Thank You Rails Girls Summer of Code for providing us an opportunity to work in a multicultural environment. Rails Girls Summer of Code allows to meet like-minded people and is a great opportunity to expand our knowledge.
Goal of Our Project
Ruby is the programming language that we use for our project.
The goal of our project (the Official Ruby Documentation Redesign) is to design an attractive and useful template for reading Ruby documentation, made available as the official ruby-lang.org language reference documentation: http://docs.ruby-lang.org/.
We cannot forget to mention the amazing kick-off with all students and mentors in the first moment of this project.
We had an opportunity to study and explore the Ruby programming language.
We worked daily and also had an opportunity to work using Trello for Activity updates within our Team.
We also had an opportunity to explore and work in Github: Update and contribute source code using Git.
What did we learn from the project?
When we study individually we do not have an opportunity to explore all the concepts.
We had an opportunity to learn and write code by following the Software Engineering Process in a real environment with support from our team.
We had an opportunity to work for Official Ruby Documentation Redesign, and whenever we had issue during our coding and testing, we were guided by our coaches and mentor.
They helped to contribute and explore this Open Source Project, making it an amazing team.
Our heartfelt thanks to our coaches, mentors and supervisors.
The team had positive support for Rails Girls Summer of Code from the beginning and have been understanding; this helped us during difficult times, by guiding us into the right direction.
Thanks to Rails Girls Summer of Code for providing us with such an opportunity to implement new skills, knowledge and experience in the Information Technology and Internet services area.
We consider that it is great to have a project that supports women’s empowerment and provides interesting projects for women to show their potential to work in all the areas.
We learnt to organize our tasks and maintain schedule of activities completed on a daily basis: https://teams.railsgirlssummerofcode.org/
Our team was very positive and we will certainly continue to empower women in coding and technology and contributing to Open Source.
Coaches
Barbara and Stella: Our coaches worked with us throughout the Summer Project and also supported on weekends to fix issues in our project. They have been supporting us and helped us during any issues by providing advice on the project, helping to understand and resolve issues, helping to implement our goals and giving valuable guidance. Learning has been a very important and valuable aspect of this project.
Mentor
Zachary is a great project maintainer and Ruby core contributor. He was our inspiration and we had an opportunity to work under his guidance. At any point of difficulty in the project, he always provided support and helped us to fix the issues with our project.
Our experience and our learning
We had a wonderful time, learning and coding, that allowed us to explore and gain knowledge in Open Source. We are stepping out with so lots of positive experiences and gained knowledge which help us further to shape our career.
Organizers of Rails Girls Summer of Code have been inspirational: We have no words to express our love for the organizers. They have been supporting us during the most difficult phases of our project and Rails Girls Summer of Code would definitely not be possible without such amazing people: Thank You from Team Alpha Ruby!
Strange Loop took place in St. Louis, Missouri. The same county where Ferguson is located. The conference, like the attendees themselves, were anything but conventional. I heard more than a few attendees who described it as a conference with equal amounts of heart and brain. So what makes it so that a conference has head and heart? Speakers who talk about society and about how software affects society – some talked about inclusion, the technical divide, what it means to be a person of color in tech and what we can do about it, and also about cognitive biases. The lightning talks and sessions at Strange Loop were plentiful; by plentiful I mean there was a total of 20 workshops to choose from the day before the conference began, and then there was a total of 36 talks over two days plus 12 evening un-sessions on Friday after day one of the conference. Strange Loop has a wide range of talks, many of them had a inter-disciplinary vibe to them. As an attendee you get exposed to a lot of different languages and techniques.
The pre-party was held at the City Museum. (Photo: CocoaGems)
Take Aways
A main take away from Strange Loop was the great value of connecting computer science with other interests or subjects. Carin Meier played around with building programs in Clojure based on chemical reactions. Since all living organisms information systems are based on chemical processes, there is a lot we can learn from it; by showing the audience demos she wanted to give an eye opener for more innovation and new ways of thinking about computer problems. Amy Wibowo’s talk was about how she and a group of Airbnb engineers hacked a knitting machine to be computer-controlled so that it could print images in yarn. She and her team learned a great deal of electronics using the problem-solving skills that computer science requires in an engineering day job; by applying these skills to a hobby project, they experienced the joy of being new to something as well as getting yarn print outs.
