Sara J Chipps

DIY Hardware Hack Day

Wanted to write about the Hack Weekend we had here in NYC a month-or-so ago, it was my first time putting one together, and I thought it would be good to share wisdom.

My reason for putting the weekend together was selfish, I wanted to learn more about hardware hacking. Our Christmas sweater was my first experience and it was super fun. So, I wanted to take up another project myself. 

I'm lucky enough to live in NYC, there are a bunch of experts that live here. Rick Waldron made Johnny-Five, and Francis Gulotta is Levo League's own pro. I asked them, and a few other people, if they wanted to help put a weekend together.

Basically we just put an Eventbrite page together and charged $30. We spread the word via Twitter and Emails, which sold us about 30 tickets. We charged because we didn't want sponsors, so the $30 was for food. 

Levo League donated the space for the weekend. Day of we ordered some food, and people arrived around 11-12.

Rick gave a great talk about Johnny-five (which is an amazing library that makes JS and Arduino easy as pie) to kick us off and then we went about our weekend. 

An environment where people are creating is awesome. Everyone spent the weekend buzzing. We brought tools and had some extra parts but people made a few runs to the hardware store to pick up some things. 

At the end of the weekend we did demo time to show off what we made, here are some really cool ones. 

Here is what I made, this LED changes colors based on your tweets. 

 

 

Rick made a  robot that that moves when he moves using the Kinect

 

This glove changes the volume on your laptop

 

The coolest thing to come out of the weekend was dorby our Levo League robot that opens the front door via the internet. 

 

Our weekend was a great time, and we plan on doing it again soon. LMK if you are interested in joining. 

There is No Such Thing as Proprietary Client-side JavaScript

 

 About 3 years ago, I launched my first product. I built it with two fabulous partners, who continue to produce awesome things. It was a little app, and a tool I thought made for better web. It is no longer online, due to costs, it was a URL aggregator called bundl.it. It was a big deal for me, as it was something I made, and put online for others to use. It was a useful tool, and I'm still very proud of it.  

 

A year or so later an established website in the same industry launched a feature that was doing the exact thing that my app was made for. They even gave it the same name. 

 

When the news hit I was flooded with emails from friends and folks that had happened upon my site. "Hey, are you working with xxx?", "Did you see what xxx did? They totally copied you!", "How could they do that, I'm so sorry. You should do something.", "Are you going to go after them?"

 

At the time I was disappointed, not because my idea had been "stolen," or "copied" by a larger company. I was disappointed because I knew that had I put my all into this product, if I had followed through with support, focused more on marketing, and funneled my energy in this product there wouldn't be market to steal. 

 

In other words, it was my responsibility to make my tool the staple the internet needed. However, the field was wide open, because I left it open. There is no such thing as disruption from the couch, and that was the valuable lesson I learned from the experience. 

 

Another lesson I learned, is that people seem to think they own ideas on the internet. Or, in this case, that I owned my idea that I put on the internet. 

 

We have seen a lot of arguing back and forth about these issues as the landscape of the web is starting to be sheriff'd. SOPA, The Winklevii, and hundreds of completely absurd patent lawsuits. These issues has made the concept of ownership of 1's and 0's on the forefront of world issues we face every day. 

 

As the world of software development becomes en vogue, we are seeing this issue broached by new developers and veterans alike.  The idea of code "ownership." The idea that the method, or the algorithm makes you money, and therefore is proprietary.

 

Web pioneers like Torvalds, de Raadt, Stallman, and DeIcaza battled on this ground. They created the free software movement, GNU/Linux, Git, Open BSD, and GNOME and told big-co software companies to go screw as they opened up their code for fellow developers to learn from, to better their craft. The sharing of ideas for a better internet. 

 

Yet, still today, people sue over simple equations behind engines making millions of dollars. NDAs and invention agreements are everywhere and claim to cover websites, executables, webapps, modules, functions, and methods alike. 

 

However, in the midst of it all, lies client side JavaScript. I freaking love this shit. I'm here to say there is no such thing as proprietary client side JavaScript. Again, there is no such thing as proprietary client side JavaScript! 

