Girl Develop It – San Diego
The Girl Develop It organization has played a HUGE role in my tech career. After I had started an online Ruby class, I realized that maybe I wanted to pursue coding as a career. I knew it would take more education, but I was not sure if I wanted to do it online or in-person. I somehow found out about Girl Develop It (San Diego Chapter), and signed up for my first class: Introduction to HTML and CSS; it was a two day class over the course of a weekend. I loved the class, and even more, I loved the atmosphere in the class: a bunch of gals, helping other gals, learn how to code. Everyone was supportive and friendly. I ended up taking the Intermediate HTML and CSS class too! After I finished Hackbright and was in San Diego for vacation, I took a React class. I am so thankful for all that I learned!
Girl Develop It – San Francisco
The Whiteboarding and Interview Prep class was my first class with the San Francisco Girl Develop It chapter and it did not disappoint! True to form, the teachers were knowledgeable, personable and patient, and the other girls were supportive and engaged.
I wanted to obtain more instruction and assistance with whiteboarding and this workshop was a perfect fit. During the class we reviewed an approach to whiteboarding that was different from what we were taught at Hackbright, and the difference was key for me. What I had taken away from Hackbright was an intense focus on the coding aspect of whiteboarding. Whereas at this workshop the focus was the algorithm aspect of whiteboarding – e.g. coming up with a solution (or solutions) to the problem, testing it and looking at runtimes and optimizations.
During the workshop, the teachers did an amazing job of both reviewing and teaching about an assortment of topics: arrays/lists, dictionaries/hashmaps/objects, space complexity, time complexity, linked lists, trees, queues, stacks and recursion. On top of this, after every group of topics, we paired up with someone and practiced whiteboarding problems related to the topic we just covered. After we finished each whiteboarding session, we discussed the various solutions that we all came up and had someone from the class demonstrate her solution in front of the class.
The very best part? One of the teachers was none other than Jessica Earley, my advisor at Hackbright! Jessica is such a talented engineer; not only is she incredibly knowledgeable, but she has the gift of being able to explain it in a way that makes total sense. On top of it, Jessica always encourages me. I am so grateful that she was my advisor at Hackbright. She’s the best.
When I got home, I felt energized, engaged, enlightened and re-invigorated. It was exactly what I needed, when I needed it.
michdcode 
It was great seeing you too!