16 posts by jessica

April’s meetup is up! This one’s super exciting because it will be a group of high profile tech leaders talking about how they got to where they are. Check out the description below! Sign up here The Chief Technology Officer … Continued

Have you always wanted to become a tech conference speaker? Want to make 2018 the year for your first one? Global Diversity CFP (Call for Proposals) Day is a free workshop event, which is targeted at supporting people from underrepresented … Continued

I’m facilitating my blogging workshop for women and nonbinary coders again! Sign up HERE Blogging: it helps the community, improves your programming, demonstrates your expertise, helps you land your next job – what isn’t there to love? By the end of … Continued

I’m thrilled to reveal the 2017 Write/Speak/Code conference site! I am so proud of the team and feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with such a lovely, committed, and hard-working group of people. HUGE thank you to … Continued

I wrote about my experience at last year’s conference and why you should volunteer this year! (Spoiler: because it will change your life.) Read it here

I’m leading a workshop for Write/Speak/Code NYC on Thursday, August 27! Info below. Blogging: it helps the community, improves your programming, demonstrates your expertise, helps you land your next job – what isn’t there to love? By the end of this … Continued

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently” – (probably) Henry Ford What an ominous way to start a blog post, talking about failure! But let’s be real: “Understand and accept that you will make mistakes” is the First … Continued

I recently spent an extra 40 minutes with a brand-new coder who had made the mistake of copying something from the internet that he didn’t understand, and another well-intentioned person had then helped him to get that nasty, terrible code … Continued

When I was first starting out programming, I asked some terrible questions in my search for a solution. My guess is you have too. You might have noticed how terrible the answers are when you ask bad questions. Get the … Continued

The goal of this article is to introduce the concepts behind ActiveRecord and the active record pattern to beginning programmers so that they can go on to successfully complete beginning tutorials without being confused by the terminology, etc. What is … Continued

When I was 11 years old I saw a news story about a controversy generated by the new talking Barbie doll. The uproar was caused by one of Barbie’s lines: “Math class is tough.” Frankly, I was too young at … Continued

Dearth of beginner-friendly info on the web got you down? Don’t worry, I’m going to explain Ruby’s classes and this weird object-oriented thing for you. The Beginner’s Path So you’re just starting out learning a programming language, and you are … Continued

This is a quick and dirty reference guide to the absolute basics of RSpec 3. My experience has been that beginner programmers don’t get enough practice with testing, and that a lot of RSpec references don’t specify which version they’re … Continued

Note: This explanation of looping is geared towards absolutely-100%-new programmers. Consider yourself warned. Also, I highly recommend typing the examples into a new Ruby file and then running it to see the output and get a better feel for what … Continued

Disclaimer: I have taken a limited number of “intro programming” classes, being but a single person, though I have had my impression confirmed by others. If you teach/have taken a course that includes my “missing fundamental,” promote that excellentness in … Continued

Ever had the thought, Yeah, me too. After 9 months of world travel (4 continents and 9 countries), I wanted to live in a place that I had set up the way I like it, in a nice town, to … Continued