#pyladies

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tuningmind: I'm not sure, though I heard 90% thrown out as an estimate a year ago.

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tuningmind: that's funny you should mention the workshop thing. Yesterday I was telling my husband how I'd love to start a hacker house for women to come just learn to code together for a few months by working on online tutorials and projects. That way they will only need to be able to afford housing.

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:) The only thing that I don't know how to make work is getting enought to make the initial mortgage payment. I want to hear more about what you did.

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tuningmind: That is awesome.

I have a huge list of learning-to-code resources that I'm constantly adding to. If you're interested, it's here: http://bit.ly/15MS0Em I'd love if you'd like to add to it.

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Ha, true.

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I want to curate it for this hacker house and put it in an order that's digestible.

tuningmind: where are you from?

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tuningmind: just like to know what's happening where. I run the Boston Python user group

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tuningmind: no way, I grew up in Utah, but call SF home now. Anyway, true about the levels thing. Want to help me out with that?

nedbat: oh cool. I'm in Boston

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pdurbin: have you been to a Boston Python event?

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tuningmind: I totally understand, don't worry.

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nedbat: hope, but I did go to an openhatch event last weekend

tuningmind: I'm moving to London in a week. Hilariously, I contacted Women Who Code there and asked about setting up a JavaScript study group. Now there are 56 people signed up. I have no idea what we will be doing, but with that many, it seems less like a study group and more like I need to have some kind of curriculum. Without knowing people's levels and experience though, that's tough. Ideas are welcome.

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pdurbin: i talked to shauna about helping there, but i was away. How'd it go?

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tuningmind: sounds awesome. I'll take a look at it once I'm no longer buried in this project I'm trying to get deployed.

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nedbat: great event. so glad I went. talked a lot to one of the app inventor developers. got to be on panel by surprise (thanks, shauna), felt like I was helping students get up to speed with open source in general

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tuningmind: yes, I was actually hoping to see Lynn Root on here so I could get her help with my PostgreSQL database setup.

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pdurbin: Boston Python project night: May 12th

tuningmind: this project has definitely taught me that 1. I'm not ready to work without other engineers by my side, 2. I don't know enough about databases, and 3. I don't know enough about deployment.

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nedbat: it's hard for me to get out. small children at home

Perfect. I'm on Twitter https://twitter.com/MichelleGlauser or you can email me. Same user name at gmail.com

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pdurbin: ah, I understand. As long as you keep feeding them, they will grow up and let you be! :)

nedbat: you give me hope :)

tuningmind: how is what received?

took them to Fenway today. so much fun

pdurbin: sounds like fun

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tuningmind: Ah, I see. Oh, that is my biggest struggle, honestly. I ask questions on Stack Overflow and get voted down, so then I really feel like I have to work through every possible solution I can find before I ask a question, but sometimes my code is really messed up by then. Often when I ask questions, the answers I get mean nothing to me and I have to ask follow-up questions that make me feel really dumb. I have to constantly tell myself

to have no shame. The really supportive people are great at running with any question and being specific, but I still feel better when I switch off who I ask so that I'm not monopolizing just one person's time and patience.

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tuningmind: I find I get the best/fastest answers when I'm really specific, but sometimes you need a higher-level explanation or even just a pointer on where to start. That's really tough to get unless you can ask a trusted mentor.

tuningmind: also, I really dislike it when people just say, "Have you googled it?" or link to the docs that I've already spent hours pouring over before I've finally got up the guts to ask a question.

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of course we do. well I do :)

tuningmind: I wonder that about nearly every part of my job, every day.

pdurbin: good to know.

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yes

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tuningmind: that's going straight into my "motivate me" sticky note.

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I agree with the notion that it helps to simply swallow your pride

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tuningmind: I'm agreeing with your "reveal what you don't know"

tuningmind: great. I think I also fear making people think, "Wow, women really aren't as good at engineering."

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michelleglauser: I just read the scrollback here. Great discussion. Do you mind if I share some of your tutorial links with the PyLadies and San Diego Python User Groups?

willingc: I'd love if you shared. Contributions are also welcome.

tuningmind: I ask questions! :)

willingc: Also, please link to the blog post and not directly to the Google Doc. Thanks!

tuningmind: i have a hard time deciding when it's ok, but i seem to have a lot of karma with people, so I ask

michelleglauser: looked at stackoverflow, strange that people bothered voting down that question, glad you got an answer

michelleglauser: great. no problem. we have a good test driven development tutorial on the san diego user group site

willingc: Though I guess if you're only going to share some of them, then that doesn't apply.

michelleglauser: we do a saturday study group where all are welcome. always looking for new resources.

selene: thanks. :)

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tuningmind: questions :-)

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I think there are many wonderful resources. Each time I try to tackle a new area in programming or EE, I ask those I trust what they find the best resources.

I like openhatch for a safe practice place. Also pyladies.

willingc: I'm going to guess you're not talking about Java EE

tuningmind: I think part of it is that I'm really independent and don't like to ask for something unless I'm sure that the answer is yes. Here are two articles I've been pondering recently. I think I need to be more of an asker. http://unstuckcommunity.tumblr.com/post/8128793... http://www.thewire.com/national/2010/05/askers-...

pdurbin: Nope. Electrical engineering.

oh. duh. thanks

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I like the opentechschool content & workshop approach

:)

tuningmind: yes

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tuningmind: I'm always willing to answer arduino questions. I teach it for the FabLab in San Diego :)

part of it is growing a thinker skin. letting stuff roll off your back

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tuningmind: i feel that way too

pdurbin: I agree with tuningmind. No "duh" allowed. And yes, the thicker skin thing helps. I was reading about resilience last week, because the project I'm working on is kicking my butt and I get so discouraged by all the failures. The silly thing is that most of what I read said something to the effect of "To be more resilient, be resilient."

FabLab lets me share my love of learning, building and sharing :)

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michelleglauser: heh. "just be more resilient"

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A few weeks ago, I posted that I needed some mentoring on a women-only forum, because I felt like my questions were being treated as too dumb on other forums. One woman answered and said something like, "Don't worry about that. Your questions can't possibly be as dumb as a lot of them out there." I didn't like that she said that. How did she know I wasn't the one asking those questions? She didn't. And her message told me that there really are

dumb questions.

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