 

You can protest, argue, call people thieves, stake the moral high ground, and point fingers all you want. There is no obfuscation, everything you have done is right out in the open for everyone to see. More importantly, everything you do is in the ecosystem for people to learn from. I think it's a great proof of concept as I've never heard anyone get angry at someone else for stealing something they have written for the DOM.

 

People don't run around copy -> pasting things they find elsewhere. For many reasons, mainly, your style comes through in what you write. Your code is your signature, and someone else's never can express your unique type of art. When it does happen (which it does), it is a matter of ethics, not law or government. Clientside JavaScript is policed by the JavaScript community, and if you're a thief that copies and pastes, people know. 

 

Not all of us write JavaScript clientside. So we all can't go about just assuming people can learn from the things we have created. So I have a few suggestions. 

 

Obviously, there is Github, and any startup that puts their code out there for people to learn from is an open web advocate in my book. That also means we need to stop signing agreements that include clauses about the ownership of syntax (I will from this point on not be signing such contracts). This means educating the people we work for about the developer community, how we help each other, and how being open puts you in a unique position to improve your standing, and help others. 

 

Funny enough, developers are now in a place of power that we haven't known before. Recently, I've seen a new form of currency sweeping the world of business. Developeronomics. From the lone startup founder, to the VC; from the Mom and Pop shop, to the Hedge fund douche bags, from the CEOs of big corp to the teachers of public schools, there is something they all need. Web developers, good ones. Enough to offer obscene salaries, equities, weekly backrubs, briefcases of cash, and sexy parties to the crack team of developers they employ to carve out their section of the internet. 

 

This puts the development community in a unique position. Do we copy the established business community in the money grab? Do we want to line pockets while cranking out "It's this for that's" with every nerd for his/herself on the terms of "my code, my product, my creation?" 

 

We've seen what that has done for the remnants of the industrial age, with huge corporations being the enemy of the individual. Where corporations battle each other in the media, and keep a tight grip on information, even if it means people losing lives. Where advancements are being retarded by a legal cat and mouse game, because the information companies hold dear could help all of us the world over if they would join forces. 

 

What a beautiful place we are at where we can make a conscious decision not to follow in their footsteps. While the internet and it's implications are still being formed every day. When we decide that the education and advancement of future developers, our children, and the history books are more important than lining our pockets (seriously, how expensive can comfy sweatshirts and Vibram Five Finger shoes be?) 

 

Where would we be now if John Resig decided to keep his little library to himself? If DHH kept his framework proprietary? How much further could we be if more people shared the way they did? 

 

I'm pledging to work for an open web and open code, a place where we can all share, learn, and invent together. I hope you will too. 

 

Developers and Professionalism

 UPDATE: Please notice, the author of the story shared is actually Matthew Heusser, this is what I get for not confirming before posting. Thank you, Matthew, for sharing your story!!

 

 

I'm a developer, and inasmuch I am proud of the fact that I rarely wear pants. As I write this now, I am wearing pants, but only because I went into the office today. I have orange hair, and a large assortment of lip gloss. I sleep to 11 most days, and I defy anyone that says I shouldn't. All in all I've embraced the developer's frat guy lifestyle. 

I've started a book called the Clean Coder by Uncle Bob Martin. The thing that has made the biggest impression for me was in the forward (written by Matthew Heusser). He tells a story about a development team he was once a part of, I'm paraphrasing quite a bit (the book is still at the office), but he talks about a team in an enterprise company that had been working on a project for quite a few months with a set-in-stone release date on the horizon. As the date approached they worked day/night/weekends to get things done. He had a team of talented coders and under much pressure from management they strapped themselves to their keyboards in order to get the job done on time, and they did.

The Friday before the Monday release date they were stoked. It's so rare that a project gets completed exactly on schedule, but they had done it. They were celebrating and relaxing when they got a call from management. Seems that legal hadn't finished the paperwork needed for the launch, and they needed an extra day to get things done, the meeting was going to be pushed to Tuesday.

