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I'm so glad I'm going first! I was really nervous. It's super nice to be back here. I actually grew up in Chester and spent two and a half years there, so the UK holds such a special place in my heart. I feel like I'm in downtown ABY; it's amazing!
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My name is Linda Liukas. I'm a children's book author, illustrator, and a super mediocre programmer. I am also a business school dropout. I come from Finland, specifically Helsinki. You know, Scandinavian people tend to be quite self-deprecating. The only thing I feel truly confident saying is that I'm a dropout.
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As Simon mentioned, I was one of the co-founders of Rails Girls, which was my first experience in software craftsmanship back in 2009. The movement spread like wildfire! Today, Rails Girls has been established in over 227 cities around the world, from Amman to Australia, from Belo Horizonte to Berlin, and even in Ukrainian cities that I can’t even pronounce. It all started as a weekend event in Helsinki, and I never imagined it would grow so much. It was something I wanted to do for my friends.
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Then, there was the Ruby community, an incredibly warm and welcoming group of people who said, "Yeah, let's spread this everywhere in the world," and that has been an amazing ride! I worked for a few years at Codecademy in New York, and I held onto the startup ethos even when I decided to move back to Finland to be closer to my family.
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So I thought, where does the most scalable change in the world happen? Surely it's not in dating applications or dinner applications. The most scalable change happens when you're four years old. If we can change the perception that a four-year-old has about the world, we can create a totally different generation of adults.
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That’s when I decided to become a children's book author. There were a few problems with this decision: first, I wasn't an author; I had never drawn before, and I still considered myself a mediocre programmer. I had no PhD in early childhood pedagogy or even in computer science. But I belong to the Jeff Atwood school of thought, where repetition is king.
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So, I started drawing. I figured that drawing is like any other skill; it's all about mechanical repetition. If you draw a thousand circles, eventually your circles will get better. These are some of the first pictures from Hello Ruby, which I started back around 2009 or 2010, when I was teaching myself programming. I encountered all these words like object-oriented programming and garbage collection, and I thought, "What is this?"
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I had this little guide on my journey; she was six years old and named Ruby. She would explain all of these concepts to me. Some people see numbers as colors; I started to view the world of technology as stories. It really helped that I had the Rails Girls community around me, creating a weird reality distortion bubble where I felt confident that I could write a children's book about programming without actually knowing how to program or draw.
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So they would send me pictures and even a plush toy from Belo Horizonte once. I thought, "Maybe there's something here!" The pictures started to improve. I imagined a world around Ruby where she had friends: a beautiful snow leopard who doesn't want to play with the other kids because they are too messy, friendly Androids, and the Linux Penguin.
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I decided to create whimsical adventures, and I thought, "Okay, I'm going to make this happen!" I have all these amazing Ruby friends around the world who will support me. At that time, Kickstarter was gaining popularity, so I launched my project there, asking for $10,000 to publish the first round of books.
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I was thinking about all of you programmers who have kids and want to share the colorfulness and excitement of programming. Unexpectedly, I received $380,000 worth of pre-orders in just a month. During the first 24 hours, the project gathered over $100,000. I still don't know if that was the best or worst day of my life; I remember crawling under my bed, feeling overwhelmed, and thinking, "I have no idea what I'm doing."
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This whole endeavor was quite messy—it was just an idea. I had a bunch of Tumblr pictures I'd made, but there was no structure or a resonant big idea about what I truly wanted to accomplish. I had to adapt quickly to make this happen, and this is essentially the story of the past year, the work I've been engaged in, delivering on the promise of creating a whimsical entryway to the world of programming.
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I came up with three principles of programming, which I wanted to build the entire universe of little Ruby around, and I will share those principles soon. By the way, all the exercises mentioned here are also available on my website for free download, where you can see what other kids have created. Here's a little girl who password-protected her door with a tiny computer. I want you all to be like Alice with me today: take the red pill and fall deep, deep down inside the computer.
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This is where I started: if we all agree that the future important languages will be English, Chinese, and programming languages like JavaScript or Ruby or Python, maybe we shouldn't focus solely on teaching grammar. Instead, we should teach poetry classes. When I went to school to learn Finnish, I didn’t just learn about grammar and tenses; I also read essays and poems and learned how to write my own articles.
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Learning to program should encompass a wide array of different concepts as well. Little girls often don't realize that they are not supposed to like computers. When I was a girl, I thought I didn’t like computers, associating them with being introverted, scary, and boring. But the girls today don't know that they are 'not supposed' to like computers; they are brilliant at focusing on things, telling amazing stories, and being precise. We need to reinvent the curriculum of code to teach programming in a way that resonates with them.
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I want to teach them concepts before they even learn how to write a JavaScript array or Ruby hash. They need to learn how to break down big problems into smaller pieces, and they should also learn about the concept of loops. Anyone who has completed a free meal on a free course has gone through an algorithm in one way or another—planning step-by-step instructions to solve a problem.
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For example, anyone who has had a dance competition has effectively used loops. The point is, there happen to be various engaging ways to teach these concepts. When I talk to programmers, they often recognize two types of joys in programming. First is the intellectual pleasure of creating a beautiful abstraction or function, leaving you feeling idealistic and happy. The other type is visceral joy when you taste the feeling of making the computer obey your commands. It's almost a tangible form of joy, and this is play.
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To truly unlock this understanding of play, I turned to those who understand it best: Sesame Street. It's remarkable that they've produced 43 seasons of quality children’s content that is both fun and educational. They emphasize the paramount importance of play for our social, cognitive, and physical well-being.
