Slashdot Mirror
The Rails Girls Are Coming to a City Near You (Video)
So far, the Rails Girls have groups in cities ranging from Warsaw to Wellington, with U.S. gatherings in Washington D.C., Charlotte NC, San Francisco CA, and... let's make it easy: Here's a map. OMG! They're everywhere! Actually, mostly Europe, being as they started in Finland, same as the Leningrad Cowboys and a popular computer operating system. But they're spreading like mad. Would you believe the reason one of the two founders originally got interested in Ruby on Rails was because she wanted to make a fan page for American politician Al Gore? Our interviewee, Magda (from Rails Girls Warsaw), swears this is true. She also tells us about their upcoming Washington D.C. workshop on June 13th, 2013, in conjunction with the June 14-15 RubyNation event. Sounds like fun, doesn't it. Maybe you need more of this kind of fun where you live, eh? If there isn't a Rails Girls group near you, maybe you should start one and help more women and girls get into programming. This is the Rails Girls' goal. Any particular ages? Not really. And their workshops are all free of charge: "You just need to be excited!"
I'll go if they are naked.
"Would you believe the reason one of the two founders originally got interested in Ruby on Rails was because she wanted to make a fan page for American politician Al Gore?"
That instantly loses them any and all credibility. Rails is shit anyways.
The guy who invented Ruby wanted the language to be "humane". Apparently, he succeeded.
Totally not a paid advertisement...
For the love of god, stop snorting so much cocaine before writing a summary. Have some restraint and wait until afterwards.
This has to be the most sexist technology thing I've ever seen. Seriously, Ruby on Rails for girls?
Is this the thread where fat bearded forever alone guys make fun of girls doing stuff they do without needing their help or approval?
Journaists get a lot of flack, but at least they know how to construct a story. /. contributors on the other hand...
Take the summary - not so much a summary as a prattling mess, that doesn't define its subject and so leaves the reader with no idea what on earth the text means.
The Return of the Prrrl Riot
Sounds like a front for guys to meet girls.
It was fun while it lasted.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Can you imagine if I set up a 'Rails Whites' group or a 'Rails African Americans' group? This is no different.
Not exactly moving from strength to strength, there.... Unless "nicheiest fandom possible" is considered a strength.
I can understand the desire by many to attract more women into the CS/software dev field. I'm just not sure if the right way to do it is to emphasize one-gender-only programs. It seems to erode the basis of one of the more public goals; that women in the CS field be treated as equals with males in the CS field(*), while admittedly fulfilling other goals.
We already know how 'separate but equal' turns out.
I note above there's already a misogynistic note - even though it's just a joke - that some people are only interested if they're naked, so maybe there's a point anyway, at least in the short term.
to get to the bottom line: "help more women and girls get into programming"
Django Girls can do it with only two fingers.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"You just need to be excited!"
That's going to be a problem.
WILL THERE BE BOOBIES?
We all know how it would work out if someone did something similar to this for men instead.
As you say, separate but equal isnt the way to go here.
I dont agree with this groupthink that somehow women choosing to go into other fields is somehow a horrible phenomenon that "WE" somehow are obligated to remedy. That's bullshit. Most women dont want to be programmers. The ones that do, are not in any way prohibited or locked out of all the same resources the guys use.
So what's the message this group and others like it are putting out? Are they trying to tell us that women arent good enough? They have to have all this special gender-specific help or they will fail? They just arent smart enough? Is that really what they are trying to say?
Cause I think that's bullshit too. Plenty of women I know with plenty of brains. Most of them dont go into programming for perfectly rational reasons - there is something else that interests them more.
If something else interests you more, you should go do that instead. Man or woman, doesnt matter.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I went to the first one in Wellington (New Zealand) this last weekend, and had an awesome time. Highly recommended to other ladies! If nothing else, it showed a number of people that ladies can have an effect on how things are built (and what), and that dev was doable, could be fun and interesting, and might even be a career path. A very positive outcome.
And people - if you're going to say [coding language x] is shit, you should say _why_ :)
...all I hear is "ear ear ear ear ear". Stop pronouncing the "r" so much at the ends of words!
