Introducing Ruby Girls Quito
Hello, everybody! (¡Hola a todos!)
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.
yep, that's our coach! (Image: picong101)
Why did we apply to the program?
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)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
LITTLE GAME
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A little game for cryptography’ geeks - taken from The Science of Deduction by Sherlock Holmes:
‘Dearest Sherlock
A Roman Emperor will help you work out what this means.
DSPCWZNV T LX HLENSTYR JZF
xx’