I don’t necessarily have 10 tips, I just read way too many Medium articles and I think in clickbait titles.
A couple years back a coworker worked through the Rails Girls guides with me and I decided I wanted to host a Rails Girls workshop just like the one you’re attending today. The guides gave me a taste of what the world of web development is like - and I loved it. I wanted to spread that love. I have since hosted 4 Rails Girls workshops (in Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden and Linz, Austria), several workshops using the Rails Girls guides (during EU Code Week) and coached at a gazillion Rails Girls workshops (like in Brno, Berlin and Maribor). And I contributed to the Rails Girls Summer of Code project.
I am not a developer. Nor was that ever really the goal when I started learning programming. A future in tech can be a lot of things and I am rather a technical marketeer, writing technical documentation and maintaining good relationships with the project’s stakeholders. I just started working at Phusion Passenger, doing just this. Passenger is an app server that helps you monitor and operate your Ruby (or Python, or NodeJS or Meteor) apps. I wrote a guide for using Passenger, which is available on the Rails Girls website.
A career in tech can also be in UX design, user testing, support or project management. A basic understanding of (web) development - which you’ll hopefully gain today - is all you need to get started.
On to the motivational part where I hope you will continue coding long after today.
Rails Girls Summer of Code sponsors teams of two to work on open source projects for 3 consecutive months and get paid for it. The scholarship program started in 2013. Since then, Rails Girls Summer of Code has supported 185 students — with a total of 68 sponsored teams and 28 volunteering teams. 96% of the participants remain working in tech jobs. Rails Girls Summer of Code students have contributed to an overall of 67 Open Source projects such as Bundler, Rails, software that you use today.
You want in on the game? Of course you do! Here's how:
- Next year you can apply as a student team. I say next year because applications for this year close in 10 days and they do require a track record of about a year learning programming to some degree.
- But this year, and I am looking at everyone who has a say in what the sponsor budget at their companies gets spend on, you can become a sponsor.
- Or, sign up as a Coaching Company, hosting a student team (or student team__s__) and offering them on-site assistance.
- Become a Coach: You are a developer and want to support a team of students? Find all the information about working side-by-side with students on their project.
- Become a Supervisor: Are you keen on directly supporting 1–2 teams with their organizational and non-coding issues and provide moral support? Become a supervisor.
- You can also become an individual supporter
Whilst waiting for the applications to open up again next year...
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Go to railsgirls.com/events and find a workshop near you, and apply as a ... coach. — Teaching others accelerates your own learning. — Teaching others will make you a better developer, as you'll be able to explain programming concepts — You'll meet new peers in your fellow coaches — Being one step ahead of the person you're coaching makes you able to relate to their frustration (Y U NO WORK?) and joy (it works!). That's great news for you, and for the person you've taken under your wings.
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Oganise your own Rails Girls workshop.
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Find a user group on meetup.com, check meetup.com/nl-NL/RailsGirls-NL/ for get-togethers
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Assemble / join a study group.
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Make peace with the fact that Google and Stackoverflow will be your new friends.
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Ask a friendly developer / co-worker to be your mentor.
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'Watch' a GitHub repository (project).
- Follow your coach and fellow workshop participants on GitHub.
- Search for 'beginner friendly' tags on Github and try your luck on those 'issues' (bugs and feature requests).
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Sign up for Codecademy / Codeschool, and follow some of their tutorials.
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Start building your own idea and keep revisiting old code you've written to see if you now know a better way.
And: have fun.
