K. Rain Leander: Leveraging Procedural Knowledge

See the PyGrunn website for more info about this one-day Python conference in Groningen, The Netherlands.

At RedHat we try to be newbie friendly, because everyone is a newbie in lots of contexts. You specialize in very few fields.

Declarative knowledge: Amsterdam is the capitol of the Netherlands, A is the first letter, etcetera.

Procedural knowledge: how do I get to Groningen, how do I train for a marathon, how do I learn a new language.

So: what versus how.

Example: when you start learning a new programming language, you may want to stick to your trusty editor and version control system instead of switching those at the same time.

I used to dance, had a degree. You do not earn a lot of money that way. I learned languages. Later html, css. I applied, but I usually not even got an interview, because I had a degree in dancing. So I got a degree in computers. I got hired by RedHat.

At RedHat we say "drink from the firehose:" inhale something that is overwhelming. Go with the flow. You have 90 days to pass the exam. It is like a boot camp. It is not about what you do exactly, but how you manage it: do you drown and give up, or do you battle on. So you learn lots of new technologies and after you pass the exam, you apply that knowledge. Not the knowledge about those new technologies, but about how you learned them. You just keep on learning new stuff, and are not afraid of it. No pressure...

For a workshop I setup this Django Girls blog: http://leanderthalblog.herokuapp.com

Challenge: deploy to OpenShift. http://django-leanderthal.rhcloud.com So, it is deployed, but I ran into problems, so you don't really see anything on it. Battling on, challenge still accepted.

Figure out who you are, what you are good at. What programming languages did you learn? How did you do that? Apply that knowledge to new programming languages. Did you learn via tutorials? Readme? Asking others? Reading books, blogs? Just do it and practice, practice, practice? Did it work or not? Apply that knowledge.

On 19 September 2015, there is a Django Girls workshop right here in Groningen. See http://djangogirls.org/groningen/ Free programming workshop for women. We need coaches. Men are welcome too.

On Twitter: rainsdance