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Ruby

Video The Rails Girls Are Coming to a City Near You (Video) 162

Posted by Roblimo from the programming-not-trains dept.
Video no longer available.
So far, the Rails Girls have groups in cities ranging from Warsaw to Wellington, with U.S. gatherings in Washington D.C., Charlotte NC, San Francisco CA, and... let's make it easy: Here's a map. OMG! They're everywhere! Actually, mostly Europe, being as they started in Finland, same as the Leningrad Cowboys and a popular computer operating system. But they're spreading like mad. Would you believe the reason one of the two founders originally got interested in Ruby on Rails was because she wanted to make a fan page for American politician Al Gore? Our interviewee, Magda (from Rails Girls Warsaw), swears this is true. She also tells us about their upcoming Washington D.C. workshop on June 13th, 2013, in conjunction with the June 14-15 RubyNation event. Sounds like fun, doesn't it. Maybe you need more of this kind of fun where you live, eh? If there isn't a Rails Girls group near you, maybe you should start one and help more women and girls get into programming. This is the Rails Girls' goal. Any particular ages? Not really. And their workshops are all free of charge: "You just need to be excited!"

Robin: So this is Magda. And behind Magda, (if you could move, so we can see it), there is a Rails Girls poster. So there is a group called Rails Girls. Magda is in Poland. And she is going to tell us about Rails Girls, Magda how did it start?

Magda: Well, the Rails Girls started when Linda Liukas who actually is a Finn, she made a fan page of her young hero Al Gore, and she loved the experience of creating something for the web, creating a web page, and she decided to share that experience with others.

Robin: Okay, wait, who was this hero?

Magda: Al Gore.

Robin: The American politician?

Magda: Yes.

Robin: Okay, so how did Rails Girls get started for real?

Magda: Yeah, that was the actual thing, that she did this website and then decided to create the workshop to teach more women to code, to share this experience of accomplishing something. In digital manner.

Robin: What do you mean, did it start out online, or as a

Magda: No, she actually gathered some friends and some people who wanted to participate, women to be exact, in the company in the middle of Helsinki and she taught them, worker friends to code.

Robin: Okay, so they started coding in Ruby on Rails.

Magda: Yes.

Robin: And it spread. Obviously to Poland at least. And to Germany.

Magda: Yeah. So the thing was that she made this workshop once and then for a second time, and then decided to share all the materials in open source, almost open source way, and people just volunteered and decided to do a similar thing in their cities.

Robin: What do you mean almost open source?

Magda: Because Rail Girls has a well, brand and logotype and all those kinds of things, you actually cannot take the logotype for yourself and do whatever with it, you actually need to sign up for our list, say that you are going to do the workshop and then you can do everything. But you need to inform us that you are actually doing this.

Robin: Okay. There are a whole lot of open source licenses that are kind of like that, yeah, close, you are right. So how many countries is Rail Girls in, to your knowledge?

Magda: Actually, I cannot tell you country-wise because we don’t have that kind of catalog but I can tell you city-wise. We have almost 75 cities now.

Robin: Around the world?

Magda: Yes, around the world. All the continents.

Robin: All the continents?

Magda: Yeah, without Antarctica.

Robin: Okay, yeah, sooner or later, I am just going to tell you that I used to say Slashdot has readers everywhere except Antarctica. And then when a loyal reader said, guess what, I am a ____3:27 south for a year. So that is no longer true. It is only a matter of time, one of your members will go there.

Magda: Yeah, I am hoping.

Robin: How about you? How did you get involved?

Magda: Well, I got involved in Ruby generally because it was very simple. My friend just coded in Ruby and I just admired him and felt he was a good programmer, so when he told me well you should try some Ruby, I just tried Ruby and because the Ruby coding is so open and ____4:01 and really cares about women and gender ratio in our community, they really quickly informed me about the workshops and when I saw the idea I just wanted to have it in Poland, Warsaw, Poland.

Robin: So you helped instigate Rails Girls and more Ruby in Poland.

Magda: Yeah, in Warsaw, for that matter, yeah.

Robin: Okay, how about elsewhere in Poland?

