May 16, 2014 at 12:17Right to your code
The German conservative system of values determined the social role of women by three K's: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Oddly enough, but atavisms of that time are still alive today - many professions are traditionally considered to be purely masculine, and not many succeed in breaking this ideological barrier.
You don’t have to go far, the ratio of female to male among the residents of Habrahabr is less than 1 in 10 (At the time of writing the post - 101448 men versus 7772 women).
Most IT teams look like a convent. Girls are found in advertising, marketing, a little less often in design and graphics, but very rarely in the "holy of holies" - in programming.
There are not so many girls in the large Mail.Ru team, but they are. And one of them - Ekaterina Trefilova lecharton - a developer from the Poster Mail.Ru , we decided to take a short interview.
When you first started programming, what prompted you to do this?
When I was 11 years old, my father brought home a computer. In it, several toys and Photoshop were installed for me. But the most interesting thing was to see what was inside the car itself. With a computer, my father brought a book that told what and how it works. One of the few instructions for the technique that I carefully read :)
This, of course, is more likely an acquaintance with computers, and I started programming when I was 13 years old. I came across a book with Pascal tasks. All sorts of stars and squares. I was delighted that the ability to correctly describe the task allows you to do so much. From that moment on, I fell in love with programming.
In addition, I have always been very fond of drawing. Acquaintance with Photoshop turned into a passion for web design, which, in turn, grew into an interest in web development.
Which editor do you use for development?
Vim, he's great! I used Sublime for a long time, tried Komodo and Geany. But I always wanted to tighten something, improve it. Then I met VIM. I read about the commands and the setting. Now I don’t even imagine how to use something else, I always want to finish the job by typing: w
When and how did I meet Perl?
At his first job. I studied in the 4th year. At the university, we wrote our projects, mainly in Python, and at work it was required to maintain the old and develop new functionality in Perl. It was hard at first. There was no experience; everyone around Perl knew nothing. Unfortunately, I did not immediately stumble upon the book Learning Perl, which I regret very much. Would save a lot of time. On the Internet I met Yaroslav Korshak, he helped me a lot then. He told me what to read, and what is desirable.
When I figured it out a bit, I fell in love with Perl. You can do everything in different ways. This incredible freedom conquered me!
What other languages are you interested in working with?
Recently, I have been very interested in the functional programming languages Lisp, Haskell. Great feeling when the brain "pops", rebuilding. But writing something serious on them is not possible. I work very often with JavaScript. Sometimes I play with Perl6 to know what is happening to it, what is new in it.
What do you think is the biggest advantage of Perl?
His freedom! Perhaps this can be considered a drawback, but for me the elasticity of Perl is precisely a virtue. It allows you to solve any problem in different ways. You can not just do everything, you can do everything the way you want.
And of course, one of the main advantages of Perl is the people who write on it. Perl has a wonderful, friendly community, I have not seen such a thing in any of the other languages. People just live it, enjoy their work, do something new and share it with each other.
What do you think should be the languages of the future?
I think the languages executed in the browser are in a winning position. Everyone is waiting for someone in this area to compete with JavaScript. If we assume that such a competitor has appeared, then it should have an intuitive syntax. If you look around, you will notice that more and more people are interested in programming. It should be convenient and pleasant for them to write code.
What do you think can explain the fact that most programmers are men?
Probably the point is stereotypes.
I studied at mehmat, and in my group of girls there were more than guys. Mathematics and programming are given to women no harder, and sometimes even easier, because we are diligent and better adapted to hard work. But after graduation, almost all the girls chose some other professions. It was influenced by public opinion that a programmer is a man’s job.
Have you ever felt discriminated against or biased by male colleagues?
Unfortunately yes. It is very difficult to work with such men.
When I first encountered such an attitude, I was very worried, trying to prove that I was underestimated. And angry, very angry. And then I realized that this did not concern me at all. After all, from the fact that someone does not believe in my abilities, I do not write code worse. Just stopped paying attention, and life became easier.
Recently, in the programming environment, there are more and more scandals related to gender. Does such a problem really exist, or is it far-fetched? Does the programmer's gender differ in different language communities?
Honestly, I have not heard of such scandals. Most programmers are smart, polite people who are not prone to chauvinism. Many, on the contrary, are delighted with the girls in the community and are willing to help get comfortable. You should not judge by a few exceptions.
Is the attitude different in different language communities? The fewer girls who write in this programming language, the more men from his community are skeptical of them. But still, there will be very few such men. Most are pleased with the girls in their ranks.
Do I need to fix the code of conduct (CoC) in conferences in a special way?
A tricky question. Do you mean some rules governing communication between men and women? I think such rules are not needed, men and women are equal, and the rules can be general.