Carin Meier talks about Chemical Computing. (Photo: CocoaGems)
Amy Wibowo shows the yarn print out from the hacked knitting machine. (Photo: CocoaGems)
Favorite Talks
Out of the sessions I attended some of my favorites included Abby Bobe’s Keynote: From Protesting to Programming, Becoming a Tech Activist, Morgan Marquis-Boire’s Security for Humans: Privacy Coercion Resistant Design, and Brian Lile’s, Cognitive Bias: A reflection, Evelina Gabinova’s How Machine Learning helps Cancer, Beating Threads - live coding with real time by
Sam Aaron, and No, Really… Robots and JavaScript?! by Raquel Vélez. Morgan Marquis-Boire’s talk was eye opening because it debunked conspiracy theories and proved that many science fictions alluding to a big brother surveillance system are as real as the built-in function SpyCore featured in iOS. Boire’s talk made me and I’m sure many other rethink our loyal attachments to our phones and our trust with all of the personal info we share. As the world goes mobile, he said, so does the surveillance state.
Sam Aaron talked about his invention Sonic Pi which allows him and many more to create music with code live in real time. He created Sonic Pi to teach kids about programming, but the program is really for anyone. We were so inspired that we immediately downloaded it and played with it the same night.
Sam Aaron talks about Sonic Pi. (Photo: CocoaGems)
A group of us playing with Sonic Pi. (Photo: CocoaGems)
Unfortunately the summer is over and we have to move on. Those were an amazing three months that completely changed our lives. At least we hoped so!
L-R: Ania, [Yukihiro Matsumoto](https://twitter.com/yukihiro_matz), Basia (Image: Piotr Szotkowski)
First of all, we wrote a lot of code.
Working on our training apps:
Anna: 89 commits / 4,350 ++
Basia: 75 commits / 7,692 ++
And working on RubyClerks:
Anna:
38 commits
Basia:
29 commits
in total: 221 commits / 352,287 ++
What’s more, we’ve been to two great conferences, seen 30 talks and we’ve met many amazing human beings.
What we were working on?
RubyClerks is an e-commerce web application built from rails engines. Before RGSoC, we had no idea how to build an engine like that. But now we have our contribution into open source, we succeed in building our own engines as well as adding one to the RubyClerks. The engine that we made is named Stripe Clerk. It’s a payment module for charging money with Stripe app. We also added some features to the RubyClerks, like a rake task for adding an English sample database and buttons for invoice printing. We also learned Test-Driven Development and Behaviour-Driven-Development, which was rather something new for us.
We are very proud of ourselves when we see that our changes will be used in the app.
It makes us sing:
Like an engine, built for a very first time!
Like an e-e-e-engine, when your app runs next to mine!
What we gained?
When you study alone at home, you know nothing about working on a project, collaboration, git or code reviews. Rails Girls Summer of Code was a great opportunity to try work on a real project, but in a very friendly environment and with great support. We couldn’t imagine a better start into IT. That was a very intense time, we’ve learned a lot. About rails, html, css, js, rails engines and testing. We also used a lot of gems and spent long hours on stackoverflow. During the first month we’ve learned more than during half a year of self-study. This is an invaluable advantage.
What we feel?__
This feeling when you see your contribution in an open source project is really good, and we want it more. We are also very impressed with the energy of the organizers. We want to thank the whole Rails Girls Summer of Code Core Team and all of the grantors. We are super super grateful for this amazing time and commitment of so many people. Without them it wouldn’t have happened. Our roots are in the Rails Girls movement and we will support this initiative as much as we can.
What we are doing now?
Ania:
I am preparing some apps for my portfolio and started looking for my first job as an intern or junior developer. When I look back, I can see all the things that I learned, but I can also see all these things that I don’t know yet. That’s why I keep on learning. But if I failed, I can always continue writing IT-pop songs… ;)
Basia:
I was lucky to get a job without a break after RGSoC. I was lucky but I worked hard on this for 1,5 years. This is it, this is my place, this is what I want to do: constantly learn new things and build interesting software with great people.
Summary
Being part of Rails Girls Summer of Code was a great adventure. We strongly recommend to try it. Just get involved: as a student, supervisor, mentor, coach or sponsor and give the best of yourself.
It is the end of an incredible summer. We improved our skills so far and attended our first conference, RubyConf Colombia. We are very grateful with the program of Rails Girls Summer of Code.
L-R Alfonso Mancilla, Angela Guette, Laura Garcia (alumni), Lina Torres, Sebastian Sogamoso
At the beginning of this summer we had high expectations about what we might do. We read, did so many tutorials, we investigated and especially, we coded, considering that practice is most important thing when you are learning to code. So we decided to absorb all the necessary knowledge of our supervisor, mentors and coaches and see for ourselves the satisfaction to see our complete project and that’s priceless.
Sarah Mei with Is Your Code Too SOLID?
