DEV Community: Senja Jarva

Nevertheless, Senja coded

Senja Jarva — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 12:20:16 +0000

This is the story of how I learned and kept coding, although I came across many challenges and annoying situations.

In high school:

At first, I was very hyped and excited about getting to go to a high school that offered programming as a compulsory subject. My aunt and her husband had urged me to learn programming because they had seen how much I liked solving puzzles and math, and they said I'd have interesting career opportunities if I learned programming.

When the actual classes started...

I didn't understand most exercises in programming lessons.

I felt like there's something wrong with me because people told me that "programming is like math", and I'm really good at math, so why I am so lousy at programming?

When I asked for help, the boys [there were only boys as teachings assistants] either tried to flirt with me and not give help OR did most of the coding for me and expected something in return. SIGH

I took way too ambitious a topic as the first course's project and failed in delivering it according to (my way too demanding) specs.

Nevertheless, I coded.

At university:

I would have wanted to take a CS degree, but as there weren't many girls studying there, I was afraid of a similar kind of romantic attention that I got in high school (that I didn't want then and I didn't want in university either). Fun fact: I was already married, so I thought this could - possibly - lessen the amount of that attention, but I didn't have the energy to take this risk.

I went to study informatics instead (which had one-third of the CS department courses), and I would have had the permission to take as many CS classes as I wanted to. (In this program, there were 50/50 girls/boys, and no, I didn't get any unwanted attention.)

I failed to submit exercises for the first programming course because I thought they weren't good enough answers. I failed this class on my first try (because I didn't submit enough exercises) but got the best grade on my second try.

I also thought I was miles behind everyone else (because I was comparing myself to the people from my high school, not my fellow university students, who were also beginners).

After taking the compulsory Java, I thought I could try some other language. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad, right? I tried python, and that was actually nice. However, enrolling in the C basics class was an absolute disaster. I felt like my programming skills were cut in two because I wasn't used to memory handling, and of course, the memory kept leaking.

Nevertheless, I kept coding.

In summer jobs

Most of the summer jobs I got didn't involve that much programming (customer service, data analysis, project management), but were in the IT industry, and I
worked with developers. To be honest, I wasn't confident enough to apply for developer trainee/intern positions because - again - I was comparing myself to the best programmers of my high school class, and since they were miles ahead of me, I couldn't be good enough.

However, there was this one company and time when I decided to apply for a developer trainee position. I did not get chosen as the (front end) dev intern, but as a project management intern (I had applied to both positions).

However, I did get to work with the FE developer intern, and we are still friends (she's a woman of colour, so I am really, really happy for her that she got the
job instead of me!) <3

Nevertheless, I kept coding.

After graduation, full time at work-life

My first job after graduation was as a UX/UI designer at a small start-up. However, what the company needed design-wise was not something that I could do (they wanted more a graphic designer, I was more like a UX engineer), and we discussed with my supervisor, would there be another role for me in the company.

During the discussion, I made the most difficult move of my programming life so far: I said out loud that I would like to be a developer and code full time (without being confident or certain that I could do it or that I was the best person, I said that this is what I'd like to do). And my supervisor agreed, and we started transitioning my responsibilities away from design towards front-end development. And I'm so proud of myself for saying that. (And of course, of coding, nevertheless.)

After the responsibilities shift, it wasn't all smooth sailing.

The same supervisor (and the CTO of the company) shouted at me for not figuring out a bug. We had this problem of an orange "we are loading stuff" screen flashing quickly when the user opened our web app, and I had tried to solve this bug on my own. I had tried "iffing" based on one variable, but since this hadn't helped, I, of course, didn't submit this change to the version control but wrote it as a comment to the ticket system. When he (supervisor/CTO) got the ticket assigned to him, he apparently didn't read what I had written in the ticket but started shouting at me for "being so stupid that you cannot even check this one variable." I stuttered to him about "read the comment on the ticket" and he continued working. In the end, the root cause was somewhere in the back end.

He didn't even apologize about shouting or calling me stupid.

I've come across many many other situations that have made me think quitting this profession.