Magda: Yeah, we have Krakow that actually held the first workshop in Poland, I was there to see, there was Linda, Linda Liukas who created the workshops and she ran some of the exercises during the workshop in Krakow, so I went to Krakow and then came back to Warsaw to put my workshop on. And then during our Warsaw workshop, one of the participants decided to make ____4:59 and then it spread to Poznan. So we have four cities now.

Robin: Okay, now I heard that you are coming here. That is to Florida, USA soon. Is that so?

Magda: Well, actually not to Florida, I am coming to Washington probably.

Robin: Okay, are you going to help try to start a Ruby on Rails or Rails Girls thing there?

Magda: I think you might have yeah, we have Rails Girls in Washington DC already, but if there will be a workshop going on, I will definitely come there.

Robin: I’ll bet that they’ll have a workshop because you are coming?

Magda: Yeah, I hope so. I will contact them.

Robin: Alright so let’s say, I was a girl, a woman, which I am not obviously, (the beard is a tipoff), and I wanted to get involved with Rails Girls, how would I do it?

Magda: Would you like to do some Rails work or you’ll learn how to code, or would you like to do a workshop in your city?

Robin: I don’t know. What should I start with?

Magda: Okay. So you should start with going to our website railsgirls.com and seeing if you have a workshop already in your city, because it is possible that you have it already since we are in 75 cities now. So if there is not, you definitely should contact us and decide to have a workshop for yourself.

Robin: Okay, now the beard is a tipoff that I am not a woman. Did I see on your website, that I can only do it, if I find a female person to accompany me?

Magda: Well, probably, but that’s not the general rule. We have just this really – well Will’s relationship will be counter let’s say, the cities are not having the very same workshop. We have different rules for different cities. People are giving their workshop their, you know, flavor and the rules for one of the cities could be that you need a female companion to be here, to be on the workshop but actually you could get into the workshop without having a female friend with you.

Robin: Okay, so what about the general spread of Ruby? What languages do you work with for instance now?

Magda: Well, I don’t work in Ruby right now, sadly. Yeah, I worked in Ruby for a year, but now I have more contacts with PHP and Java. And I do all of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, general code and stuff.

Robin: So basically web programming?

Magda: Yeah, I do web programming.

Robin: May I assume that most Rails Girls members do web programming or at least some?

Magda: Well, the participants of a Rails Girls actually don’t do programming at all in the beginning, we actually have participants who are from various backgrounds who studied law, who studied culture, who studied nutrition or everything else, anything, and they just wanted to see how people like to code, they heard about the workshop and they wanted to try, and we see the Rails Girls, and if they like it, if they like coding, they just pursue their careers in most generally, web programming.

Robin: So I know some people who track wages for programmers and sysadmins. Things like do Linux credentials get you more money, so one thing they have been saying is that, people who are like you saying coming in as lawyers and the what not, not about programming, learning to program - they call this hybrids, they are people like for instance, someone who has an accounting degree and can also do some web programming and do like SQL sequel work, is the most valuable person at least for most businesses.

Magda: Oh okay. I wasn’t aware of this.

Robin: Yeah. So what you are saying is your people are just the smartest ones out there, you know, whether you know it or not.

Magda: Well, we actually have participants from slightly other group. Well, they are people who like their accountant jobs and just would like to learn some coding too, and say, well being a coder accountant, but we have lot of stay at home moms who have trouble getting back to work, and they tell us the possibility of just coding from home is the best option for them. So our people who just went into, made a bad decision and went into this life that made them to not have a decent job, their degrees didn’t helped them to get a decent job, and they just decide to change it for something better, well paying, better.

Robin: So Rails Girls, is there any help within the group as far as finding work?

Magda: Yeah, actually all the local groups have mailing groups, and if you are having problems with getting work you definitely can contact them. In Warsaw, we have this case where after the workshop actually a lot of companies contact us just to get connected to our participants, because they are looking very hard for new programmers.

Robin: Really?

Magda: Yeah. We have this lack of programmers, Ruby programmers in Warsaw, Poland, so every hand is very precious for us.

