We are Fany and Anye and together with our coaches, Ignacio and Jonathan, our supervisor Katrin, our mentor Nico and the Living Style Guide’s Content and Media Chief, Jen, we are Fanxhe Team and we collaborate with the Living Style Guide’s Ruby gem. We work from Crowd Interactive’s offices,where our coaching company -a software consulting agency that specializes in e-Commerce- have supported us since we decided to participate in this program. Crowd is based in Colima, a small city in the west coast of Mexico which has landscapes from beaches to volcanoes.
My name is Anyelina and I’m 28 years old. I’m Spanish, but I’ve lived in México for the last three years. I graduated with a degree in Social Work, and am a nature-lover and I also like outdoor sports, and programming.
My name is Estefania and I’m 25 years old. I’m Spanish, but I’ve lived in México for the last four years. I graduated with a degree in Social Work, and I’m a book-lover.I also like animals, dancing, music, and programming.
HOW WE MET?
We met in Mexico three and a half years ago, because both of us were participating in the same student exchange program. Since that moment we became friends and partners. Later, we started working together on a few projects, including programs of social character: for example, to prevent domestic violence.
How did you hear about the SoC and why did you apply?
It was at one of the gatherings organized by us, the girls who attend to the workshops by Codificadas and Women Who Code, because besides learning to code we also know how to have fun. On this occasion our friend Lucy organized a cocktail night with Margaritas at her place; of course Erika and Viviana - part of the organizers - couldn’t miss it. They had an exciting message to share with us.
Codificadas =)
Erika and Viviana work at Crowd Interactive and they had just been informed about the Rails Girls Summer of Code, so taking advantage of being at the gathering they transmitted a heartwarming message, offering us full support of Crowd Interactive for any of us interested. They invited us to their office, an appointment for the next day to talk about the summer of code.
With nothing else to say other than we were two passionate programmers, we were determined to participate since the very moment we received the invitation. It was an opportunity that arrived at the right moment and suited our characteristics.
And why not… the next day we were there, at Crowd Interactive, we decided to tackle this adventure. During the meeting, Esteban Cortes and Victor Velazquez gave us the requisites to apply. And even when the hopes of getting a sit weren’t high because we barely had a weekend to read through the proposed projects list, pick one, make a project plan and fill our application, we both continued with the attitude of striving night and day.
Why ‘Fanxhe’? What does the name mean?
The day that we met to complete our application to participate in the Summer of Code, we hadn’t noticed that we had to pick a name for our team. We hadn’t come up with anything, and suddenly, we asked ourselves, what if we put our names together?
So, “Fanxhe”, it’s just the combination of our nicknames.
##What are you working on?
We are working on the open source project, Living Style Guide.
But, what is Living Style Guide?
Living Style Guide, is a ruby gem that generates front-end style guides using markdown, improving the documentation of front-end projects and being of great utility for web development teams.
If you want to know how easy and quick is to generate a style guide read this.
Why did we decide apply for this project?
When we reviewed the proposed projects list and we found the Living Style Guide’s gem, we knew that it was our project. We believed in its potential, it suited our characteristics, knowledge and taste. We knew that this project would allow us to grow as programmers because the tasks that we could work on could make us improve our skills gradually, increasing the complexity every time.
What is our work in the gem?
During these three months, our focus is to improve the usability of the generated style guides, adding small tools that will help the user navigating through the style guide with ease.
Our project plan poses a big challenge for us, because every task that we choose involves some effort and a lot of studying, to learn and take advantage of these three months working in the summer of code.
What is your happiest moment so far?
Every day since we started our participation in the program, we have learned something new, we get to do something different and we feel backed by every member of the team, so, each day is a new professional achievement for us, as well as personal and we feel happy for it. The very moment that we got selected to participate in this program was a great joy for both of us, as well as the fact of being able to work with a united team. Like they say:
“A team that has fun together, stays together”
Do you want to see half a day of Fanxhe Team at RGSoC ?
If you could code anything in the world, what would it be?
We can think several things. Have you seen the movie “Transcendence”? With technology they want to make our world a better place. We would love to program something like this… or, have you ever imagined a machine that is capable of mediating conflicts in an objective and impartial way? We would be able to end wars, disputes, fights, misunderstandings, etc. as with neighbors or friends, as between countries or their leaders.
