kchodorow

Hello, Glass

On Friday, I got Glass, which is pretty cool so far. I got to “bring a guest,” so Andrew and I went over to the Glass studio in Chelsea Market after work. I had been there before for a workshop on designing Glassware (or, as I prefer to call them, Glapplications), so I knew thatContinue reading “Hello, Glass”

Davy Jones’ Freezer

Last weekend I participated in The Arbitrary Gamejam #5, with the theme “Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead.” I came up with “Davy Jones Freezer,” where you’re an ice cream transport that needs to get through a minefield to deliver ice cream to an island. This wasn’t as tight a game as The Little Volcano,Continue reading “Davy Jones’ Freezer”

Getting Better All the Time via Code Review

I read a great blog called Ask a Manager, which recently posted a question that I think had more of a technical than business solution: [New coworker’s] HTML and CSS work are terrible. This is his first “real” job out of college, so I understand that he has some catching up to do as farContinue reading “Getting Better All the Time via Code Review”

Scratches & Bruises

Last week, I volunteered at an NYU event (hosted by my old club!) to teach high school girls how to program. It totally changed my mind about what to use to teach kids how to program: they should start with Scratch. It probably helped that one of Scratch’s creators, Tammy Stern, introduced it. In aContinue reading “Scratches & Bruises”

User Support

On my last post, Jaime asked: How the whole “Hacker News MongoDB random bashing” situation was dealt with from inside? There is a lot of MongoDB-hate out there, and I guess that it has to be difficult from an emotional point of view (especially when so many silly comments are made) What I found theContinue reading “User Support”

The High Ground in Low Country

Part of MongoDB’s company philosophy was not to trash-talk any of our competitors, no matter what. If we were asked, we should describe what the other solutions’ strengths and weaknesses were, and what good use cases would be. My coworkers researched the other databases out there and gave presentations on them, so we’d all beContinue reading “The High Ground in Low Country”

The Little Volcano that Could

This weekend, I participated in The Arbitrary Game Jam, a once-a-month game jam with randomly-chosen topics. My entry was The Little Volcano that Could, a turn-based strategy game where you’re a little pool of lava in a big scary world. The jam started at 10pm on Friday night, at which point I was at aContinue reading “The Little Volcano that Could”

MongoSF

I flipped to the next slide. “You can think of MapReduce like a chicken… ” I couldn’t think of the verb. “Like…” I looked out at the audience and tried to concentrate. What was the verb for what a chicken did to create eggs? It felt like my brain was at a standstill, all thatContinue reading “MongoSF”

The Joy of Programming

Last weekend I volunteered at Black Girls Code, an organization that encourages black girls to enter STEM fields. I was a teaching assistant for the “Build a Webpage in a Day” workshop, which basically covered some HTML and a tiny bit of CSS. The problem is, HTML isn’t very interesting. After a few hours someContinue reading “The Joy of Programming”

Speed Mentoring

On Thursday, I did a “Speed Mentoring” event at Google, where a Barnard & Columbia woman had five minutes to ask a Googler questions and then we’d move on to the next student. It was an odd format for mentoring, but I think by the end I had a useful set of quick advice forContinue reading “Speed Mentoring”