Robin: So wait a minute, if you are an American, and you wanted to learn a new language, and you wanted to work as a Ruby on Rails programmer, go to Warsaw.

Magda: Oh, I would definitely do this. Well, you would get a nice wage, you follow wage?

Robin: Wage, yeah, pay.

Magda: So you will get nice pay, you will get to see Poland and see places. The problem is that our currency well is slightly worth than yours is. Like three times worth. So you won’t get back to States and be rich suddenly.

Robin: Well, that’s okay but you can live there, and get a motor scooter, you can get an apartment, you can go out and drink beer, and better beer than in the United States, and that sort of thing, right?

Magda: Well, I don’t know about the beer, because I don’t actually drink the beer in the United States somehow, but you can have a great time in Poland being a Ruby programmer.

Robin: Okay now here’s something else, I don’t know if you guys have thought if there are any Rails Girls groups, that some years ago, I went to Saudi Arabia, where all the women are stay-at-home moms by law, and they can’t work really hardly with men, and have to wear a garbage bag, you know with the eye slits, terrible, so they are there. Do you have any groups there yet?

Magda: Well, we don’t actually have any groups there yet. But I hope really that one will just see this interview and decide to start up a group in Saudi Arabia.

Robin: Yeah, or any of the other Arab Muslim countries. Hello ladies we are looking at you. Yes we are.

Magda: Yeah, there are no groups in well, Muslim countries so you are most welcome to join us and start a workshop for your own.

Robin: And there, you can keep the men out, in fact, you’d have to. And you could learn, and you could help each other get work.

Magda: Yes, so it is a great option for women, if you don’t have this many possibilities, well working from home would be great and the Rails Girls workshop is a great way to just learn to code to start learning to code.

Robin: What about the social aspect? Does that come in to play at all?

Magda: Well it does. Because after the workshop we have this group we have mailing group and we have meetings, so we are keeping ties together, so we actually really help each other to learn and to grow.

Robin: Do you get together, do you get together and go out or anything like that?

Magda: Well, we actually get together and start coding. Meetings about coding.

Robin: Then after coding, you got to eat, anything like that?

Magda: Yeah, we have hangouts, obviously, yeah, in the middle of every workshop we have this little spark-up party for everyone to meet and greet, and we have them bubblies there and just relax and meet each other.

Robin: It sounds like a great group. What we need now is I think after Rails Girls, we need Rails Guys right?

Magda: Yeah, but actually in Poland you have like both of the groups being Rails Guys yeah, so you have them everywhere.

Robin: So what we should do then is concentrate on spreading Rails Girls?

Magda: Yeah, I think spreading Rails Girls is just really valuable for women but actually I think it is combining the men’s world and the women’s world in the coding environment is very important.

Robin: About once a year in the United States we talk about is how few young girls go into science and technology careers. Can Rails Girls help with that either directly or just by being an example?

Magda: So we are helping young women directly by just getting them to the workshops and teaching them to program just before they go into their college and choose their college degree, oh sorry you don’t call it degree, how do you call it graduation or something?

Robin: No we often call it college degree yes. Correct?

Magda: Oh okay, so people ____16:04 actually. Yay for me. Should I just? Wait because my tongue is not working now.

Robin: Understood.

Magda: So we are helping women young women directly by getting them into workshops and teaching them how to code just before they choose their college degree. So they have an option to see how cool is coding and just going into IT as a new college degree. And we are helping them indirectly by just showing the example, that you can do this, if you want to, but ultimately it is your choice, and we would like just all women to have this choice. They don’t have to go into programming if they don't – just don’t like it, the main thing is for them to be not afraid, to just try and see if it is fun for them or not.

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The Rails Girls Are Coming to a City Near You (Video) More

The Rails Girls Are Coming to a City Near You (Video)

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  • /. editors, please... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:29PM (#43965951)

    For the love of god, stop snorting so much cocaine before writing a summary. Have some restraint and wait until afterwards.

    • Just how often do you think /. editors get offered blow to put up a story? They've got to get while the getting is good.