We believe that we can summarize all of our ideas in programming something that has as a result to create a happier world for everybody. Although these ideas might sound crazy — inspired by science fiction films — every day the technology advances demonstrate that, practically, everything is possible.
Hello everybody, we are Raluca and Thuy, located in Berlin, Germany.
Raluca: When I moved 3 years ago in Germany with my family, I also decided to change my career, from Assistant Manager to Developer. I struggled a lot, but being geek helped me to learn by myself Python and Java. Last year I discovered the neat world of Ruby, and I love it since. I am also volunteer at Rails Girls Berlin, to whom I thank because they helped me discover I am part of a large community, and not alone.
Thuy: I was working as an IT-buyer and a project manager in the design and tech industry before I decided to dive deeper into coding (first with html/css and a bit javascript). Apart from Rails Girls Berlin Team I volunteer in a few other non-profit projects focusing on Black and People of Color communities.
We have a Nuremberg based mentoring team of three people (Stella Rouzi, Christian Bruckmayer & Henne Vogelsang) in which Henne has the main role. And of course, we also have a team of coaches: Robert Siemieniec, Gustavo Guimarães and Hackership coaches.
When we applied for the Rails Girls Summer of Code 2015, Hackership offered us a spot to stay and code, along with interesting workshops and talks during their summer batch in Berlin. Everything happens under the supervision of Qian Zhou who is currently located in Helsinki/Finland.
As you see, we have a lot of great people to help and to support us. Thank you all, and thank you, Rails Girls Summer of Code, for the chance to take part in this program.
Why “Ruby’n’Bugs” ?
Well, first of all, it is funny :). And because Ruby and Bugs is like Ying and Yang, cannot have one without another. Well, maybe you can have bugs without Ruby, but where is the fun in that?
How did you hear about the RGSoC and why did you apply?
Raluca: I found out about RGSoC program during a Rails Girls Berlin beginners workshop. Lisa from Rubycorns presented the project with so much of enthusiasm and passion, that I entered the website to check what it is about. When I saw that it implies having mentors to guide you, working with experienced developers, and above all contributing to open source project (the dream of any beginner developer), I knew I have to try to be part of this program.
Thuy: I know about the RGSoC program since last year but didn’t consider to apply because I was working in full-time and coding was just a ‘nice to know’ occasion for me next to my daily job. Since I decided to intensify my coding skills this year and Raluca asked me 1 week before the application closed, I thought: why not trying, you never applied for a grant or scholarship in your life and the Ruby community is the most welcoming environment for beginners!
Within a week, we were a full team, with coaches and a coach company.
What project are we working on?
The Project we are working on is called Open Source Event Manager.It is an event management tool tailored to Free and Open Source Software conferences, which helps event organizers with call-for-papers submissions, scheduling, marketing and analytics. Since we are also co-organizers of events, the reason we have chosen this project is obvious.
What are we most looking forward to this summer?
At the beginning of this program, we thought that learning and contributing as much as we can to the project are the main goals. Meantime, we discovered another equal important goal: to learn how to work as a team. Having different backgrounds and interests is not always helping us to keep the team spirit. Not mentioning the lack of self-confidence, or stress, or a pesky bug to stubborn to be solved quickly. Perhaps the ultimate goal of this summer is: learn how to deal with any issue may occur, social- or code-related.
If you want to read more about our benefits, challenges & learning lessons of working as a team, please find it here.
Instead of “THE END”
Our journey just started, and we have a lot to share on the way. If you are curious about our progress, about our achievements and our struggles, please follow us on Twitter: @rubyandbugs, on the Teams App, and read our Medium blog posts from time to time.
Team Hackrgirls consist of two crazy coders from Cochin, Kerala, India namely –Nidhiya and Anjaly the two engineering students who believe in the awesomeness of “OPEN SOURCE“. Anjaly Elizabeth is a good front end developer and a passionate designer and Nidhiya – a developer who loves to experiment with front end technologies. To an added merit, although we are students we have been working on various commercial projects. Being open source enthusiasts, we actively volunteer for Mozilla. We consider RGSOC as one of our greatest achievement and we have already fallen in love with the amazing experience of learning, experimenting and the ultimate pleasure of fixing the bug ;)
The term Hacking has always excited us and it pumps up adrenaline (dunno why :D). Since we are the girls who loves to code and chill out we thought of naming our team as Hackrgirls – cute and nerdy name indeed right ? ;)
What are you working on ?
