Author Archives: Carmelyne Thompson

Susan Potter is a wearer of many hats, but mostly software engineer and practicing applications architect (based in Chicago, IL).

Employer: Finsignia

Extras: Last month, Susan presented at WindyCityDB conference in Chicago, IL on Link-walking with Riak. She was a speaker at Code PaLOUsa 2011 in June. Talk: Deploying distributed software services to the cloud without breaking a sweat. She is very active in the open source community with GitHub personal repositories, Twitter4R and collection of Gists.

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Our short Q&A with Susan Potter:

What is your technical background?

At university I studied Mathematics, but audited Computer Science courses while writing an experimental parallel and distributed PDE solver first in C, then in C++ and finally in Java, which didn’t have much utility other than to teach me how not to write multi-threaded or distributed software.After graduating I worked for investment banks in London before skipping off to a San Francisco startup building a B2B trading platform and have since been working as a senior software consultant for hedge funds, investment banks and technology startups all over the US.

What industry sites or blogs do you read regularly?

To be honest, I use my Twitter timeline and some private lists as a fairly reliable source of interesting, relevant and/or thought-provoking technical resources from all over the internet. However, the following links have been fonts of recent software engineering wisdom or great resources in the areas I currently practice within:

• Erlang/OTP resourses:
  Steve Vinoski’s blog,
  erlang-questions mailing list
• Haskell resources:
  Home of Haskell Weekly News,
  Control.Monad.Writer by Don Stewart
• Databases & datastores:
  myNOSQL blog
• Scaling & high-availability:
  High Scalability
• Code:
  GitHub (yes there are other sites, but not as active or fast growing)

What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?

I recently wrote a blog post on the (types of) tools that have made me a better software engineer. In short these are: emacs, vi(m), make, gdb, UNIX commands / utilities, UNIX shells, LaTeX, Git. The blog post explains why.

What tip or advice would you like to impart to women interested in programming?

If you enjoy software development, always learning new things and are excited about the possibilities in this field, then do not let anyone discourage you from persuing it further. There will always be a job market for self-starters that can teach themselves even if they don’t have the right educational background. Make sure to back up what you have learned on your own. Open source projects, blog posts or screencasts that demonstrate your skills in the areas you are looking to get into help much more nowadays than simply having a CS degree with no public portfolio IMHO.

If you were a computer part, what would you be?

A CPU socket comes close. It provides multiple connections (mechanical and electrical) between the microprocessor and circuit board. In the technology community it seems I am always connecting people based on their interests and needs such as connecting business founders with technical founders or hiring managers with skilled developers (mechanical connections). Other times I am suggesting new architectures, software stacks, tools, etc. to solve the problems people I talk to are currently encountering (electrical connections).

aimee daniells (lowercase as requested) is a self-employed software crafter from Winchester, UK.

Her twitter handle: @sermoa and thoughts: http://sermoasquared.co.uk/

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Our short Q&A with aimee daniells:

What is your technical background?

I was sponsored through university by IBM. I had an integrated degree where I worked at IBM 3 days a week and studied Computer Science at university 2 days a week. After I graduated I worked for IBM for a few years. Although I began as a developer, they decided to retrain me as a tester. I didn’t like the way IBM made decisions for me.

Now a tester, I looked for a job where I could begin as a tester but progress back into development. This didn’t really work. Fortunately I was learning in my spare time. I learned Ruby on Rails and made the application mychores.co.uk – a team based tracking system for recurring tasks. On the strength of that I got a job with Eden Development, an agile web development and consultancy company.

I worked at Eden for 3 years and took an apprenticeship under Enrique Comba Riepenhausen. I learned an incredible amount about good quality, reliable, well tested software and user experience design. Towards the end I took on two apprentices, one of whom I am still in regular contact with.

I am now an independent software crafter, doing freelance work and visiting companies to work as a contractor. I love what I do, I love meeting people and I love learning and sharing. At the last company I’ve just finished working at, I was approached by somebody who wanted to be mentored by me, who has now become my newest apprentice.

What industry sites or blogs do you read regularly?

I do not read RSS. I used to be subscribed to hundreds but I couldn’t read them all. These days I get all the news I need through twitter.

What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?

I love my macbook. It just does exactly what I want it to do, feels reliable and very rarely annoys me. I prefer to develop using Vim because I feel it is very powerful and I can express my intentions using intuitive combinations of keystrokes. I typed on the Dvorak keyboard layout for years, but I’ve recently changed to Colemak. I find it very comfortable and efficient to type on.

What tip or advice would you like to impart to women interested in programming?

Ask questions. Better to ask a silly question one day than give a silly answer another day. There is no such thing as silly questions, only silly answers. Listen a lot and ponder. Think carefully about what you believe. Share your opinions when asked. Share whatever you know. Be generous. Blog about things you find interesting: somebody else will do too. Ask for things you need. If you want to learn more, find a mentor. Don’t wait for people to do things for you. Make your own luck. Be extremely proud of who you are. Look yourself in the mirror every day and tell yourself how wonderful you are. Be humble. Don’t brag, but let your skills speak for themselves.

Last question on our q&a, if you were a computer part, what would you be?

I would be the Any key!

Nola Stowe is a co-founder of devChix from the Texas, USA.
You can reach her at @rubygeekdotcom on twitter.
She is currently a web developer at Game Salad.
Game Salad is a free tool that creates games for the iPhone, iPad, Mac
& Web with no coding required.

Her linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nolastowe &
She blogs at RubyGeek.

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Our short Q&A with Nola Stowe:

What is your technical background?

I started programming the summer I turned 13. I had a TRS-80 and read the BASIC programming book that came with it, along with another programming book I bought at Radio Shack. I had a cassette tape drive to save my files and a 5inc thermal printer. I programmed math games for my siblings. I distinctly remember making a program that would roll five dice and using ascii characters to draw  a box around the number. You could then choose which dice to re-roll. Ahh, sometimes I long for those summer days and also think: “…. boy, how much better I could have been if I had the internet like now!”

In college, I discovered the fun of web development so I majored in Computer Information System and Design Studio minor. I actually petitioned to have my water color class count towards my CIS degree, arguing that since my chosen field was web programming with a design minor, it is good to have the training and understanding of color principles from my water color class. They accepted my petition

What industry sites or blogs do you read regularly?

I check:

rubyinside.com – ruby is my favorite language; this is a great site to keep up with the ever-changing landscape

techcrunch.com – to keep up with what’s new with facebook, google, etc

railscasts.com – weekly screencasts, they are super informative

teachmetocode.com – screencasts on web development, very helpful

peepcode.com – screencasts at affordable prices, and great supporters of devChix.com

What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?

I use vim and textmate. It depends on the environment. For home development, I am on Ubuntu so I use Vim. For work, I use a Mac so I use both Vim and Textmate , but lately I’ve been using Textmate a lot.

What tip or advice would you like to impart to women interested in programming?

It’s a mans world for sure. Do not take it personally when someone gives you slack. Focus on doing the best work you can so people cannot tell the difference between your work and that of any other. Do not assume every issue you come across is “because you are a  girl” … just focus on what is needed to get the job done.

If you were a computer part, what would you be?

I would be a keyboard because I am always focusing on what is needed to get the job done. If we did not have keyboards, we would not be able to get much done.