      Most days all they get are free, useless books and blowjobs (metaphorical and otherwise) from Dice HR drones.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I think it was an exciting summary. I also feel very confident after reading it, as if I could do anything.

  • OMG Ponies! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:34PM (#43966011) Homepage Journal

    Is this the thread where fat bearded forever alone guys make fun of girls doing stuff they do without needing their help or approval?

    • Re:OMG Ponies! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirGarlon ( 845873 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:41PM (#43966105)
      If by "make fun" you mean "unleash a torrent of abuse," then, apparently, yes.

      • The full quote of the origin of your sig... It seems to have a different tone when you read the full context...

        Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure – the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it – the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics – the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual – the humility of the spirit.

        These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts Godmore, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?

        • Excelent offtop :)

          The snippet in the sig is sufficient, because Western civilisation forgot about this heritage. The EU documents do not even mention Christian ethics as the foundation of Europe. Which is kind of WTF, because e.g. "Give the emperor what belongs to the emperor, give God what belongs to God, and give me what is mine" is the foundation of religion-state separation. Did it always work properly? No, but we are talking about basics here, not practicalities.

          But I agree that the whole citation is m

        • Thanks. I am, of course, aware of the full quote. I have mixed feelings about how I had to butcher it to fit into a Slashdot sig.

          My point was that Feynman was not openly hostile to religion. He spoke about ethics frequently and he never claimed that the scientific method was appropriate for addressing ethical questions. I frequently see Feynman quoted on Slashdot to attack religion -- and based on what I have read and heard of Feynman, I don't think he would have done that. I cannot really tell whether Feyn

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by PhamNguyen ( 2695929 )

      Yeah those guys are a bunch of fat ugly (not that people should be judged by their looks, or we should promite thinness as a body image) pussy faggots (not that there's anything wrong with being a woman, or gay) who can't get laid (not that women are sex objects or we should promote an image of manlyness that involve having sex with lots of women).

      I bet these guys are just bitter cause they got bullied in school while all the girls got with the cool kids (bullying's ok when they aren't gay, right?)

      • or we should promite thinness as a body image

        No, we should be promoting a having healthy BMI as a body image. Being too thin or too fat (obviously the latter is far more common in western society) is unhealthy, and would should not be trying to teach our kids that it's OK to be fat, because it's not if we care about their long-term health and longevity.

        • No, we should be promoting a having healthy BMI as a body image.

          BMI is actually a poor measure of health on an individual basis, as it doesn't distinguish fat from muscle. Body fat percentage is what we really need to be aware of. It's hard to measure accurately, though; skinfold or electrical impedance tests can help you track whether your own is going up or down but are hard to accurately translate into absolute numbers.

          • BMI is close enough for most of the population. Only athletes need to worry about the fat/muscle problem.

            However, even back in the 90s, I remember getting body fat percentage tests done which used some handheld electronic tool that (I was told) used IR light to measure the fat, upon being applied to the arm at the bicep. It reported an absolute number. Of course, I have no idea how accurate this really was, but it was used on me in health fairs in college.

    • Get with the program, dude. Ponies are now FOR the fat bearded forever alone guys.

      [I kid of. Plenty of us no fat bearded forever alone guys like ponies too]

  • The Reason Why Journalists Matter (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Journaists get a lot of flack, but at least they know how to construct a story. /. contributors on the other hand...

    Take the summary - not so much a summary as a prattling mess, that doesn't define its subject and so leaves the reader with no idea what on earth the text means.

  • Slashdot just jumped the shark (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:39PM (#43966071)
    It was fun while it lasted.

    • Re:Slashdot just jumped the shark (Score:5, Informative)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @05:39PM (#43966731)

      It was fun while it lasted.

      It jumped the shark when they sold out to Dice. Now it's just another stagnating cesspool of hipsters who think owning an iPhone and have installed linux on their old dilapidated computer (and, quickly finding they couldn't do anything with it without RTFM, gave up, much like their collection of unread 'classic' books) makes them geeks. You can tell because when someone posts a well-written but politically unpopular comment, they're modded down, while one liners supporting the party line get +5s, though they're about as intellectually stimulating as a twinky is at being healthy.