We are really excited to take up the impress.js ( a 3D presentation tool) as our RGSOC project with Bartek as its mentor ! :D . First few weeks we tried to digest the code and started playing around. When we started to code, it was more like learning. We really enjoyed what we did daily and the learning experience is beyond explanation. And of course our mentor and coaches guided us well. Currently we work on various demo and the most recent one is a Solar system demonstrated using impress.
What will we do next for the project?
The main challenge is to implement the sub steps and we need to work on the various issues in the current system. By analyzing the user preferences we are trying to modify the tool to make it more creative and useful. Also, the preview models are under consideration.
If we could code anything in the world, what would it be?
If we can end a war/disputes while running lines of codes, we would like to program such an algorithm and use it for the world peace :) . It may seem like an impossible task for any of you, but we would like to make it happen at least in our imaginary world
What are you most looking forward to this summer?
Since it’s not summer in our region, we would love to make use of this monsoon to code for our future via RGSOC 2015. We look forward for having more challenging bugs in our codes. Our team is grateful to have Bartek as mentor and we are thankful to have wonderful coaches like Harisankar, Manu and of course can’t miss out our lovely supervisor Katrin :)
We are Evy and Sofi from team
RubyGirlsQuito and, as you might have guessed, we are based in Quito, Ecuador. We are
working on Project LEAP Encryption Access Project – Webapp. We’re a group of two
passionate young students who, oddly, love to learn about
cryptography.
Team Ruby Girls Quito! (Image: Ruby Girls Quito)
Who we are?
Sofi: My passion for coding comes from a very young age. When I was 15, I started
learning html, javascript and MS-DOS, and, as you might have guessed, this was a
breath-taking experience. I also have a bachelor degree on classical music and I’m
currently working on my Literature thesis (about an argentinian writer –Jorge Luis Borges-
and a French philosopher –Jacques Derrida-). When it comes to coding, I love everything
that has to do with encryption (and that, among others, is the reason why I love working
with LEAP) and I have taken many courses in that area. Peculiarly, I’m also very fond of
philosophy, especially, philosophy of mathematics.
Evy: And me? I come from the dark side of the business -haha-. I´m a business Engineer and
I work as a University Professor (well, I´m starting and learning). Currently, I´m
involved in researching, but I want to work with projects on Technology Management: I love
innovative projects. So, as you can imagine, I didn´t know absolutely nothing about
programming until recent years when due to my permanent atraction to the technology world
-even though I always thought that it was too late for me to study something technical-
I started to get involved on that world. My story starts exactly one year ago: one day
there was the opportunity to work with a project about e-learning, but the thing is, I
didn´t understand about what they were talking (all about developing), so I was a little
bit frustrated. Suddenly this event called Rails Girls appeared and I went there and met
incredible girls (Sofi included :) ), ate a lot of delicious food -haha-, practiced and
understood code; and that’s how history begin! I started to love it and now I´m here with
all of you in this amazing RGSoC ;)
How did we hear about RGSoC?
Our long-time coach, Batman (yeah! that is his nick name –pretty awesome, uh?-), told us
about this program. He said that this was an exquisite experience and a way to meet
awe-inspiring people (of course, he was not wrong). We took his advice and experience has
proven itself not to be wrong. After all, how can an advice be fallacious if it comes from
our silent guardian, our watchful protector: the Dark Knight.
We think that RGSoC is the epitome of what coding society is like. It is a group of
passionate people committed to create a better world where knowledge is shared in an
equal manner between everybody. It is a way of creating a world where one can freely
help each other… so why does someone wouldn’t love to be involved in it?
What project are you working on?
