Rachel Kaufman
Software engineer
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
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I’m a full-stack web developer currently working at Attentive, a B2B company in the rapidly growing SMS marketing space. I work primarily in Java, Python and Typescript.
Although I’ve been building websites for ages (geocities.com, IYKYK), my first career was as a science journalist. I loved getting to ask smart people about black holes, rare animals, and the inner workings of the brain. In 2021, I shifted gears and taught myself web development. In early 2022, I started my second act.
I love trying new things and solving big problems, but I also have found I love the little things:
writing unit tests
finally finding and fixing that one annoying bug
creating great design docs
I’ve led projects to build features from scratch (a login system now used by 1,000+ clients, rebuilding an Airflow job to take advantage of its built-in concurrency and shorten a job’s processing time from 6 hours to 6 minutes) and also gotten to work under brilliant senior engineers to improve existing products.
I’m also active as an organizer in Women & Gender eXpansive Coders DC, a local tech group for women and nonbinary people in tech, and on the leadership committee for Attentive Women in Engineering, Attentive’s ERG, where I plan and host events like brag workshops (inspired by Julia Evans), speaker series, and social get-togethers.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Gotta Go Fast: React at 60 FPS
How can you create performant animations, backed by fast-updating data, on the web, using React? Attendees of this talk will learn how to make silky-smooth data-powered animations without having to give up the convenience of React. (Mostly…)
React is great for manipulating the DOM, but all that shadow DOM logic can bog down data-powered animations and slow down sites. How can you keep the ease of React while rendering lightning-fast, silky-smooth animations? There’s a trick to it (and, spoiler alert, some of it’s not React). In this talk, learn about:
how to get data from the backend to your frontend mega-fast
why requestAnimationFrame beats setInterval hands down
the power of HTML Canvas for web-based animation
Come see how fast React can be!
Get Unblocked Faster: Tips from Journalism to Ask Great Questions
Everyone gets blocked sometimes. The key to getting unblocked is to ask clear questions.
In this talk, a journalist-turned-software-engineer shares tips taken straight from the news business to supercharge your questions and get you unblocked faster.
No "one weird trick" hacks here - just insights into:
- Why asking good questions is a superpower
- What the inverted pyramid has to do with asking good questions
- How and why to 'get the name of the dog' without overwhelming your audience
If you're new to the software engineering world, or are curious how to level up your communication skills, get ready to have all your questions about asking questions-- well, answered.
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