How do databases work?
I put together this presentation to explain database concepts to people just learning Rails. Expect to learn: How databases store data Primary key, foreign key, and index in a database What is an algorithm and data structure? (more…)
Incremental Design — A conversation with a Designer and a Developer at RailsConf 2013
Here is my Rails Conf 2013 talk! Developers: how many times have you had to completely rip out your hard earned code for a totally new site design? Designers: how many times has a re-design taken 4 times as long as the developer said it would and not looked good in the end? Change all that by using an incremental approach to design. Set up your code to change all the buttons at once or prioritize design changes to make each small change ...
Why start-ups should be concerned about hiring a diverse group of engineers
I wrote this as a first draft after taking The Op-Ed Project seminar in the fall of 2012. It inspired a later article published on Entreprenur.com Hiring engineers for start-ups -- or any company -- is hard. In fact, hiring engineers was the 2nd hardest position to fill in 2012. So one of the last thing you want to add to your list of must-haves -- Ruby, Javascript, Ops, TDD, etc -- is gender diversity. A lot is at stake when you hire ...
GoRuCo and Gender Diversity
A while back I along with a small group of women in the NYC Ruby community, participated in a conversation with the GoRuCo organizers about how to get more women attending and speaking at GoRuCo. It was a fruitful conversation and Francis wrote up a great post on the results of that conversation on the GoRuCo blog. I encourage you to read it.