Creativity in coding.

Of all the places to get inspiration for coding, I got it on Sunday at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. There's a really amazing exhibition of the works of Edvard Munch & Van Gogh right now.  I've gone to the exhibit a couple times, and it still blows me away that I live where I can bike 10 minutes and see pieces of art like this.  I don't think I'll ever get over this feeling of awe, but I digress...

My favorite painting from the exhibit. Cupid and Psyche (Munch 1907)

On this visit to the exhibit, I noticed a Van Gogh quote that I had missed during my prior visits and it really resonated with me:

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." 

In the context of the exhibit, it was reminding us that the series of paintings by each of these artists should be viewed in a collective manner, where the themes of life, death, love, angst are not singular events.

It also had a lot of meaning to me in regards to what we do, when we code in our dev team (or working on your own project).  When we work on a project, we are all working on individual parts- building new features and functionality- which, on their own, might not mean that much, but when we are constantly repeating this process, all those small things, written by the different individuals of our team, can collectively add up to a really cool web application.

Maybe it's weird to some, but, to me, coding is the most creative job I've ever had.  Sure, there are rules to follow- syntax and best practices- and, yeah, you have to have 'tuned' your brain to have a good grasp on logic, but approaching how to solve problems is all up to you.  I don't think of the rules as limiting; they are what actually allow you to be creative.  I see the rules as simply outlining the canvas, but within that canvas I am free to design and build as I want.

I hosted a RailsGirls meetup and give my first coding workshop!

So excited to write about this.  One year after building my first Rails app, I organized and presented my first coding workshop.  It's a pretty amazing thing to be able to do.

I have been kinda consumed lately with worrying and preparing for giving my first coding workshop.  I hosted ~18 coders at our local RailsGirls event for all day workshop.  I introduced the concepts of MVC and styling with CSS and the Bootstrap gem as we worked on adding functionality to a Tamagotchi - virtual pet app.  It was fun, but stressful for me.  And it was only stressful because I'm not used to being the center of attention or speaking for ~5 hours straight!

That's me! Presenting to ~18 bright (mainly women) coders.

Everyone was supportive of one another, and I really felt like we created a safe, friendly, open environment for learning about coding with Ruby on Rails.  I'm really proud of that.   I would love to do another workshop in a few months.  It's just kind of exhausting and intense to plan for 5 hours of coding content + activity.  I really had no idea how long my presentation would actually take or if folks would be bored out of their minds.

I was thinking it would be great to offer another, more low-key meetup option like a "Coffee & Code" type event where a small study group could get together for a couple hours and get help on working on their own projects or online tutorials/courses from a coach or 2.  It would take the pressure off of one person to present and host an all-day event.

Overall it was a great experience and empowering to be a room filled with bright women all interested and focused on coding!  I am, of course, thankful to work for a company that supports activities like this too!

Of course I have been neglecting blogging lately, but I have still been trying to learn new stuff- I've learned some more Angular & I've been playing around with Rails API with a Angular client-side app, but this experience really trumps anything else I've been doing otherwise!

My ~10 months of coding: an update.

Wow, I can't believe I haven't post for such a long time.  Sorry about that.  Even though I haven't been posting about my progress, I've still been busy coding, reading coding books, and even attended a small conference, and also took a few weeks off for a much needed vacation.

So, to recap, I've been learning to code for ~10 months and working professionally as a Ruby on Rails developer for ~5 months.  I feel I've learn a lot and progressed a great deal over the past months in my knowledge about Ruby and Rails.  I still get stuck on things, but not as often.  I can work through most things pretty independently.  Of course, I still like to talk through things with my colleagues because sometimes you find a better way to do things by just talking about it with another coder.  One thing I need to work on for the next few months is learning beyond Ruby by trying to do more JS and other languages.

I try to always be reading a coding book during my free and commuting time.  Most recently, I read Eloquent Ruby (a good review of basic Ruby concepts!).  I started reading Design Patterns in Ruby and, somehow, I'm not challenged with just reading one coding book :-P, so I am also concurrently re-reading Sandi Metz's Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) on my commute.

My mornings.  7:30 am.  On the train and reading POODR.

I read POODR about 3 months ago for the first time.  I really liked it and learned some stuff, but to be honest a lot of the concepts were hard for me to get a good solid grasp of.  I have only re-read the first couple of the chapters, but I can already tell a difference on how well I am getting the concepts.  It feels really good to be more comfortable and have a better understand of object-oriented design concepts this time around.  It means I'm still learning and progressing.

I took a few weeks off at the end of August to go back to the US to go to Burning Man.  It was my second burn and was simple amazing.  I was worried it wouldn't be as moving as my first time, but luckily it was even more amazing.   I met a bunch of cool people, had meaningful conversations with strangers, wore my amazing fiber optic dress, danced all night, and generally just had a blast.  No phone, no internet, lots of dust.... ;) it was a great recharge for my spirit.  Just like my first time, it helped me refocus and re-evaluate where I am, who I am, and where I wanna go right now in my life.  It also reminds me of what/who I appreciate in my life and what is really important to me.

Riding around in the desert by the light of my dress.

A few weeks ago, Google had the first ever Polymer Summit in Amsterdam.  Polymer is a google framework for creating web components.  It's a bit out of my comfort zone since it is more front-end oriented than backend, but I spent the day learning how to use polymer and how get the most benefits out of it and the tools it provides.  I'm super excited to use it.  I've already started on a pet project to remake my personal site out of polymer.

This weekend there is another conference I will be attending - the Google DevFest in Amsterdam.  It's more oriented to mobile dev, but there is a workshop on Angular 2 that I'm really looking forward to attending.

I'm also helping out with the RailsGirls meetups.  I will be hosting the December meetup in Amsterdam.  I'm still working out ideas for it and planning for that.

And if all that doesn't keep me busy enough, I'm super close to my moving date and officially will be a resident of Amsterdam in a couple weeks!  So excited for that.  I'll trade a 1.5+ hr train commute every morning and evening for a 20 min bike ride.