Carmen's Tales

"active record" in lower case is a design pattern for working with relational databases that could be used in a number of different languages.  It's not Rails specific. Even though, I come from a database background, my favorite part of Rails has been ActiveRecord.

The Famous concept of TDD has been around for while, hasn't it? Well for me, it's been exactly 3.5 years since I first heard about it. I remember in my first web dev job, only the Sr Engineers would write test and I would fix bugs and do some html.   

I have been working my way through TDD concepts and applying the principles quite rigorously. I struggle sometimes, because it takes me a while to understand some of the concepts. I had probably been applying TDD for more than a week before I realized how and why it works so well. Also I've just realized something else, I may have been testing something that had already been tested when I'm experimenting with those cool new gems out there nowadays.

What is it, or isn't? Am I or I should I be? Are you or could you be? What does this really mean? Are there different standards for the many demographics within the development community? And when can one really consider themselves an experienced Sr. Engineer?

En octubre 2010 decidí tomarme unas inusuales vacaciones, asi que asistí a tres diferentes Conferencias en Informáticas en América del Sur.  Ruby Conf en Montevideo, Uruguay, Ruby Conf en Sao Paolo Brazil y  CLEI (Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática), realizada en mi ciudad natal, Asunción.

Como iba a estar 2 semanas en Paraguay,  me pareció una excelente oportunidad para realizar un mini-workshop y compartir mi experiencia sobre RoR, asi que  unos días antes de mi viaje me comuniqué via email con el Decano de la Universidad Católica de Asunción, en la cual me gradué, y le sugerí hacer un taller en la Universidad.

As I was preparing for my trip home and my presentation, a number of insights about my time in the US, being a developer and the many differences between North and South American cultures began to flood my mind.  But it wasn’t just North and South American cultural differences, it was also the many differences and even cultures that exist between developers and the many different languages and styles we speak and create with.

El acelerado avance de la ciencia y la tecnología que caracteriza este siglo enfrenta un desafío latente: contribuir a un desarrollo humano sustentable, equitativo e integral, en un marco de respeto por la igualdad de oportunidades de género, reconocimiento de la diversidad educacional, cultural y étnica. Este desafío aun esta en una etapa muy joven en los países latinos, por lo cual promover un esfuerzo colectivo de concientización e intercambio entre todos los países, orientado a lograr que la ciencia y la tecnología sea un campo mas de oportunidades, incluyendo el genero femenino, es un factor preponderante en esta época.

Mi experiencia como Software Engineer latino en San Francisco, CA ha sido bastante desafiante y a la vez enriquecedora, por lo cual quisiera aportar un grano de concientización a la comunidad tecnológica de America Latina, compartiendo mis experiencias, los desafíos que he tenido que enfrentar y mis pensamientos acerca de los obstáculos que una mujer latina presenta en esta área.