We all know and love Ruby, but there is a large target audience of new programers who haven't discovered it yet. As experts in Ruby, we need to be able to mentor a new thriving generation of Ruby programmers. Most of us are familiar with the push the past few years for everyone to learn programming (even Mayor Bloomberg got in on the action!)
In this talk, Rachel will discuss how experienced developers can better approach newcomers and create a better community. The talk will cover the different motivations that novices come into her classroom with and how to best approach questions from rookies. With a better understanding of how people learn and how to teach, we have better tools to equip ourselves and as a side-effect, improve our own understanding of a programming concept through the fresh eyes of someone new to Ruby. The goal is to create a welcoming and thus more effective learning environment, be it in a classroom, the office, a meet up, or online.
This talk comes from my experience in teaching at General Assembly in NYC, running a Railsbridge, co-organzing Meetups, and mentoring various students and collegues over the years.
The main take-away is that there is no one way to introduce someone into our community, but by expressing empathy and support, we can help one more cool person over that initial hurdle in creating their Ruby or Rails application.