🔦 Spotlight on female coders: gender gap, Women Make 30 day challenge and news from Oculus, Google, and more
Tags: gender, programming, learning, news
Published: 2020-09-28 15:40:20

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title: 🔦 Spotlight on female coders: gender gap, Women Make 30 day challenge and news from Oculus, Google, and more
published: true
description: Spotlight on female coders: gender gap, Women Make 30 day challenge and news from Oculus, Google, and more
tags: #gender #programming #learning #news
//cover_image: https://direct_url_to_image.jpg
---
Hi there, how is September treating you? This is a copy of our latest newsletter edition which is dedicated to celebrating female coders. It&#39;s about time, if you ask us! 

We have a brand new [infographic](https://www.developereconomics.com/blog/infographic-gender-gap-in-programming) shedding the light on the gender gap in programming. Feel free to share it on social if you want to start a healthy discussion backed by data. 

Use it to urge the community to bring balance in the dev classrooms and work spaces. We&#39;re also putting the spotlight on several inspirational female coders you can follow on Twitter. There&#39;s no secret reason as to why we chose to spotlight them in this issue. Their content is just fun and engaging! Your suggestions on how else we can support developers of all stripes are welcome - just leave a comment below! 

Female coders you can follow:

[@EmmaBostian](https://twitter.com/EmmaBostian)
[@ASpittel](https://twitter.com/ASpittel?)
[@ctrlshifti](https://twitter.com/ctrlshifti?)
[@sarah\_edo](https://twitter.com/sarah_edo)
[@krstnfx](https://twitter.com/krstnfx)
[@kefimochi](https://twitter.com/kefimochi?) 


**Dev Resources &amp; Articles** 

[Just F\*ing Ship It. 3rd edition [2020].](https://womenmake.com/30-day-challenge-2020) Women Make is holding a 30-Day Challenge. The concept is simple: 30 days to build and launch something. Can be anything. It doesn&#39;t have to be a tech product. Can be with code or without code. [WOMENMAKE] 

[Building widgets in SwiftUI.](https://swiftwithmajid.com/2020/09/09/building-widgets-in-swiftui/) Learn all about building and updating widgets with SwiftUI. [SWIFTWITHMAJID] 

[6 practical tricks every Python developer should have.](https://thenextweb.com/readme/2020/09/23/6-practical-tricks-every-python-developer-should-have/) Python has a vast array of built-in features that can help you write code that is elegant, concise, and expandable, the kind of characteristics you expect from a professional programmer. [THENEXTWEB] 

[Everything about null in JavaScript.](https://dmitripavlutin.com/javascript-null/) In this post, you&#39;ll learn everything about null in JavaScript: its meaning, how to detect it, the difference between null and undefined, and why using null extensively creates code maintenance difficulties. [DMITRIPAVLUTIN] 

[You really don&#39;t need all that JavaScript, I promise.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1L2WgXu2JY&amp) Stuart Langridge - Member of the Web Standards Project&#39;s DOM Scripting Task Force, Podcaster, Developer and Author talks about how you maybe shouldn&#39;t rely on JS as much as you&#39;re told to, and offers some practical tips. [YOUTUBE] 

[Why every developer should become a writer.](https://dev.to/khaosdoctor/why-every-developer-should-become-a-writer-1fim) Lucas Santos hopes that, with these tips, you will be inspired to write more and share your content. [DEV.TO] _Why not write for our Developer Economics blog? Get in touch if you have knowledge you&#39;d like to to share.

[Top 10 skills to include in your IT CV.](https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Top-10-skills-to-include-in-your-IT-CV)Find out what skills and keywords you should include on your CV to stand out as an IT professional in a competitive market. [COMPUTERWEEKLY] 

[How to validate pull requests in AWS and make code reviews easier.](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/validate-pull-requests-in-aws/) When a project grows, and developers are pushing code frequently, there is always a chance that working pull requests might break somewhere. [FREECODECAMP] 

[Farewell, Flat. Get Your Apps Ready for Galaxy Z Fold2.](https://developer.samsung.com/sdp/blog/en-us/2020/09/02/farewell-flat-get-your-apps-ready-for-galaxy-z-fold2)
 
Check out the latest documentation for foldable devices and learn how to take advantage of Flex mode, ensure App Continuity, and control layouts with Multi-Active Window. Then test your app on a real device in the Remote Test Lab. [DEVELOPER.SAMSUNG] 

**Our Free Resources**

[NEW: How close are you to an average developer?](https://developereconomics.com/resources/graphs) Our graphs give you insights into global trends based on the fresh data from our Q2 2020 survey.

