All about Front End – Girl Code @ ANWB
Last Wednesday it was finally time for another Meetup! This time it was at the ANWB. And that wasn’t really a coincidence, ’cause it’s where I got my first job as a full stack developer after being retrained as one last December. To be fair, it took a little nudging to apply for the job back then, ’cause why would you want to program at the company of the ANWB-stelletjes with their unisex raincoats? Well, in the end I’m really glad I did, ’cause we’re with more than a 100 developers here, building around 150 web applications and 30 apps. And we’re as free as can be to use the modern techs and tools we like. So that’s pretty awesome. What’s also pretty awesome is that the people who hired me were really interested in Girl Code and wanted to support our cause by hosting one and hopefully in this way also get in contact with more Girl Coders and help to raise the number of women in code.
When I started to work here I met Hanny and I was really impressed by her work and story. So after helping her with VHTO’s Girlsday at the ANWB, I asked if she also wanted to organize a Girl Code with me at the ANWB. And if it was up to me if she would also give a talk at this event herself! Even though she never did it before and was a little nervous about it, she accepted the challenge! So we started to look for a second speaker and we soon found out, which didn’t surprise me, we had a lot of other brilliant women ANWB’ers for the second talk and helping us out with the rest of the organization. Thanks, Anne, Xiaolin, Sabine, Marjon, Chantal and Lisa! With an open call for a speaker we completed the program with Chantal (S)!
The talks
In programming you can choose sides. You can choose the front or back end and if you really can’t choose you can always still be Switzerland and choose full stack.
For this meetup at the ANWB we sided with the front end and we had three Girl Coders who led us through some different tech and aspects of front end coding. Despite the autumn storm outside we had a filled up room and an awesome night. Hanny, Anne and Chantal rocked the stage and we had some great conversations after during the drinks. So thank you all for coming and making this night another successful Girl Code event!
Hanny talked about the connection between front end and UX, Anne about Elm and how it compares to AngularJS and Chantal about Bootstrap. You can take another look at all the slides below.
PS Keep an eye out on our Meetup page, ’cause the next one is already in progress! If you like the topic of artificial intelligence, I would make sure to block Wednesday night December 6 ;-) Just a tip.
Meet our 600th.. err.. 296th member: Bahareh!
June 9th enters history as the day Girl Code
got her 600th member on Meetup! A day of celebration. A tradition (that started at Girl Coder number 400) is to interview the lucky new member, introduce you to another inspiring woman on here and celebrate YOU. Unfortunately, after several tries we couldn’t reach the Girl Coder in question (long story short: turn on your Meetup messages if you don’t want to miss out on things like these! ;-) ), so we decided to let random.org decide who we would interview to celebrate our 600 members milestone out of the then 614 Girl Coders! ‘Cause we are very lucky to have you all! Random.org chose wisely for one tough cookie, a.k.a. @oneToughCooki22 on Twitter and a.k.a. Bahareh Amali irl. Another awesome example of a truly inspiring Girl Coder! So let the interview begin!
Bahareh moved from Canada to Amsterdam in 2013 to finish her Masters in Urban Planning and she decided to stay. Her field not being an easy job market, always already interested in IT and wanting to improve usability of applications she gave programming a try in 2016 and started to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery through online courses. ‘Cause she’s awesome like that.
What is it that you like about code?
That it empowers to build on your ideas attracts me to it. When I have a cool idea, I want to make it. I see programming as a very powerful means of expression.
For starting Girl Coders who wonder: which online courses did you use?
I’m following the Full Stack JavaScript and Front End Web Development tracks on Treehouse. And, in addition to that I’m one of the campers at FreeCodeCamp and participated in the #100DaysOfCode challenge.
Woo, that’s a commitment! How did you stay disciplined?
I’ve read many books on time management and learned different tactics on how to get things done. At first I tried to stick to the 9 to 5 schedule but slowly I’ve learned to manage my time better and instead of staring at my laptop for 8 hours straight, I cut down the problem into very small pieces and work on them throughout short sprints using Pomodoro clock. Now I work about 4 focused hours everyday including weekends.
What do you do for fun besides coding?
I like to dance and listen to live music and Amsterdam is a great place for that. Once in awhile I go to festivals to enjoy the beats, socialize and practice my Dutch with locals. I am also learning bass, which is great mental exercise.
Any advice for other girls thinking of changing their career to programming?
I would say just take your time and although dipping into different languages may be tempting at first, try sticking to one. Learn it well, get good at it and then move on to the more complicated languages. I would also say join coding groups, Meetups, hackathons and basically immerse yourself in the tech community as much as possible. And remember as Kathy Sierra says: “It takes 200 times of repetition to learn and master a new task”, so don’t get discouraged if you didn’t get it with the first few attempts. We learn most from our failures.
