World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2022 shows that at the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to reach full parity. But we all can do something to speed up the process.
Our value code at Beetroot Ecosystem sets out our commitment to providing diversity in a broad sense and gender equality in particular. Improving diversity and inclusion is our strategic direction for the coming years, and we have some numbers to be proud of.
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We chose five countries to compare. We asked real women from Ukraine, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, and Moldova — where Beetroot or Beetroot Academy operate — to answer three questions and inspire other women to have a career in tech despite all the challenges. And the challenges could be pretty impressive. Just take a look at this comparison chart first:
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Today, it is difficult for me to single out a person who motivates me. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I have been inspired by all Ukrainian women, who, by their actions, prove the unsustainability of the pseudo-traditional myth of a woman as a keeper of home comfort, in fact, a creature who is not able to take care of even her own life and needs constant male supervision. Ukrainian women defend their homeland with arms, work, search for and buy the necessary equipment, medicines, and uniforms all over the world, participate in the development of complex software systems for the army, distribute tons of humanitarian aid, weave camouflage nets, and make trench candles from cat food cans, and take care of themselves, their families, and strangers who find themselves in difficult circumstances. I am really proud to live at the same time as these women, to know them, and to see how Ukrainian women not only have the right to equality in declarative terms but successfully realize it in all spheres of life.
If colleagues or potential employers are not ready to accept a woman as an equal participant in certain processes, you often don't even know about the missed opportunities: you simply won't be invited for an interview, won't be involved in the discussion of a new project, etc. Clear cases are mostly related to positive discrimination, when a woman is given certain unsolicited “advantages” for which she is supposed to be grateful: to make concessions, not to defend her rights, not to realize her ambitions. A striking example of this is conscription in the army, which is used in almost every debate about the need to continue the fight for women's rights as an argument in favor of the statement “women have already received all the rights they need, and now they are trying to get undeserved advantages.” The only recipe I know to combat this in the professional sphere is to ask myself every time: “Does this attitude apply to male colleagues? Can they also take advantage of this opportunity?” If the answer is “no,” you should refuse such “gifts” in an acceptable manner, without provoking a conflict, to avoid putting yourself in a dependent position.
“Buy yourself some comfortable shoes!”. At first, this advice was literally about shoes – I lived most of my life with the idea that “a woman should decorate the world with herself,” which means constantly wearing makeup and beautiful (albeit uncomfortable) high-heeled shoes. Coupled with her love of hiking and traveling, heels gave her the predictable result of rapid fatigue and many minor injuries. Buying my first pair of sneakers in my size, which I used to be ashamed of because a “real woman” should have a foot slightly larger than a child's, truly turned my worldview upside down. Since then, in any business, the first thing I check is whether I have the “comfortable shoes” to go the distance and, if I'm not comfortable, what I can do to get rid of this discomfort. Usually, you must try to eliminate the imposed restrictions and allow yourself to be as effective as possible, but it's worth it in most cases!
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I greatly respect women like Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Katherine Johnson, and Hedy Lamarr, who just did what they were told they could not do.
The major barrier for me was that I was told I couldn't go to architectural high school. Then I can't study Informatics or electronics at university because these things are not for a woman, according to my parents. This is still a major barrier for lots of girls in Bulgaria. It cannot be overcome easily. I didn't get lucky as a high schooler and studied accounting, but I got a bit lucky and studied Informatics at university. Pure luck. The other barrier for women in Bulgaria is the disrespect they face daily about their work and efforts. Now, I'm just excellent at my work; that's how I overcome barriers.
To be kind, to have in mind that everyone faces their own struggles I know nothing about, so I should be respectful and listen more. When I write, it sounds like I saw it in some graffiti somewhere, but it's helping a lot.
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The woman that inspires me the most is my grandma. She's the toughest person I know. Since her childhood, she experienced a lot of headwinds in her life, but she never gave up, and she always looked for positive aspects. She has a strong character, and to some people, she may seem cold. I really look up to her and try to be as strong as she is to overcome all obstacles in my life.
I've never experienced any challenges in my career due to being a woman. But my career history is very short, since I graduated from university only last summer and started working professionally recently. I hope that I'll never face any challenges because of my gender.
The most important piece of advice I've been given is that giving a chance to things or people that don't convince us from the beginning might turn out interesting. And even if we didn't like it after all, at least we've tried.
