Exercism Community Stories: Recent Episodes
Exercism
Jeremy chats to José Valim, the creator of Elixir, and puts your questions to him.
We'll be focussing on José's decision to make Elixir a functional language, and discussing its evolution. Don't miss it!
Ethan Hansen is a current computer science student at Case Western Reserve University studying the intersection of quantum computing and cybersecurity.
He loves all things open source, private, and secure.
He's also a big fan of the V language - so he built the track for it on Exercism! You can check it out here and give it a try - https://exercism.org/tracks/vlang
We had a great chat across such a wide range of topics and ideas and it was definitely the first time we'd come across someone who loves Quantum computing. Ethan also runs his own podcast dedicated to Quantum computing and you can check that out here as well (links down below)...along with some other really cool things we covered in our conversation.
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minds: https://www.minds.com/1ethanhansen/
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gitlab:https://gitlab.com/1ethanhansen
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github: https://github.com/1ethanhansen
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podcast: https://anchor.fm/quantumcomputingnow
Thelma was raised in Bronx, NY. She studied for a BBA in Economics from Baruch School, CCNY. Currently she is a widow with an adult daughter and son. She worked as a programmer, mostly C and simulation software at Johnson Controls and smaller firms; long retired.
Now she walks all the time for recreation and to run errands; she bikes and swims in warmer times and her main hobby is Exercism! She never learned to drive as her and her husband and spent decades doing just about everything on a single speed tandem!
Exercism has been a great connector for her and her son -- he's currently mentoring her in JavaScript and they write and talk all the time now.....Exercism mentors substitute for the therapists that so many of my friends and acquaintances see, helping build connection and belonging.
Looking to get started with coding? Carl's story should inspire you to push off into learning Python...As a total newbie to coding, her took on the Exercism Python track without knowing anything about programming and is now flying.
Carl, known in the community as “meatball”, lives in Sweden and is a full time student.
He recently discovered his love of Python on the Exercism website where he started to build up his knowledge of programming.
Since then he has learnt Elixir, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Typescript, and Crystal.
He has contributed to multiple tracks on Exercism but primarily the Python track.
Outside of Exercism he loves doing programming projects across various languages and frameworks as well as playing video games.
What happens when you get life-changing news or information? How do you respond? How do you process? Catch up with DJ to hear how he reframed his perspective on hearing he'd been diagnosed with cancer
Erik Schierboom lives in The Netherlands and works as head of open-source for Exercism. There he builds the software and infrastructure that powers the open-source elements of the platform, ensuring each track is a joy to work with.He was a top Exercism volunteer before joining full-time.As a true polyglot developer, his biggest passion is learning new languages.He loves to share knowledge, for example via mentoring, blogs, Stack Overflow posts or conference talks.
When he's not programming, you can find him playing on the PS5, reading a book, watching a movie/series, listening to some music or playing tennis.
Today we are catching up with Bobbi Towers, the self-proclaimed "Child of Exercism", who began their journey of contributing to open-source software right here with us. They joined the community in 2018 as a student on the Clojure track and went on to become a mentor. When the pandemic fell upon us and we began work on v3, the track needed a maintainer so they stepped up to develop the tooling and write the initial exercises, despite never having worked on a software project of that scale before.
Our spirited discussion revolved around a common theme of personal growth in the face of life's many challenges such as mental health issues, social isolation, and physical disabilities. After a 2015 accident which resulted in losing the use of a hand, they began to explore alternative input devices to find something more accessible and hopefully become more productive. Finding the existing commercial solutions to be either lacking or prohibitively expensive, they turned to 3D printing to design and manufacture their own one-handed keyboard.
We caught up with Isaac who is involved with Exercism, specifically in mentoring learners across numerous different programming languages. A self-proclaimed techie. Jack of all trades.
Coffee hobbyist. Enjoying motorcycles, bicycles, woodworking, welding, DIY, fantasy novels, gardening...amongst other things. We are so grateful for all the effort and energy Isaac puts in to mentoring and wanted to give a little insight into the day-to-day of what it means to be a programmer working remotely.
Taiyab Raja is the principal UI/UX designer behind Exercism v3. If you think Exercism looks and feels awesome, he’s the man to thank.
Taiyab enjoys all things startups, design and entrepreneurship. Born to entrepreneurial immigrant parents and raised in a deprived neighbourhood in Birmingham, England, Taiyab fell into his love for tech, design and building things, which, by chance, led to getting involved in amazing and interesting projects and people working toward the public good.
Where to find Tai:
Online
Brian Underwood is an Elixir consultant for Erlang Solutions living in Stockholm, Sweden. He likes to learn, understand, and play.
Show Notes:
- "Risky Business: James Bagian—NASA astronaut turned patient safety expert—on Being Wrong"
- Erlang Solutions
Franziska lives in Germany and has a full-remote position as a Senior Software Engineer at Atlassian (the company behind Jira, Confluence and Trello). She works on Go services for a new product called "Jira Product Discovery". It aims to support product managers with their work and is currently in public beta.
Before joining Atlassian, Franziska worked as developer (Node.js, Go, Vue.js) and tech lead at small companies around Frankfurt, Germany. Franziska spends her free time with her husband and daughter and helps out on Exercism as a maintainer for the Go and JavaScript track (username junedev). Because of her passion for teaching, she put a lot of effort into creating and improving the syllabus for those tracks.
Gabriel Nelle is living in South Germany near Baden-Baden. He’s sharing the apartment with his girlfriend and two cats. He studied to be a teacher for mathematics and German at university in Siegen which he finished in 2008.
Since then he worked as a developer in the web-space mostly with JavaScript, PHP and Python. Early 2016 he switched to Go and has never looked back. At GoStudent he is part of building the No 1 global school as a staff engineer. His passion is simple, boring code. In his free time he likes to hike in the beautiful Black Forest.
Lars Hvam lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and loves the ABAP programming language. Having put together the ABAP track on Exercism, we caught up with Lars and had a chilled chat about how he ended up in tech.
Rebecca Mark works for Unison Computing, where her mission is to make learning the Unison programming language as fun and accessible as can be. She started programming after a career in education; her favorite question from a student has been, “Is Rebecca a real grown-up?” to which her answer is another question: “Does that exist?” She started studying web development between sandwich bites on her lunch break.
Later, she was a member of the second cohort of the Ada Developers Academy, where she learned the importance of holding the door open for others when it comes to entering the tech industry. Since that time she’s worked on software projects big and small, and has come to love functional programming and creating tech communities. Every day she wakes up and learns something new from her brainy coworkers and the stellar Unison community.Her degree was in English Literature, and yes, she does think it is relevant to programming. In a different world she might have gone on to study poetics and convince future reluctant readers that it’s worth it to struggle through a poem.
Roll the dice again and in that universe she might have stayed in education, working with a focus on social justice. In this world, she’s grateful she gets to convince future Unison programers that there is a lot of joy to be found in learning a new programming language ecosystem or contending with a new functional effect management system.If you aren’t careful she’ll tell you all about her favorite poetic form (the sestina), her dogs (Kirby and Picasso), and her love of making pottery (you should go touch mud)!