Nevertheless, I have kept and will keep on coding.

Book recommendations about the social aspects of dev teams

Senja Jarva — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 20:26:51 +0000

I'm currently reading Peopleware, but I would love to more books that look at the social dynamics of professional software development: managing a team, how teams work or what the social dynamics usually are in development teams?

(This is really wide topic, and I'm generally interested in anything under this wide umbrella, so comment a suggestion even if the book you're thinking covers only some area of this.)

Got any recommendations that you have read yourself, or that are still on your to-read list?

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

What makes great developer merchandise for women developers? Part 1: The message

Senja Jarva — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 21:49:23 +0000

Not just pretty in pink - but what it says and means

Many people think that any product that is meant for women (or girls), is the same product that is sold to men, but the color or colors have been changed to pink or purple (or whatever is considered to be a color that appeals to women).

However, as a woman, I can spot these types of products quickly, and disregard them even faster because they don't speak to me and are poorly branded.

Good branding is more than just having "the right colors". Good brading is about understanding your customers (in this case, women), and being able to design a product that has a message that speaks to them in their own language and conveys values that are important to them. The best of products like these end up being not only something that the customers want but something that they feel they absolutely need.

No matter the amount of glitter or pink is going to make women developers buy a product, if it doesn't speak to them.

In this post, I'm not talking about what the product itself is (examples in this post vary from shirts to stationery to shower curtains) and how that affects the marketing. There are details like what item the product actually is, what material(s) it's made of, what size and color it is, but these aspects need a blog post of their own (and I'm working on one).

In this post I'm focusing only on the message or text that is on the products.

I'm giving some examples about some very good and some very bad products that seem to be targeted at women developers. And I've also included a section for the boring and generic products, that are clearly targeted at women developers, but as these products don't speak to us and about those things that are important to us, we forget them faster than you can write rm -r bad_merch.

Note: the links to the products are not affiliate links, and I don't get anything from linking to them. I am mainly providing links to save you time from searching them on the internet, if you happen to want to buy them.

Values, thoughts and phenomena that are common to women

Knowing your target customers means knowing what they value, what they think often and kind of things they encounter in life. Putting thoughts and phrases that center these values will make really products.

Softer values

Being a male dominated industry, so many companies, teams and people seem to talk and care about are hard values (money, price, speed, efficiency). I would really like to talk about how the software and the people writing it should talk about soft values. After all, we are in the software industry.

Design by Amy Wibowo/Bubblesort Zines, photo by Jackie Luo

putting the soft in software

Being peaceful

If only we could stop wars as easily as we can force kill some operating system processes... Oh well, a woman can dream. In the mean time, declare variables, not war!

Declare variables, not war

Difficult phenomena women encounter often

Now this product is a rarity I thought I would never see: something that mentions periods and made me curious about a programming language I don't know. Ship this to me now! 😍

cobol and periods

Women face many obstacles in the technology industry. Having this sticker (and the #shecoded / #theycoded campaign) say it out that it takes energy to continue, but the we are doing it anyway, means so much. Thank you Dev for having this campaign and these amazing stickers! 🥳

She Coded sticker pack by Dev.to

Good jokes about dating

Listening to women's preferences about dating... Now that's my idea of a great boyfriend and dev merch product!

my idea of a perfect date

Niche hobby merch

Finding a combination of some niche hobby and programming, and making a pun or joke about them, is the perfect way to speak to women developers (and other people too, thb). Some of these hobbies that I mention are of course something that anyone, not just women, can be interested in.

Coffee types ☕

Why are there so many products that mention coffee, but never specify the type of the coffee? As a woman and a latte addict, I would love to see more merchandise that includes different coffee types. Where are the products joking about flat whites, cappuccinos, macchiatos and programming?

latte++

Cats 🐈

Women developers and cats? Purr-fect combination!

