Code like a mother, like mother only can

Happy Mothers' Day!

You can do anything, Mom. Source: Pixabay

I am not a mother, not even a woman. But I do code. My job is writing code: transforming people's needs into abstract requirements, putting them into perspective of the system I've been given to work with, proving it's not available yet, implementing so that I can no longer prove it, ensure nothing gets broken, deliver, verify delivery. I improve working comfort, culture and style. I divide big problems into manageable chunks and turn them into abstract requirements, then see above. I fight technical debt.

And I'm a husband, and I'm a father, and I'm a brother, and I'm a son. My friends are partners, parents.

A while ago (mere eight years ago) I met mothers-to-be of children around the age of my daughter-to-be at a time. Three years ago we created a project together to get them busy with something new: a coding course for them. We called it "Kury kodowe". "Kura" means hen. "Kura domowa" is a "house hen" - "housewife". I think they all were stay-at-home moms then. Add some fun with the words, add "kod" - "code", turn into plural and presto! "Kury kodowe" - "Code Housewives". We had some fun, girls got bored, we stopped. Recently I got back to it and started transforming it into a different programming language. I don't think I will be translating that one into English but I would like to have a space where I could share my tech ideas, thoughts, findings, experience.

I used to publish such things on my main Steemit account, @breadcentric and recently as @kurykodowe. @codelikeamother is my new account for that purpose, to be used in English.

Yes, you. Source: Pixabay

I looked for the name for a month or so and struggled. "Kury kodowe" did not translate into anything obvious. I looked for "like a mom" and found "When Did Looking “Like a Mom” Become an Insult?" by Sonya Benham on Babble. Next thing, who remembers the add below?

Why "like a girl" is treated like an insult? Why is "like a mom" same? Why "like a mother" is understood as a short for "like a motherducker"? Duck this. My work colleague has an awesome T-shirt: "code like a girl". I decided to try and play on the same theme. Mothers are incredible. Most of ones I know have every needed soft skill and quite a few competencies to become really good at way more things then I could even think of. For instance programming.

In Polish there is a clear distinction between writing to a man or a woman, so I started writing in a way that is clearly intended for a female only audience. It doesn't matter to if it is my audience or not, I wouldn't like it however to sound like if I wanted to write to a male only audience and this is my way to express it. In English we don't have such a thing, I'm afraid. That said I always try to present my technical knowledge and opinions as if I tried to share some knowledge and as if I had to learn from it right after I would forget it (this has helped me in the past). If you find my content useful - please get back to me. If you don't - please get back to me. If you have questions - please get back to me. If you clearly see I don't understand something - please get back to me.

In the past I did share a number of posts about technology:

• I wrote a Minecraft mod: Part 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
• I wrote an unfinished series on setting up a software project infrastructure that I never finished but will eventually have to: Part 0, 1, 2 and then I tried to set up Jenkins, I broke down and spent every single day since then crying in a closet
• And others

What I will be writing about that I haven't mentioned:

• every day security, the way I understand it
• learning tools for kids
• maybe some tutorials - we'll see

You can always visit my main main account, @breadcentric, where I usually write about bread and baking. See you around!

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^{Originally posted on Code Like A Mother. Steem blog powered by ENGRAVE.}