Bowst Team
If you’ve ever wanted to learn to code but felt like it was too late, this powst is for you. Admittedly, it is geared toward ladies (because ladies before… something male-oriented that rhymes with ladies), but the resources cited are for everyone.
Secretarial School: A Sob Story
In the spring of 2003, just before my senior year of high school, I met with my guidance counsellor to discuss “what I would like to be when I grow up”. While I’ve never been entirely comfortable with that question, I told her I wanted to work in computer science. I’d always been interested in computers, and it was obvious that the field was growing, so I was fairly confident in my decision… that is, until I heard my guidance counsellor’s response.
She looked down at a printout of my grades, looked at me, looked at my grades, and told me that since I wasn’t very strong in math, anything to do with computers probably wasn’t a viable option for me. She suggested that I might instead consider secretarial school.
Did those words jump off the page at you?
Here, let me try again: she said I should entertain the idea of applying to SECRETARIAL SCHOOL. To quote Pete Holmes, a comedian I listen to sometimes while waiting for Louis C.K. or Chad Daniels to get their faculties in order and release a new album, “I honestly don’t know why we’re not all doing backflips right now. SECRETARIAL SCHOOL was said to me in a room with air in it.”
My initial response was to smile and politely chuckle along with her obvious joke, then she spoke again. She wasn’t kidding at all, and instead went on to justify her conclusion by citing my strengths in English and writing. I didn’t know what to say, and honestly I’ve no idea how I made it out of her office without her assuring me that if I fixed my hair and tried a little harder, I might be able to marry well.
I did not go to secretarial school — even if I had wanted to, it would have been impossible because the last secretarial school closed in 1977. What followed for me instead was a good education at a respectable university in a field that I found interesting, but wasn’t entirely passionate about, and a string of jobs that were just that: jobs. Just what everyone aspires to, right? Working for the weekend at a job that pays the bills and leaves you feeling empty and even a little resentful at times.
That’s how, at the age of 26, I found myself working as an office manager, doing more phone-answering and dishwashing than anything else, asking myself why I was paying upwards of $300 a month in student loans. Hadn’t the point of seeking higher education been to avoid ending up as a dishwasher? Where did I go wrong?
An excellent question–where did I go wrong? I graduated with honors and a Bachelor of Science from a reputable institution. Before that, I finished high school with honors (except in math). And before that? Before that, I let an old woman talk me out of a career path I’d been excited about. I’d let the fear of potential failure and making a costly misstep influence my decisions and ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Worst of all, I’d accepted my limitations without making any effort to remedy or refute them.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Women are Bad at Math: A Little Background
Here’s the most obvious statement that will be made today, quite possibly by anyone, anywhere. Before we become full-fledged women who are bad at math, we’re little girls. Little girls filled with hope and wonder, who are openly told that we can do anything we set our minds to… except math, apparently.
No other information is provided as to why women might be ill-suited for arithmetic, with the exception of some left-brain/right-brain bs that, sure, might apply to what we’re predisposed to out of the box, but that should have little bearing on what we can accomplish when we try.
Here’s the problem ladies: it’s convenient to believe that we’re being shunted aside by men because of some innate gender bias and, while that may be true in some cases, we are in no way blameless. The sad fact is that women are expected to perform poorly in math-based fields by men and women. I don’t know exactly how it started, but it’s been conveyed and accepted by enough people, that it’s become a problem.
Women who expect to perform poorly in math, do. A confluence of self-doubt and anxiety lead to the perception that learning math is a harder, even insurmountable, task where women are concerned.
The misconception that women are naturally poor math students affects the way teachers work with female students struggling in the subject, even female teachers. One study found that in many cases female teachers were actually projecting their own anxiety about math onto their female students. In some cases, even female students who were doing well in class were so uncomfortable in their surroundings that they were reportedly not likely to pursue higher education in math.
