This piece was originally written for Model View Culture's Quarterly #3, October 2014. I am a woman who works in the technology field. I am vocal about my experiences, passionate about creating a more empathetic infrastructure, and not a fan of sugar coating or coddling. When I speak out about my experiences as a woman in STEM, regardless of how optimistic or pessimistic my tone is, I’m met with the same tired comment from men with Really Good Intentions™ “Maybe if you just focused on the positives, you’d realize that it’s not so bad, it could be much worse.” Don’t be mistaken though, this is rarely just friendly advice -- it’s something … [Read more...]
Introducing the R Programming Language
When I was an apprentice one of the most helpful tools for solidifying knowledge was blogging. Naturally, I'm turning to blogging while I go through the first two Coursera data science courses. What is R? Besides being surprisingly easy to Google despite the single letter name, R is a programming language popular among those who deal with data and mathematics. It's an implementation of the S programming language. The philosophy of S was to create an interactive environment where the users didn't have to really concern themselves with notions of "programming", or consider themselves a "programmer" to successfully use the environment. … [Read more...]
Digging into Data Science with the R Programming Language
Ever since completing my apprenticeship about a year ago I've been missing learning. I learn a lot during my day job, sure, but I am no longer constantly learning something new. I wanted to get back into the habit by enrolling in some Coursera courses. I'm currently enrolled in the Data Scientist Toolkit and the R Programming Language courses. I opted to take courses from the Data Science track because it seems to be a great combination of maths and programming skills while also requiring a knack for storytelling, and creativity. I love this intersection of skills, and have enjoyed many roles in both camps: Editor in Chief of my middle … [Read more...]
Recursion Code Exercise
The other day I was faced with a bit of a challenge. I was to take a nested hash and from it return an array of all of the keys from the hash. So for example: The first thing I needed to do was to create a test case to verify that it was working as expected. My testing framework of choice when it comes to Ruby is RSpec, so I created my test. The first thing I knew I needed to do was to iterate over the hash, and for each key push it into an array that would be returned at the end of the method. This first go left me with this result: 1) FlattenHash returns an array of keys for a nested hash Failure/Error: expect(actual).to … [Read more...]
Learning from Failure – Nickel City Ruby, Buffalo, NY
I gave this talk at Nickel City Ruby in Buffalo, NY on October 3rd, 2014. Failure doesn't have to derail all our progress and productivity. Wouldn't it be great if instead of viewing failure as something to be avoided we actively sought out and enjoyed it? This talk is about how we can learn from our failures, how we can use our failures to our advantage, and even enjoy them. It will explore why many of us avoid failure at all costs, and how we can change the way we view and process failures. We'll discover how we can turn our failure into feedback, and in the process improve our work conditions for ourselves personally, for those on our … [Read more...]
Learning from Failure – Geek Fest
I gave a presentation at Geek Fest at Groupon on July 15th. Failure doesn't have to derail all our progress and productivity. Wouldn't it be great if instead of viewing failure as something to be avoided we actively sought out and enjoyed it? This talk is about how we can learn from our failures, how we can use our failures to our advantage, and even enjoy them. It will explore why many of us avoid failure at all costs, and how we can change the way we view and process failures. We'll discover how we can turn our failure into feedback, and in the process improve our work conditions for ourselves personally, for those on our teams, and for … [Read more...]
Learning from Failure – 8LU Smalltalk
I gave a small talk at 8th Light University on July 11th. Failure doesn't have to derail all our progress and productivity. Wouldn't it be great if instead of viewing failure as something to be avoided we actively sought out and enjoyed it? This talk is about how we can learn from our failures, how we can use our failures to our advantage, and even enjoy them. It will explore why many of us avoid failure at all costs, and how we can change the way we view and process failures. We'll discover how we can turn our failure into feedback, and in the process improve our work conditions for ourselves personally, for those on our teams, and for … [Read more...]
The Pipeline is Full of Acid
This blog post originally appeared on 8th Light's Blog Last week, my co-worker Doug Bradbury posted on the 8th Light blog to ask about gender equality on programming teams. I've had some thoughts about his post for a couple of days, but I'd like to take a step back first. Before we ask whether our teams would be srtonger with more diversity, we should ask why our teams lack diversity in the first place. This past spring semester I taught a Girls Who Code club class at The Chicago Tech Academy. It was an incredibly rewarding experience. Being given the opportunity to teach a group of high school girls some basic programming skills and see … [Read more...]
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