One last random thing you still want to share?
I tweet my ongoing saga, and share programming related books and resources on Twitter. If you are interested you can follow me @oneToughCooki22!
So, as Bahareh advices immerse yourself in the tech community and come to our next meetup ;-) You might run into this inspiring coder and get to meet her yourself! Also, if you’re looking for an awesome front ender to hire, you know where to tweet this One Tough Cookie!
Hope to see you at one of our next events, Bahareh. And thanks again for letting us interview you!
Now at 631, on to the 700th!
Building Rock-Paper-Scissors – Girl Code at Codaisseur
JavaScript, C++, PHP… Coding languages exist in big numbers. Another one, and some say an easier one to learn, is Ruby. We wouldn’t know. Ruby was new for us too!
So, last Wednesday it was time to get a taste of it at Codaisseur. And despite of the very, very, VERY good weather outside we had a filled classroom. Proud of our eager to learn Girl Coders and eager to teach tutors! After some short introductions about Girl Code and Codaisseur, all eyes and ears were focused on Ester Kais who showed just how easy it is to build a Rock-Paper-Scissors game in Ruby in just 1.5 hours. The evening was a big success: we once again met cool new people, got a taste of a new language and saw that wine not always beats coding, ’cause even after we finished and it was time for drinks most of you were still perfecting their games. In short: it was a good ol’ night of coding!
Keep an eye on our meetup page because we can’t wait to see you all again!
And if you weren’t able to join us this time, below you can find the slides and here the tutorial complete with installation guide. You’re welcome ;-)
PS it was Valentina Colombo who invited us to Codaisseur and arranged for everything on Codaisseur’s end. Because of a more important personal emergency she sadly couldn’t join us. But we would like to thank her again for welcoming us and help arrange for this awesome meetup to happen: thank you, Valentina!
Hidden Figures – Girl Code at the cinema with NGTI
Last Friday it was finally time to go see the movie of the year, or should I say century, with a bunch of Girl Coders: Hidden Figures. First, if you didn’t already: GO TO THIS MOVIE! It’s an absolute must-see!
Hidden Figures is about three African-American female mathematicians who’ve sent the first American into space with their calculations. Say what?! Yeah, the movie is called Hidden Figures for a reason. This truly awesome true (!) story has remained hidden in history until now. The whole movie is all about the struggles black women faced in the world of coding. I type faced, but apart from the open and proud racism maybe, I’m sad to say the inequality for women developers and especially black women developers is still very real in this day and age. Because we believe awareness and role models are really important to close the gender gap in tech, I feel hiding this story is part of the reason girls don’t always realize coding is a real option for them too. And what role models Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan are!
Listening to what struggles women developers face was the reason for Ahmed of NGTI to visit our last meetup at Booking.com and leaving inspired he wanted to help raise awareness by hosting the next Girl Code meetup. So he hooked us up with some great food at the office and free tickets for the movie. Next, Ahmed’s words on the collab and the movie:
Going into my first Girl Code meetup, I knew there’s a staggering gender gap in the industry. What I was struggling with was, what can I do about it. There’s often an underestimated step in the process of creating a change, that’s listening. I knew if I wanted to help, I’d have to listen first. So, there I was listening to brave women speaking up for themselves, sharing their experience, remembering what they had to overcome, and foreseeing what’s yet to challenge their progress, being vulnerable yet strong and admitting their fears in an act of courage. I’m sure that whatever I grasped from listening doesn’t amount to even a fraction of what they experience, but it was enough to make me want to spread the word further. That’s why we wanted to host an event with Girl Code, and that’s why when they suggested watching Hidden Figures, we couldn’t miss it! It’s essential to progress that we occasionally look back, assess our failures as human beings and move on with the intention of not repeating the same mistakes. Hidden figures gives us this opportunity to look back not far in history, to see bright women fighting for their basic rights and passionately contribute to the progress of humanity, despite all the hurdles in their way, only for their contribution to stay hidden for years. There are so many lessons to be learned, but for me the most important one is, without the courage of people speaking up and raising awareness change simply can’t happen.
Finally, this is not only about injustice. This is also about fitness. As it’s the case for the body needing diverse diet to stay healthy, the same applies to industries. Having people from a limited pool doesn’t produce good ideas. If the tech industry is keen on being healthy, it’s time for a diversity diet. Hire for diversity and inclusion, not just to be fair but to be fit.
Note: NGTI is hiring, please check our job openings.
