Made with Code

By Kaitlynn Bayne

Take a trip up to North Campus to visit the engineering campus, and it is no question that men are the main one’s who populate the terrain.  Sure, you will run into girls as well, but there are probably at least two male engineers for every one female engineer here.  This isn’t a unique trend to the University of Michigan.   Female engineers are in very high demand right now, simply because they are very short in supply.

Why is this we might ask?  Gender norms is the easy answer- girls grow up thinking they need to play with Barbies and wear the color pink, etc. etc.  But being a girl, I don’t know how “pressured” I was into these stereotypes.  I really enjoyed the traditional girly things.  I had no interest in computers or coding, not because I thought it was only for boys, but because I genuinely had no interest in it.

Well, Google is taking this into consideration with one of their newest projects.  This project is called Made with Code and was created to try to show girls all the cool things you can do with programming.  This project has multiple parts to it.  There is a website where you can buy bracelets, necklaces, and other sorts of accessories all made with a 3D printer.  In fact, earlier in the summer, they had a promotion where you could use their program to make a bracelet with your name on it.  Once you made a bracelet you liked, they would mail it to you for free.  On top of the Made with Code market, there is also a website where there are fun computer programming activities.  These include making songs, making memes, and creating interactive characters.

I think this is a very smart idea on Google’s part.  If this was around when I was young, it is likely I would have enjoyed coding (or at least would have learned even a little bit about programming.)  Hopefully this project will have its intended result and show many young girls out there how programming can make so many cool and beautiful things.

Source: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-07-07/features/sfl-free-3d-bracelet-google-made-with-code-project-20140703_1_bracelet-3d-printer-code-project 

Fun websites: 
http://www.shapeways.com/jewelry/bracelets?li=nav&s=72#more-products

https://www.madewithcode.com/projects


  

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