• Read more about Closing the Gender Gap: Women who Code

It is no secret that the tech industry is heavily saturated with males. It has been fascinating to read recent studies on females in the industry as well as the success females have had coding. It is common to see female presence as graphic designers but not necessarily as developers, I never grew up aspiring to be a developer, it just happened over time.

Since I was a kid I remember my art teachers saying that I should pursue a career in visual arts, more specifically they told me to follow more of a commercial career. I loved to write, mostly poetry, so graphic design for me was a perfect combination of words + graphics, both things I truly love. I pursued my passion and graduated college as a graphic designer, and since then I've "converted" into a front-end developer.

I was not trained to be a front-end developer but I started to code my own projects because it was tiring as a designer to have developers change the vision I had of my layouts. I have been coding for the past 15 years and wouldn’t imagine going back to a designers position. I just prayed that the programming would respect the original look and feel... Which wasn't the case very often! I think my success has been in part due to my attention to detail, or at least that's what my bosses over the years have told me. I think it's by human nature that women have a sense of detail that most of the male population do not have, nor do they pay attention to it, that is why female developers have high success writing code.

What are your thoughts on women who code?

• Read more about Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Code...

No matter what level of developer you are, at some point you will have the underrated joy of inheriting a legacy software project. And since we're fortunate enough to work in such a fast-paced community and ecosystem, "legacy" really encapsulates any piece of software more than a month or two old. Often though, we don't have time to appreciate how our ancestors used to write Ruby back in the days of Rails 2.3, or even (gasp) 2.1 — we need to get right to work. It's at this point that the nefarious Jabberwocky method can rear its ugly head.

The Jabberwock in the Room

When we first adopt a project, some of the language may seem like gibberish. Let's say we encounter this snippet of code in some controller:

@sword = VorpalSword.new @sword.snicker_snack! 

Looking at this code, we might expect to open up the VorpalSword model and find:

def snicker_snack!    Jabberwock.destroy_all end 

Unfortunately, in this all-too-contrived example, the VorpalSword class simply doesn't have that method!

The Jaws That Bite, the Claws That Catch!

Stuff and nonsense! Now we'll have to dig through and see if we can find a way to uncover this method. Let's start doing some sleuthing...

• Maybe there's a method_missing in the VorpalSword class

• Does VorpalSword inherit from anything?

• Hmm...does it include or extend any modules?

• It's probably just a plugin. Let's check the vendor/ folder...

• Okay, maybe not. How about something under the lib/ folder...

• Is "snicker_snack!" a gem?? Who would name a gem "snicker_snack!"

• Did someone overwrite method_missing in ActiveRecord::Base?!

• That's it, I'm switching to Scala!

Final Uffish Thoughts

Abstraction is a fantastic technique - we love to keep our software DRY and happy, but occasionally it can lead to code obfuscation. So before you go galumphing back to your project, take a few minutes and follow these suggestions to keep your code readable, and avoid those Jabberwocky methods:

• Using modules is a self-documenting way to extend the functionality of your classes. If you do decide to use a shared library to cover some functionality, try to use modules rather than re-opening classes.

• Be very careful when you use metaprogramming techniques like method_missing, or dynamic code creation. Writing a lot of crafty methods using a few lines of Ruby can be lots of fun, but sometimes a little bit of duplication can improve the readability of your code tenfold.

• Lastly, documentation and tidy code is important. Try to organize your methods, and definitely drop a comment into the class if you know a shared library will be mutating it down the road.

Be sure to keep these tips in mind, and you'll find whoever inherits the code after you will chortle in his joy.