Rails sucks except for mass-production crank-em-out-cheap "web sweat shops" with a carefully-selected staff.
It's too different from "regular" programming for places with fungible and/or multi-hat staff such that the learning curve is too large. It's the right tool for the right place, but that RIGHT place is not everywhere.
Use the right tool for the job and know your staffing patterns. There is NO one-magic-size-fits-all. It does quite well where it fits well, but the trade-off is that it sucks badly outside of its comfort zone.
no matte8 how sudden and officers. Others the next round of
What an unfortunate nickname...
NYC here, feeling slighted not to have been included on the US tour.
The full quote of the origin of your sig... It seems to have a different tone when you read the full context...
Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure – the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it – the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics – the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual – the humility of the spirit.
These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts Godmore, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?
Finally some girlz— naked and covered with hot grits— for the rails brogrammers to enjoy!
Rails Girls?
Everybody got it but me.
Peter, Paul, George and Harry.
Everybody has a new car.
Everybody got it but me.
Everybody sleeps with Mary,
Peter, Paul, George and Harry.
But who would ever have suspected
that that sweet young girl was infected?
Now everybody got it but me.
Rails Girls? The mind boggles.
If women are so smart then why are they using rails?
Global Interpreter Lock. Ruby is just a toy and cannot even hope to scale the performance peaks that a well-honed Java solution can.
My main gripe with it is that web apps written using Rails don't scale very well from an architectural/maintainable point of view.
Interesting (sincerely); I read this from time to time, but don't hear much about why people believe it (note: I'm RoR ignorant).
Question: at what point(s) does RoR start to not scale very well?
Long-tail reasoning would suggest the most web apps are pretty small and will never grow to operate at ebay or facebook scale; seems to be plenty of room for easy-to-build smaller apps that never need to scale.
But my belief is that is because of the encouragement to work within the framework and take a "pragmatic" approach makes developers unwilling (and sometimes unable) to design a better program. It isn't an inherent problem with the language.
(emphasis added)
So... if the language (Ruby) is fine, and the framework (Rails) doesn't scale, is that actually a problem?
My first thought is easily reaching the scale-point (where you need to start building from scratch, or maybe with a somehow stronger framework) to "grow to the next level" doesn't seem that bad.
(Not that you were making a value judgement about scaling being a problem; I just read you as stating an observation; a useful thing to know.)
If a man had written TFA the response would've been at the same level. It's rather annoying to hear an exalted highschool "person" cheerleading a programming language in the way, as if it's some fashion accessory that needs to be demoed in the streets at full tilt.
Methinks some people are just too willing to be offended.
Comments in this thread are - just - plain - sad.
For years, people in the IT world have bemoaned the fact that there aren't enough women in IT, /. people who can
YET, when a bunch of women do something about it, the only thing most of
be bothered to comment say are derogatory - either about the women or about the project overall.
WHO gives a flying rat's rear end if there are sweet looking pictures on the front page? This simply
attracts the younger generation. (Young girls are - like young boys - less intimidated by something
that appears friendly and that they relate to.) I can imagine a lot of 11-15 yo finding this appealing.
(Maybe some will be even younger, who knows?) They've also sprinkled their pages with funny
cartoons to keep them reading!
WHY in the nederworld does it matter if the programming paradigm isn't everyone's favourite?
Getting young women into the field is the desired outcome. They'll figure out for themselves
that there are other things in this area. They just need a way to get started. (And for those
retractors, yes, there will be a number of women who don't want or need this type of support.)
Like it or not, getting a foot into the door with whatever programming language that is *easy*
(how many of you started with basic? HUH?) keeps the interest level up. As the person
learns, they move onto more complex structures.
Really, for those who've posted these - you ought to hang your heads in shame. I bet a lot of ...
you didn't even look past the home page
I've never understood why there's so much support to such a sexist group. I'm sure if I made a group "Python for men", or "Python for whites" I'd end up in jail (or maybe just really beaten up).
But "Ruby for girls", which focuses on helping women (without any rational reason for it's sexism), is all so popular.