We can say that this is a new beginning, although three months were not enough now we have more confidence to start new projects and be more active in the open source community. We want to express our gratitude to the program’s organizers, our supervisor Ramon Huidobro, our coaches Sebastian Sogamoso and Alfonso Mancilla, and mentors Nick Quaranto and Benjamin Fleischer, who were always willing to help.
Sandi Metz with Nothing is Something
Last week we attended the RubyConf Colombia, which was amazing! Especially Angela, who lived this experience as an organizer.
Registration
The atmosphere in an event like this is indescribable. You’re surrounded by great people, from whom you can learn a lot. All you want is to just hear everything they say and not miss a word. There were four women speakers (Woohoo!!) with very motivational talks.
The people who made possible this conference
This year the conference was held in parallel with the JSConf Colombia at the same place, we also had the opportunity to attend, and were very excited after the last keynote. In it, the organizers made a homage to the women in tech, exalting all the work we have done to make progress in this sector.
Friday Hug!
Finally, we want to thank all the organizers who made these conferences possible, especially RubyConf Co, which is the first time that was realized in Colombia. All speakers were very excited and were saying they definitely would come for a second edition, to which we also look forward!
So long and (and no thanks for the
externalities) goodbye! Rails Girls Summer of Code
2015 has come to an end, and, as it has always been, it has been a sad farewell.
For 3 months, we have been coding and learning evything that we could about
this amazing world that coding is. We have not only learnt that coding is
fun but also that the people who code is perhaps the most kind and most
willing-to-help people on the world. Throughout this 3 incredible months we
have got in touch with people from all over the world who, without any kind of
compensation, was always been there to help. So for everything that has been
done and taught, thank you all!
In general, it was not only about learn technical skills… it goes farther than
that: it is a personal experience to prove yourself that you
can do things that you never thought you could. How important is for a
person to get this knowledge when he/she doesn´t know nothing about programming,
like running a server, creating a controller from the terminal or doing a “push”
on git? It´s so important as it encourages you to try new things. So, for sure,
“this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is,
perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Soo… how was it?
FYI, we were (well, actually, we ‘are’) TeamRubyGirlsQuito from Quito, Ecuador. Our
work was to implement Braintree Payment gateway, allow Bitcoin payments and
implement a deactivate button for the amazing LEAP web app. And even though, we
knew nothing about crypto currencies and payment’s gateways, we managed to learn
everything about them (well, maybe not everything, but, at least, a lot).
Working with LEAP was, in a word, amazing. It was like a dream come true to work
on an application that works with encryption and, so far, it has motivated us to
learn more about encryption (or, al least, to read a lot of books about
cryptography). So, we think that Rails Girls Summer of Code is one the most
amazing experiences we will ever have. We know that all of the things that we
learnt on this summer, all of the people we met, and all of the nights and days
we spent coding will be part of our fondest life memories! :)
Pretty much what implementing Bitcoin feels
like (image from www.bidnessetc.com)
But apart from everything that was learnt (git, Rails, the evil haml,
javascript, bitcoin functionality, Braintree functionality, etc.) we had a
really great time while meeting people from all over the world. Even though, we
only had one amazing coach (having Batman is always enough!), we got help from a
variety of people. We couldn’t be more thankful for the help that was given:
from Erlang’s master Dave Cottlehuber from whom we
learnt that MacPorts are the evil and should not never (NEVER) be used, from
stackoverflow’s boy Raki, who helped us even though
we only met him at Stack, to Colombia’s rails core member [Guillermo Iguaran]
(https://twitter.com/guilleiguaran) (thanks so much for all the tutorials,
for all the amazing discussions about logic, Turing and Hilbert, and for all
of the sleepless-nights in which you helped us to understand ‘fake-braintree’).
Thanks to LEAP guys (Thorsten, Azul, Elijah, Klaus and Christoph) for
everything… You’re, indeed, amazing! Thanks to the Rails Girls Summer of Code
and ThoughtWorks! And of course, thanks so much to our amazing only coach,
Batman! As the “real” Batman would say:
“a hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as
putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know that the world
hadn’t ended”. (You’re our hero ;) )
Soo.. Thanks so much!! RGSoC has taught us not only how to code but also that
there is people building a better world while coding, who we will always give
help to whoever needs it. And, lastly, it has taught us that no matter how
many bugs there are, no matter how many nights you haven’t slept and no matter
how many dreams you had about your code, at the end of the day to see
your code complete and useful is, in a word, priceless.
“One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.”
– Ken Thompson
Oh, Sean Bean, we love you so much (image from:
worldbuilderblog.me)
