#softwaregirl

Hace unos días, me presenté a una entrevista de trabajo. Todo iba muy bien hasta que me hicieron una pregunta que me pareció de lo más extraña. -¿Cómo te sientes en un ambiente lleno de hombres? Ante esta pregunta, respondí que no me incomodaba en lo absoluto ya que en la universidad hay clases en la que soy la única chica. Más tarde, al salir de la entrevista, admito que me sentí triste. Me sentí sola. Tuve conciencia de tener una que otra compañera en alguna clase. Pero no pasamos de más de 3 comúnmente. Y se me saltó algo loco en la cabeza. Las feministas radicales (si, esas que en los desfiles muestran las tetas y exigen igualdad), porque no motivan a que la mujer puede llegar a ser todo lo que ella quiera y enseñar que la programación es más allá de cosas de niños. Es algo muy humano, te enseña a crear. Me entristecí porque las mujeres deberíamos tener el mundo de la programación en nuestras manos. El primer programador fue una de nosotras. Oh Ada! Te esforzaste tanto! ​​ El mundo de las ciencias de la computación necesita chicas. Quiero en este momento hacer un llamado al video de PINK – Stupid girls. El cual expresá lo que siento.  ​​ Las feministas no entienden que el mayor enemigo no son los hombres. Si no, nosotras mismas, por ponernos trabas, por decir que las matemáticas no son lo nuestro, que las ingenierías no son para nosotras. MENTIRA! No culpemos a los hombres de algo que solo es problema nuestro. 

I’m very happy. It has been hard. At first, I thought I would be easier than the previous project as I had learnt a lot in the first project about routes, decorators, paths, etc. Oh my God, I was wrong.

This time the project was split in backend and frontend, what makes sense, for sure. But I’m not an expert in frontend so to start I was struggling to send the data properly.

Unfortunately they didn’t explain well the project and I hadn’t full information of how the webpage I had to built worked. Often, when you have to do this kind of projects where you have to complete some functionalities they do a brief demo of the final solution so you can make up your mind and see how it should work in the end. That wasn’t the case this time.

It just made it more difficult to follow. They recommend start doing the backend at the beginning and test it in the terminal using CURL.

Well, following that instruction I did it has I was said. But when I tried to join it with the frontend, for nobody surprise, it didn’t work.

There were bugs to fix in the frontend before it started to work. That was annoying because that wasn’t part of the course and required an experienced person to help.

In the end, I could implement everything, do the needed fixes in the original code and push it to GitHub successfully.

But there was another part to do as part of the course. It was very interesting for me as it was something I heard a lot and I’ve never could apply it in my job. This is nothing but test your code by coding.

I always test my code, of course. But I do it by testing the final result and document it in somewhere: jira, excel, any specific file… but never using a code to test. I usually write the septs I follow and also the result wether it is the expected or not.

That blew my mind. It is very useful! I really liked it even though I got some unexpected errors in the meantime that I needed to solve before doing the proper test and check the result.

To sum up my experience in this second project:

Positive things:

- I tested my code by coding. I liked this way of working a lot.

- I customised, with some mentor help, the VSCode properly to run the tests and debug my code.

- I installed a theme for the terminal that helps me a lot to read the errors and everything inside.

- I applied my previous learning with databases, Flask and Python.

- I learnt how to identify when an error is in the frontend or in the backend.

- I used a little bit of JavaScript to fix the frontend bugs.

Not that positive things:

- I felt stressed and powerless a lot during the project. The course content wasn’t aligned with what they requested in the final checklist. This bad feeling was bigger as I really enjoyed the videos and explanations. Before starting I felt well prepared to start coding and in the end that wasn’t true.

- The effort was bigger than expected. It took a lot of hours to finish and deliver the project.

- I faced issues when uploading the repo to GitHub. In this case, it as totally my fault because I did it wrong from the beginning when I clone the repo.

Well, three more projects left!