We came across a clip from our very first demo at SoundCloud. We discussed Rails Girls, our learning process, and demo’d our sample app Freddit.

Back then we were proud of signing in users - now we’re writing our own programming language. It shows how far we’ve come in 9 weeks.

Better late than never. Enjoy. 

Laura just got back from Eurucamp 2013, a Ruby conference in Berlin. Between swimming and ruby lectures, she spoke about Rails Girls Summer of Code and some of the issues marginalized groups face in the overwhelmingly white, male, class-privileged, English-speaking tech community. 

The full video of her talk will be available soon. 

Laura in action: 

Some quotes and reactions from attendees:

“Does anyone know what microaggressions are? Yeah, only women raised their hands.” @laurawadden

— ashe dryden (@ashedryden)

August 18, 2013

“@laurawadden: link to short video about Microaggressions: http://t.co/cWqTjdNlza #RGSoC @eurucamp” < purleeease watch this, everyone.

— Mazz Mosley (@mnowster)

August 18, 2013

@laurawadden Thks 4 jump starting #microagressions discussion! Can’t wait 4 what you build. #relevant cc @ashedryden pic.twitter.com/hGRDadPByi

— Johanna S.S Bassetti (@johannassb)

August 18, 2013

Thanks for educating me about microagressions & sharing resources so more ppl are aware of their power to impact @laurawadden!! @eurucamp

— michele with one L (@sheley)

August 18, 2013

@eurucamp The topic of microaggressions is quite triggering, but I’m so grateful @laurawadden is raising it [@ashedryden]

— Ruben (wyan) (@wyan)

August 18, 2013

Laura is working on revising the talk and will continue to post more information about microaggressions. To learn more, watch this short video overview and you can read more about Derald Wing Sue’s work here.

Thanks to everyone, especially for the Rails Girls Summer of Code community, for the opportunity to attend and speak at Eurucamp 2013.

See you next year.

So, this happened: 

Earlier today, Bloopark made a big no-no. They posted separate hiring listings for men and women, citing difference in coding style – apparently “Women write sexy code: neat and clean” – and a difference in interview opportunities – a coffee date for women vs. a meeting for men.

We heard about the listings this morning from Berlin Geekettes: 

Your thoughts on the job description listed for a female web developer? http://t.co/u7hmWU4w9w

— Berlin Geekettes (@BerlinGeekettes)

August 8, 2013

They promptly took down the female listing, but in the process left only the men’s listing up: 

So now they’re only hiring men. Great.

It’s obvious what’s wrong with these posts, but worth pointing out the heterosexism. If you’re a guy, you’re automatically assumed to have a “girlfriend” (especially one who “doesn’t understand”). Men can have boyfriends, too! Also, the complete disregard for anyone who doesn’t identify as a man or a woman. Gender is a fluid thing - not something to essentialize down to stereotypes or separate work listings. 

Sad (but not surprising) to see sexism and heterosexism so alive and well. If there were more women working at Bloopark, it’s possible that this listing never would have been posted. 

And for the record, we don’t write beautiful and sexy code…yet. It’s dirty. It’s ugly. And you know what? That should be okay. 

Tweet to @Bloopark to tell them what you think. 

We just finished a CSS coaching session by Soundcloud’s User Experience (UX) expert Tiffany Conroy. She sat down with us for a couple of hours to critique our beautiful (*cough cough*) site.

The critique wasn’t pretty. And neither is our code.

But…

It works! So we’re happy. And now we’re both convinced that we’re destined to become backend developers.

What we think we learned: 

What we really learned:

Stay tuned next week when we implement the CSS in our web application. To see it so far, take a look here. In the meantime, we’re diving into Rubinius tomorrow and Thursday-Friday it’s testing time.

Re-posted from the SoundCloud Blog: http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/07/19/rails-girls-summer-of-code-welcoming-nicole-and-laura/

Rails Girls Summer of Code: Welcoming Nicole and Laura

“Two women. One summer. Big-time coding dreams.“  Nicole and Laura are spending this summer as interns at SoundCloud, mentored by SoundCloud engineers. They’re here as participants in Rails Girls Summer of Code: an initiative focused on bringing more women into the world of open source.

L-R: SoundCloud developer and RailsGirls mentor Duana, interns Nicole and Laura.

We took a few minutes to chat about what inspired them to get into programming, what they’re working on with their SoundCloud mentors, and how being part of Rails Girls is helping them to gain access to new career opportunities.

We’re glad to say that Laura and Nicole will be here all summer.  Follow their coding adventures on their Tumblr, on their daily log, and on Twitter. We can’t wait to see what they build!

Meet our sample app, Freddit. It’s just like Reddit, but named Fred.

As of 12:30pm Berlin time on July 2, 2013, Freddit can:

• Sign-up, sign-in and sign-out users
• Post ideas
• and… drum roll please… Vote on ideas (fancy, we know) 

Users also can’t delete each other: 

THIS JUST IN: No more Hobbesian battleground in our sample app. Users can’t delete each other. #SampleAppPeace

— Rails Grrls (@RailsGrrls)

July 2, 2013

After two weeks of work, we’re ecstatic about our progress (and happy that we haven’t broken anything). 

Our next steps are to build more functionality into Freddit and start work on the Learners Directory. Check out our Github repository to get a closer look. Special thanks to our coaches Duana Stanley, Deepak Jois, Oliver Hookins and Tobias Pfieffer for bringing us this far in just two weeks.