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Yeah, so this is an interesting--
[Rachel] I felt like all the programmers that I saw around me had
started programming when they were six, and so they had this
huge leg up, and I looked at what they were doing, and I said,
"well, I don't quite understand that, but I'm pretty sure that I'm
just as smart as you." That's a little bit of a confidence boost
that lets you go out there and try learning an entirely new skillset.
[GitHub Presents] ♪(energetic music)♪
[Passion Projects]
[a short documentary series]
[directed by Julie Ann Horvath]
[Rachel Myers]
My name is Rachel Myers. I'm a software engineer,
and my passion project is RailsBridge.
♪(energetic music)♪
It's an organization that is trying to expand diversity in the
programming community, specifically Rails, but we're branching out
to Javascript, and databases, and version control, we just want to
change the world and increase diversity all over the place.
I have a master's degree in philosophy, so before I started learning
to program I would teach freshman philosophy students.
When people study for a humanities credit, they're doing it
because someone is making them, and when they come to
RailsBridge they're doing it because they see the world changing
and they want to be a part of it because they see their friends
having jobs that are really engaging and exciting,
jobs where you want to come home and keep working.
They feel that calling where you have a project
that is so engaging that you want to do it all the time.
Sometimes people describe me as self-taught, and I say,
"Well, no, not really; everyone taught me." Sara Ellen gave me
an internship when she was not justified in doing so.
She took a chance on me. I was at a meetup and the conversation
was "we really wish that we had more junior developers"
"that we could mentor and teach these things to." The response
was, "I don't know anyone like that. I'd love to pair and mentor"
"people, and I don't know where those people are." I raised
my hand and I shouted out from the back of the room, "Here I am.
I'd love to pair with you. You don't have to hire me; just let me
pair with you; I would learn so much," and indeed, Sara Ellen
pulled me in for an interview and she said, "yeah, you're gonna
have to pair for free, but you're in." So that was my first
opportunity to see the whole work flow, to see what it's like
to work as a developer.
It's not just learning a language;
it's learning an entire way of thinking. It's learning how
computers work, it's learning about what the work flows
to be a programmer, learning all those things, and trying to
do that, sometimes while you have another job.
My first open-source project was trying to learn how Git works.
I realized that I didn't know anything about version control,
and so a friend and I decided that we would create a project.
I would fork her project, I would make changes, I would submit
a request, and all of our changes were silly.
I have been really pushed forward as a developer because of
what I do outside of work. I'm pushed forward by what I do at work
as well, but I don't necessarily dig into the same stack in my
side projects that I do at work, and it's been a great way to
put code out in the world and make sure that it's up to people's standards.
So I would say that's a huge benefit of side projects,
and passion projects specifically. Most of the problems I work on
are things I've never done. If I've done it before, then I'll do it,
but that's boring. I think one thing that I find really motivating is,
I wake up and there are six new emails, six great new ideas
that people have proposed and I'm really excited about
four of them; I think those are four ideas that will change
the world, and I want to get up and help.
♪(music)♪
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