What I have found gripping

• In Ruby, typing pp in an Interactive Ruby terminal prints out a humanly readable object. pp stands for pretty print

• Turning Ruby code into music and experimenting with it 

• Learning more about crafting software in a different programming language

• Diving into small technical problems and learning from the body of work of experienced technical coaches. I came up with a few different solutions in Ruby before getting to this one for the Leap Years kata:

def check_leap_year_input
  puts 'Enter a year: '
  year = gets.chomp.to_i

  if (year % 4).zero? && (year % 400).zero?
    puts "#{year} is a leap year."
  else year % 100 != 0
    puts "#{year} is not a leap year."
  end
end

pp check_leap_year_input
# Note: You are welcome to improve this code if you wish as this is NOT the solution I used for solving the kata after writing its tests

• Angie Jones suggests that how someone solves a Wordle challenge may tell us a bit about how they approach solving problems. It often takes me 3 or 4 attempts before guessing the word of the day

• Making small changes to a Ruby project and pushing them

• Sharing what you create is important regardless of the skill level and (again) so is being part of a supportive community of practice

• Seeing cultural influences on what one might make brings about interesting results and conversations, no matter where one is from

• The value and necessity of preserving collective memory in context

• The fast learner is a myth, according to Paulo Carvalho from Carnegie Mellon University. In his study, he noted: "In the right conditions, people learn at a remarkably similar rate."

What I have read

• Newsletter WOR #67: On fête nos 5 ans, Women on Rails

• The Myth of the Fast Learner, Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII)

• Good Enough Software Engineering, Victor Ronin

• class PP, Ruby docs

• One Ruby Thing: Use zero? for comparison of numerics like Integer, Float and BigDecimal, Andy Croll

• Upload and Serve Images from Dropbox in Your Rails App, Fatuma Hussein

• The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #210, Nadia Odunayo

• How I Taught GitHub Copilot Code Review to Think Like a Maintainer, Angie Jones

• What if Wordle Could Replace Job Interviews? Angie Jones

• Better engineering with right-sized models (PDF) (Sustainable SLMs Lisbon AI), RL Nabors

• Wild horses, Gina Trapani

• Why engineers refuse coding tests for interviews, Greenhouse

• Connected by Data: Weeknotes Nov 5, 2025, Tim Davies

• Jean Jullien : Mon dessin Peace for Paris est un signe de solidarité, Gaëlle Legrand

What I have listened to

Beta Hiring : Épisode 2 — Quand le recrutement s’inspire du product marketing ! avec Chloé Girardin

What I have watched

The Psychology of Technologists (Cat Hicks, Catharsis Consulting) | posit::conf(2025)

Featured quote

(...) Let me just give you one piece of advice I’ve learned over my years of live coding with music - there are no mistakes, only opportunities. This is something I’ve often heard in relation to jazz but it works equally well with live coding. No matter how experienced you are - from a complete beginner to a seasoned live coder, you’ll run some code that has a completely unexpected outcome. It might sound insanely cool - in which case run with it. However, it might sound totally jarring and out of place. It doesn’t matter that it happened - what matters is what you do next with it. Take the sound, manipulate it and morph it into something awesome. - Sam Aaron

Further reading and resources

In English

• Dr Cat Hick’s website

• Turn off your AI Assistant for Code Katas, Emily Bache

• Let them learn! How to nurture great software engineers, Clare Sudbery

• Angie Jones’s Courses

• Jean Jullien’s website

In French

• Podcast (Ausha) : Les Meneuses, Chloé Girardin

• La place Saint-Gervais devient le jardin mémoriel en hommage aux victimes du 13-Novembre, Ville de Paris

• France, un album de famille, Yann Arthus-Bertrand

• France, un album de famille : les photos par studios