Another study showed that men and women alike were under the [alarmingly] false impression that women whose abilities were in doubt would work twice as hard to overcome the stigma. Unfortunately, that mentality is fairly absent outside of inspirational children’s dramas produced by Disney. If a woman thinks she’s bad at math and feels anxious about it, and her peers openly doubt her, and her teachers begin telling her it’s okay that she doesn’t understand rather than working to help her to, and we dismiss it as a society by making a joke out of it, then nine times out of ten, the woman will perform poorly. Anyone would perform poorly under those conditions; those who don’t are the rare exceptions, not the rule.
That brings us to an important development in the educational community, called STEM.
Nice STEMs
While, for a time, our society seemed fairly comfortable with women being bad at math, it became something of an issue when Americans in general became known for our poor performance mathematically. Historically, we’d been leaders in science and technology-based fields. However, it’s become clear in recent years that we’re being outranked and, it’s predicted that by the year 2018, may be nationally unable to meet the growing demand for the tech-savvy individuals our country requires.
Simply put, our students are losing interest in math-based fields, our teachers aren’t well-equipped enough to effectually teach the students that still are interested, and our overall proficiency-level is dropping like a stone.
In response, the Obama Administration launched the 2009 “Educate to Innovate” campaign geared towards reigniting student interest in STEM subjects. For those remarkable few of you who haven’t heard the acronym STEM mentioned, it stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics.
Thirteen agencies joined forces to form the Committee on STEM Education (coSTEM), which is concerned with increasing funding for K-12 STEM education, student engagement, and underrepresented demographics–that’s where women come in.
Learn to Code
Okay, back to my sob story, but only for a second. I knew I needed to do something so I could make a career change, but I’d already spent upwards of $40k getting my degree (which I’m still paying for and have sadly never used), so going back to school was out. Instead, I began attending networking events in my area, finding out how people had gotten started in development, and learning what resources they’d found most useful.
I had been afraid of being scoffed at or belittled. After all, I was an office manager, and even at 26, I was a few years older than some of the most talented developers I’d encountered. However, while there was a little condescension (and I’m sure some mockery behind my back), for the most part my questions were met with enthusiasm. When I confided my interest to learn more about development, and to maybe become a developer myself one day, the reaction I received was incredibly positive.
Developers are intelligent, curious people. In a field that is continually changing and improving, you have to be curious and ready to learn if you’re going to be successful. The majority of the developers I met were more than happy to share the resources they actively used and encouraged me to come to them with questions when I had them, and I did.
Another thing that I learned from my talented developer friends, was that many of them didn’t have degrees. To write code, especially front-end, you don’t actually need a degree in Computer Science, you just have to be able to do it.
It Is NOT Too Late
Okay, back to you. Women are severely underrepresented in STEM fields, so much so that there are incentives for employers to hire women, and for colleges to recruit them. That means, that if you’re interested in learning to code, now is a great time to start. Even if you’ve finished your formal education and have no intention of returning to college, there are plenty of online resources available to you.
Resources
There are a mentally crippling number of resources available to people who want to learn to code, and choosing good ones, especially when you’re just starting out, can be daunting. Since this article is aimed at people just getting their feet wet, let’s start with the reliable freebies.
Free
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While there have most certainly been mixed reviews of W3Schools, if you’re new to the field, it’s a valuable resource. W3Schools allows you to choose a language and addresses it in an easy-to-follow way beginning with the very basics. I’m not saying that W3Schools should be your developer bible, but it’s a great way to gain a basic understanding of code. The Try It Yourself sandbox sections, where you can experiment with writing the code you’ve just been exposed to, are particularly valuable.
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Once you’ve wrapped your head around the basics of HTML structuring and CSS styling, CSS-Tricks is an excellent resource for further expanding your knowledge of CSS. Their Almanac section, which delves into styling elements in detail with examples, is particularly useful.