We will be working with LEAP Encryption Access Project. LEAP, which is a project devoted
to give all Internet users access to secure communication. We will dedicate our summer
to implementing bitcoin payments to the app (pretty splendid!). Of course, we chose LEAP
as it is a project working on security, encryption, and, on a theoric level, with
cryptography. So far, it has been an awesome experience (yesterday, for example, we
learnt about Salt or random data used in cryptography) and we have loved working with our
mentors, who we usually refer to as “crypto mentors” or “the suicide squad” (even though
they still don’t know their names and, yes, we love comic books!).
What are our expectations for this summer of code?
We have really high expectations but the principal, among others, is to learn how does
an app built in rails work. We also expect to meet awesome people and so far we have done
so (we even get in touch with an Erlang’s maniac, with a Homebrew’s contributor and with
lovely Team Tessie).
If we could code anything in the world, what would it be?
Sofi: Definitely, something about cryptography, implementing zero-knowledge proof seems
awesome to me. Also, I’ll love to create an app that somehow helps with building massive
online education systems, as in my country, many people doesn’t have the resources to
attend universities. That’ll be a Good Thing.
Evy: Definitely I would like to code music, I love music!! And in fact, there is
people who do that… but I would like to learn it first.
Follow us on @zeroknowledge9, @claucece and @evy_navarrete
Quick advice for anybody that wants to start coding to do awesome things and think that
it is really difficult:
“sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do
the things no one can imagine”
(Alan Turing)
Long life inspiration: Alan Turing (Image: Wikipedia
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LITTLE GAME
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Hello! We are Angela and Lina from Barranquilla, Colombia. During our summer, we will be working on a Project which is called “Rubygems Adoption Center”. For this project we have an incredible team working with us. Our coaches are Sebastian Sogamoso and Alfonso Mancilla and our mentors Nick Quaranto and Benjamin Fleischer. Our supervisor Ramon Huidobro. They have been very helpful for our growth and progress throughout the project because every day we have feedbacks that help us to complete our tasks in the best way possible.
The amazing people of Team Binary
Why Team Binary?
The name was chosen thinking about the binary system and its importance in the computer science. The system, although, is apparently easy for being composed of only two digits is able to process complex instructions. Even though, we are a trainee team, we are capable of performing complex tasks and move forward with this project.
How did you hear about the SoC and why did you apply for it?
Angela: I started learning Ruby on my own one year ago influenced by a friend who is Rails evangelist. After I started with the basics and learned some Ruby microframeworks I decided to learn Rails. At that time I heard about Rails Girls workshop in my city so I decided to go and learn from them. I got a lot of knowledge and there I met Lina. Whom presently is my partner in this Project. In the workshop, Paola and Melissa, two participants of last SoC, talked about the Rails Girls Summer of Code. The following year I prepared myself and studied hard and this year I took the decision to apply to be part of this wonderful experience. Lina: My beginnings with Ruby was in the university. I started with Web development. In the class, I could learn the basics and got interested. Then, I decided to participate in the workshop that was organized in my city and a year later I had the opportunity to enroll in the SoC with Angela (whom I met in workhsop). I became interested to participate in SoC because I met and became quite close with a friend who was a participant in 2013 and told me about the program. I took this opportunity as the beginning of a new stage in my professional life and the opportunity to acquire new knowledge. Today I’m happy to be working on this project with an excellent workgroup
What project are you working on?
Our project was born from the need to maintain an updated gem and all those who are forgotten by an owner, unable to continue keeping it. The project is named “Rubygems Adoption Center”. It consists of an application in which an owner that can’t continue maintaining or updating a gem, then he will be able to publish it for adoption and receive applications from people who can take the gem, the owner may accept or decline these requests. It is a project of the Rubygems organization and we are very excited to work on it.
What are you most looking forward for this summer?
Angela: Is hard to say only one goal, this is my first time working on a big and important project, making it exciting and of course, I would like to continue contributing. I want to absorb all the experience of my coaches and mentors, I have learned many new things, I feel very comfortable in this community because all the people I have met here is really friendly, RGSoC is a great family. Lina: Primarily keep learning. The opportunity to participate in this Project which I have seen always as the beginning of something new and great in my life, so I would like to follow this way, now I’m relying on my team, and later I want to implement projects that allow me to improve my skills and background.
Our team twitter account is @TeamBinaryRG.
Follow us too in our blog.
