Sara is a developer living in NYC specializing in web applications with a focus on JavaScript and Startups. In her spare time she Wrangles Nerds.
She likes speaking to and meeting with diverse groups from the Girl Scouts to straight up code junkies. Her goal is to inspire more females to see that being a developer is fun and glamorous.
She is best reached via email, twitter, or on her cell at (862) 201-3065.
Current Projects:
There is something I’ve gotten really excited about lately and it is only just beginning. I’m talking about the new wave of awesome girl tools to hit the web. I’m in the middle of the the biggest petrie dish for startups in the world, New York City (oh yeah, I moved, I love it!). I’ve been watching new ones pop up monthly, companies like Fashism, Birchbox and ToVieFor. Conceived by girls, run by girls, built for a mostly female demographic .
My life's dream knocked me full in the face when I saw this (omg, that google search made me find this I <3 you, Microsoft). I was 17 years old and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: be a part of the community that creates applications like that. However, I learned quickly that apps like that didn’t actually exist. I dreamed of the days when women figured out how to leverage software for their needs and wants. For a long time we’ve had fantasy football apps, miniature train forums, and ways to randomly put your friends into intermural sports teams online. Guys have been doing this for a decade, but now FINALLY, we are tinkering too!
Proud of you, ladies, can’t wait to see what else is in store.
"What's your business model?" The words sprung from my mouth like rhetoric. Like "How are you?" and "Are you ok?" the phrase is a staple I use when discussing some startup or another, which is a semi-recent hobby of mine. While I was getting the elevator pitch during a meeting last week I asked this question, immediately noticing the douchiness behind it when the developer replied, "We don't have one." He went on to explain that they were very proud of their product and wanted to expand their user base before figuring out how to make money off of them. It's funny because I was often hit with the same question when working on Bundl.it, and I would answer "I don't have one, I'm just building a tool to make the internet a better place."
Like it or not we are the curators of the largest compilation of stories, ideas, pictures, and video that has ever existed (I like it a lot, and I bet if you're reading this you do too). Sometimes it's not about squeezing every last cent out of people that enjoy your work. Sometimes it's making life easier for users, or even developers, and not being concerned about what's in it for you until it becomes necessary.
I don't have ads on this blog. I've been approached by maybe a half a dozen companies in the past few months, and my answer has always been the same. I wont put advertisements on my site that are pictures, or images, I will only have ads when this blog gets big enough to attract the advertisers with the least offensive ads, the ones that are small lines of text that don't interrupt your reading experience and are an after thought. Why? I like you guys, and I don't want to pimp you for a penny. I feel like you are a guest here, and I don't want to make a quick buck by making your stay here less pleasing. I'm trying to add to the value of the web by adding my opinion and thoughts, I hope it helps.
I love money just as much as the next girl (you should see my shoe tower). However, the place in my heart that the interwebs holds compares to no other. I consider it a career goal to make my footprint beneficial.
Join me? This is our internet, let's help each other enjoy it.
The news of Iron Ruby possibly being euthanaized by Microsoft sincerely surprised me. I have long felt that the Iron projects are a nod to the real developer from a corporation that often panders to the drag and drop community. Pointing resources at an initiative that will never make them money (in a measurable way) caused many of us to believe that there was a part of MS that was inspired to give back to the people that have been building applications and bringing them Windows and SQL Server hosting fees for years.
This comes on the heels of Microsoft.Data.dll and Visual Studio Light Switch being announced. It's very difficult to get a reputation in the development world as a skilled and knowledgeable contributer when your primary focus is .NET. Many look at us like bubblegum coders, not really able to tread water without our WYSIWYG IDE This type of progression does not help.
I really hope it is not the intention of MS to phase out Iron Ruby and it is all just rumor and happenstance. I know that either way I will be continuing my pursuit to learn Ruby better and keep filling up my toolbox. I will be keeping a close watch as the rest of this story unfolds.
In other news Rob Conery is working to rally the troops for a triage mission. If it comes down to it, it will be hard for me to say "If MS doesn't care about keeping this project alive why should I?" However, I do see IR as a valuable resource for diversifying the .NET community. I would love to be a part of this should the gauntlet be thrown.
