DEV Community: Amy Hudspith

EBC - Everything but code

Amy Hudspith — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 10:32:00 +0000

Welcome to Everything But Code!

This is going to be a series of posts covering what I feel are the most important/useful topics in programming that aren't writing the actual code.

But surely the code is the most important thing?

True! Having the slickest workflow means nothing if the code you end up writing doesn't work. But I think that having a good setup can help you to write code more efficiently and accurately, which will ultimately lead to better code!

Ok, but I already have a setup, why should I read this?

It is easy to get comfortable with a particular way of coding, and you may think it won't be worth the time adjusting to a new system, especially if you don't know for certain that it will lead to an improvement. I would encourage you to give any concepts you read here a long think before trying so that you spend that precious time on solutions you do feel could improve your coding.

Yeah, but, I know I have the best setup, I spent ages researching it 4 years ago!

You are probably right that your setup was the best for you ... 4 years ago. But in the four following years not only will new systems and technologies have been created, but you will also have changed. I feel that it is worth having a look at your setup every so often to ensure it is still the best for you that it possibly can.

Hold up, I'm a complete newbie, can we slow down?

Absolutely! Several of the posts in this series may be discussing things that you have never heard of before. Don't expect yourself to read through everything in one weekend and come out with the best setup ever; take your time and slowly introduce things to your workflow over time. This will allow you to adjust much more easily to each thing you introduce and give you the time and space to make sure you understand how each new introduction works with the systems you already have in place.

Nevertheless, Amy Coded in 2022

Amy Hudspith — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:10:01 +0000

Hey there folks!

I'm Amy. I'm 22, have just landed my first job after uni and for the first time in a long time I feel like things are truly starting to go my way!

I had a tough time at uni, dealign with mental health and direct discrimination due to being a woman studying Computer Science. I tried to leave my university better than I found, helping to create the Women in Tech group and supporting the efforts of staff and other students to increase the gender diversity within the department.

I find a lot of women struggle to see how they can start making a difference, so I thought I'd share some of the ways I feel I've helped:

Just being a woman in tech!
Apply to be part of organisations/schemes (during my time at uni I have been a GitHub Campus Expert and an MLH Coach Organisations such as these tend to put you more in the spotlight, giving more people an opportunity to see you)
Get involved in the hackathon scene (in general it's a really welcoming and accepting community, and if you are no longer a student see if your company can sponsor a local hackathon and send you along to the event)
Amplify and support the women around you
Talk about the difficulties faced by women in tech

Nevertheless, Amy Hudspith Coded

Amy Hudspith — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:04:28 +0000

My journey to tech

Where did it all start?

I class the start of my WiT journey to be when I started my Computer Science GCSEs (qualifications you take in the UK when you are 14-16). That means that, at the time of writing, I am about to start my 7th year as a WiT!

I attended an all-girls, Catholic, state school in the North East of England, and given that school description you may be surprised to hear that I had the opportunity to take a Computer Science GCSE; I was too! Luckily, the staff at my school so the benefit of the Computer Science GCSE, something I will always be grateful for. More surprisingly to me, my school (I stayed on to the Sixth Form) allowed me to take a Computer Science A-level even though only 4 of us were going to the do AS, and only 2 of us would take the full A level.

Where am I now?

I am now at Durham University studying Computer Science. I wasn't sure where I specifically wanted to take my career when I was applying to uni, so I chose to do a general computer science course to give me that breadth of knowledge. I am about to start my fourth year (I'm on an MEng integrated Masters, rather than a 3 year BSc).

What else do I do?

I am a big believer in finding other areas to exercise your passions. I've found that when I've solely focussed on "normal" education I end up getting bored or start to lose interest.

Volunteering

I love volunteering. I often find opportunities to volunteer, whether it be for tech or other things, but for this post I will talk about those that relate to tech.

Firstly, if you are at a UK university they will most likely be volunteering opportunities within your department. I have helped out at many department open days, and I've found that they are great for meeting more people in your department.
At my university you can also work to help support the younger years in their labs. Not only are you getting the satisfaction of helping your peers, but (at least at Durham) you can get paid for it too!

Another way in which I have volunteered over the years is through Coderdojo. If you haven't heard of Coderdojo, it's basically an organisation that puts on free coding clubs, often once a month, for children in a given geographical area. Coderdojo is probably my favourite form of volunteering I take part in as the repeated running allows me to really see the children develop, which just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

There are also one-off opportunity to volunteer at events. Usually they are to support the running of an event, and often come with some sort of benefit such as free swag, discounted/free tickets to the event the following year. Often you can still get a lot from an event while volunteering for it, so always have a look at the website or email the organisers.

Attend events

Following on from volunteering at events, you can also just attend them! There are for too many events happening for me to list them all, so I will just list some of my favourite, along with groups that put on many events.

Grace Hopper Celebration
BCS Women Lovelace Colloquim
BCS in general put on a lot of events
Your uni computing society (mine is DU CompSoc)
A hackathon (mine is DurHack)
To find a hackathon you can look at MLH

WiT in public

You may have heard of 'learning in public'. This is the idea that instead of learning privately and keeping your resources to yourself, you talk about the learning process, share resources you've found or made and generally make the learning process public. If you want to find out more about this there is a learninpublic tag here on Dev.

I personally love the idea of learning in public; it shows people that it's ok to not know something, it's ok to need help and it's ok to help others learn (as Lin-Manuel Miranda so perfectly put it 'the world is wide enough').

I would love to have a similar initiative for women in tech. From my experience being a WiT, talking to other WiT and running WiT groups, seeing and hearing from other women can make a massive difference to our perception of ourselves and out place in the tech industry.

Book recommendations?

Amy Hudspith — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 08:03:50 +0000

Looking for book recommendations of any kind! Leave your faves below 📚

Things you may not know GitHub offers

Amy Hudspith — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 20:02:00 +0000

What do you think of when you hear the name GitHub?

Not that long ago, I thought of one thing only - version control.

Now, I would think its pretty likely that this may be all that you think of when you hear GitHub too.

And that's ok!

GitHub does version control incredibly well, and for a lot of people GitHub is the only version control service they have ever used.

And like I mentioned above, until recently I also had this viewpoint.

So what's changed?

Well, quite a few things have changed.

First of all, on 29th May 2020 I became a GitHub Campus Expert. This has given me more of a reason to explore what GitHub has to offer.

Secondly, I became the web editor of my college at university, and subsequently had the ability to create a web committee that needs managing.

Finally, Covid happened, and there was a sudden need to have all my team organisation online.

What have I found?

Organisations - Great for managing a team, provides communication, centralised repo ownership, kanban boards
The Explore tab - Helps you discover new and interesting repos from other users
The Blog - Interesting posts from the GH team
Actions - for CI/CD
Online Learning Labs - amazing learning resources
Campus Expert Program - I couldn't not plug this amazing scheme 😆
The Student Developer Pack - A must for any students

Of course, there are many other things GitHub has to offer, but these are the ones I have found the most interesting/useful so far.