Ask HN: Stories about women who helped you to become a better programmer?
Today is International Women's Day. Who has stories about women who helped them to become a better programmer?
After I came up with the app idea, I went around to the different professors I had classes with (some male, some female) and not one wanted to sign off on the project. Some simply said no, some tried to talk me into doing the same app in HTML5 or another language that we covered in class. I spoke to one of my peers and they referred me to a teacher I had never taken a class with. I went to her, expecting to be rejected, but instead, she happily agreed to sign off on the project. The one condition was that I TA her CS2 class the next semester in Python. I told her I never used Python before and she said: "Well you have 3 months to learn enough to TA the class". With her guidance, I learned enough Python to TA. With her guidance, I learned enough Objective-C to build the App. With her guidance, I graduated. This one professor taught me to push my limits and not let anyone hold back my pursuits of knowledge, and for that, I am extremely grateful.
There was never any arguments about what I was trying to do (which at the time, I thought was impossible). She worked towards her career goals and I worked on mine.
It would be more macho to say I taught myself Software Development and did it all by myself but the truth is I would not have the job I have now without her.
My mum was a self-professed luddite - as in the traditional term where she hates technology. However, knew I was good at maths and could see how computing was going to be a big part of the future. So she'd buy me every book on computing she came across in second-hand book stores. It didn't matter what they were on, she'd get them for me (still does too). So back in the pre-internet days and even before I had my own computer I'd read and re-read them constantly. And I'd try my hand at writing programs on paper and tracing them out in my head.
My grandmother bought a brand new Commodore 64 because she could afford it, and played some games but not much else. She did however show me how to run BASIC. So whenever I went over she'd let me on there, and I'd transcribe my programs into the computer and finally get a chance to run them and see if my thinking was right.
The second was my first manager, Mary Deyo. During the interview, she said "I don't see very many computer classes on your transcript". It's true. I majored in math and physics, and was largely self-taught in computers. I figured that was the end of my job prospects there. But she had a masters in math (like my mother), and was largely self-taught in computers. She hired me despite my (lack of) transcript. My whole career (probably) comes from her taking a chance on me.
* My first official programming teacher was a woman at my high school who was kind enough to accept me and two friends into her class two years early. She also encouraged me to apply to a college-level programming competition, which gave me both a sense of humility in knowing how much more I had to learn, and whetted my appetite to learn more. She also let me spend class time on software that did my calculus homework :)
* I landed my first professional job thanks to the encouragement of Dr. Mary Dayne Gregg and her class in COBOL, which got my foot in the door of a large company doing Y2K fixes. I can't say it was my favorite gig, but she prepared me well for my first job.
* My wife: not a programmer but as an ardent and patient feminist she's helped me be less of a pain in the ass for my coworkers.
Next was a high school teacher. She taught Java. The class was excruciatingly boring and we were essentially being taught to the test. She was not a programmer and pretty much just recited from the textbook. How did that help me become a better programmer? Since the class was trivial and she wasn't much of a disciplinarian I had 45 free minutes a day to mess around on my own in Python.
Then... years later, I had gotten this programming job and met the woman of my dreams, who also worked in the office, and it did take her a few months to get me to notice her. She didn't give up and we went out and things just worked out well. She keeps pushing me and inspires me and encourages me to be the best I can be. Still together and in our 7th year... I've created a few websites, started up a freelance business, and currently working on starting up a business, and she is also learning virtual reality programming, augmented reality programming, so she is just as encouraged and inspired by me as I am by her. I support her in anything she does -- I've seen her come up with ideas, invest some money, and even invested some money with her, only for her to lose interest, but she keeps going at it. I think she definitely found her calling with virtual reality.. she is so obsessed with it.
I'm sure I'd still be doing my thing without her, but having a woman there to support my dreams and be someone to talk to helps a lot.
I was inspired to find some of the very smart people whose methods and books I used, assuming they were men, were in fact women. Jesse MacWilliams worked at Bell Labs and developed the MacWilliams identity (which made my life easier for computing the properties of a cyclic code.) Vera Pless is another that worked in coding theory and authored some classic texts.
These are some of the women whose works I relied on and who were inspirational during a formative period in my career, where I was trying to level-up and gain deeper insights.
Thanks, Mrs. P!
Company I worked at hired a woman to join our team of almost all men at a small consultancy. People who had worked with her before all said she was an excellent developer, and she was. I worked very closely with her for the next three years. She had a different perspective than the rest of the team. More formal. More thoughtful than just crank out some code and move on to the next task. She taught me things I never knew I didn't know.
I quit my last job and decided to take a time to learn to code and become a software developer. I am a full-time student since last November. My wife is paying all the bills (the education per se is free, as I am using freeCodeCamp, and free online tutorials and documentation).
From there, she pointed me towards a camp offered by our school to improve my animating skills, but the senior student leading the program happened to be quite efficient at ActionScript. Most of the other students in the camp were beginners, so while they learned to animate, I learned more extensive ActionScript, and that had me hooked.
At my first programming job (certainly not my first job, but first in technology) I had a female manager who was incredible. She and I were the only women in the group with 15 or so men.
She was highly respected by everyone in the group for her leadership and technical expertise, and she managed to juggle leading her team with being a great mom to her kids. She showed me that as a woman there was nothing standing in the way of my career, and that down the road balancing family priorities was possible.
I'm grateful everyday for her example and the lessons she unwittingly taught me. Hopefully one day I'll be as awesome as she is!