Women have been coding for years, just on different platforms.
/I met an incredible developer today. I'll confess, this was an unusual setting and my own unconscious bias kicked in, I didn't think she was a developer at first. She began telling me about her work and I was just getting used to her Arkansas accent (sounds like Bill Clinton) when she started explaining her process and how she thinks about projects. Instantly, I knew what she was. When she started getting into the details about the more complex projects she's worked on, I was blown away, this lady can code!
Rusti Barger in the Ozark Folk Center 'Maker Space' in Arkansas, USA.
She talked about how much planning she has to do before she writes the first line of code. She described the logic she uses to design new and intricate procedures. The packages, the functions, the loops within loops, the tricks..
What gave her away was that she kept using the word "binary" when explaining this one particular project. I recognized her computational reasoning and even though we work on different platforms, we were speaking the same language.
Of course, if you look at her code and the output, the applications she makes can only be described as beautiful. And this is how she does it.
I was so inspired by my conversation with Rusti that I started thinking about how we can teach coding to high school learners using concepts from weaving. Some students learn by using their hands and this would be a way to teach digital concepts using a tactile medium. It's definitely worth a try.
Like I said, I met an incredible developer today.
You can find Rusti at the Spinning and Weaving Shop at the Ozark Folk Center Craft Village, 1032 Park Ave, Mountain View, Arkansas, 72560. Email: HayilHandmade@gmail.com. Website: http://www.ozarkfolkcenter.com/calendar-of-events/workshops/ofcspbeginnerspinning.aspx