Design by Amy Wibowo/Bubblesort Zines, photo by Jackie Luo

purr programming

web developer and cat mom for life

develo-purr

Yoga 🧘🏼‍♀️

Yoga is maybe the most common exercise hobby among women. As yogi myself, I would love to see more yoga related merch! After all, programming and doing yoga are both a practice.

devOps is like yoga

Being a mom and having kids 👩‍👧‍👦

Many women have kids and I'm sure [although I myself don't have kids] that there are a lot more jokes to be made about being a mom and a developer! Here are a few.

naming kids and variables

single mom software developer

Headaches 🧠

I don't have a migraine or don't have headaches very often, but I know many women who have them. I think it's refreshing to see this health issue used as a topic and a punchline that doesn't blame the person suffering from migraine/headaches, but connects everyone through something we all find stressful and difficult - when our code is not working, or when we have to support every possible browser 🙈
This is a wonderful way to normalise migraines and headaches, and not accuse individuals suffering from them ❤️

Headache programming

has to work in every browser headache

Cars 🚗

Alright, cars might not be such a common hobby among women, and yes, the cars themselves aren't the main reason why I picked this product. I picked this because if you were to replace cars with e.g. shoes or clothes, this would be something I would buy immediately. Plus, women do make excellent mechanics/car hobbyists, when they are interested in cars! And when you like cars, I bet that the garage tends to fill itself, although, taking less space than node_modules take.

cars and node_modules take up space

Cooking and baking 👩‍🍳

For the women who cook and bake - I'm so sorry to see there aren't more puns about programming and these hobbies. I laughed when I read this though: how-to-make-lasagna brilliant! Could someone make something similar with browser cookies? 🍪

HTML lasagna

Visually beautiful, graphic and aesthetic designs

These examples are quite different from the rest in this post, I wanted to include them, since they are so brilliant. These don't have any written text on them, just a graphic element, so the message is not verbal, but aesthetic.

To me, these have a bit of a hidden meaning - they don't scream out loud that "I am a developer", but other developers will recognise that these are somehow code related.

These kind of designs could have text on them, but the text would have to have a message that emphasises the meaning or message of the image (which might be very difficult). I think that all the other examples in this post are verbal-message-first designed: first you have the idiom, text or message, and then, if available, a related picture is added to create added interest. With these, it's the graphical idea first, then text, if needed, but probably not (we don't need text if the image says it all).

React code mandala

CSS code mandala

Old stereotypes that have been spun to a different meaning

Immeadiately when I saw this product, I cursed the fact that I'm a front end developer and not a data scientist. Yes, the punchline is THAT good. And I think it's so good exactly because it is re-frasing a very old, very stereotypical profession that is expected of and offered to women, but especially beautiful women. Re-frasing "modelling" as a data-related action is simply brilliant.

I model for a living

I wish I had more examples in this category, but currently I don't. I will keep looking and update this section if I come across any. And if you know some products that are also giving a new spin to an old stereotype, please let me know in the comments below!

The "NO, JUST NO" category 🛑 🆘

Okay. I contemplated a long time if I should include these or not, and I decided I will, but only because I want to call out the very ideas and topics that these represent.

These are real problems, that are causing pain - not only to women, but to all of their friends, spouses, kids and relatives too - and should not be put into products, used to make money, and worst of all, reproducing and spreading these thought patterns and attitudes to other people.

Examples in this category are NOT FUNNY. (Maybe from the toxic masculinity point of view they are, but that is not the perspective of women.)

Content/trigger warning: objectifying women, shaming women for their lack of skills or productivity, fatphobia, sexualising comments about appearance, pick up artist vocabulary.

If you want to skip this part, feel free to jump to the last part of this post.

To prevent these products getting more clicks and traction, I haven't provided links to them because I don't think that they should get any more traffic.

Objectifying women

Shaming based on skills or productivity

Sexualised comments about appearance

Mother shaming, fatphobia

PUA speech

Boring and generic

These products are not harmful in the sense that the products in the previous section were. However, I wanted to include these because they are perfect examples of writing or messaging that is done by someone who clearly isn't part of the target group, or doesn't know how to speak to the people in the target group. Women will notice that these messages aren't appealing to them, and that the writer doesn't understand what it is like to be a woman.

