Sarah Mei

I have a Facebook account on which I have duly locked down the privacy controls (several times, it feels like). In theory, no one can get at my information unless we become Facebook friends.

In practice, I’ve discovered, it’s another story entirely. After spending the better part of ten days, recently, integrating Facebook into another website, I have new rules for how I use Facebook. I realize they sound a little tin-foil-hat-style crazy, so after the rules I’ll explain a bit about why I adopted them.
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Preliminary slides for my RailsConf talk I’m giving this afternoon on conceptual tools for evaluating databases. Contains some profanity at the beginning. Slides are subject to change since I haven’t actually given the talk yet!
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I use rspec on every project, and I’ve started adding cucumber to all my projects in the last few months. There’s lots of information out there about how to set up and use cucumber, but there isn’t much covering your developer workflow when you’re using these tools.

How do you start, and how do you know you’re finished? What do you test, and where? These questions can be answered hundreds of different ways, but here’s my way.
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I’ll be hosting another Ruby hack night on Tuesday, June 1st, at Pivotal Labs – 731 Market St, between 3rd and 4th in San Francisco. You can RSVP here.

You’re welcome to bring any sort of Ruby-related project! The theme for the evening is Javascript testing, following on this month’s monthly meetup. But I won’t make you write any Javascript if you don’t want to.

The peninsula has all kinds of neat hack events like SuperHappyDevHouse and various Hacker Dojo events. But I hate driving all the way down there just to hang out with hackers and get something done on a project. There are plenty of hackers in San Francisco. There might even be more of the type of hackers I want to hang out with.

So I’ve decided to host a monthly hack night, to be held on the Tuesday following the monthly SF Ruby meetup. My employer, Pivotal Labs, has graciously volunteered their space. Since tonight is the SF Ruby meetup, the next hack night is next Tuesday, April 27th, from 7-9:30 (ish).

RSVP now! See you next Tuesday.

I have a few friends who periodically ask me, “Why don’t you work at Google?” To non-developers, Google seems like a programmer’s paradise – smart people, free food, scooters! and interesting projects to work on. Google does indeed have all of these things.

It’s not enough.

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Previous to joining Pivotal Labs, I didn’t do a whole lot of pair programming.

Hoo boy.

It’s been a little over two months since I started, and the number of hours I’ve spent solo programming since then would all fit in one workday. I’ve had some surprising realizations – about myself, my style, and my abilities – and more than a few DUH moments. This post is more a collection of anecdotes than a coherent essay, but if you’ve wondered what full-time pairing is like, I hope it gives you a few insights.

It does contain some profanity. I blame my co-workers for that.

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Yesterday I did a talk at SCALE 8x called “Moving the Needle: How SF Ruby Got to 18%.” Broadly, the topic was how to get more women into a technical community. I talked about how, specifically, we took the SF Ruby monthly meetups from 2% women to 18% women over the past year.

Short version: it was a lot of work.
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Just finished my LA Ruby Conf talk on teaching Ruby to kids. Here are a few further resources:
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LEARN ME

…is now open for registration. Last year Sarah Allen and I did three workshops for women and this year we’re going for four. So, if you’d like to learn Rails and can come BOTH Friday, February 26th in the evening AND Saturday, February 27th during the day, go sign up! There are only a few spots left.

And yep, still free.

We’re also seeking Rails developers (of any gender) to assist as TAs. Tell us about that here. Past TAs and teachers have found it quite rewarding. Plus you get a drink ticket for the afterparty.

And finally, some logistics: it’ll be in an office space in downtown San Francisco, near transit. Next week we’ll send out the exact address. We’ll have informal childcare and space for pumping or nursing – please tell us if you think you’ll be using those services when you register.

See you there!