"No way" was Matt's response, "we have been killing ourselves over this. They have Saturday and Sunday to get this work done, plenty of time." "Sorry," was the word from above, "these people are professionals, we're not going to ask them to work the weekend. Meeting is pushed to Tuesday." Matt was irate, "Are you serious? My developers have been working around the clock, nights, weekends, you name it. We can ask the guys in legal to put in a little extra time." Management responded, "You don't understand, these guys are PROFESSIONALS."

That's when it sunk in for him, people don't think developers are professionals. They look at us like a bunch of sloppy kids that happen to know how to do something that they need. After reading that story, it sunk in for me too.

Clients trust me to take care of things they don't know how to do. In order to do that, they need to feel I am competent and capable. Disappearing in the zone for a few days, while it may be best for the project, isn't comforting for the client. Up until then I had a dim view of client hand holding, and thought "they just need to trust that I am working on it." However, I have realized that a good working relationship, constant updates, and accountability are just as important as clean code and passing tests. 

I still rarely wear pants, and have orange hair, but my client's comfort is much more important to me now. I want them to know I'm here whenever they call, and they can trust that I'm working hard to solve their problems and build their software. The response I have gotten has been great, and I've noticed how much they appreciate being kept in the loop no matter what. That makes my job easier, and that's a reward I didn't expect. 

 

The Work Life Balance of an Independent Software Developer

I hear a lot of talk about this "Work Life Balance" thing. It sounds interesting, and at some point in my life I think I will probably enjoy having one. Should I have a family, for instance. One thing I appreciate about this field is how mom friendly it is. As a developer, it's super easy to work from home, and keep some pretty weird hours. I hope one day I can sit next to my child while I hack away at work, maybe they will read Nancy Drew books. 

As far as my swinging bachelorette lifestyle in the big city goes: there is no balance. My work is my life, and I love it that way. My process is thus: I wake up in the morning. Usually around 10am(ish). I roll over and check my iPhone. I have a horrible habit of getting important emails when I am half asleep and not starring them, this itself isn't awful but when I wake up sometimes I don't remember them. I have been getting better at this. I <3 priority inbox. 

When I get up I decide where I want to work that day. The unofficial slogan of New Work City is "People that can work anywhere work here." Independance means I can work anywhere. Most of the time it is there, or outside somewhere, or at a restaurant, or at a salon getting a pedicure (I have wifi to go).

My first priority is always client work. This can take anywhere from 1-10 hours, depending on my workload. It varies depending on number of clients and where I am in a project. Lately I have found happiness in being short term JavaScript support for existing teams, or working on small projects or plugins. Depending on who I am working with we often have chat open, or a constant email dialog. Sometimes I take a few calls. I spend equal time in Komodo, my editor of choice, as Vi or just in the CLI git-ing it up. I like solving unique problems, and I like to think of myself as a bit of a browser sleuth. 

After I am done with client work I move on to Girl Develop It. This can be anything from coding to answering emails to working on curriculum to interviewing potential teachers. Vanessa and I share a Remember the Milk todo list, and every day I try to knock a little bit off the top. Some days I'm in the zone and I'm knocking things off our list, other days that's Vanessa. We balance each other out pretty well, a great pair.

Throughout the day I am talking to other developers about life and their craft. 

If I'm at New Work City or a community space I've usually had conversations with at least a few keyboard slingers around me. Today no one would shut up about Google+, tomorrow it will be something else. Sometimes a debate about frameworks. Sometimes Kevin Galligan waxes crazy about hating dynamic languages. Sometimes Alex Godin impresses me with the latest thing he's working on. My darling Tony Bacigalupo sometimes wants to chat with a question or some commentary. 

If I'm alone somewhere hacking away it's likely an IM from Jackson Harper inquiring about a Girl Develop It swimsuit calendar, or asking if my quiet protest of Go Daddy is because I don't support their female models contributing to technology, or introducing me to a new technology I hadn't heard of/vice versa (or asking what to get his fiancee for her birthday). It may also be  Scott Reynolds who I bug for Ruby help and always get it (riddled with snark). I can be insufferably inattentive to IM windows however, and consider forgetting a conversation existed the reason to end it. Sorry about that. 