Why are there so many products that say "girl" instead of "woman"? If it's because these are targeted at under 18 year olds, that's great, but how about providing the same products with the term "woman" too?

girls who code are the best

Girl code

I'm a girl and I'm a great developer

coding girl

coder girl definition

this girl know code

I know I code like a girl, try to keep up

I know I code, vol 2

Put on lipstick and code

Alright, finally some products with "woman" in them!

women can code

But seriously. Someone didn't even run this through a grammar checking program?! 🤦‍♀️

I'm a women who codes();

Wife

Listing a relationship through which women and girls are usually defined in the society ("sister" - I'm surprised that this is not followed by "wife", "girlfriend" or "mom") is not a great way to change the world and get men to see us as ourselves - women and humans first, then in relation to some other human beings. "Woman" - good! Absolutely better than "girl". "Developer" - great!

But seriously, although all women would like to introduce themselves as a "legend", putting this here just proves who the maker of this isn't aware how much women and girls are feeling imposter thoughts and how many men see them as unqualified (even if there is a solid track record of their skills).

sister, woman, developer, legend

Okay, even though the text in this one doesn't mention women, I think many more women use these types of "keep calm and..." products that men do, and therefore I included this in this post. However, whether this product is targeted at men, women or non-binary people, even Mark Zuckerberg tells people that it's better to strive to be a developer, not date one. So how about changing this to "keep calm and be a developer"?

keep calm and date a developer

What makes good developer merch?

Senja Jarva — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 20:55:04 +0000

Last week, my order from Dev's merch store arrived, hip hip array! I finally have some Dev.to stickers 🥳 😍(The only downside of was, that I had ordered two packs, and got only one...)

This week, as I've been browsing black friday deals everywhere, I've been wondering, what makes developer merch good. Is it just the dev jokes on the merch? Or the merch itself, whether it's stickers, mugs, t-shirts or face masks? What about the color or size selection? Or (dare I even suggest this) is it the font? Or sometimes the (lack of) graphics?

What do you think? What is your favorite merch (either something you own already or something you'd like to buy)? Why is it your favorite?

Is there some merch that isn't available anywhere, but you're dreaming about it?

As a developer, what are the pros and cons of being on Twitter?

Senja Jarva — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 20:28:43 +0000

Dear Dev community, I'd like to know your thoughts about being (at semi-active) on Twitter.

If you are active on Twitter, what do you like or love about it? Is there something you get only from Twitter and nowhere else?

What about the not-so-nice parts, what are they and how have you dealt with them or lessened their impact?

I'd especially like to hear about experiences from developers who belong to some minority (being disabled, a person of colour, being a member of the LGBTQI community). Is it easy to find people from similar backgrounds on Twitter? What about how the more privileged people treat you, have you experienced more discrimination on Twitter than somewhere else?

Cover photo by Ravi Sharma on Unsplash

What I learned from submitting my first speech to a tech conference

Senja Jarva — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 17:41:57 +0000

Until last week, I had not submitted a speech to any tech conference. I have watched a lot speeches given by others, always thinking that "one day I'll be up there". Submitting a speech is the first step for getting me on that stage. Wish me luck!

This year, many things have made this possible that I was able submit a speech to a conference. Firstly, I work for a company which encourages its employees to share their knowledge at different comminities of practice (for example, every week at Fridays we have an hour long TechWeeklies presentation). Secondly, my employer also encourages us to participate to conferences. Last, but definitely not least, I have the amazing possibility to work and talk with out wonderful developer advocate, Juhis about conferences and what it's like to speak in them. I definitely wouldn't have submitted my speech without Juhis. Thank you.

If you have held the presentation once somewhere else, it helps a lot

Having the slides and a good idea of what you want to say, makes it possible that you can submit the speech quickly. You already have the title, possibly a short description of what the speech is about, and the slides at your disposal. You can submit to conferences that have a tight deadline (think about how painful it would be whip up a presentation out of thin air in two weeks, just because you want to submit it to some conference). And if need be, you can also modify the speech a bit, if for example, the conference or the track you're submitting to has a theme that is not at the core of speech, but can be added on top or a sideline.

