Kira Howe

Posts42 entries

December 7, 2020

BarCamp Philly 2020

I went to a virtual conference this weekend called BarCamp Philly and had a really good time. The way they ran the conference was new to me. They somehow made the experience feel enjoyable and inspiring, which I thought was really impressive because I've had a hard time getting excited about virtual conferences this year. I've been to a dozen or so since everything got cancelled back in the spring, and this was the first time I stayed until the end and left feeling more energized than drained, fired up with lots of new ideas and inspiration and even a new acquaintance, which is super exciting to me because I find it so hard to meet new people during a pandemic. […11 min read]

post#conferences#discord#virtual-conferences

October 30, 2020

Christianese For Outsiders

When I started hanging in out in religious circles in my late twenties for the first time in my life, I had a lot to learn. Not just about the diversity and depth of different religions, but also about the culture. There are certain words that mean different things in a religious context, and other ones that don't really exist outside of one at all. This a brief overview of some of the language I've picked up over the past few years. These definitions are all based on actual personal experiences from about two dozen different churches/synagogues/groups, so of course as such are entirely anecdotal. This isn't meant to be an academic or universal description of religious terminology, just some new words and ways language is used differently in religious contexts that I found interesting and which might be useful if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. […4 min read]

post#church#faith#religion

October 15, 2020

Journalism Is Important

This is the first post in a series on things the 2020 pandemic has taught me. It's been by far the weirdest and hardest thing I've experienced so far in my life. It was a real struggle to figure out how to operate in this new kind of world, but after about half a year I feel like I'm finally starting to get my bearings. Some days feel normal again, and I can mostly do the things I used to enjoy before the pandemic hit. Now that I have some presence of mind back I realized the experience has actually taught me several important things. The first is that journalism is important. […4 min read]

post#journalism#pandemic#society

September 16, 2020

An Atheist Tries Religion

I grew up as an outsider to religion. I never considered it a worthwhile pursuit and spent quite a few years as an outspoken critic. As an adult I began to explore it for myself, and I now have what I would count as a spiritual life. I still find most of what religions teach very hard to believe, but I've also found a lot of value in them. My secular education left me desperately unprepared for the hardships of adulthood and, like many people who turn to religion, when life sent me seeking answers I ended up in church. Spoiler alert: I didn't find any answers, but I did find wisdom and traditions that I now believe have great potential. […10 min read]

post#faith#personal#religion

September 2, 2020

The Life You Can Save

What are our ethical obligations to each other? It's a complicated question. Living in a civilised society implies abiding by a set of shared rules. Some are explicit like laws and contracts, some are implicit like cultural norms, and some are disputed. Whether we have an obligation to care for others, and if so to what extent, often ends up being debated as a political issue, but at its core it's a philosophical question. […10 min read]

post#books#effective-altruism#ethics

August 3, 2020

December 10, 2019

Searching for Sunday

What is the point of going to church? I ask myself this question weekly. I didn't grow up going to any sort of regular religious services, but I'm becoming increasingly religious as an adult. I'm inclined to think that church should be a part of my faith journey, but mostly because going to church is just what religious people do. I've never understood the point, and have experienced quite a mixed bag of emotions venturing in and out of a handful of different faith communities over the past couple of years. […7 min read]

post#books#church#faith

January 17, 2017

The Pragmatic Programmer

This is a book by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas about programming, but not in any particular language. It’s about all the other things that go along with programming, beyond just writing code. It’s a perfect book for beginners or people who don’t have a lot of experience working on a huge code base. You can learn pretty quickly how to write code that works, but writing code that is easy to read and maintain is whole other process. This book is a great place to start if you’re writing code that runs but is still sort of a mess. I feel like a lot of the advice would be common sense to someone with 5+ years of programming experience, but for beginners with a basic understanding of software development and coding this book is a perfect place to start learning how to think about the big picture. […5 min read]

post#books#pragmatic-programmer#reading

November 25, 2016

September 5, 2016

What your rails app does behind the scenes

Ever wondered what your rails app is really doing? When I first started learning Rails it seemed like magic. I finally got started building some rails apps and couldn't believe I could get one up and running in 5 minutes. What is this magic? Needless to say there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I was living in blissful ignorance, building away and not worrying about how it all worked until it didn't anymore. When the error messages stopped making sense, I realized I should probably dig a little deeper and see what Rails' magic is made of. You don't have to be able to rebuild Rails or even add to it, but understanding it is at least a start and, IMO, important if you're going to try to build with it, if only because it makes debugging so much simpler. I've still got a long way to go, but these are some notes from my first encounter with Rails' machinery. […6 min read]

post#mvc#rails#web-development