After I am at a point where I feel it's ok to walk away from Girl Develop It related work, I can focus on my personal projects. The shoemaker's shoes, if you will. New design on the blog, new project with a friend, returning some emails, learning a new language... I must admit I rarely get this far. 

Evenings start around 9pm. There is an equal chance I will be out on the town, teaching JavaScript to Girl Develop It students, going to a developer event, or  sitting in a cafe working all night. 

Like tonight:

There are times I get tired of teaching classes, or working on a certain project, or solving the same problem. However, I'm never sick of being a developer or being surrounded by them. This is a great thing because I am got-dang 24 hours a day, and that's how I like it.

For now.  

 

jQuery Tree Traversal Performance Testing

The other day on Twitter I was wondering if anyone had compared the performance on jQuery's Tree Traversal functions as often you are able to locate an element more than one way and are faced with a choice. I put this together on jsPerf, the tests are all similar, if you could run it on your browser that would be wonderful, so we can compare. 

If you have any suggestions on how to make these tests more accurate that would be better, I tried to make them all similar, this is my first experience with jsPerf. 

 

EDIT: changed some of the tests to make sure they are doing the same thing, thanks Rick!

http://jsperf.com/jquery-tree-traversing/4

You're not going to land dates at a hackathon

I, if you don't already know, am a huge fan of alternative ways of getting women into this amazingly exciting field. I had a great lunch the other day with a woman named Elena Silonok, she's pretty much what I want to be when I grow out of my eight colored hair and little kid hands. Not only is she beautiful, but she's brilliant and making the world a better place. Meeting women like her gets me all inspired again and reminds me why I do this in the first place (besides, you know, loving it).

I got this article sent to me in a DM from my friend Amrit Richmond (dropping names like it's my job). I appreciate the attempt by Fast Company to get ladies interested in hackathons, lord knows that we can use it. In the past, even I have expressed the overwhelming abundance of hot guys in software development. However, I need to clear up, that a hackathon is the last place you want to go if you are looking for developers that share your love of ST:TNG (don't judge me, I didn't grow up on the original).

This is a picture of me from the last hackathon I did. Breadpig had an awesome event where we all got to play with legos overnight, and our legos battled each other in the morning. Wait, what, you can't see me you say? Oh, well that's because at this point my eyes are pretty red, my hair looked like something the cat threw up, and to be honest I probably wasn't smelling all that great either. See, I had just been working on this dang little feisty robot for 12 hours in a row. From 7pm to pretty much 7 in the morning. I showed up dead serious, and ready to work.

If you try to show up at one of these things all "heeeeeey, I'm here for the drinks and the small talk" no one will want to work with you. No one else is there to meet people (especially the guys, if they are there to meet anyone it's other guys, or they are extremely illogical in nature). They will smell it on you if you are, and no one wants dead weight on their team.

Why go to a hackathon if you are just going to get smelly and gross and you aren't able to make guys take your Myers-Briggs to see if you're compatible? I can only tell my story. About 3am at the Breadpig Hackathon I took a look up from my laptop to see a bunch of girls that weren't competing talking and giggling with some guys in the corner (this is not a knock on giggling girls, I have been one a few times in my life). I then looked around to see my friend Alexis (and my new friend Danielle) working on their bots, and a whole bunch of guys around them cranking away at theirs. I was super proud and in my mind I said "We're fucking awesome."

That's why you go to a hackathon, for the pride that you can hang, and to be happy in what you built. Now, go forth! Build cool shit! Tell people about it!

Your Idea Isn't Good Enough

I've been hesitant to write this post for a while. I'm a true idealist, and I know that the littlest bit of discouragement can hurt a dream. However, this has been a long time coming, I'm going to try and do it with kid gloves. 