Read all the questions in the submission form, and make sure you have a list of all you need [and get them in time!]

Now, I thought that I had read through all the questions, and that I knew what I needed. Turns out, I was wrong.

One of the requirements of the application, was a headshot photo. I thought this would be straightforward, I'd just use the same photo that I use at work (a black and white one that was taken when I started at Futurice a year ago). As it turned out, on the very last day of submissions, the conference requested a colorful photo...
In the end, I found the colorful version of that same black and white photo, and luckily the conference required only a very small (400px x 400px) photo, because the colorful one had a really bad resolution.

Another asset that I thought was readily available, but actually wasn't, were the company brand guidelines. This comes from the possibility, that if I am representing my employer, and the employer is okay with the conference using their logos and brand at the conference marketing, the conference needs a guideline how to use their logo and other brand materials. I thought that we would have something like that publicly available (many company's have press kits), but I was wrong. In the end, a lovely colleague from marketing made a presskit for me, put it available and I was able to link them in the submission form.

Don't optimize too much, just put yourself out there

I came across (not on this conference submission form), but in some other conferences form, a checkbox question of if this speech or its materials are already publicly available on the internet. I had to ask a colleague, Juhis, who has submitted to and spoken at many conferences, would it make sense for me to try to optimize these things, and not make some videos of my speeches or presentations public on the internet. His answer was no - most of the conferences don't sell their tickets due to the exclusive content. It's a lot smarter to get yourself out there, practice presenting and gather a portfolio of presenting experiences, than try to optimize getting in to some conference with some exclusive speeched. He also told me that if I continue presenting, I will also get some ideas that will be so fresh they are exclusive when I submit, but that majority of speakers (himself included), have a portfolio of ever-green topics, that they rotare from conference to conference. Which is totally fine, because they are important topics, and can stand the tooth of time.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

Anyone who is studying the basics of programming, should have the right to study them in their own native language

Senja Jarva — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 20:23:43 +0000

Photo by Soundtrap on Unsplash

[If you don't know me, let me share some background information about myself before you read any further. I am a Finn, who lives in Finland, a welfare country that has 3 official languages (Finnish, Swedish and Sami). My native language is Finnish, but I know English (started studying this on third grade, at age 9, as a compulsory foreign language), Swedish (compulsory to learn at least one other official language of this country, started studying at seventh grade, at age 13), and French (started studying on eighth grade, at age 14, as a voluntary foreign language). Also, since the seventh grade, I went to a "language shower" school were we learned more English than is taught in a normal school - we had half of our subjects taught by native English speakers (by a British and an American). This made me very comfortable with speaking, writing and thinking in English from a relatively young age. I am also a neurotypical, linguistically talented, intelligent person, to whom studying at school has always been easy. So, when it comes to this topic of languages and learning, I am very privileged. Now, we can proceed.]

Given my background, it is not surprising that only in the two recent years, when the topics of diversity, equality and inclusion have become more important and visible in my life, I had not thought about how beneficial and necessary it would be to learn programming in your native language. When I had to study programming in high school, the first and only book I read about this topic in Finnish, was the "Basics of programming in Java" by Arto Wikla. After that, if I wanted to know or learn something, all the results in Google were in English. I think I did some kind of "programming vocabulary" in Finnish and in English in my notebook, learned those terms and then just proceeded deeper into this subject by talking and thinking it in English.

However, during these couple of years, when I've talked with my sibling, who has HFA and is studying programming, and my blind friend, who is also studying but also works part time as a developer, they've told me that both of them would have really, really, really benefitted from having the basic course materials in their native language (Finnish). It would have saved so much time and energy from people who have to use such a huge part of their energy to fight the everyday discrimination they face in their lives. [Clarification: I am not saying that we shouldn't have the materials also in English. I am hoping that we would provide them at least in ALL the official teaching languages: the native languages and English.]

And this has gotten me thinking: WHY?