And now it’s time to buy me some Katherine, Mary and Dorothy posters for inspiration! Thanks to all Girl Coders who joined us for the movie. You made our night!
Curious about our next meetup? Join us at meetup.com/GirlCode to stay in the loop!
The challenges of a (Girl) Coder – Girl Code at Booking
‘Cause being a coder brings challenges and being a Girl Coder can bring even more, this night at Booking was all about sharing experiences. First with talks by Tara Nielsen, Liana Popescu, Yosra Alaa and Abril Alvarez. And after, during the Q&A and the drinks, we got to hear the stories of our community too. It was an awesome and inspiring night and you came with many! Thank you for that!
The talks
You probably wouldn’t say, ’cause our speakers were very good, but for all four it was their first talk ever! They maybe were a little hesitant before, but they rocked and this is what we think Girl Code is all about! We want to offer the stage to women who have interesting and inspiring stories, even when they don’t have much experience speaking on stage yet. Ours is the perfect stage to start out when conquering the world. And seeing all four of them kick so much ass up there, made it even better! Not that we doubted that before. Thanks girls, for choosing our stage for your first talks. We feel very honoured!
Tara talked among other things about imposter syndrome, Liana about the importance of mentorship, Yosra about conquering multiple male-dominated fields throughout her life and Abril about the different challenges in different countries. You can take another look at all the slides below.
Meet our 500th Girl Coder: Caroline!
Wow, this week started with another great milestone for us: we got to welcome our 500th Girl Coder on Meetup: Caroline! And since our last interview with our 400th member Tina was so well received, we would now love to celebrate this milestone with you by introducing Caroline too!
Caroline is from France and when she doesn’t eat sausages, she drinks beers in all the wonderful and chill bars Amsterdam has to offer. She also likes to attend exhibitions, talks and events and loves to socialize in general.
Why did you want to join our group?
I joined the page ’cause I’ve always been interested in coding. I learned the basics at school, but I’d love to learn more in order to give another dimension to my own work. Without coding I currently feel restricted.
So, what do you do?
I’m a graphic designer mainly specialized in identity, web and print. I actually just stopped working for a fashion brand, so now I’m back on the market! I’m looking for a job in a graphic design agency or maybe in a fashion company again. I’m down for both as long as they’re interesting! Also, I’m passionate about patterns, which I design in my spare time.
Oh, do tell more!
I like doing weird black and white patterns, digital art, screen printing, handwritten typography or working with leather. The patterns I’m making are an on-going project. For now I’m thinking about making a series and printing them, then make a little tiny exhibition in a café somewhere or sell them through some concept stores. I still need to figure that out. Maybe it would be great to animate them as well. That’s where the desire to code comes in. I do experimental/digital work which I would love to animate with code.
What coding languages would you like to learn?
I learned a little HTML and CSS at school, and now I’d love to dive deeper into these languages related to animation. I would also like to learn Java and WebGL for example.
Do you have a game plan to learn these languages?
A game plan? Yes, I need one! There is always the way of learning online. But I think it’s way more motivating to learn in a group with a real person teaching. I still need to find this somewhere. You can of course find a lot of basic courses online like that, but when it comes to basic+ / medium level I’m still wondering where I could find good ones.
You say coding will add to your graphic designing. Let’s turn it around: do you have tips for Girl Coders who want to learn more about graphic design next to their coding?
Nowadays more than ever these two professions are getting really close and we work together more and more. So the good thing is that you can always ask someone around you for advice! A tip from me: to learn graphic design is to start on paper. Make a little sketch, think about the current problem you’re trying to solve and what you want to communicate. When your analysis is complete, it’s super easy to start designing something that makes sense. Experiment as well! Open your design software without any ideas in mind and… Play around!
Do you have anything random you still want to share :-)?
I’m looking forward to attending my first meetup of Girl Code. We go girls!
And we’re looking forward to meet you IRL as well, Caroline. Will you bring the sausages? ;-)
If someone has tips for Caroline where to start learning the languages she would like to learn. Send her a message on Meetup or make sure you’ll catch her at one of our next events!
On to the 600th!
Meet our 400th Girl Coder: Tina!
Yay! Last Wednesday we did a little dance of joy. Our Girl Code, started only 1.5 years ago, welcomed it’s 400th member on Meetup. It was Tina! To welcome her and celebrate this little milestone we thought it would be fun to do a little interview and introduce you all to Tina :-)
Tina finished her Media and Communication studies at the Faculty of Humanities in Koper, Slovenia and is now working at a media production and distribution company in Amsterdam. Her favorite game is Super Mario 64 and eager and passionate to learn coding she joined our group.
What inspired you to want to learn coding?
