The latest articles on DEV Community by Jon Fincher (@jfincher42). https://dev.to/jfincher42 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F71618%2Fcec8d668-0d6b-4d04-ac0b-4b8a2b409f93.jpg https://dev.to/jfincher42 en Jon Fincher Tue, 05 Mar 2019 22:38:24 +0000 https://dev.to/jfincher42/im-jon-and-i-support-women-devs-4ebo https://dev.to/jfincher42/im-jon-and-i-support-women-devs-4ebo <p>I'm a teacher now, but I've been programming computers in one form or another since the early 1980's when I was first introduced to them in junior high school. </p> <p>In all those years, I have yet to find a compiler switch, interpreter setting, debugging command, editor configuration, or library function which has ever asked:</p> <ul> <li>What gender are you?</li> <li>Who do you love?</li> <li>What bits of anatomy were you born with?</li> <li>In what country were you born?</li> <li>What colour is your skin/hair/eyes?</li> <li>What holidays do you celebrate?</li> <li>What language do you speak?</li> <li>How fast can you run?</li> </ul> <p>I know there are people out there for whom the "correct answers" to these meaningless questions are, sadly, important. I also know that often, these people look a lot like me.</p> <p>I left my job in tech to become a teacher a few years ago (face it, tech companies have enough straight white cismale engineers). Now my job is teaching new generations of excited skilled makers (who look a lot less like me) how to build the cool shit they imagine, then getting myself and others the hell out of their way while they reinvent the world.</p> <p>Computers have never cared about the people who program them. That means we have to.</p> wecoded