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Lately, I find myself inspired by the women who could make it in politics, considering the complicated and tense political situation worldwide. Especially, I admire Ursula von der Leyen, who could become – by her power of will, ambitions, and fidelity to her own principles – the most powerful woman of the present world, the President of the European Commission. Also, I deeply admire the fact that besides her career, she is a heroic mother, having raised seven children. That said, this woman has bright and strong intentions for a peaceful and happy future – her motivations are her children, grandchildren, her nation, and all the consistent work and values she promoted and developed through the years.
I never experienced obstacles in my career path, especially due to gender. Quite the opposite – I had been encouraged and welcomed in teams where men predominate because, from what I learned, including women, especially in IT, creates a healthier and beneficial psychological climate in the team.
The most valuable piece of advice I learned from my husband is that consistency plus discipline creates the path.
I have been inspired by many people in my career, both women and men. Surprisingly for me, some of the most lasting inspirations have been from younger female colleagues — at least I have been lucky to work with people who question the status quo, who stand up for themselves, and who do not shy away from being leaders.
I have been fortunate to be in the Nordic environment, which is known for its high level of equality and tolerance. Not obstacles so much as the occasional “being underestimated” – this is easy to overcome if you have mature leaders who trust in you and give you a fair chance.
Give yourself a promotion in the head!
Not quite unusual for computer fonts, Times New Roman has been around since before computers became a thing. The British newspaper The Times commissioned it in 1931 as a retro update from a regular 19th-century font to something more solid with a strong 18th-century vibe. Old broom sure knows the corners (or so the saying goes), but you can see how the font may feel outdated in the 2020s.
It would not be a stretch to say Times New Roman looks ancient, as we already know it was designed this way. Even Roman in the name is a nod to the Italian school of printing from (15th century!). Seeing old-fashioned characters on a groundbreaking visual device, CRT screen, was weird enough. Now that we have modern LCD screens with much higher resolution and fidelity, a font capturing aesthetics from 300 years ago feels crystal odd.
Fonts classification is usually much more objective than old-fashioned or modern. One reason why Times New Roman may give an archaic vibe is that it is a serif font. All letters (or other characters) come with decorative lines, which range from very subtle to indeed something you would see in an 18th-century newspaper. Note how you can’t see any tails on the letters in this article—or almost any website created in the last 10 years.
Serif and Sans serif versions of Inria font from Black[Foundry]
Times New Roman, much like a lot of newspaper fonts, is rather narrow. It is a mostly business decision: you gotta fit in as much text on a page as possible—even during the times (ha-ha!) when the ratio of ads to stories was much lower. At the end of the day, all publications did that and it’s not like many people would’ve changed morning newspapers just because one is a bit easier to read than the rest.
Computers, however, do not have the same limitation. You don’t pay more for publishing an article or sending a document with much more reasonable line spacing and kerning than the average Victorian newspaper. If it’s the intermediary audience (e.g. client that commissioned an article) that needs to save costs, they can always change character size or pick a narrow font themselves.
Furthermore, the mobile boom is not helping narrow fonts like Times New Roman. Most devices connected to the internet now have a vertical layout. Trying to squeeze in extra characters on screens with little horizontal space will bring nothing but frustration for the reader. Interestingly, The Times had to adapt similarly in print: they had to create yet another Times New Roman-inspired typeface after moving from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004. These days, a narrow font is a compromise on usability that you don’t actually have to make—and people would appreciate it if you didn’t.
One could argue that a document in Times New Roman screams laziness or indifference. If the sender didn’t change the default option to something more balanced, it communicates that they either did not want to make your experience better or did not bother to do that. That kind of attitude does not help to secure a job or scholarship.
On the other hand, certain institutions would have you use nothing but Times New Roman. Some universities strongly encourage if not outright mandate the use of Times new Roman for papers, and so do scientific journals. Older government forms coming as templates to be filled out in Word would not play nice if you try to change the font. That being said, such restrictions are getting scarcer, especially with the rise of Mac. The OS and default office-like apps there have a default font different from Times New Roman (and a new one every few years at that).
The current default font on MacOS
Summing up, the cardinal sin of Times New Roman is defaulting to it without consideration. The font is a must in very few scenarios, but you see it much more often than that. Even Microsoft agrees something has to change: the default font for Word has been Calibri since 2007.
The above-mentioned Calibri is a spiritual successor to Times New Roman. It is now the default font for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It is a sans serif font (no decorative lines) that looks perfectly fine on both screens and paper.