One of the reasons is the universality of the language and creativity that supports it. Also, I believe women/girls/ladies who code are braking into stereotyped men’s territory, which adds to my interest to the playground. Another reason is because I simply adore my ThinkPad and I might watched Mr.Robot a little bit too much recently.
Which languages are you most interested in?
JavaScript at the moment. But I will try to learn jQuery, Ruby and Python also.
Did you already start?
Yes, I started two years ago with HTML and CSS via Codecademy. Now I upgraded to JavaScript and I still use Codacademy because it’s very user friendly!
What are you doing in your daily life?
Working in the office (nothing connected to programming, unfortunately), wandering, partying and cycling around Amsterdam, listening to music at least 9 hours per day, doing interviews with music artists, volunteering at community dinners, sporting as much as my computer lets me, dancing around my room and trying not to eat all the cookies at once.
What will you do when you learned how to code?
Celebrate. It will be probably a bottle of Rose or Cabernet Sauvignon. Then I might send my requests to some companies and upgrade my employment status.
If you had all the skills you can imagine what would you build?
I am not completely sure what all these languages can build yet. But I am definitely more interested in software than web development.
Do you have anything you want to say to inspire other Girl Coders?
Girls, we run this world!
Do you have advice for girls still hesitating to make the step to learn coding?
To keep it simple: try not just coding, but everything that you can. Life is too
short to hesitate. It might not be your cup of tea, but at least you tried. And it might fit you like a glove, you never know!
Do you have anything random you still want to share :-)?
I cancelled my Friday plans and rather stayed home, because I had a coding class in the morning (Saturday Morning Coding Amsterdam). And I ate all the cookies at once, of course.
With love, Tina<3
Want to meet and eat cookies with Tina IRL? She will be at our next meetup. So RSVP to Building a Ducky Shooter Game: Girl Code meets JavaScript at NYCDA if you haven’t already. On to the 500th!
Workshop Photon Particle: Girl Code meets IOT
Because of the enthusiastic reactions to the talks about IOT at our last Meetup in August, our September Meetup last Friday at Q42 was all about connecting our own ‘Things’ to the internet ourselves. For this hands-on workshop we’ve picked the Particle Photon Starter Kit as our ‘Thing’. And because it comes with a built-in WiFi module everybody was online in no time, building their own apps with the LED and photocell. Afterwards they took it home to keep on building the wild ideas they made up during the workshop.
As always time flies when you’re coding with other Girl Coders, so it was hard to stop when the evening was over. Several Girl Coders are hungry for more coding with their Photons in the good company of some fellow Girl Coders. If you’re too let us know you’re interested in a casual Photon evening somewhere with WiFi, so we can pick a date and a place!
Girl Code meets IOT
Internet of Things has become increasingly ubiquitous in our daily lives. Your thermostat is controlling the temperature based on your behavior, your smoke detector warns you through your lights in case of a fire and in the near future you’ll be buying your smart-by-itself-ordering-new-coffee-beans-when-you’re-out-coffee-machine right at the Media Markt.
IOT makes our daily lives easier and offers fun opportunities for us coders. Beyond coding apps and websites, you can bring your coding into the real world even more when you do something with IOT. Think of world-saving drones, but also of fun little projects like building a connected dress.
Last Wednesday it was finally time for our meetup at Q42 Amsterdam dedicated to IOT in preparation for an IOT workshop Kristin wants to give for quite a while now (read: at least a year). And because everybody was as excited about the topic as we are, this long-anticipated IOT workshop will be next! Keep an eye on our Meetup group, Facebook and Twitter to make sure you will be part of it.
We had a blast and want to thank you all again for coming and making Girl Code such a success. Below the slides of all of the talks. See you at the next one!
An intro on IOT – Ineke Scheffers
How neural networks can make a drone your next best friend – Tessie Hartjes and Iris Huijben of Blue Jay Eindhoven
Hooli: Building a Connected Hoola Hoop – Katja Hollaar
LoRa, IOT-projects and a poll – Kristin Rieping
GCP NEXT World Tour: Girl Code meets Google Vision API
Our 7th Girl Code event is a wrap! Google was in Amsterdam with GCP Next World Tour and so we hijacked Girl Googler: Sara Robinson! Sara first talked about everything what you can make Google’s Vision API do and more importantly: how. It wouldn’t be Girl Code without some coding, so after Sara’s talk it was time to open our laptops and play with it a little ourselves. We concluded the workshop with some brainstorming where the consensus seemed to be that we have to do something with Tinder and the Vision API… Very curious about those apps ;-)!
Thank you all again for coming and see you at the next one! Join us here to stay in the loop!
Ineke 