Last night ended with mental exhaustion after my first coding workshop!
For those who know about it, I'm sure you agree that Codebar.io is a wonderful idea. For those that don't know about it, it's a free workshop for minority groups including women (sure nobody who has worked in development would argue about women being a minority... I have spoken to about ten female developers in as many months!) to teach them to code or improve their current skills.
But aside from the great opportunity to learn, what really stood out to me was how welcoming they were to me, as a recruiter. I think I often turn up to developer events kind of already feeling apologetic about my profession. I got obsessed recently with reading developers' thoughts on recruiters on blogs, and although it's obviously not comments personal to me, I still cringed at a lot of sales-phrases and situations I recognised and now realise developers hate! But anyway, my job really didn't matter, I felt like one of the group, and I had a great time!
I was really glad that I'd had time to go through the HTML module on codecademy beforehand, because even getting a head start it was making my brain hurt by the end. My tutor was very patient as I asked painstaking questions! We were working for two solid hours and by the end I had that post study feeling that I remember well from long nights in the library at university. It was weird studying again, but really cool, because I built a page that worked, and that's pretty good going for a tech recruiter (and an English graduate)!
Thank you to everyone at Codebar for being so welcoming, and to my coach for the evening :) I will definitely be coming back, CSS needs to be tackled...
Thursday 27 March 2014
Thursday 20 March 2014
First Module Down :)
I think this post is more of a check in for myself than anyone else... but... I have completed the first module on Codecademy!
I was worried I'd find it really difficult to commit to this properly given that the day job is quite hours-demanding, but half an hour a morning/evening seems to be working nicely!
I was worried I'd find it really difficult to commit to this properly given that the day job is quite hours-demanding, but half an hour a morning/evening seems to be working nicely!
Caffeine Fuelled Geeks
So getting up early on a Thursday morning to come in before work, fuel up on strong coffee and push code is not something you associate with the lives of most Technical Recruiters. But I wanted to get through to the end of the HTML/CSS module on Codecademy...
I know there was a lot of debate recently about 2014 as the 'Year of Code' and whether that was a good thing or not. Google obviously think it is... As a technical recruiter the skills shortage in the UK market is pretty evident, so it would make sense to try and release the pressure by getting more young people coding. And it probably wouldn't stick with most people - would most people's stories become those of the self-professed 'caffeine-fuelled geek' whose CVs I come across rarely and excitedly? Maybe a few - but what a fantastic gift to give those few.
But I reckon for most people, who will use tools created by developers for a large part of every day of their lives, blissfully ignorant of how the puzzle fits together, it will help to demystify an ever more complex technical world. And if Prince Andrew is putting together a 15 minute website, then god knows Tech Recs have no excuse to remain ignorant!
This isn't my first brush with coding, actually; I did a little bit of C++ at University under the guidance of my engineer friends, so I knew what code looked like on a page. I had forgotten the satisfaction, though, that you feel when what you've written works! I think I've always written creatively or opinionatedly as a way of structuring my thoughts and making sense of them, and actually there's a very similar feeling of satisfaction that I got out of a few really (like, really) simple lines of HTML. Painfully basic initial observations and feelings: I like that you open and close things, I like that logic, it's like clauses in grammar! It reminded me of learning human languages. I wonder why the command words you use in coding are English? Are all programming languages like that?
I'm kind of excited to reach the point where I get really stuck with something - that's when you actually start learning... I doubt I'm far off that point!
I know there was a lot of debate recently about 2014 as the 'Year of Code' and whether that was a good thing or not. Google obviously think it is... As a technical recruiter the skills shortage in the UK market is pretty evident, so it would make sense to try and release the pressure by getting more young people coding. And it probably wouldn't stick with most people - would most people's stories become those of the self-professed 'caffeine-fuelled geek' whose CVs I come across rarely and excitedly? Maybe a few - but what a fantastic gift to give those few.
But I reckon for most people, who will use tools created by developers for a large part of every day of their lives, blissfully ignorant of how the puzzle fits together, it will help to demystify an ever more complex technical world. And if Prince Andrew is putting together a 15 minute website, then god knows Tech Recs have no excuse to remain ignorant!
This isn't my first brush with coding, actually; I did a little bit of C++ at University under the guidance of my engineer friends, so I knew what code looked like on a page. I had forgotten the satisfaction, though, that you feel when what you've written works! I think I've always written creatively or opinionatedly as a way of structuring my thoughts and making sense of them, and actually there's a very similar feeling of satisfaction that I got out of a few really (like, really) simple lines of HTML. Painfully basic initial observations and feelings: I like that you open and close things, I like that logic, it's like clauses in grammar! It reminded me of learning human languages. I wonder why the command words you use in coding are English? Are all programming languages like that?
I'm kind of excited to reach the point where I get really stuck with something - that's when you actually start learning... I doubt I'm far off that point!
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