      Nothing says "mainstream culture" like group think and people patting themselves on the back for regurgitating what the other 'popular people' say. Geeks, real ones I mean, have a wide diversity of opinion and frequently debate endlessly for hours over pointless minutae like whether Han shot first or not or rage over calling the 'higgs' the 'god particle'. In fact, you can usually tell you're in the company of fellow geeks because they're having a grand old time being disagreeable with each other, and in fact make a game out of it! Nothing charms a geek quite as much as vehemently disagreeing about which Star Trek captain was the best... and whipping out slide rules and technical manuals to have a proper go of it. Don't get me wrong though -- it's all faux outrage, with about as much real emotion as telling someone their favorite bands sucks. Yeah, okay, and?

      That's the difference. And that's what Slashdot has lost. There's no diversity of opinion anymore... which is another way of saying... there's not very many geeks left on the site... just pretenders...

      • My favorite part about this post was how you derisively call people hipsters then immediately drop this gem:

        ...and have installed linux on their old dilapidated computer (and, quickly finding they couldn't do anything with it without RTFM, gave up...

        That's some crazy cognitive dissonance there. Yeah, how dare people try to use/learn something different in a safe environment rather than subject their main box to the possibility of data loss over something they may well not find any practical use for. How dare they give up when they find almost every resource available on the internet is about as 'friendly' as you are! That attitude is EXACTLY wh

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No, as much as you want to reinvent the nerd concept: He is right and you are wrong. Oh and, I know because I see he is the nerd and you the pretender fucking hipster: he doesn't give a shit about linux winning in the desktop over your bitchy MacOS as much as you do or seem to think he does. He just owned Linux because he wanted, he didn't ask for permission and didn't cry in forums about how tough is Linux and because of being tough things will go wrong for it. He manned up, and you are what is wrong with

        • I think you may have missed the point. From my reading, her/his point was that these "hipsters" really aren't geeks per se. Especially in the world of hardware and computing.

          By definition a geek is someone who has a strong curiosity in most things that would be considered technical to the layman, primarily what's going on under the hood and creating stuff around it. When you encounter a new black box you spend the time and actually enjoy learning it inside out. It's that drive to know as much as possibl

          • I think you may have missed the point. From my reading, her/his point was that these "hipsters" really aren't geeks per se. Especially in the world of hardware and computing.

            Yeah, well... trying to get some people to the whooshing noise was the point is a lost cause.

            To your (rather loud) point, installing Ubuntu then giving up after you realize that the command line is necessary is actually a pretty good test of the "hipster" mentality. Having a Macbook, github account and endless copypasta from stackexchange does not qualify one as a rails guru, or IOS programmer or anything else either. Just someone who is interested in image over substance. Jmho.

            Bingo. Gold star for this guy. Unlike the previous poster, who was last seen riding the short bus. -_-

        • I don't like how these post suggest the inviability of desktop Linux D:

          Look guys, the days when Linux was hard to install and use where a decade ago, I've been running Linux as my desktop for nearly 11 years. Never had a problem with it (well, not more than I've had with Windows, nothing is perfect). It usually runs in my best hardware, only about 4 years ago in my last hardware upgrade did I started to dual boot often, for games.

          And I've never been treated badly in a LInux forum (well except when ubuntu we

      • I agree with this posting 100%

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        If your premise was true, then the 'real geeks' (RG) mostly likely went somewhere else, since RG are not likely to just drop off the face of the e-Earth. Your theory would thus carry more weight if you identified this alternative(s) destinations for RG.

        I suppose the alternative is that /. has grown larger than the total RG population, and now are too much a minority to affect mods "properly".

      • There's no diversity of opinion anymore.

        I disagree!

        No, I'm ont actually trying to make a joke, I do disagree. Yes, unpopular comments do sometimes unfairly get downmodded, but there is often plenty of debate and disagreement on this site. It's the thing that makes it worthwhile.

        Clearly you must to some extent agree because you are still here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mvdwege ( 243851 )

        The only real groupthink I've managed to spot is people complaining about groupthink.