Translations are common in other professions and hobbies

For some reason, it other domains or professions, this topic of language is not even on the table. Of course you study other subjects on higher education in your own lingo! For example, medicine, law, physics and math books are all translated! Same goes for many hobbies, whether it's baking, handicrafts, sports or taking care of pets, there are books, blogs and forums filled with tutorials, vocabulary and discussion in many other languages than English. Duh! (Of course, the advanced courses or topics might have books only in English, but, I'm not agruing here that all the materials should be translated, just the basics.)

But I've noticed that it comes to programming, there isn't much talk or discussion about this. It's not a taboo of any sort - it's something that everybody has obviously thought about, but the majority of developers I have talked to, seem to shoot this discussion down and sweep it under the rug in a matter of seconds.

I can't help but wonder: why is that? Are they all just so privileged and well-educated, that reading and learning in English is easy-peasy for them? Or is it that they honestly don't think, that this would benefit others?

In the case of Finnish, I am aware that this language has such a small market, that you wouldn't make a huge profit by translating and publishing basic programming books in Finnish, but even the universities here seem to be choosing to use English materials, and not translate any materials, even the ones that they have written or put together themselves.

Some arguments against

Some of the developers I've talked to, have produced some counter arguments to support their opinions. Here are two most common ones that I have encountered, and I don't think that they are very good.

"It's a waste of resources"

I think that we all agree that in the IT industry globally, we have a huge shortage of workforce. Especially of seniors, but also of juniors and intermediates. Especially of developers, but also of designers, product owners, testers and scrum masters... you name it! So, we all should be making things easier for everyone to access this industry, help people on their career and develop themselves, right?

We developers are also people who like to optimize things. Optimizing CI/CD pipelines to get faster deployment? Sure! Minimizing build time and package sizes? Absolutely! Changing keyboard layout to type faster? Duh!

But isn't translating basic programming materials and this way reducing beginners learning time also optimizing? I think it is. So why don't people see it this way?

This "it's a waste of resources" argument sounds much more like an excuse that has a root cause of "to me it looks like a lot of work, and I don't see much benefit in it". In a similar fashion, learning a new keyboard layout seems a lot of work to me (how many weeks did you say it takes to get familiar, again?). I haven't ever tried it, but since many people seem to be doing it, who I am to argue that "it's a waste of time and energy"? Almost the same goes for optimizing pipelines, build time or package sizes: those I haven't done much, but I do see the point in them.

But hey, there are also developers who think that having proper documentation that tells you how to get started with this repo, stack and project is "a waste of time", so maybe this "what to optimize" is actually a discussion of "what I think we should optimize". Which is fine too, but I wish we would then say "this is my opinion", and hide behind these "this in generally considered a waste of time"-type of arguments.

"They have to learn the terms in a foreign language anyways at some point"

True. But learning common concepts and familiar topics in a foreign language is faster than learning uncommon concepts and unfamiliar topics in a foreign language. To learn the vocabulary AND the subject matter at same time (and usually within a limited timeframe, because let's be honest - whether it's at work, on a course or on a bootcamp, time is always limited), takes a large amount mental energy and resources.

I would rather learn the subject matter first, in the easiest circumstances possible, and then learn its vocabulary in a foreign language. How about you? Oh, I get that some people might want to challenge themselves more by having the material in a different language. Sure! But that's their choice to make.

Even if some people like to have "more challenges" in their learning - I've checked my privilege above, I suggest you do the same before reading this - not everybody not everybody has this privilege of extra mental energy.

To give you a few examples:

People who are discriminated against by any characteristics (whether it's their gender, sexual orientation, skin color or disability) have to use a lot of energy to fight that discrimination. They don't have that "extra energy" for "more challenges".

People with dyslexia or other disability that affects their learning, don't have that "extra energy" for "more challenges".

People with ADD, ADHD or any other attention related disability, don't have that "extra energy" for "more challenges".

And supporting my previous point of optimising and getting more workforce into this industry: if we want to have a diverse set of people working in IT and get them studying faster and more efficiently, and then to work, one big leap that would help in this for everybody, is having the materials that teach the basics of programming in people's native language.

