Geek Mama

Let Me Code

April 23rd, 2014

I’m a total fraud. How in the hell, did I end up with a speaker ticket?

When I attended my first railsconf back in 2011, I was a self-proclaimed novice despite the fact that’s I’d been coding rails professionally for two years, despite the fact that I had over 10 years coding experience in other languages prior to that. Obviously, I wasn’t a professional since I had yet to write my first test. Obviously, I was a fraud.

I came to railsconf 2011 to become a ‘real developer’. My lack of testing knowledge branded me as an outsider, and until I could learn ’the right way to code’ I’d never be ‘real’.

Wish I had known back then that I’d come back to railsconf later to hear DHH call TDD a ‘fad diet’. Dunno if I would have felt less like a fraud, but it helps that nowadays folks are challenging the notion that you HAVE to code one way or another.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the foundations are important, patterns and testing are important (sorry DHH), and learning from others is what makes this community great. But you have to keep moving forward even when people keep telling you ‘you’re doing it wrong’. Because everyone will tell you that, all the time.

It’s been a long journey for me leveling up my game, feeling like I finally can hold my own in a room of ‘real engineers’. But now I see a room full of people just like me, and even more people just like me three years ago. They’re here to level up, to become ‘real developers’… maybe not knowing that they already are ‘real’.

Entry Filed under: Personal,Professional,Ruby on Rails