A good idea is not enough. I know no one has thought of a way to network single nurses to doctors who want to have affairs and large payrolls (if you know what I mean). Yes, you are the first one who came up with the concept of sharing only children's birthday parties on a network of school aged children that enjoy horseback riding. While all your friends wouldn't shut up about the new twitter API changes, you were home working on your business plan for the SMS driven app that links construction workers standing on corners with guys in pickup trucks and questionable ethics. None of these things have been done, you are a genius, bravo. 

I can't tell you the horrors I've seen of people getting ripped off playing the start up game. I am not going to bore you with stories about developers who were in the midst of deploying apps they worked months on only to go unpaid and never rewarded. I don't know if it is the Facebook movie, or the amount of capital getting thrown around the market, but every developer I know is getting bombarded with opportunity. I can't tell you the golden ratio of making a Gmail Killer. I can tell you what I've seen, and how best to avoid becoming a roadkill on the superhighway. Buckle up.

The person that will be your CTO for mostly sweat equity is not someone you want building your application. I now live in a world where "CTO" or "Technical Cofounder" is a fancy way of saying "someone in this relationship is being had." On one end you have a person that is investing all the money that they got from selling their grandmother's minivan in a single person that is telling them they are a developing machine that is going to bring them from zero to Mashable with $10,000. On the other hand you have a founder who has happened upon a recent grad who wants to prove themselves, and will work 90 hour weeks until it's obvious to everyone involved that they are in over their heads. 

Founders, the odds are against you that you've found the perfect person to create your app. The developer that is qualified to build an app from the ground up is not running around tech events handing out business cards. They are working for funded companies that respect their knowledge and education enough to give them a full team of people support them.

Developers, someone with a marketing and PR background doesn't know anything about managing a software project. They have no concept of what goes into it, and what is neccessary to make it successful. They don't care that you're architecting, or iterating, or writing unit tests. They want to click the button and see the magic, anything else is overhead and costly. 

 

The developer that tells you "no" is the one you should believe. There is no incentive for us to say "no" or "not possible" or "this will take a very long time" besides saving both of us a lot of headache. The easiest way for me to get you to part with your hard earned cash is to say "This is a fabulous idea! It should take me 6-8 weeks. I will need half up front." If a developer telling you it's a bad idea, or it will take longer than you think,  it's because they are being honest. In all likelyhood they've done this a few times, and they don't want you to get burned. If you are hearing this, instead of moving on to the next developer ask for some feedback on how to make it more feasible. We'd love to tell you. 

No individual is going to have your best interest in mind. Except your mom, and I don't think that's who we're talking about here. The odds of you finding the perfect person to build your empire in this market are akin to your odds of being hit by lighting, at a Tumblr party, while checking into Foursquare. Sometimes there is magic, sometimes there are sparks, but remember what you are asking this person to do. We don't come to your job and say things like "I think it would be great if you could create this ad campaign for 10% of your usual price. If it makes me money I will share it with you! If not, eeeh, at least we tried." or "Can you give me these implants for free? If I make it as a huge Hollywood celebrity I will give you 40% of my royalties and 9% of my groupies." No, we respect what you do and ask you to do the same. 

 

There are teams of people that build applications from the ground up and that's all they do. You need to find them, vet them, talk to the people they've made happy, and pay them to do what they have done many times. Maybe you will hire a firm, maybe you will find a proven, experienced developer and give them the resources to do so. They are used to talking to people with no tech background, holding their hands through the process, and giving them quality products. Check their previous projects, talk to former clients. If you don't have the money to pay a team to build your application, you don't have an application. Maybe you need to cut some features and be realistic about your budget. Maybe you need to start hitting the streets and talking to VCs. Maybe the nest egg you have would be better invested elsewhere. 

 I hope I haven't burst any bubbles, I am not here to tell you not to follow your dreams (both founder and developer). I just think there is a real void in communication here, and a lot of people getting burned. If you want to make your vision a reality don't let anything stop you, just educate yourself on what is out there, and make sure your feet are firmly planted in soil. 