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Codepen is like a more extensive version of W3schools Try It Yourself sandbox. It allows you to experiment with HTML, CSS, and JS to see how they work together. In addition, there are a lot of talented developers posting their work on Codepen, so you can learn exactly how they accomplished a lot of the cool effects available in development today.
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With the basics under your belt, Mozilla Developer Network and Google Developer Tools are excellent resources for learning about some of the more efficient and complex development solutions available to you. There is a LOT of information here, but don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by it. If nothing else, web development is a commitment to being a lifelong learner, so it’s completely okay if you don’t understand everything at once.
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At some point, you are going to have questions, and you might not know enough yet to find the answer yourself on the wide world of Google. This is the part where you get by with a little help from your friends on Stack Overflow, a committed network of skilled developers and people who are just starting out, where you can connect and find answers to your questions.
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Honestly, while free resources are awesome and Google will always be your best friend, as a new developer if you truly want to excel (and quickly), you’re probably going to have to commit to some kind of regimented form of training.
Paid [resources that still aren’t even remotely as pricey as college]
These are the best, most cost-effective beginner subscriptions I’ve found. They’re each about $25 a month and start with the building blocks of web development fundamentals. That said, even for the most dedicated and adept students, these courses won’t teach you everything you need to know–more on that later.
Quicky Degree Programs
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I’m currently enrolled in Udacity’s Front-End Developer Nanodegree, and I have to say that I have some qualms. For one, if I’d started this program before getting my footing with the free resources I listed above, and developing my skills a bit with Treehouse, then I would be completely lost. Udacity’s Nanodegree is new, and even though it’s backed by Google, and offers a lot of cool resources, there are still a lot of kinks. For example, when I started out I had a dedicated instructor that lead a lesson and review hour once a week to both present topics and answer questions. That was the reason I chose Udacity for $200 per month, rather than continuing my education with Treehouse for $25 per month. Well, Udacity discontinued that feature after two months, but guess who stills regularly pays $200. Also, several of Udacity’s tutorials start out great with, “We’re going to teach you JavaScript in three months, and here are all the awesome things you can do once you know it”, and finish with, “Okay, now go read this book on JavaScript so you can complete this project in the allotted time frame” — not really what I’d expected. So, while I intend to finish the degree program, and do think it’s valuable, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone as a first step.
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OMG, PROCEED WITH CAUTION! Web development is kind of the hot career right now. Accordingly, and seemingly overnight, popup schools in major cities are offering programs that tout their ability to teach you enough about web development in 12 weeks to make you employable, and in some cases you don’t have to pay them until you get a job. Maybe that’s true, maybe they can teach you everything you need to know in 12 weeks and get you a job where you earn $80k annually right off the bat, but it sounds a little too good to be true to me. If you do decide to embark on this road, I STRONGLY advise you to ask a developer what they think about it, especially the 12-week time frame, research available jobs and salaries in your area, and read ALL of the fine print.
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Aftermath (Ha, get it?)
In summation, if you’re a lady (or a man, or a little-known but particularly intelligent, possibly genetically enhanced or lab-grown creature of sorts) and you’re interested in learning to code, my advice to you is to just try it. If you’re bad at math, that’s fine. Know why? Because computers are awesome at math so you don’t have to be. There’s no coding language that relies heavily on advanced Calculus, and certainly nothing I’ve come across in front-end development that entails more than a general understanding of arithmetic. You are not too old, and it is not too late. If you want to learn to code, all you really need are the resources to learn from and the drive to do it.
This is the part where I shamelessly plug Bōwst, because it’s an awesome company, and I love it here. Bōwst cares about women in code, and the importance of gender balance. I mentioned earlier that I got my start by talking to developers at networking events. At Bōwst, we regularly host such events, including monthly Seacoast Drupal User Group meetups and Front End Rally events. Even if you’re just starting out, we’d love to talk to you, and would be happy to point you in the right direction where resources and learning opportunities are concerned. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.
Happy coding!
