In what ways does [crocheting, knitting, cross-stitch, weaving, etc] remind you of writing, reading, and debugging computer programs?
You mentioned the for/while loops, which was the first parallel I thought of. I also like it that different people approach problems differently. You definitely touched on this with your discussion of free-hand crochet. I think there are process knitters and outcome knitters just like there are developers who think it's important to talk about different ways to solve a problem and those who want to just dive in and throw code at the wall until something works.
One of my favorite things about fibre crafts is the idea that two people could walk into a yarn store, even buy the same yarn and then create two totally different objects. Sort of a vector off of that, two people trying to solve the same problem might choose different languages or libraries. Maybe they have different ways of organizing their code, which make it more or less readable to someone else. Maybe one writes a bunch of unit tests and the other names all their variables 'x'. There's just a huge scope for creativity in both.
How would you explain your fibre art craft to a fellow programmer, if you wanted to convince them to give it a try?
I would tell them that knitting or crochet is more productive than their fidget spinner! Sadly, it's less acceptable to knit during meetings at the office (when we maybe go back to the office) than it is to fidget with a fidget toy.
This one is really interesting because I have had co-workers tell me they want to learn or re-learn how to knit or crochet. They say they aren't any good at it so they've picked it up and then dropped it again as a hobby. My response is always to ask them to remember what it was like when they were starting out as a developer. They felt like they didn't know what they were doing...and then they got better and more confident. Same with this. But you get a hat out of it or a scarf.
Any other thoughts?
I was also thinking about the communities I've found in both activities. I live in a fairly big city (Chicago) so that may be part of it, but - pre-COVID - I found lots of people to hang out with to practice both knitting and coding. We often spent Sunday afternoon sitting in the local yarn store for a couple of hours knitting and talking about designers and patterns and life. Then there were the meetups for software to talk about the latest whatever and eat pizza.
Nerds want to nerd, I guess. It doesn't matter what the topic is.
In what ways does [crocheting, knitting, cross-stitch, weaving, etc] remind you of writing, reading, and debugging computer programs?
You mentioned the for/while loops, which was the first parallel I thought of. I also like it that different people approach problems differently. You definitely touched on this with your discussion of free-hand crochet. I think there are process knitters and outcome knitters just like there are developers who think it's important to talk about different ways to solve a problem and those who want to just dive in and throw code at the wall until something works.
One of my favorite things about fibre crafts is the idea that two people could walk into a yarn store, even buy the same yarn and then create two totally different objects. Sort of a vector off of that, two people trying to solve the same problem might choose different languages or libraries. Maybe they have different ways of organizing their code, which make it more or less readable to someone else. Maybe one writes a bunch of unit tests and the other names all their variables 'x'. There's just a huge scope for creativity in both.
How would you explain your fibre art craft to a fellow programmer, if you wanted to convince them to give it a try?
I would tell them that knitting or crochet is more productive than their fidget spinner! Sadly, it's less acceptable to knit during meetings at the office (when we maybe go back to the office) than it is to fidget with a fidget toy.
This one is really interesting because I have had co-workers tell me they want to learn or re-learn how to knit or crochet. They say they aren't any good at it so they've picked it up and then dropped it again as a hobby. My response is always to ask them to remember what it was like when they were starting out as a developer. They felt like they didn't know what they were doing...and then they got better and more confident. Same with this. But you get a hat out of it or a scarf.
Any other thoughts?
I was also thinking about the communities I've found in both activities. I live in a fairly big city (Chicago) so that may be part of it, but - pre-COVID - I found lots of people to hang out with to practice both knitting and coding. We often spent Sunday afternoon sitting in the local yarn store for a couple of hours knitting and talking about designers and patterns and life. Then there were the meetups for software to talk about the latest whatever and eat pizza.
Nerds want to nerd, I guess. It doesn't matter what the topic is.
Good luck with your talk!
Your name or handle
heath3conk