If we are talking about compliance with general norms of behavior, then such rules, of course, should be. After all, this is a public event, and everyone should be comfortable at it.
What tasks does Perl have to solve?
Now I work as a programmer at Mail.Ru Group, one of the largest Internet companies in the Russian-speaking Internet, in the Poster Mail.Ru project. The project backend is completely written in Perl, so all the tasks that I solve, I solve in this language. I am engaged in supporting existing functionality and developing new ones. I was very lucky with the team, these are talented and enthusiastic people. It is interesting and pleasant to work with them. It's very cool here!
How to introduce girls to programming? Should I advise learning Perl?
It seems to me that you need to stop believing that female programmers are something special. And that "this is not a woman’s business." Choosing a profession, many are afraid of this attitude.
Should I advise learning Perl? Of course it's worth it! This is a great language to do so much fun!
Do you like to attend Perl conferences?
I love Perl conferences. My first conference was YAPC :: Russia + Perl Mova 2012. There I saw how many interesting things are written in Perl and met interesting people. After that I was so energized that I moved to Moscow!
Whether you liked the speech with a report at the conference?
I really liked it, I plan to repeat it.
To speak is very useful while you are preparing, you can take a different look at the topic. During the speech, you realize that there are people who are also interested in this topic, they may have similar problems and completely different solutions. It is very motivating.
Describe some interesting “feature” that you implemented in Perl.
It was interesting to develop an integration system for the company I worked for and its customers. Think over the architecture, make it convenient for users and administrators of the resource. I had to work with certificates, means of cryptographic information protection. Difficult and confusing, but very exciting!
The funny thing was to implement a tool for printing tags from the administrative panel. There are completely different sensations when the hardware interaction with the code goes beyond the mere output of information to the screen.
Now in our project we are solving many interesting tasks related to the load. You can always write code that works faster, I like to learn from my colleagues.
What interesting foreign resources inspire you?
http://perlhacks.com is one of my favorite blogs! Some trifles are often described, which are difficult to find out on their own. It is very inspiring to write code, taking into account the features of Perl, its capabilities.
And of course, http://blogs.perl.org/users/perl_5_porters_summaries/ .
PS The purpose of this interview is not to launch a feminist movement on Habré or provoke a holivar in the style of “Battle of the sexes”.
We posted it on our blog for the sole purpose of showing girls who are thinking about choosing (or changing) a profession to "taste" programming. Believe me, this captures no worse than embroidery!
You don’t have to go far, the ratio of female to male among the residents of Habrahabr is less than 1 in 10 (At the time of writing the post - 101448 men versus 7772 women).
Most IT teams look like a convent. Girls are found in advertising, marketing, a little less often in design and graphics, but very rarely in the "holy of holies" - in programming.
There are not so many girls in the large Mail.Ru team, but they are. And one of them - Ekaterina Trefilova lecharton - a developer from the Poster Mail.Ru , we decided to take a short interview.
When you first started programming, what prompted you to do this?
When I was 11 years old, my father brought home a computer. In it, several toys and Photoshop were installed for me. But the most interesting thing was to see what was inside the car itself. With a computer, my father brought a book that told what and how it works. One of the few instructions for the technique that I carefully read :)
This, of course, is more likely an acquaintance with computers, and I started programming when I was 13 years old. I came across a book with Pascal tasks. All sorts of stars and squares. I was delighted that the ability to correctly describe the task allows you to do so much. From that moment on, I fell in love with programming.
In addition, I have always been very fond of drawing. Acquaintance with Photoshop turned into a passion for web design, which, in turn, grew into an interest in web development.
Which editor do you use for development?
Vim, he's great! I used Sublime for a long time, tried Komodo and Geany. But I always wanted to tighten something, improve it. Then I met VIM. I read about the commands and the setting. Now I don’t even imagine how to use something else, I always want to finish the job by typing: w
When and how did I meet Perl?
At his first job. I studied in the 4th year. At the university, we wrote our projects, mainly in Python, and at work it was required to maintain the old and develop new functionality in Perl. It was hard at first. There was no experience; everyone around Perl knew nothing. Unfortunately, I did not immediately stumble upon the book Learning Perl, which I regret very much. Would save a lot of time. On the Internet I met Yaroslav Korshak, he helped me a lot then. He told me what to read, and what is desirable.
When I figured it out a bit, I fell in love with Perl. You can do everything in different ways. This incredible freedom conquered me!
What other languages are you interested in working with?
Recently, I have been very interested in the functional programming languages Lisp, Haskell. Great feeling when the brain "pops", rebuilding. But writing something serious on them is not possible. I work very often with JavaScript. Sometimes I play with Perl6 to know what is happening to it, what is new in it.