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Another company that I think many of us loved growing up is Lego, which identifies five types of play: physical play, play with objects, symbolic play, pretend and socio-dramatic play, and games with rules. Yet, when we think about programming, we often only consider the last type, games with rules. Lego also explores various motivations for play, including achievement-based, social, and immersion motivations.
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Yet, when teaching programming, for some reason, we often restrict ourselves to this narrow view of progress, power, and optimization, overlooking the collaboration, exploration, and joy that so many programmers experience. Suddenly, I had the vocabulary I was searching for—this was the kind of approach I wanted to embrace, one that encompasses all these facets.
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So, let’s talk about those three principles: playfulness, rules, and curiosity. The first principle involves asking the question, "What if?" Entire industries have been built around this very question. For instance, spreadsheets emerged from this inquiry, leading to the modern finance world.
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I believe it’s crucial to illustrate the vibrancy and playfulness of computing. One thing I dislike is when laypeople say programming is just people sitting silently in front of computers. What happens inside programmers' heads or the interactions between them and their devices contains a culture and vibrancy often lost on the general public.
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I want to show the happy and humorous events that take place within the programming community. Little Ruby is a girl who doesn’t merely function as a computer; at times, she thinks like one. For example, when I instruct Ruby to get dressed for school, she complies but forgets to remove her pajamas since I didn’t specify that. Similarly, when I tell her to clean her toys, she does so but leaves her pens and papers behind because, in her mind, those aren't toys.
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Six-year-olds feel relieved when they see Ruby's logic, and parents often feel frustrated by it. This principle also applies to the most fundamental aspects of computers—thinking of binary logic in a fun way instead of just as numbers. Ruby is quite specific with her wardrobe: on Mondays she wears red and green, on Wednesdays she avoids yellow, and on Fridays she creates her own rules.
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Ruby understands that sometimes big problems are just smaller ones combined, and that if you tackle issues bit by bit, you can achieve anything. The second principle revolves around rules—asking how something functions. Many people perceive computers as black boxes that shouldn't be tampered with or explored.
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But technology isn't so mysterious; it consists of real people creating tangible things. To foster the next generation of innovators, we must equip kids with skills to inquire about how things work. Ruby understands that if she wants to make cupcakes, she needs to deconstruct the problem; altering ingredients will yield different results. This abstraction aids in understanding logic.
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The third principle is about curiosity—asking the question, "Why?" It saddens me that we’ve lost sight of computers being born from poetry and practicality. Ada Lovelace, the daughter of a mathematician and a poet, embodied this connection. Somewhere along the way, we began viewing computers as soulless machines.
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When I work with children, I start by showing them pictures of various objects, asking which one is a computer. They often overlook the truth. It's fascinating to explore the idea that items such as collars on dogs can house computers, leading to dialogues about how technology is integrated into our everyday lives.
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For instance, when I share how historical computers were immense machines and that future computers will become intricately small, there's a sparkle in their eyes as they start to think about the possibilities. I love sharing that in Japan, toilets have now become computers, illustrating how wondrous and innovative technology can be.
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We instill kids’ curiosity about topics like how combustion engines work, but when they want to know about algorithms or digital interactions, we adults often become surprisingly vague or dismissive, resorting to calling it magic or complicated. The truth is that technology developed rapidly, and the talented computer scientists who have built remarkable things in the past two decades have also created layers of abstraction that leave consumers uninformed.
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In our workshops, we build computers with kids to help them understand components like CPUs and RAM. They learn what happens when they program actions, such as why viruses can affect computer functionality and how to design interfaces—essentially hands-on knowledge about their digital worlds.
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One of my favorite stories is about a little boy who designed a button to print coloring pages but quickly moved on to envisioning printing real Legos. It’s these imaginative ideas that symbolize the creativity of children. There's another instance with a girl wanting to be a dolphin doctor; through our discussions, she designed a dolphin health application, showing that with the right guidance, kids can channel their passions into technological creations.
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Then, there’s a boy, age six, who dreams of being mission control for astronauts. Donning oversized headphones, he’s created an intergalactic navigation application, demonstrating how these kids will experience technology differently. These imaginative endeavors will shape their futures in innovative ways.
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In conclusion, none of this is really new. Computer science is thrilling because it links to historical figures like Alan Turing, who envisioned child-like machines for artificial intelligence, and Seymour Papert, who suggested teaching kids to produce and create rather than calculate prime numbers.
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Then there's Alan Kay, with his vision of a hackable iPad from the 70s—these are creative ideas that connect storytelling with learning. There are great books for slightly older kids and we should appreciate works like the 'Poignant Guide to Ruby' that excited many to explore programming, and all of this hinges on the importance of passion and imagination.
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This is why we need storytellers—people who understand that technology is fundamentally human. Programmers often find it difficult to explain that code is written for humans and not just for computers. The essence of technology is humanity, acknowledging that a computer once defined a person who could calculate with precision.
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Historically, technology combined tools and skills necessary to make things happen. This entwining between humans and technology means we need various voices to share this narrative. Each of us harbors childhood tales that shape our adult perspectives, just as my Scandinavian stories have influenced who I am today. I dreamt of being a world builder, waking in Moomin Valley, roaming through magical realms.
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The harsh reality is that you can't officially train to be a world builder in school. However, programmers discover a loophole: you possess the unique ability to create entire worlds from nothing, only through the power of your words. With imagination and a strong understanding of storytelling, you can build complex realities. Thank you!
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Thank you.