I have been waiting for this one event all year. Of all the conferences I have been to, this one last year was hands down my favorite. It was a weekend of software and s'mores, what more could a girl ask for? We hosted some amazing talks, we ate some great food, and we talked about the stuff we love. It rained all weekend, but that only made it more fun (you'll just have to take my word for it).
I'm not going to sell it to you, there are 30 tickets being released, buy them while you can.
Without further ado, Concept Camp 2010. Pics from last year below:
When I first started out as a freelancer it was very lonely. Steven and I spent many an hour staring at each other, and he never contributed anything of worth to our morning standups. Enter: New Work City, I had heard about coworking through some chatter on Twitter, I googled to find a space in the NYC area and found NWC.
I've been working out of NWC for a little more than a year an a half now. I have never fallen in love with a community like I have the one that works here. There are all types of people in different professions. We have developers (of course), but we also have startup crews, project managers, CEOs, and even a fitness DJ. One thing all these thing have in common is they are all extraordinary. Just walking in the room at NWC fills me with warmth and inspiration. It's such a privilege to be surrounded by people that want to do nothing less than make the world a better place.
I've been actively involved in NWC's growth for the past year when I became a member of their board. We have been steadily expanding since I started. It became necessary for us to find a new location three months ago. As with everything else we do we turned it into something fun and exciting. We had a member scavenger hunt to find a new location.
We found 412 Broadway, and we have some seriously ambitious plans for it. We are going to have classrooms (which we have already reserved for Girl Develop IT), we will have an event space for things like launch parties and different types of meetups, and we will have plenty of room for the spillover we are now getting from our packed house down the road.
So, it's all hands on deck as our Mayor Tony Bacigalupo leads the charge to raise money. I want to do what I can, in getting us this amazing space, so I am laying my dignity on the line and giving it to you: Internet. A guy named Blake has made a web app called My Dunk Tank. The idea is to allow folks to dare you to do things by donating money. The winning dare has to be done or the money is refunded.
I know you folks like me as much as I like you, so I'm not concerned that I will have to do anything embarrassing. I mean, you wouldn't do that to your favorite Girl Developer, would you? We go back so far!
Check out My Dunk Tank here, and remember, I'm a nice girl!
A very good friend of mine is in the midst of an avalanche of work. He has a lot of open contracts, and has been abandoned by a fellow developer that was helping him with his workload. So, with three huge clients breathing down his neck he has been working non stop for weeks now.
One client contacted him about the iPad application he is building for them, he let him know "I paid another developer to look at your code, he says it really sucks."
When he told me this story, I had to chuckle a bit, and think of all the times I had decided that other people's code sucked. When I first started out, and I looked at code that definitely sucked hard, I scrapped it, and started from scratch in a way I knew was way better. As I matured I looked back and realized that what I had destroyed was a well accepted design pattern, and what I created was a mess of a mess pattern.
Lesson learned.
After some growth I encountered code that I thought sucked ever so often. At this point I wasn't decimating things all together, I would find specific parts of code that I found intolorable and rewrite it. About 9 times out of 10, when I got more than halfway there I'd run into an issue that made me say "Ooooh, that's why they did it that way" and revert it or use the same "sucky" logic with my syntax.
Now that I am a little more seasoned, I can tell you with all confidence that I never look at a solution that someone else created and say "Oh, this code sucks." I know that there really is no quick way to tell if code is good or bad without understanding the entire solution. Sure, sometimes things can look sloppy, or poorly done, or undocumented (in my case, not self documenting), however, you never know what was going through the head of the developer that wrote it. More often than not there is a reason why they have done things this way, and there is no hard and fast way to tell what the context is without being elbow deep in it.
So, when I hear that someone has looked at someone else's code base and determined that it sucked I smile and remember what it was like to be so new and sure of myself. So sure that I was an amazing developer, and that I knew what was best in every problematic situation. I miss that swagger, but I appreciate what I have learned, and that is the only person's code that sucks is my own, and the reason why it sucks is I just haven't learned how to make it better yet.