What do you think is the biggest advantage of Perl?
His freedom! Perhaps this can be considered a drawback, but for me the elasticity of Perl is precisely a virtue. It allows you to solve any problem in different ways. You can not just do everything, you can do everything the way you want.
And of course, one of the main advantages of Perl is the people who write on it. Perl has a wonderful, friendly community, I have not seen such a thing in any of the other languages. People just live it, enjoy their work, do something new and share it with each other.
What do you think should be the languages of the future?
I think the languages executed in the browser are in a winning position. Everyone is waiting for someone in this area to compete with JavaScript. If we assume that such a competitor has appeared, then it should have an intuitive syntax. If you look around, you will notice that more and more people are interested in programming. It should be convenient and pleasant for them to write code.
What do you think can explain the fact that most programmers are men?
Probably the point is stereotypes.
I studied at mehmat, and in my group of girls there were more than guys. Mathematics and programming are given to women no harder, and sometimes even easier, because we are diligent and better adapted to hard work. But after graduation, almost all the girls chose some other professions. It was influenced by public opinion that a programmer is a man’s job.
Have you ever felt discriminated against or biased by male colleagues?
Unfortunately yes. It is very difficult to work with such men.
When I first encountered such an attitude, I was very worried, trying to prove that I was underestimated. And angry, very angry. And then I realized that this did not concern me at all. After all, from the fact that someone does not believe in my abilities, I do not write code worse. Just stopped paying attention, and life became easier.
Recently, in the programming environment, there are more and more scandals related to gender. Does such a problem really exist, or is it far-fetched? Does the programmer's gender differ in different language communities?
Honestly, I have not heard of such scandals. Most programmers are smart, polite people who are not prone to chauvinism. Many, on the contrary, are delighted with the girls in the community and are willing to help get comfortable. You should not judge by a few exceptions.
Is the attitude different in different language communities? The fewer girls who write in this programming language, the more men from his community are skeptical of them. But still, there will be very few such men. Most are pleased with the girls in their ranks.
Do I need to fix the code of conduct (CoC) in conferences in a special way?
A tricky question. Do you mean some rules governing communication between men and women? I think such rules are not needed, men and women are equal, and the rules can be general.
If we are talking about compliance with general norms of behavior, then such rules, of course, should be. After all, this is a public event, and everyone should be comfortable at it.
What tasks does Perl have to solve?
Now I work as a programmer at Mail.Ru Group, one of the largest Internet companies in the Russian-speaking Internet, in the Poster Mail.Ru project. The project backend is completely written in Perl, so all the tasks that I solve, I solve in this language. I am engaged in supporting existing functionality and developing new ones. I was very lucky with the team, these are talented and enthusiastic people. It is interesting and pleasant to work with them. It's very cool here!
How to introduce girls to programming? Should I advise learning Perl?
It seems to me that you need to stop believing that female programmers are something special. And that "this is not a woman’s business." Choosing a profession, many are afraid of this attitude.
Should I advise learning Perl? Of course it's worth it! This is a great language to do so much fun!
Do you like to attend Perl conferences?
I love Perl conferences. My first conference was YAPC :: Russia + Perl Mova 2012. There I saw how many interesting things are written in Perl and met interesting people. After that I was so energized that I moved to Moscow!
Whether you liked the speech with a report at the conference?
I really liked it, I plan to repeat it.
To speak is very useful while you are preparing, you can take a different look at the topic. During the speech, you realize that there are people who are also interested in this topic, they may have similar problems and completely different solutions. It is very motivating.
Describe some interesting “feature” that you implemented in Perl.
It was interesting to develop an integration system for the company I worked for and its customers. Think over the architecture, make it convenient for users and administrators of the resource. I had to work with certificates, means of cryptographic information protection. Difficult and confusing, but very exciting!
The funny thing was to implement a tool for printing tags from the administrative panel. There are completely different sensations when the hardware interaction with the code goes beyond the mere output of information to the screen.
Now in our project we are solving many interesting tasks related to the load. You can always write code that works faster, I like to learn from my colleagues.
What interesting foreign resources inspire you?
http://perlhacks.com is one of my favorite blogs! Some trifles are often described, which are difficult to find out on their own. It is very inspiring to write code, taking into account the features of Perl, its capabilities.
And of course, http://blogs.perl.org/users/perl_5_porters_summaries/ .
PS The purpose of this interview is not to launch a feminist movement on Habré or provoke a holivar in the style of “Battle of the sexes”.
We posted it on our blog for the sole purpose of showing girls who are thinking about choosing (or changing) a profession to "taste" programming. Believe me, this captures no worse than embroidery!