        Aside from that the prime reason Slashdot is still good is that it has a diverse audience. There are some identifiable subgroups, but most of them coming at a subject from a different perspective makes for some interesting reading, aside from two or three contentious subjects that devolve into shouting matches between two subgroups.

        And as for complaining about Slashdot jumping the shark? In the 15 years I've been here, that

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The amount of bullshit that gets posted here every day and THIS is the post that set you off? Fuck, you were around for Jon Katz, you should have been long fucking gone. No offense but if you're still using something that you think is shit, even though you know it's shit, it's perfectly obvious it's shit, but you're still coming here anyway... Maybe Slashdot isn't the problem. Maybe the problem is looking you in the mirror every morning and you're just doing the same finger-pointing everyone else does...whe

  • Seems a bit sexist to me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DumbMarketingGuy ( 171031 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:44PM (#43966129) Journal

    Can you imagine if I set up a 'Rails Whites' group or a 'Rails African Americans' group? This is no different.

    • And you'd be helping whites or blacks, if one or both of those groups are under-represented in tech.

    • Hey look ma! An genuine stupid!

      Hey DumbMarketingGuy, does your buttz get hurtz when all the ladies actually know more about tech then you? Do you still have trouble forming relationships with women (other than your mom...)? What about comics? Are ladies allowed to read and enjoy comics? Are they allowed to play games? Do you get all upset when you get your ass handed to you by a some savvy women in any of the games you play? Who let all these womenz on the Internet anyone amirite?

      I bet you're a white hetero

  • Fangirling Al Gore, then Ruby on Rails? (Score:3)

    by The Archon V2.0 ( 782634 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @04:48PM (#43966171)
    Not exactly moving from strength to strength, there.... Unless "nicheiest fandom possible" is considered a strength.

  • Equality via Exclusivity? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quietwalker ( 969769 ) <pdughi@gmail.com> on Monday June 10, 2013 @05:04PM (#43966339)

    I can understand the desire by many to attract more women into the CS/software dev field. I'm just not sure if the right way to do it is to emphasize one-gender-only programs. It seems to erode the basis of one of the more public goals; that women in the CS field be treated as equals with males in the CS field(*), while admittedly fulfilling other goals.

    We already know how 'separate but equal' turns out.

    I note above there's already a misogynistic note - even though it's just a joke - that some people are only interested if they're naked, so maybe there's a point anyway, at least in the short term.

    • I can understand the desire by many to attract more women into the CS/software dev field. I'm just not sure if the right way to do it is to emphasize one-gender-only programs. It seems to erode the basis of one of the more public goals; that women in the CS field be treated as equals with males in the CS field(*), while admittedly fulfilling other goals.

      We already know how 'separate but equal' turns out.

      I note above there's already a misogynistic note - even though it's just a joke - that some people are only interested if they're naked, so maybe there's a point anyway, at least in the short term.

      As a point of special interest, it is worthwhile. Women generally have different wants/needs when it comes to events like these, not to mention the obvious benefit of giving attendees the comfort of knowing they won't be going to *another* fucking sausage fest tech conference. And they merely cater to women; men are perfectly welcome (for some definitions of welcome) to attend as well.

    • We all know how it would work out if someone did something similar to this for men instead.

      As you say, separate but equal isnt the way to go here.

      I dont agree with this groupthink that somehow women choosing to go into other fields is somehow a horrible phenomenon that "WE" somehow are obligated to remedy. That's bullshit. Most women dont want to be programmers. The ones that do, are not in any way prohibited or locked out of all the same resources the guys use.

      So what's the message this group and others li

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Ugh... You really just don't get it.

        • Ugh... You really just don't get it.

          Excellent rebuttal. You really made your point there, didn't you. Very well supported.

        • Well, explain, "you don't get it" is not an argument. But the phrase "you just don't get it" is feminist code for THE PATRIARCHY!!! So I can guess what you mean by that.

      • Most women dont want to be programmers.

        Neither do most men. So, we can safely discount that point.