 

Oh yeah, and try to get one of those domains that are a real word but have the dot in a funny place. Like port.ly or stalk.me. I hear those are cool now. 

The Girls are Back In Town

There is something I’ve gotten really excited about lately and it is only just beginning. I’m talking about the new wave of awesome girl tools to hit the web. I’m in the middle of the the biggest petrie dish for startups in the world, New York City (oh yeah, I moved, I love it!). I’ve been watching new ones pop up monthly, companies like Fashism,  Birchbox  and ToVieFor. Conceived by girls, run by girls, built for a mostly female demographic .

My life's dream knocked me full in the face when I saw this (omg, that google search made me find this  I <3  you, Microsoft). I was 17 years old and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: be a part of the community that creates applications like that. However, I learned quickly that apps like that didn’t actually exist. I dreamed of the days when women figured out how to leverage software for their needs and wants. For a long time we’ve had fantasy football apps, miniature train forums, and ways to randomly put your friends into intermural sports teams online. Guys have been doing this for a decade, but now FINALLY, we are tinkering too!

Proud of you, ladies, can’t wait to see what else is in store.    

 

Making the Internet a Better Place

"What's your business model?" The words sprung from my mouth like rhetoric. Like "How are you?" and "Are you ok?" the phrase is a staple I use when discussing some startup or another, which is a semi-recent hobby of mine. While I was getting the elevator pitch during a meeting last week I asked this question, immediately noticing the douchiness behind it when the developer replied, "We don't have one." He went on to explain that they were very proud of their product and wanted to expand their user base before figuring out how to make money off of them. It's funny because I was often hit with the same question when working on Bundl.it, and I would answer "I don't have one, I'm just building a tool to make the internet a better place."

Like it or not we are the curators of the largest compilation of stories, ideas, pictures, and video that has ever existed (I like it a lot, and I bet if you're reading this you do too). Sometimes it's not about squeezing every last cent out of people that enjoy your work. Sometimes it's making life easier for users, or even developers, and not being concerned about what's in it for you until it becomes necessary.

I don't have ads on this blog. I've been approached by maybe a half a dozen companies in the past few months, and my answer has always been the same. I wont put advertisements on my site that are pictures, or images, I will only have ads when this blog gets big enough to attract the advertisers with the least offensive ads, the ones that are small lines of text that don't interrupt your reading experience and are an after thought. Why? I like you guys, and I don't want to pimp you for a penny. I feel like you are a guest here, and I don't want to make a quick buck by making your stay here less pleasing.  I'm trying to add to the value of the web by adding my opinion and thoughts, I hope it helps.

I love money just as much as the next girl (you should see my shoe tower). However, the place in my heart that the interwebs holds compares to no other. I consider it a career goal to make my footprint beneficial.

Join me? This is our internet, let's help each other enjoy it.

et tu, Iron Ruby?

The news of Iron Ruby possibly being euthanaized by Microsoft sincerely surprised me. I have long felt that the Iron projects are a nod to the real developer from a corporation that often panders to the drag and drop community. Pointing resources at an initiative that will never make them money (in a measurable way) caused many of us to believe that there was a part of MS that was inspired to give back to the people that have been building applications and bringing them Windows and SQL Server hosting fees for years. 

This comes on the heels of Microsoft.Data.dll and Visual Studio Light Switch being announced. It's very difficult to get a reputation in the development world as a skilled and knowledgeable contributer when your primary focus is .NET. Many look at us like bubblegum coders, not really able to tread water without our WYSIWYG IDE This type of progression does not help. 

I really hope it is not the intention of MS to phase out Iron Ruby and it is all just rumor and happenstance. I know that either way I will be continuing my pursuit to learn Ruby better and keep filling up my toolbox. I will be keeping a close watch as the rest of this story unfolds. 

In other news Rob Conery is working to rally the troops for a triage mission. If it comes down to it, it will be hard for me to say "If MS doesn't care about keeping this project alive why should I?" However, I do see IR as a valuable resource for diversifying the .NET community. I would love to be a part of this should the gauntlet be thrown.