls workshop in Dec 2013 and with my study colleagues formed a project group the very same day. It was new and exciting. We began meeting regularly in January. I started taking online courses in HTML, CSS , Javascript, Ruby and Rails, focusing mainly on Ruby. At times I was getting puzzled in that ‘new world’, as it seemed a little overwhelming, but I received so much support and encouraged, and got inspired by Rails Girls and Ruby community members, that in March I decided to go for it fully. And here I am, learning, getting frustrated and excited daily, applying for the program, that being a part of will empower me and give me strong basis to pursue a career in software development.
I am a Computer Science student living in Berlin since 2009. Technology and programming have been my passions for a long time now. After several years of working in the pharmaceutical sector I decided to follow my heart and go back to university to study Computer Science. Although changing my career path was a very good decision, I realized that the university is not the best place to learn how to program; it provides not that many possibilities for gathering hands-on experience. Joining the Rails Girls in 2012 has changed everything. I’ve found such a lovely, supportive community and helping hands to really get into the world of coding. Thanks to Rails Girls and the Ruby developers I met through Rails Girls I’ve found a way of learning that is fun and motivates me to go further. I was doing online courses after work and studies covering several topics. I became a Rails Girls Berlin organizer to share this passion with as many women as possible. In January 2014 I quit my job as a personal/project manager to focus on my goal to become a developer at the end of the year.
And now, I am a proud Code_Padawan. <3
Our Passion Project: Ataru
Form IV: Ataru, also known as the Way of the Hawk-Bat, or The Aggression Form, was the fourth of the seven forms of lightsaber combat. The history of Ataru stretched back through the Old Republic, to at least as early as the Mandalorian Wars, where it was commonly employed by Jedi of that day. Ataru continued to be a common form among the Jedi in the latter stages of the Republic, and was also known to be employed by the Sith. Wookiepedia
Ataru is a gem that can be used as a command line tool for documentation testing. You can check if the code samples in your software documentation are correct. You can also use Ataru during your CI at Travis. You can find more infos here: https://github.com/CodePadawans/ataru
We released the first version (0.1.0) of gem Ataru on Rubygems.org You can install and run it on your documentation.
The life of a Code_Padawan
Being a Code_Padawan means that there are rules to guide us on our path to become a Code_Jedi one day. First of all, we have a group of really awesome coaches who are teaching us a lot of things. Most of the week we are working at Asquera , our main coaching company. One day a week we ware going to Fyber , our second coaching company.
We have a lot of amaaaaaazing people as coaches <3
Sebastian, Matthias, Kacper, Arne, Bodo, Jan
Dirk and Lucas from Cologne are our volunteer coaches
Ernesto is our drawing master
Jedi Power of the Week
During our journey we unlock some secret Jedi Super Powers every week. They are like a „quintessence“ of what we learned in this week. By remembering this word we can bring back all those amazing memories. But they are also some principles that are needed to be a good Code_Jedi. Here are some examples, but you can find all Jedi Powers on our blog
From our Padawans Diary
We hat a lot of amazing moments in the past weeks. It would be too much for this blogpost to tell them all. So we are just list some highlights and if you want more, read our blog
the moment when we had our first non-coach contributor on github
having this awesome logo <3
giving a keynote talk about our journey at RedFrogConf
having a lot of fun together
Writing (and deleting) a lot of code
And then the summer ends…
There are almost 2 weeks left working on Ataru. We had (and still have) an amazing time! And we learned a lot. About programming, about learning itself, about ourselves. We learned that programming is more than writing code. It has also a lot to do with creativity and communication with the people you are working with. Sometimes it’s important to be patient with yourself and to be not afraid to ask questions. There are no stupid questions!!!
We want to encourage everyone who is thinking about applying for Rails Girls Summer of Code or an internship or some other programming course: Do it! It will change your life. Maybe not the way you were expecting it but in a positive way. Challenge yourself and find your passions.
…but our journey is not finished yet
The Code_Padawans will still follow the path to become Code_Jedis one day. We will continue with maintaining Ataru and learning to code.
So, if you want to help the Code_Padawans on their way, hire us. :)
Run and Validate! (a traditional valediction of Code_Padawans following the path of Ataru)
You can read our blog
Follow us on Twitter
Visit us on Github