Hello again! I have been working and working and working, lately, and I have a few things up my sleeve!

First, my company, The Open Bastion, is working on tutorials in Python. Get in touch if you’d like to create with us! Note: paying gig 🙂

Next, though I know some Python, it seems that I need to keep going, so I am learning Javascript, now. Exciting! Something altogether new! So far, it seems like a friendyfriendly C analogue, based on the 50-odd pages of a C++ book I read back in the day, which makes web site and app creation a BREEZE. I know complications will come – I feel like I hear more complaints about Javascript than any other language, right now, but as with all new languages, I’m really enjoying learning the syntax. I’m doing the Codecademy interactive tutorial and it’s adorable and fast fast fast, so I feel like I am getting a lot done and learning learning! Note to self (and to youuuu!) to research later – why are semicolons sometimes required at the ends of lines & sometimes not? I wonder – is it more than just good style? With Cx semicolons are quite explicitly required, right?

Next, I’m working on a Mac, now. If you know me, you’ll know that this is, like, a huge deal for me. It’s just a work machine, AND it’s four years old, buuuuut it’s great for coding even if it’s comically bad at other things, i.e. file management (honestly does anybody EFFECTIVELY use Finder? my theory is that apple wanted to ensure that their file management system was different than windows’ [whose Explorer {directories, not internet} is superior to all others] and now they’re too bashful to back out???). The mouse pad, though, is a serious delight to use, the best touch pad I have ever operated on, and the keys are lovely to type on. It’s strange having no optical drive (it’s an Air) and the minimal number of USB ports can be frustrating, but of course, a $1300 machine is a $1300 machine, and a professional versus hobbyist (read: my perfectly delightful $600 2.5y/o windows/ubuntu machine) computer is going to be a vastly different user experience. I hate the fanboyism around macintoshes so, so much, though, that I probably will still never buy one on my own, but it seems you need to be comfortable with them to work in tech, at least in Portland. So here I am. A bit blech, a bit “oh this works really well.”

Lastly, I’m volunteering with a group called Chick Tech right now, which assigns mentors in industry to young women. It’s a very cool organization, and I can already see myself staying involved with them for a long time. I worry about this approach to solving one of tech’s many diversity problems, though – the problem, at this point, is not to interest young women in STEM, but to keep grown, adult women in tech once we are here. And here, we are, and I/we will demand equality. Jessica McKellar and Selena Deckelmann, a couple of fabulous tech luminaries whom I follow, both refer to the “leaky pipeline*,” – we can get them in, but we can’t keep them there. I think the following tweet from Jenny Thurman sums up the issue quite well.

girls ALREADY like science, I don’t think inspiration is what they need, but respect, equal pay, and a less hostile work environment.

— Jenny Thurman (@jennygadget) June 16, 2014

So I will continue to think about this while I have a blast with my mentee, a motivated young lady whose trajectory I am excited to follow and encourage.

* the earliest reference I have found to this particular use of this term is from a paper from 1996, found here.