        The thing is that so many people seem to forget (apparently you included) is that women are humans and as such behave like humans. Humans are on the whole social animals and there is generally a really bad feeling associated with being the odd one out.

        So in a massively male dominated field, even without sexism or bad behaviour there is a strong disincentive to join simply because being the odd one out is unple

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Arker ( 91948 )

          "The thing is that so many people seem to forget (apparently you included) is that women are humans and as such behave like humans. Humans are on the whole social animals and there is generally a really bad feeling associated with being the odd one out."

          Cry me a bloody river. Please. To a degree this is true and it's always been true, in every profession or other group, and so what? It's just pathetic that you have such an expectation of pampering, for life to have no adversity in it.

          "Have you ever been to

    • Basically, the problem is that despite all of the progress that's been made in allowing us to look at gender in a sane and reasonable way there is still a small but significant minority of 'that guy'.

      I don't even think it's the dongle jokes as much as it is the false sense of superiority that some men have, including men who are old enough and experienced enough and educated enough that they ought to know how much they don't know and that there are other people out there, many of them women, who know more t

  • to get to the bottom line: "help more women and girls get into programming"

  • Django Girls (Score:3)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday June 10, 2013 @05:08PM (#43966381) Homepage Journal

    Django Girls can do it with only two fingers.

  • "You just need to be excited!"

    That's going to be a problem.

  • Rails Girl (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I went to the first one in Wellington (New Zealand) this last weekend, and had an awesome time. Highly recommended to other ladies! If nothing else, it showed a number of people that ladies can have an effect on how things are built (and what), and that dev was doable, could be fun and interesting, and might even be a career path. A very positive outcome.

    And people - if you're going to say [coding language x] is shit, you should say _why_ :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jemmyw ( 624065 )

      I went to the first one in Wellington (New Zealand) this last weekend, and had an awesome time.

      I'm also in Wellington :)

      And people - if you're going to say [coding language x] is shit, you should say _why_ :)

      _why was the best part of Ruby.

      I'm primarily a RoR developer for quite a large company. Ruby and Rails have plenty of problems, but I think they only attract so much vitriol on this site because they were overhyped for a period of time, and because some will pour hate into anything they disagree with or dislike. The most common technical things that are said against it are that the language runtime is slow (which was true, it is quite a bit better now), that it doesn't scale (which

      • My main gripe with it is that web apps written using Rails don't scale very well from an architectural/maintainable point of view.

        Interesting (sincerely); I read this from time to time, but don't hear much about why people believe it (note: I'm RoR ignorant).
        Question: at what point(s) does RoR start to not scale very well?
        Long-tail reasoning would suggest the most web apps are pretty small and will never grow to operate at ebay or facebook scale; seems to be plenty of room for easy-to-build smaller apps that never need to scale.

        But my belief is that is because of the encouragement to work within the framework and take a "pragmatic" approach makes developers unwilling (and sometimes unable) to design a better program. It isn't an inherent problem with the language.

        (emphasis added)
        So... if the language (Ruby) is fine, and the framework (Rails) doesn't scale, is that ac

        • Rails isn't the barrier, it will work fine with a complex application. The scalability problem is where the program starts to require more than Rails 'MVC' pattern. But as I say, this is a problem only in the heads of the developers, they don't want to go outside of that pattern and the result is overloaded model classes.

  • What an unfortunate nickname...

  • NYC here, feeling slighted not to have been included on the US tour.

  • If women are so smart then why are they using rails?

  • Comments in this thread are - just - plain - sad.

    For years, people in the IT world have bemoaned the fact that there aren't enough women in IT,
    YET, when a bunch of women do something about it, the only thing most of /. people who can
    be bothered to comment say are derogatory - either about the women or about the project overall.

    WHO gives a flying rat's rear end if there are sweet looking pictures on the front page? This simply
    attracts the younger generation. (Young girls are - like young boys - less intimid

  • I've never understood why there's so much support to such a sexist group. I'm sure if I made a group "Python for men", or "Python for whites" I'd end up in jail (or maybe just really beaten up).
    But "Ruby for girls", which focuses on helping women (without any rational reason for it's sexism), is all so popular.

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