**Industry News** 

[SHA launches campaign to avoid exclusion among young and vulnerable groups during COVID-19 crisis.](https://3rdsha.causevox.com/) Social Hackers Academy, a Greek non profit organisation, is providing free online coding courses to people within vulnerable groups. The aim is promoting integration and offering a stable future in the tech industry. To maintain the scholarships model, SHA is launching a crowdfunding campaign to support 60 new students on the next online courses, dividing each cohort in two. Students from vulnerable groups, such as youth, long term unemployed people, migrants, asylum seekers or refugees can apply for these scholarships. You can support SHA activity by donating to their crowdfunding campaign [here](https://3rdsha.causevox.com/). 

[The Oculus Quest&#39;s unofficial app store gets backing from Oculus founder.](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/the-oculus-quests-unofficial-app-store-gets-backing-from-oculus-founder-palmer-luckey) Luckey, who has backed a handful of VR startups as an angel investor since departing Facebook, said that SideQuest&#39;s software followed in the footsteps of early developer products that his team had been building out before the Facebook acquisition and was promoting a more open Oculus platform. &quot;No HMD manufacturer should have a stranglehold on the VR ecosystem or unilateral control over what people run on their VR headsets, and when I look at Sidequest, I see the spirit of Oculus Share,&quot; Luckey said in a statement. [TECHCRUNCH] 

[Top 20 iOS homescreen customization apps reach 5.7M installs after iOS 14 release.](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/top-20-ios-homescreen-customization-apps-reach-5-7m-installs-after-ios-14-release/) Remarkably, the three most-downloaded apps — Widgetsmith, Color Widgets and Photo Widget — account for 95% of these 5.7 million downloads. That indicates that the rest of the app customization market today is much smaller. But this could still change over time if more apps embrace the trend and expand to include innovative and unique features. [TECHCRUNCH]

[Announcing DevFest 2020.](https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/announcing-devfest-2020.html) On October 16-18, thousands of developers from all over the world are coming together for DevFest 2020, the largest virtual weekend of community-led learning on Google technologies. [DEVELOPERS.GOOGLEBLOG] 

[JDK 15: The new features in Java 15.](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3534133/jdk-15-the-new-features-in-java-15.html) Highlights of JDK 15 include text blocks, hidden classes, a foreign-memory access API, the Z Garbage Collector, and previews of sealed classes, pattern matching, and records. This is just a short-term release, only to be supported with Oracle Premier Support for six months until JDK 16 arrives next March. [INFOWORLD]

[Google expands its Flutter development kit to Windows apps.](https://venturebeat.com/2020/09/23/google-expands-its-flutter-development-kit-to-windows-apps/) According to Google, Flutter has been used to build more than 100,000 apps for Android on the Google Play Store alone, including from big-name companies such as eBay. As it continues to open support to more form factors, its uptake should rise accordingly. Google said its own data shows that more than half of all Flutter developers use Windows already, so offering native desktop support for Microsoft&#39;s omnipresent operating system makes a great deal of sense. [VENTUREBEAT] 

[Upcoming changes to CI/CD Minutes for free tier users on GitLab.com.](https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2020/09/01/ci-minutes-update-free-users/) If 400 minutes is not enough, uses can purchase additional CI/CD minutes at $10 per 1000 minutes or upgrade to a paid tier. Also, they can bring their own runners. [GITLAB] 

[Introducing Swift on Windows.](https://swift.org/blog/swift-on-windows/) The Swift project is introducing new downloadable Swift toolchain images for Windows! These images contain development components needed to build and run Swift code on Windows. For over a year now, there has been a significant endeavour to port Swift to Windows in conjunction with the developer community at swift.org. The Windows support is now at a point where early adopters can start using Swift to build real experiences on this platform. [SWIFT] 

Do you have an article that you'd like us to share in our next newsletter? Let us know below, and if you'd like to subscribe to our bi-weekly editions, head on over to our [website.](https://developereconomics.com/signup)