This forum keeps showing up when I Google questions, and there's a newbie section, so I figured I'd join.

My name is really Rebekah. I'm 17, live in Iowa, and I'm in the middle of earning an AAS in Programming at my community college. I know, I'm weird... a teenage girl halfway through a programming degree. Kind of a long story.

I'm familiar with several computer languages but I don't feel competent enough to say I "know" them. Mostly these are the languages I've had the opportunity to take classes on, and the Microsoft Machine has clamped down pretty hard around here. It's most of what they teach. I've had a little C#, a little Java, extensive amounts of VB (it was free college credits), and I did learn HTML and CSS out of an O'Reilly book when I was 13. (A bit outdated now.) I've tinkered a bit, starting to learn Python and C on my own at different points but not getting very far because I've been busy with other things.

I don't really know any one language in depth well, although hopefully I can change that soonish. People hear all the stuff I've taken classes in and they think I'm some kind of expert programmer... that's silly. Knowing the basics of several languages isn't equivalent to knowing one really well. Having been in a few relationships does not qualify you to be a marriage counselor. You know? So if someone's thinking that--don't think that.

I'm so sick of Visual Studio. I want to learn the languages of open-source, not just Microsoft's babies. So it's back to self-teaching and the ability to choose tools that don't try to write code for me. I know I should learn to use those tools, they probably save time in certain circumstances... I guess. There's probably an open-source IDE out there that I'll find and like one day. I've been experimenting with the code editors Linux offers. Emacs is all right--I haven't really learned to use it yet--but vi still scares me. There's always gedit, I guess. I'll have to explore its customization options later, like whether it'll show me line numbers and stuff.

I'm in a Linux class now. I think the teacher is an actual hacker, or at least someone who really knows her stuff. So far, the book has mostly covered a lot of the stuff I've learned by tinkering; I guess I didn't realize how quickly I'd been learning on my own. But I think it's about caught up to me now we're a few chapters in.

I want to contribute to open source and answer people's programming questions and be competent enough to help make cool stuff that isn't pinned down by restrictive legalese. I sympathize with hacker ideals and hope to join the culture. I guess I've been in sort of a low-grade larval stage for quite a while, but I've been hampered by the complications of American public schooling... and believe me, this was a big enough hamper to hold an army's laundry. Friggin' PHBs running those schools...

Anyway, that's me. I should be doing homework.

Hello Rebekah, welcome to LQ!


It is very inspiring to hear your tale, more women are needed in the FLOSS community.

Keep up the good work!

ditto

Welcome to LQ. You are clearly very smart for your age and are well on your way to a career in programming. I wish you luck.

You should know one language in depth. The exact language depends on what you want to accomplish. Knowing lots of languages is very useful as well. I know that learning about other languages has exposed me to new concepts and programming styles that have helped me in languages I already knew. I'm not a programmer by profession, but I know C and bash well.

Welcome to LQ, GNU, Linux and free thought!

There are GNU/Linux IDEs, but I would encourage you to try your hand all the way down at the basics - shell, filesystem and your brain as top level organizing agent!

That will put you in direct touch with all the essentials, make all the wonderful Unix/Linux utulities immediately available to you and give you most versatile skill set in the least time if you are smart and willing to work at it initially. You seem to fit that description!

Afterward, if you prefer a GUI or emacs-like IDE environment you will already know your way around the tool set and nothing much will be hidden from you by acquired IDE habits.

My own development environment consists of tmux for multiplexed shells, urxvt for unicode terminal and vim for editor - all should be available in your distro of choice. I organize each project's structure according to my own habits and manage some rather large projects in parallel - all without an IDE, and wouldn't have it any other way! Just a suggestion, but one I think may be valuable to someone like yourself!

Good luck!

but you work in outer space


dual boot
OpenSUSE is a nice stable OS
or Debian 8 ( i hate gnome 3 so i run kde on debian and suse )
ScientificLinux 6 has Gnome2 ( THAT I LIKE )

or

install MinGW on windows and use gcc and/or "blodeshed's Devc++"

in 2001 i ran mingw and Cygwin and Visual studio on XP

believe it or not but learning to use Autotools and gcc is WAY nicer that Visual studio
but if you need an IDE most distros have something that is Default

Eclipse is nice and so is QT creator for using the QT based GUI's




find a program that YOU like and is related to something you like
a hobby ?

for me it was SPACE and the Voyager missions
i got into working with that imaging data

Spot the trekie ...

Hi Rebekah

Lots of good links in the signatures in your replies.

Since being self taught mostly.

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Slackware-Links

Howdy from the scooter tramp.

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys!

I've heard of STEM, but FLOSS? Is that something about dentists? Silly acronyms.

Girls are definitely a real minority around here. I'd say we're about 5 of the tech students I see. But the "boys' club" has been treating me very well, apart from a jerk or two. There is one teacher whose classes I won't take any more, because I refuse to pay him to make his little below-the-radar derogatory comments at me every day (and then he started gossiping about me after I didn't sign up for his classes), and I'm pretty annoyed at my college for not taking my complaint about him seriously. He will remain nameless here. But everyone else has been awesome.

My guy friends are cool with me as I am. They don't feel threatened by my intelligence--which nearly everyone in high school had been--probably because they're willing to accept that a teenage girl with a blue pixie cut even could be intelligent. These are guys who grew up reading about Hermione Granger, and they don't seem to care that a chick can program better than they can. They just accept that it's my specialty and they have their own, like web design or game design or hardware or networking, which I'm not so good at (especially hardware and especially especially networking). Nerd guys are just really accepting and also willing to get into conversations about Ender's Game and Death Note and Harry Potter and Pokmon. And they're maybe a little protective of me, too. It's kind of sweet actually. You should have heard them in the situation with that teacher. The one guy who was in the class with me called out the teacher a few times when he was rude to me, and when I eventually told the others about why I wasn't taking any of his classes, I had to turn down some very colorful insult suggestions they had for him. :P

Also, I never got invited to go see 50 Shades of Grey. That's a plus for me in any friend group.

free/libre/open-source software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_a...software#FLOSS

but it can be used for the teeth as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_floss