What I learned during my first Hacktoberfest

Senja Jarva — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 16:08:55 +0000

My first Hacktoberfest, WHOO! 🎉

For two years now, I've been waiting for an October during which I could participate in Hacktoberfest. During 2018 I was so tired that I just couldn't do it, and in 2019 I was travelling the world, without a laptop and usually no access to internet.

So, in the beginning of 2020, I made a promise to make sure that in October 2020, I would be mentally ready, have the time and energy, and that in the end, I would finish Hacktoberfest!

What I started doing from January 2020 onwards, was to bookmark interesting repos. These repos would either be some library that I had used in a (personal or work related) project, or they had a lot of issues in a topic that I was interested (mostly accessibility, but some had also styling bugs).

To be honest, in September, I was quite bored and somewhat anxious to have something to do. Now that autumn was making evenings darker and darker, and the weather was getting colder, limiting the possible outdoor activities, an empty calendar felt depressing.

But when October kept coming closer, I found myself feeling more and more excited! I had the energy and time to participate (thanks Covid-19 for clearing out my calendar), I had a laptop and working internet connection AND on top of all this, I had done all that work collecting interesting repos and issues, so I had basically a ready made todo list at my disposal. I would totally win this Hacktoberfest!

And as we know, the rules changed in the beginning of October, which pretty much scrapped my todo list, as many of the repos on my list didn't opt-in to participate in Hacktoberfest. But in the end, I found other repos that were participating, so the rule change didn't prevent me from finishing Hacktoberfest. Also, I am so happy for the maintainers, that Hacktoberfest is now opt-in, as it saves so much spam and unnecessary work from them.

Development process related insights

As I worked mostly with technologies that are already familiar to me, most learning insights I had were about the development process in general.

Issue and PR templates in GitHub are SO USEFUL 📝

It's quite difficult to start fixing an issue, if the issue doesn't have even a basic description of what the context is, and how the feature should work. Therefore, having issue reporters use an issue template is a really helpful practice.

Also, when submitting in a PR, when you have to fill in a PR template that reminds you to check all the things the reviewers are giving most feedback about, this saves a lot of time and nerves from the submitter of the PR and a lot of time and unnecessary work from the maintainer or reviewer.

Social interaction really helps with motivation 👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏻

Slack channel #️⃣

As we are living in this "new normal" and most face-to-face events are cancelled, I obviously couldn't just go to a Hacktoberfest event and work on my PRs with friends and random strangers. But I was really confident that having some kind of social support network would help, so I set-up a public channel to a women and non-binary developer Slack space that I'm part of, and started engaging with people in there.

We discussed topics like:

the new rules and how they affect finding possible repos
how to find issues that fit your skill level
with whom we could spar and rubber duck debug if we got stuck

What was particularly rewarding, was that the channel attracted people who hadn't heard of Hacktoberfest before, and some of them even finished Hacktoberfest!

Remote pair programming session every week 👩🏼‍💻🔁👩🏾‍💻

In addition to the asynchronous chatter and support of the Slack channel, I also wanted something more synchronous and personal. And therefore I asked close developer friends, who were also participating in Hacktoberfest, if they would like to have remote pair programming sessions with me. I asked four people in total, and ended up having one pair programming session per week! It didn't matter that the sessions were always with different people: the main idea was to get support and exchange ideas and feelings about how we're doing and if we're stuck on something, how do we get forward.

I will definitely do these session again in next year's Hacktoberfest!

It matters how your employer relates to open source 💵

I happen to work for a company, who financially compensates employees to contribute to open source. First of all, it's a huge privilege. Secondly, I haven't used this privilege as much as I wish I had, but when October started, this financial support system made it even easier for me to contribute.

But what I realised during Hacktoberfest, is that the money alone isn't a sufficient motivator (not at least for me). I need some kind of other motivator, whether that is something social (like the pair programming sessions) or a cute prize (like the swag from Hacktoberfest).

