🕵🏻 mystery game + teaching others
Hello friend!
This past week I heard so many wonderful folks say they won't tweet, blog, twitch or present because they think that they have nothing to contribute, or that their perspective is not valid without a CS degree or a massive following.
Here's my news for you: the tech world needs your perspective, especially if you don't have a massive following, if you're not overrepresented in tech, or if you're struggling to learn a difficult concept. Experts are important but we learn faster from peers.
Also, please know that you can reach out to me when you need someone to brainstorm stream ideas, proofread your post or be there for a dry run of a conference talk. I do that for my students and I'm happy to do that for ✨ you ✨
~ Sylwia
✨ Dev Snacks
- This is a project I dreamed about whenever I saw my students struggle with debugging: Julia Evans has created a choose-your-own-adventure mystery game to help you improve your debugging skills
- Here's a delightful talk by Emily Giurleo where she explains gem update bugs through a Pokemon metaphor -- and also, one about memory compaction
- To support self-taught devs, Kyle Shook launched his frontend practice with ideas of projects to make, along with tips and learning resources
- Have you seen this video series on React? This initiative not only makes expert-level talks available to everyone, it also features more diversified group of devs than I usually see in React spaces
✨ Lovely events and communities
🔻 CodeNewbie Challenge
CodeNewbie Community is relaunching their beloved CodeNewbie Challenge. If you want to write more, get a job, code more, or start coding, check out this five-week email challenge that consists of weekly "missions", suggested reading material from other community members, helpful worksheets and exercises, lots of support, and self-care tips.
If you want to learn more, here you'll find CodeNewbie Challenge FAQ and signup.
🔻 Coffee Code Break: Algos Interview Practice
Women Who Code are hosting Coffee Code Break, where they "start working through a LeetCode problem as a group before creating break out groups to allow everyone to work together towards a solution." The event is open to devs of all experience levels and devs of all genders are welcome, as long as they follow the Code of Conduct.
The Coffee Code Break takes place on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 2PM ET.
🔻 Intro to Hacking: Open Source Intelligence
Are you that friend that loves to Google and can find information about anyone with just a few clicks? Every day, the internet expands to include more and more information. (...) This presentation will go over how to track a digital footprint and demo how to use some common tools hackers use to get information off public resources.
This talk is taking place on Monday, April 26, 2021 at 6:30 PM ET. You can RSVP to Intro to Hacking talk here.
🔻 New Communities Alert: Women & Non-Binary Rubyists and Rails devs
I have craved this kind of space for the past two years and just recently, two have been created! WNB.rb is a monthly meetup and a slack community for women and non-binary Rubyists, and Women and Enbies on Rails is a discord community. Reach out if you identify as a woman or non-binary person and you'd like an invite!
✨ All the Fluff
- Believe me, you really want to follow Anna Lytical, a coding drag queen who explains JS and CS concepts on twitter and tiktok 💕
- While at it, if you'd like to diversify who you're following, supporting, and learning from, I have three threads for you: a list of tech youtubers, a list of women devs to sponsor on GitHub, and my own daily thread of devs to follow that I just started
- One of my favorite humans on Twitter, Josh Comeau, wrote an empathy-building blog post on how he coded using dictation and eye-tracking for six months due to Cubital Tunnel Syndrome
- I just want to become friends with the person who wrote this dog adoption ad
✨ Teaching others
Food for thought and words of encouragement:
- Amy Hoy's pep-talk-like article "But I'm not an expert"
- Ali Spittel's talk "Those who can should also teach" where she covers the "why" and the "how" of tech ed
- Chelsea Troy's series on tech course desing <- Chelsea is one of my new favorite tech educators!
- Kent C. Dodds' blog on how he prepares and runs workshops and how he records videos
- Doug Bradbury's workshop on successful mentors where he emphasizes that peer-learning is more efficient than expert tuition
🛑 News and stuff
- If you're white, do not look away from the police brutality and the ongoing trial. If you feel powerless, follow and learn from Kim Crayton for starters -- she also leads workshops and gives talks so consider that for your next company event
- Congratulations to the tech employees of NYT who formed a union last week!
- MIT scientists translated spider webs to sounds in an attempt to better understand arachnids and to communicate with them in the future -- the soundscape is fascinating and creepy
- If you want to see how our planet has changed over the past four decades, Earth Timelapse is a global zoomable video now at your disposal