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Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Tell us about the women who have inspired your coding journey ❤️

Gracie Gregory (she/her) on October 13, 2020

A very happy Ada Lovelace Day to everyone! Ada Lovelace Day happens on the second Tuesday in October each year and was founded in 2009 by Suw Cha...
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Gracie Gregory (she/her) • Edited

I'll kick things off. I'm not a developer, but I was encouraged to start learning to code when my former team held a lunch-hour series just for me where we learned about Git/GitHub, the basics of Markdown, and a handful of other things that have helped me in my career tremendously.

To have badass female engineers devote that kind of time and support to a (at the time) copywriter was so inspiring. I'll never forget it.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, y'all!

Learning to code Shoutout to @annaspies , @farrahc32 , @nocnica , @deeheber , and Anna Yovandich!

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Peyton McGinnis • Edited

My mom!

She's the reason I got into coding in the first place when I was a kid.

My mom ran a photography business for a few years and she started working on a WordPress site. I was curious on how websites were made, and so my mom and dad bought me a book on HTML, and from then on web dev has been a huge part of my life.

My mom is a wonderful role model and has kept encouraging me on my programming journey; even though she doesn't herself code, she always loves seeing the new web projects I'm working on and provides a little input here and there.

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

I love this! Your mom really does sound like a wonderful role model!

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Prakhar Yadav

Sarah Pez and Vaidehi Joshi
I absolutely admire them. They inspire me and I feel motivated by them to keep getting better 🙂

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Stuart Sackler • Edited

When I was a kid, my Mum would program video games for me. It was the early 80's so programming was a much longer more arduous process. My Mum was the most technical one in the family and certainly a role model for me. Thanks Mum!

Also Pearl Chen. Were it not for Pearl, I would never have started building with Arduino. Pearl is awesome. Great Teacher, fantastic mind, and a really fun person!

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Heather Williams

I never really thought about whether or not women were in STEM, I just went to university and got a degree (chemistry) and then later reskilled myself into dev. But reflecting on it my parents were certainly helpful in that regard, they brought me up to believe that I could do anything I wanted to. And with an aunt who was a sys admin there was a good female role model right there for me.

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SarraLKSC

When I think of women who inspired me in my journey as a coder two faces come in mind. The first one is of my first ever programming teacher ! I remember lacking confidence and being scared in my code because I thought I didn’t know as much as the other students did. There was this one guy in my class who had been coding all summer long so whenever the teacher gave a simple task (triangle of *) he would come up with a super hard way to do it and encourage the teacher to use it as well. some of us felt lost whenever he spoke but that teacher knew how to reassure us and build our confidence into coding one line at a time.
The second one is Pauline Narvas an English instagrammer/blogger/YouTuber/Podcaster/ that happened to be a coder (full time job) although she had a biology degree ! This woman really showed me that to become a coder all you need is to love coding that’s it ! No other prerequisite! She inspired me to throw myself into it and enjoy the journey

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Pandita

Let me give a shout out to the dolling community of the 2000s because this was a fairly big group of girls teaching other girls the basics of HTML/CSS/JS to show off pixel doll art.

It's how I started this journey of development (and drawing!) and I'm sure there are plenty of girls who may have a similar backstory and are out there being awesome in whatever they're doing now :3

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

That is so dang cool. Love hearing about communities like this whose passions led them to a lifelong pursuit of knowledge through programming!

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Jordi

When I've started coding I didn't know about programmers at all, just a few years later when I learned about Turing and Ada Lovelace that I became really interested in programming and inspired to keep learning it, but also all the teachers I had.

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Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Awesome. Turing is such an inspiration also ❤️

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Jordi

Yeah, Ada and Turing are my biggest inspiration :D

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Catherine Mohan

I didn't know what programming was until I took a class in high school. I fell in love with it thanks to my wonderful teacher! She encouraged me to continue in the classes and I eventually joined the school's Robotics team. She encourage me to get my engineering degree and even attended my college graduation. I definitely wouldn't be here without all her support.

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Linzi

I am a junior (like, very junior) web developer and, although I'd be lying if I said I'd been directly inspired by anyone to pursue web dev, I was very taken with Grace Hopper's achievements when I read about her. What a lady - wow! For those of you who don't know her story you should check her out. I was early in my Computing degree at the time and it was pretty inspiring to read about her.

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nthdat

Your post just made my day!
You encourage me to keep going forward even tough problems are waiting ahead!
Keep up your good work <3

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Edited

That's a great question, that I just answered in a separate post
But you will likely need Google Translate and an irony dectector to read it ....

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B. Agustín Amenábar Larraín

For me @rachelandrew taught me you don't have to be tough and loud to be a solid, powerful, respected professional.

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Matt Curcio

Question:
Has anyone ever tried to use/model/mock-up Lady Lovelace's code to determine what it does and if it works at all? I know that the code was for a machine that was not built (is that correct?) but has anyone ever investigated the workings of the machine and if it will even work? What does the machine do? Calculations or more?
Cheers

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Lars Gyrup Brink Nielsen

Sandi Metz has informed my understanding of Object-Oriented Programming and thoughtful testing through tech talks and books. An amazing, inspiring woman in tech!

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Anja

Happy Ada Lovelace day! 👩‍💻😊

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Youssef Rabei
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She inspires me, help me and every time there is something I don't understand she's there to help with her awesome animated series or IG posts
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Omar

The only women I know and remember her name is Margaret Hamilton.

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CatalinRadoi

Seems like a good evening to watch this documentary:
ihavenotv.com/calculating-ada-the-...

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Montegasppα Cacilhας

Everyday is Ada Day. 😉