If you want to ditch the default and stay sleek, Georgia is a great option. It is a serif font but letter strokes are much more subtle than what you see with Times New Roman. Georgia does not look outdated and works better for vertical screens, as it is not too tight on the horizontal space.
Should you feel like going barebones, Helvetica is the right font. It is a sans serif font looking as bland as it gets—in a good way. Helvetica lacks elements that would make it look too modern, but it also has no archaic elements that would make the font too classic. I think we can trust Apple on that: they used a spin on Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, as the MacOS system font for two years.
Somehow, I felt a big future for tech when the Internet connection was provided in my dormitory
I'm from Kramatorsk, Donetsk region. I studied in Kharkiv and was supposed to become a radio-electronic engineer, but in 2001 I understood exactly what I wanted to do. It was the time when the Internet “appeared” in our dormitory. I liked what was happening there and felt a future was behind it. So I switched to web development. I bought some books, and for the next two years, I had the luxury of free time to study without having to work. 2003 I graduated from the university, and within one month, I found my first work as a PHP developer. I was the happiest junior developer who was paid for the work he liked. I remember my first salary — $250 transferred via Western Union from the USA — was like a fortune. Back then, there were no web developers among my friends. Compared to nowadays, it wasn't that hype. But for me, it was evident that this was a future. I told my friends that all the companies I knew would need a website or should be represented online somehow. And I wanted to be a part of this evolution.
Pink Floyd, my lifetime project, and three kids
I was always a fan of the music of the 70s, and Pink Floyd was my favorite band. But there was no website dedicated to Pink Floyd in Russian or Ukrainian. So I decided to do that on my own. I reached out to the person who did the official newsletters about Pink Floyd to help me with that, and long story short — I made a website, and it turned18 recently. This fan website is the most extended project in my life, but I switched it off because I didn’t want to contribute to the Russian-speaking community anymore. The most crucial thing is the following. Remember I mentioned that person who worked on the official newsletters about Pink Floyd? She is currently my wife, and we are bringing up two kids. We used to make jokes that we actually had three kids — our first one was the Pink Floyd website.
From a web developer to a start-up founder
After two years of work in Moscow, I was back in Kyiv. I didn't like living in Russia, so moving back to Ukraine was obvious. At this time, I stepped out of web development, and in 2007 I started my own business. All went well, but the political regime of Yanukovych reminded me of Russia, so we decided to move to Poland and work remotely. Since 2014, when the war started, it has been impossible to run my business in Ukraine.
And after a 7-year break in web development, a dozen hours of upskilling, and 60 interviews, I have found a new job in Berlin as a senior back-end developer. Now in 2022, I'm a co-founder of the tech startup countX, and all my engineering team is from Ukraine.
How I met Beetroot Academy
It was a coincidence and proof that networking rules. One of my colleagues, Alex, also works as a teacher at Beetroot Academy, so I've heard a lot about this online school. When Alex introduced me to Dmytro, CEO of Beetroot Academy, I was ready to start our partnership. He told me about the fundraising campaign on a mission to help Ukrainian people affected by the war start a new career in tech. So I couldn't stay away from it and donated for scholarships — the less I could do in these challenging times. Now seven women from Donetsk and Luhansk regions are studying at Beetroot Academy, and I’m happy to be their mentor.
Why I support tech education for Ukrainians
Ukrainians, especially men who are out of the country, live with the feeling of guilt. My life is safe, but my three classmates are now fighting against Russia, risking their lives. People try to find their own way to help Ukrainians win this war, overcome the consequences and rebuild the country. So do I.
I already had an idea of investing in tech education. That is where I can contribute as a professional and entrepreneur, so I chose to support the future of Ukraine this way. Many Ukrainians affected by war want to enter the tech industry and need an opportunity to do that. Tech education is one of the most impactful and cost-effective ways to help Ukrainians restore their lives and fight poverty after the war ends. I believe our country will be the next tech cluster after Silicon Valley in the USA and Bengaluru in India. Moreover, I want many Ukrainians to be a part of that success story. I contribute to it by donating for scholarships and would like to encourage others to support Beetroots Academy’s mission.