Come to think of it, I could run a personal Hacktoberfest every month - decide how many PRs I want to get done this month, and decide a prize that I get, if I finish the challenge. Let's see if I'll do this! But in any case, I want to continue this spark of joy that comes from contributing to open source, and having your PR reviewed and merged to a library that I have used.

Some random facts 🌀

Safari WTF. Why does it have a default setting, that makes it not focus on buttons and other inputs with keyboard navigation?!?! You can change this setting to being able to focus on buttons and inputs, but it is just weird and confusing to have this as DEFAULT. Safari WTF.

Dev.to has a special badge that you get when you finish Hacktoberfest! Can't wait to have my badge!!

Hello Dev.to, I'm Senja

Senja Jarva — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 07:52:45 +0000

Hello Dev.to and all the folks in here! For several months now, I've been meaning to start blogging here. And finally, over a half year of living and working remotely, I've got my rubber ducks in a row, and I've put together this introduction post.

This is a bit of a random introduction of me, but this is who I am. Nice to meet you all!

`while (true){ doHandicrafts() }`

I learned to knit at the age of 7. After that I tried bobbin lace, crochet, sewing, felting... Anything and everything our Finnish school system taught us, and then some, from magazines, community college courses, craft fairs, etc...

Nowadays I sew most of my own clothes (shirts, blouses, underwear and dresses), and would like to sew even more (pants are so darn difficult!). I'm also always knitting something, especially during remote video calls, when I need to stay focused and follow the conversation.

I’m always comparing programming to handicrafts because I just see too many similarities, and cannot stop seeing them. (I'll definitely be writing about these similarities in here!) So if someone in your life knows handicrafts (any type of them really) and would like to learn programming, forward them to my content (this blog, my Instagram etc) and let’s see what happens!

And oh, during the two last years I've been very into e-textiles, electronic textiles, that is! It's been wonderful to be able to sew circuits (conductive thread, micro controllers and LEDs) into my clothes, and then program them to shine in colors and the intensity that I want!

`learningToCode().then(avoidCoding()).then(startCodingProfessionally())`

I had a bumpy start with programming. Although I had the privilege of attending my first ever programming lesson when I was a teenager, the fact that the teachers didn't know how to teach something totally new to a girl who was used to A++'s and had an extensive knowledge on every other school subject, the lessons left me paralysed with uncertainty, shame and guilt for not learning this stuff as quickly as some other people, who knew a little more of the basics than I did. [Imagine if I had been used to C++'s, then I would have totally had the brains for programming. [And yes, pun intended.]]

Although I passed the high school programming courses, I felt like I could "never really like this topic" because some of the boys in my class knew this better (and teased me about it). Therefore, at university, I only did the absolute minimum when it came to programming. If there was a group assignment that was related to programming, I didn't volunteer to participate (although I would have wanted to learn!). I didn't take any advanced courses because I had worse grades in programming than in other subjects.

After graduating uni, I was hired as a UI/UX designer into a small start up. Turned out, that they had a major bottleneck in turning designs into web app code, and somehow I found myself asking my supervisor, if it would be possible to transform my role from design, a bit by bit [pun intended again!] to programming. Turned out, it was possible. And here I am, working as a front end developer for three years now ;)

Diversity && Inclusion

I have a sibling who has HFA (high functioning autism) and dyslexia.

I have another sibling, who has major difficulties understanding any [verbal] language.

One of my best friends is blind. They don't see anything (light, colors or movement). But that doesn’t stop or prevent us from sewing, knitting, swimming, going to cafes and movies, biking and programming together. They are better at football, juggling and sports in general than I am. And in programming accessible web applications :)

All these loved ones are very dear to me, and I want to help build a world that treats them equally. Following their life and listening to their experiences of how other people have treated and still treat them, is my source of empathy and a key to understanding that although I have also faced discrimination in my life, they have faced it many times more.

So yeah, I think and talk about diversity, equality and disabilities a lot. I also want to learn more about white privilege and supremacy, and my internalised ableism. And anything else, that I don't see and experience, because I have certain characteristics, skills or people assume I'm something.