To Dream. Perchance to Code. Joanna Ireland 10/10 '14

A good friend of mine, who happens to be the Director of Digital Content at PMA , spoke to my Intro to Professional Writing students tonight. I learned much more about her actual job - since our time together (we're also neighbors whose boys play together often) usually revolves around recipes, creating silly memes, a glass of chardoney, book chatter, the latest New Yorker or other "literary" magazine... I'm feeling a bit like a mental midget right now and as I'm delving deeper into the world of digital content, realizing how little I really know (although I can fake it really well) and how much I need to learn. And I'm in awe of her skills and ability to move fluidly among the communication worlds.

Apropos of learning, E. mentioned a local chapter of women who are teaching other women to code. Can't remember the name at the moment, but they meet at Wegmans, and they partner experienced with newbie programmers, and although my plate - nay, my tupperware - runneth over with hustling to freelance, repping for Young Living Oils, Celedon Road and Visalus, playing with a 4 year old son, doing the wifey thang with my hubby, I think I need to check out this coding group.

I've dipped a toe into the coding waters of website html. I can bold and highlight and italicize with the best. But this new world beckons. I have to remind myself not to dismiss my potential ability because I'm mathematically challenged. I see patterns - many patterns - everywhere, and isn't coding nothing more than a collection of patterns you manipulate?

Heck, by producing my son, born 01-01-10, a miraculous example of binary basic, am I not qualified to take my place among the other coders out there? I think I'm going in.

{Takes deep breath. Leaps.}

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10/10 '14 3 Comments
Girldevelopit, perhaps? They are big around here.
Thomas Boutell
YES! That's it, Tom. And my friend who's the director of digital content at FMP or MFP (I always mix up the letters' order) is working with the Philly group and says it's super awesome. :)
Joanna Ireland
In my 1.5-Computer-Science-degrees (and plenty of coding since the early 80s) opinion, programming is like any other creative work; it careens from massively rewarding to massively frustrating crossing all points in between. Math is super useful for some elements and no big deal for others; a sense of how big tasks are made up of smaller tasks is probably the most fundamental thing, as well as being really useful for getting stuff done in general. I think computers are much more awesome if one learns more about how to make them sing and dance (as it happens, my first program ever did in fact play music) and besides if you squint just right it's kind of like wizardry and who doesn't like that?
R. Francis Smith