Imagine a house. To have it running steadily, there should be a good foundation, building blocks, proper infrastructure, good furniture, designs, and usability functions. In web development, the front-end developer is somewhere in between the processes as he takes the ideas from the UI\UX team to turn them into clickable websites that work. Back-end developers, PMs, and QAs take care of the other vital parts, such as proper foundation, team and project management, and testing.
So there's actually a front-end and back-end. We won't say which one is easier. Let's just leave one picture here for your understanding.
To light up a room, you have to click the button. Ensuring it is clickable is a job for a front-end developer; ensuring there is a light is a task for a back-end developer. Front-end web development is the art of using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a set of other tools for a website/app for a user to see and interact with them.
Basic front-end development glossary
In front-end web development, there are vital terms you should know. We bet you've heard most of them, so let's just keep them handy in the list below.
Programming languages or codes
For example, HTML
In development, you need to speak a language everyone understands — your machine, your code compiler, your user, and your project manager. Below are just a couple of languages we use in the front-end. They look different to everyone, but mean the same and help achieve the result — have the webpage ready and running.
HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is the code developers use to structure a webpage. Remember seeing a webpage made up of blocks, paragraphs, or tables? HTML helps with that. It originates from a code developed by WHATWG some 30 years ago, in 1993.
JavaScript, conveniently referred to as JS, is a programming language considered one of the cores for front-end development. Designed over 26 years ago, it is now used in almost every webpage you see. Even on the Beetroot Academy website, too :) JS is used to create animation, control multimedia, and generally work with dynamically updating content, buttons, banners, etc.
Here, you can also look at some Javascript libraries — jQuery, React.js, and more here on Kinsta, for example.
Front-end development tools
Git, Google Fonts, W3C, and more
Compilers, linkers, code editors are essential for every front-end developer. These are basic tools that you will use in your daily routine — as home technicians use multitools for repairing the leakage, for example.
To name a few, there are Google Fonts to help you work with fonts, W3C Markup Validation Service to validate your code, and many more.
Version control tools are also part of the list here, used for monitoring changes to your code. We guess you strive to make your code better and better each time. Hence, version controls will help manage the evolution of your code as it becomes clearer and more effective. Git is the most popular, and it's open and free of charge.
Design principles in front-end
In front-end development, we use responsive design to ensure our content fits every (or almost every) gadget and looks good on it. Recall how you open a webpage on your iPhone, reopen it on your laptop, and send it to granny's email — and it still looks good on your grandparents' old-fashioned computer? That's responsive design in action.
Design automatically adapts to given dimensions, so all users feel comfortable interacting with the content. The feeling is the key here — because the front-end is mostly about what the user feels while using your web piece.
CSS, closely connected to HTML, is a code used actually to style an HTML doc. It has everything to do with the colors, styles, and other properties.
Looks quite interesting, huh? Now that you're familiar with the basic front-end development glossary, it's high time to learn the front-end. We hope you find this glossary helpful, no matter which tech direction you will choose. Keep it in your saved links to come back once in a while.
Join our next group in May and start learning with tech industry experts to gain knowledge you need to work as a junior front-end developer.
While such languages as Python and PHP have existed for quite a long time, C# is regarded as a young programming language. Danish software engineer Anders Hejlsberg developed it in the year 2000. Today, he still works for Microsoft as the lead architect of C#. Anders Hejlsberg is also known for being the chief architect of Delphi and the original author of Turbo Pascal.
C# was originally named COOL, whereby the acronym stood for “C-like object-oriented language”. Alas, Microsoft could not hang onto this “cool name” because of trademark law.
C# is pronounced, “see sharp”. The name was taken from the musical notation, whereby a sharp symbol points that the written note should be played a semitone higher. The “sharp” suffix has been used by several other .NET languages that are editions of present languages, including J#, A#, and the functional programming language F#.
The base syntax of the C# is similar to C-style languages such as C, C++, and Java. This programming language most directly represents the underlying Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).
If you plan to create apps for the Microsoft platform, you should definitely learn C#. The developers favor this language for being easy to use and well-designed. Also, it is often recommended programming language to use when creating games through the Unity Game engine.
C# used for:
A list of programs and applications written in C# includes Microsoft Visual Studio, Paint.NET, Windows Installer XML, Open Dental, FlashDevelop, KeePass, NMath, Pinta, Banshee, OpenRA.
Here are a few reasons to work with this particular programming language:
The future looks bright for C# because of its popularity, versatility, and existing creations. If you want to have a solid foundation to become a master developer, you should learn this “cool” programming language.
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