I recently finished a World War II book (Beneath the Scarlet Sky), and while it was well written…I needed something optimistic to read after that.
I randomly found Girl Code in my library app (free audio book is such a nice community thing, hope we don’t lose libraries) and seemed like it was perfect to get something with a different perspective.
The book was short, but was exactly what I needed. These two young women, Andrea Gonzalez and Sophie Houser, found programming, and as the cover says accidentally went viral, but ended up getting so much more out of it.
At a macro level the book was about how much we need to expand opportunities for everyone to learn to become a developer. How much we should make sure we are encouraging young women to be software engineers (or any kind of engineer), something that raising a five year old girl hits close to home. (Girls who Code and similar initiatives are laudable.) How much our lives are now surrounded by code, as Sophie and Andrea do a good job informing us. I did also learn a lot about Menstruation Taboo, that I had no idea about.
At a more micro level, I enjoyed them talking about the joy of learning to code. It made me think of those times when I’ve solved a problem, maybe I feel like I have spend hours spinning my wheels, only to have a revelation. Also, they talk about the power of collaboration, from working with each other, to pairing with other programmers when they built the mobile version.
That was the pure, inspiring thing that was exactly what I needed. I think when you work in it every day, what ever programming you do (and I don’t claim to be a developer), you can forget that thrill.
