My idea of a good time: coding on a Linux computer

Lately my idea of fun has been firmly rooted in coding, and playing around with Linux.

We’re planning to buy our son a new Linux PC after passing his (and before him, my) old Linux PC to our daughter.

I’m very tempted to extend my loan of my personal MacBook Air to him, and but myself a new laptop to install Linux on, and use that to explore what’s possibly my latest midlife crisis.

This article about Jason Evangelho’s switch to Linux just reinforces my temptation/idea.

Canonical’s Ubuntu seems to command a lot of mindshare when it comes to desktop Linux, so that was my next stop. I went through the same paces: download to a USB stick, boot up to the “Live” version of Ubuntu 18.04 (which includes 5 years of security patches and updates), have a look around, click “Install.” Ubuntu presented me with several options for partitioning the internal SSD, including blasting the entire drive. Tempting! I was feeling lucky so I took the plunge.

Raising brave, imperfect daughters, and teaching them to code

Last week I came across a tweet sharing Reshma Saujani’s TED talk, titled “Teach girls bravery, not perfection“. I immediately bookmarked it to watch with my daughter (and tweeted my plan to do that).

I'm going to watch this with my daughter. She's 7 years old and we've talked a lot about making mistakes, and courage.

— Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) June 20, 2018

Saujani replied to my tweet, and asked me to let her know what my daughter thought of the talk.

So, I watched the talk on Saturday morning with my 7 year old (along with my son). Afterwards, I asked her what she thought about what Saujani said about how important it is to be brave, rather than being perfect, and how the quest for perfection is so self-defeating.

My daughter said she liked the video. I asked her to elaborate, and she commented on this talk has inspired her to try to learn to code again. She said that she stopped trying the first time around because she kept making mistakes.

I noticed this when I introduced her to coding on Code.org last year. She started off really excited to see what she could create after watching me learn front-end web development for most of last year. But she soon gave up when the exercises became trickier and she found herself making mistakes.

Since watching the talk, she’s been asking me when she can get back to learning to code. It also helps that my son has also returned to learning to code after seeing me return to Python (I’ve started at the beginning with Python 3).

Now all I need to do is pick a learning platform for her to learn with. So far, Code.org and Scratch look like good options for her.

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

An awesome thread about developers’ careers

Stephanie Hurlburt asked for stories from developers about their career paths on Twitter, and it quickly became one of the best threads I’ve read in a while. As you can imagine, I have a particular interest in stories about other developers’ careers given my journey this year. This thread didn’t disappoint.

I started reading the thread when I woke up this morning and, boy, what a great way to start a day.

Twitter friends, I have a request of you.

If you got into computer science after undergrad or were self taught later in life and now work as a programmer, could you share your career story in a reply to this tweet? pic.twitter.com/fz9kBH7lAD

— Stephanie Hurlburt (@sehurlburt) December 24, 2017

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

Celebrating Women in Tech with the awesome #WITBragDay meme

Three women in technology collaborating with laptops

My favourite meme at the moment is the awesome #WITBragDay meme on Twitter that celebrates women in tech. It seems to have been started by Alice Goldfuss with her tweet:

Hey, women in tech, we've had a rough week. I therefore pronounce this #WITBragDay

— bletchley punk (@alicegoldfuss) August 11, 2017

The result is tweet after tweet of pure inspiration from women in the technology industry. I spent some time reading tweets this morning when I woke up and I found myself smiling because these stories are just awesome.

My eyes are on fire from so much screen time! But #WITBragDay is worth the burn. pic.twitter.com/wHFSSpmacc

— Erica Larson (@teaaddict13) August 12, 2017

These women, and others like them, are the perfect response to the odious Damore memo. These stories are also the stories I want both our kids to know, especially our daughter. Heck, these stories inspire me as I learn to code. Here is a selection of some of my favourites: