S1 E2: A Fun, Approachable Way (Jessica / @codergirl1991)
Jessica Wilkins joins the show to talk about her origin story coming from being a musician to building a passion project to promote diversity in classical music and how she got pulled into the tech industry by warm, friendly communities.
We discuss a fun, approachable way to learn technology as we discuss Exercism, an online platform built to teach the joy of programming to everyone.
Transcript
I just want to kind of practice some coding challenges.
Jessica:That's what I like about it.
Jessica:It's just very fun, approachable, but you're still learning a lot
Jessica:I had this idea to create a project called the Black Excellence Music
Jessica:Project that, highlighted musicians in the jazz world and just promoting
Jessica:more diversity in those fields
Eddie:Welcome to Episode 2 of the WebJoy podcast.
Eddie:I'm your host, Eddie.
Eddie:In this podcast, we interview guests about their origin story and what
Eddie:makes them excited and joyful to be part of the tech community.
Eddie:I hope you enjoy today's episode.
Eddie:"A fun, approachable way" with Jessica Wilkins
Eddie:Hi, Jessica, how about you, share who you are, what you do, where you work,
Eddie:brief introduction about yourself.
Eddie:If you will.
Jessica:Sure.
Jessica:I'm happy to be here.
Jessica:My name's Jessica Wilkins.
Jessica:I'm based in Los Angeles, California, and I'm a software developer
Jessica:at This Dot labs and I'm also a technical writer for FreeCodeCamp
Jessica:I changed careers from a classical musician.
Jessica:So before being in software, I spent all my time, performing,
Jessica:teaching, and recording.
Jessica:Since I'm been in LA there's a big recording scene here.
Jessica:(laughing) so that was my life just running all around Southern
Jessica:California and living that life.
Jessica:Then the pandemic hit and everything obviously changed and
Jessica:it didn't go away anytime soon.
Jessica:Like I had thought and so I had an idea for a project that I had started
Jessica:in June of 2020, because race relations were really bad at that time.
Jessica:There was George Floyd's murder that we were going through and all of that.
Jessica:And then also COVID was just really really, really bad at
Jessica:most places around the world.
Jessica:So tensions were just high.
Jessica:I had this idea to create a project called the Black Excellence Music Project that,
Jessica:highlighted musicians in the jazz world and just promoting more diversity in those
Jessica:fields and to bringing forth those stories of musicians from past and present.
Jessica:So I decided to learn how to code because I had all this free time
Jessica:now, since, COVID was just forced us to all be at home pretty much.
Jessica:So I started just learning how the code bounced around a different
Jessica:resources and landed on FreeCodeCamp.
Jessica:Started learning, HTML and CSS and JavaScript and started to really enjoy it.
Jessica:And so the first year I bounce back and forth between if I wanted to
Jessica:make a career change or not, but then finally decided make that plunge.
Jessica:I did end up building the project there and launching that and then making
Jessica:a version two, but then I decided to switch careers for certain there.
Jessica:That's how I ended up here.
Eddie:I love how, in the midst of a really unfortunate time, with COVID,
Eddie:with all the tensions being high because of such horrible decisions
Eddie:that were acted in our country that you said what can I do about this?
Eddie:you found a proactive way to uplift people and, say, Hey, listen, I'm going to
Eddie:do what I can to create more visibility.
Eddie:So that people have something to look to rather than being dragged down into
Eddie:the bad things that people are doing.
Eddie:Of course we need to address that, but also to say, while people are looking
Eddie:at this what if we have a way to uplift and raise those black voices so
Eddie:that people can see them and amplify them and, really uplift the community
Eddie:in a season that was so difficult
Jessica:Absolutely.
Jessica:Yeah,
Eddie:I can't imagine what that time was like.
Eddie:what do people have to kind of break out of that heavy time?
Eddie:And I love that.
Eddie:You're like, let me bring a little bit of inspiration, to
Eddie:that time to help people through.
Eddie:I think that's awesome.
Jessica:Yeah, it just came out of nowhere.
Jessica:Cause I was, getting all these messages from people because one of the, I guess,
Jessica:good things that came out of COVID was we were finally having a deeper
Jessica:conversation about lack of diversity in many industries, not just in music.
Jessica:And it was talked about film and television and whatnot.
Jessica:And so within the music industry, specifically within the classical
Jessica:world, there really isn't a lot of diverse representation
Jessica:for Black and Latino musicians.
Jessica:There've studies done about it, and it's like as low as three and
Jessica:half percent, which is really low.
Jessica:It's been pretty steady for the past, like decade or so.
Jessica:I had people messaging me on Facebook and Twitter asking me about resources
Jessica:to learn more about, black musicians the classical world and jazz worlds.
Jessica:And so I started just sending them all these different sites
Jessica:that I found over the years.
Jessica:And I was like, there should really just be one site and it should have some games.
Jessica:It should have some good teaching materials.
Jessica:I was like, I guess I'll just build it.
Jessica:And so that's where it came in.
Jessica:I was like, I guess I'll learn how to code.
Jessica:And I kind of just went down that crazy path and ended up loving it there.
Eddie:That's so cool.
Eddie:I know a lot of people who are trying to get into tech that I've met on Twitter.
Eddie:A lot of times they're trying to figure out like, oh, what should I do?
Eddie:How should I improve my skills?
Eddie:And it's funny because one of the biggest things I always come back
Eddie:to is what's something that you're interested in that you wish existed
Eddie:and figure out how to build that.
Eddie:You may have to rely on grabbing stuff from tutorials or stealing
Eddie:stuff from other websites you see, but have a vision for what you wanna
Eddie:have and then figure out what skills you need to be able to build that.
Eddie:Because your passion for what you're building is what's gonna
Eddie:drive you to learn rather than.
Eddie:Just following a curriculum because you wanna learn a thing.
Eddie:That can work, but it's also very hard to stay passionate about it.
Eddie:It's a lot easier to fall the bandwagon.
Eddie:So I love that's literally how you learned.
Eddie:It wasn't, I'm just gonna learn HTML because you thought, Hey,
Eddie:I want this thing to exist.
Eddie:There's no other obvious way to have it exist than to build it myself.
Eddie:So I'm gonna figure out what I need to figure out.
Eddie:I love that.
Eddie:That's that's so awesome.
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:There were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way where it's like,
Jessica:okay, I guess we can't do that.
Jessica:Or I guess this doesn't work and all that, but it's, it's all
Jessica:part of the learning process.
Jessica:I'm glad that I went through that journey and I give the exact same advice
Jessica:to people that are getting started.
Jessica:Just find it a passion project of yours and just start building it there.
Eddie:Well, so, you shifted away from music and into tech,
Eddie:amid COVID and all that stuff.
Eddie:You started learning it for this project, but what kind of captivated you about
Eddie:tech beyond building this one project as something that you wanted to keep
Eddie:diving into and that you wanted to make this a sequence of jobs or a career.
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:So as I started diving a little bit deeper, I just love the aspect of the
Jessica:possibilities, what you can build.
Jessica:And I was like, oh, there's so many cool music applications that you can build.
Jessica:I was thinking about all these problems that I experienced as a musician.
Jessica:There should be an application.
Jessica:And also just by perception of what is developer specifically
Jessica:within web applications?
Jessica:I think a lot of people, especially non-technical people think, oh, build
Jessica:up a simple little page and whatnot.
Jessica:Why do we need a developer?
Jessica:We can just use Wix or something.
Jessica:Like, I don't know where all these developers come in, but there's so
Jessica:much complexity when you're building out a really cool application.
Jessica:So I had all these ideas and this is cool.
Jessica:If I could keep learning this stuff and build a career, build
Jessica:some really cool projects.
Jessica:And so the potential of what you could build with these skills
Jessica:really attracted me to it.
Jessica:And the fact that it's always changing, I didn't want to be in something that
Jessica:just, I learned it and it's okay, well I'm not gonna grow anymore.
Jessica:I think that's one of the great things about music is you're
Jessica:always learning new repertoire.
Jessica:You're always challenging yourself.
Jessica:You're always in these wacky, crazy situations as a performer.
Jessica:So it never a dull moment being a musician there.
Jessica:So that's what I really wanted is to keep challenging myself and
Jessica:not just hit a level where it's all right, I've learned everything
Jessica:and I'm just gonna cruise along.
Jessica:I want to keep growing and being challenged and work on very unique,
Jessica:problems and provide solutions there.
Eddie:That's really cool.
Eddie:That's a perspective I haven't always heard a lot of.
Eddie:Well, you know, we're on this podcast cuz we come together to talk about
Eddie:different things that bring us joy.
Eddie:And so I was just curious about, what is a product, tool or community
Eddie:that you found that you really enjoy using and brings you a lot of joy.
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:So when I started using the past few months is exercism, which is website
Jessica:where you just solve a whole bunch of different coding challenges, but it's
Jessica:different from a lot of the other ones that are more, like computer science.
Jessica:We all know of leet code and stuff like that.
Jessica:If you're preparing for a job and whatnot, but they're just
Jessica:also code wars and hacker ranks.
Jessica:But I really like exercism because you could still focus on those problem
Jessica:solving challenges, but they make it in a more fun, approachable way.
Jessica:So you're not just like, slogging away being like, ah, binary,
Jessica:search trees and all this stuff.
Jessica:They come up with these like really cute little fun problems, and
Jessica:they're still teaching a lot of the basics and advanced concepts.
Jessica:So you can get yourself lost and just solving all these problems.
Jessica:You're not trying to rack up points or anything like that.
Jessica:You just go through the different challenges and there's so
Jessica:many supported languages too.
Jessica:So if you're picking up a new language and you're just like, oh, I just want to
Jessica:kind of practice some coding challenges.
Jessica:That's what I like about it.
Jessica:It's just very fun, approachable, but you're still learning a lot as opposed to
Jessica:sitting there going I gotta do this cause I got a job interview coming up there.
Jessica:so that's what I really like about it and that community is just, really friendly.
Jessica:I like communities that are friendly atmospheres that are welcoming and not
Jessica:really focused on this ultra competitive situation where we're here to learn.
Jessica:And it's also open source.
Jessica:So if you wanted to contribute and build your own challenges, then you could do
Jessica:that as well, which is kind of cool.
Jessica:So yeah, that's what drew me
Jessica:. Eddie: I had never heard of
Jessica:and checked it out when you told me , Hey, this is what I want to talk about.
Jessica:And what's really cool that stuck out to me is: I was actually just
Jessica:having a conversation with one of my coworkers the other day.
Jessica:A lot of times, People can design gamified systems to always be
Jessica:competitive and that's good and everything, but not everyone.
Jessica:Like, I am not someone who tends to like competitive things.
Jessica:It's okay.
Jessica:But it definitely doesn't get me really excited.
Jessica:I actually like co-op stuff more than competitive.
Jessica:and that's what stood out, what you just said, like looking at it, it seems
Jessica:more like a co-op than a competition.
Jessica:You're not trying to beat people.
Jessica:And in fact, they have mentors to help look at your code reviews and
Jessica:it's more like you're on a team than you are trying to be the best on the
Jessica:leader board or something like that.
Jessica:Exactly.
Jessica:You're not worried about like leveling up or how many points you get.
Jessica:It's just let's go through these fun challenges and they have that mentor
Jessica:program where people look at your code and talk about ways you could
Jessica:optimize it, they also have a built-in tool where they'll check your answer.
Jessica:And if you have a lot of extra repetition or stuff like that, it'll make suggestions
Jessica:like, you have some repetition here.
Jessica:You might want to consider refactoring this part.
Jessica:So you dive back in the challenge, oh yeah, I guess I could refactor
Jessica:this here, make it cleaner.
Jessica:So it's fun there.
Jessica:It takes away that ultra competitive, oh my gosh, I'm behind.
Jessica:Or I don't measure up to so-and-so.
Jessica:it's just, you're just going through fun coding challenges there.
Eddie:Nice.
Eddie:How did you stumble acrossed it and find out about it yourself.
Jessica:Yeah, I think I discovered on Twitter because
Jessica:someone else was talking about it.
Jessica:And at that point I was using some of the other sites and I was like, oh, okay,
Jessica:what's cause it's such unique name too.
Jessica:I've never heard of that for like a coding site there.
Jessica:So I clicked on it.
Jessica:Started working through it.
Jessica:I'm like, yeah, I really like this.
Jessica:I'm glad that I found it.
Jessica:So there's so many cool things you can find on Twitter.
Jessica:Just poke it around and it's like, oh, what's this, you know?
Eddie:Yeah, I definitely have a list of way too many things that I'm intending
Eddie:to check out one day cuz I see it on Twitter and well if I don't save it now
Eddie:it's gonna disappear from my timeline.
Eddie:So I'll send that tweet to a note on my phone.
Eddie:And then I tell myself, I'm gonna check out that note one day, but,
Eddie:really it just keeps growing.
Eddie:It's probably got like 120 items on it that still need to be looked at.
Jessica:Right.
Jessica:Yeah, same here.
Jessica:I have a whole bookmark folder of just programming resources that
Jessica:it keeps growing and growing.
Jessica:I'll get to it eventually.
( Eddie:laughing) Exactly.
( Eddie:Well cool.
( Eddie:What languages have you tried out on exorcism?
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:I've mainly been working with JavaScript and then also playing
Jessica:around a little bit with TypeScript and a little bit with Python there.
Jessica:And so they have a great range of beginner, intermediate,
Jessica:"expert challenges" and whatnot.
Jessica:And so it's great if you're just picking up another language, you're oh, okay.
Jessica:Yeah, let me go get started with this and it's still engaging.
Jessica:They try to create these like different stories with the
Jessica:problems that you're solving, just to help keep you engaged there.
Jessica:So it's not just solve this problem.
Jessica:You'll be like two sentences or something.
Jessica:They'll give you an actual story.
Jessica:They're like, oh, can that be makes sense there.
Jessica:So I like the engagement factor with.
Jessica:it.
Eddie:Yeah.
Eddie:I think when I was looking at it, that was one of the biggest things
Eddie:that popped up is that you have this story or something to go into.
Eddie:Like for example, I just randomly pulled up this medium one that
is called robot name and it says:
:Manage Robot Factory Settings.
is called robot name and it says:
:When a robot comes off the factory floor, it has no name.
is called robot name and it says:
:The first time you turn on a robot, a random name is Generated
is called robot name and it says:
:every once in a while, we need to reset a robot back to its factory
is called robot name and it says:
:settings and the name gets wiped.
is called robot name and it says:
:So we need to respond with a new, random name, they should not
is called robot name and it says:
:follow a predictable sequence.
is called robot name and it says:
:And, that means you can end up having collisions of the names.
is called robot name and it says:
:So your solution must ensure that every existing robot has a unique name.
is called robot name and it says:
:So you're generating these unique names, making sure that they don't
is called robot name and it says:
:match the other unique names, but that they're actually random and not
is called robot name and it says:
:just a sequence of ABC or 1, 2, 3.
is called robot name and it says:
:So that's really cool.
is called robot name and it says:
:Like you actually feel like you have a job and you're trying to accomplish something.
Jessica:Right, right.
Jessica:And it just makes it way more fun.
Jessica:As opposed to just being like, all right, just solve this abstract problem.
Jessica:You're like, oh no another one, you know?
Eddie:Yeah.
Eddie:that's cool.
Eddie:Cuz definitely leet code and things like that is just very technical, no
Eddie:reason for what you're trying to do.
Eddie:It's just write an algorithm that does this thing.
Eddie:And this is nice cuz it makes it feel more like you're doing a real job.
Eddie:I guess have you ever run into anything that's frustrating or any drawbacks?
Eddie:When you've tried to use the website before?
Jessica:Thankfully, no, I think they have a pretty good user experience
Jessica:and it's nice and clean, simple user interface there where you just dive into
Jessica:the challenge and on the site, I think it's like the right-hand side panel.
Jessica:They have all the directions and the different test cases you're like, okay,
Jessica:how are they testing this here and go.
Jessica:Oh, okay.
Jessica:Gotcha.
Jessica:So I think it's laid out quite nicely.
Eddie:Awesome.
Eddie:Well, that's cool.
Eddie:So if it sounds interesting to anyone listening, feel free to check out the show
Eddie:notes, I've got a link to it, in there, so you can check it out and try it out.
Eddie:And if you want to continue learning more of the language you're currently learning.
Eddie:Do that.
Eddie:If you've been curious about another random language, they've
Eddie:got all sorts of languages.
Eddie:57 different programming languages.
Eddie:So there's a lot there to figure out.
Eddie:So you can grab a random language you haven't used before
Eddie:and learned something new.
Eddie:As we wrap up, one thing we always like to do is.
Eddie:Hear if there's anything that each of the guests has that they'd like
Eddie:to share with the community that they think might be helpful to the community.
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:So I always love to talk about FreeCodeCamp.
Jessica:That's where I got started learning and then got involved
Jessica:with the open source projects and started writing articles for them.
Jessica:It's a free platform where can learn how to code and they focus
Jessica:on full-stack JavaScript as well as Python and data science.
Jessica:So they have an interactive program on their main website where you learn
Jessica:by building projects, which is the best way to learn in my opinion, too.
Jessica:It's interactive.
Jessica:So you're not just sitting there consuming hours and hours of videos.
Jessica:They'll give you a challenge and then you start to slowly build out this site.
Jessica:So beginners have this great sense of oh, okay, look what I'm building.
Jessica:They could see it, in real time, okay, this is what I'm building and understand
Jessica:how all the pieces fit together.
Jessica:They also have a very active YouTube channel.
Jessica:I think they have, like, 5 million subscribers at this point on their
Jessica:YouTube channel and they covers like everything with PHP and Ruby
Jessica:and Java and CS concepts, Math.
Jessica:They just have a whole bunch of videos that you can go through, but
Jessica:they're really high quality videos.
Jessica:So whatever you wanna there, you can check out the YouTube channel.
Jessica:I just like the community.
Jessica:It's very friendly and approachable.
Jessica:Cause we have people from all around the world.
Jessica:I would probably say I think Quincy who's the founder of FreeCodeCamp have
Jessica:said that, the North American population was maybe like 30% or somewhere around
Jessica:there, and so we have a lot of people from parts of Africa and India and
Jessica:other parts of Europe and Asia that just wanna learn how to code and gain
Jessica:this skill set and transition jobs.
Jessica:so we all just try to help each other out and answer each other's questions
Jessica:and that's what I like to be a part of is just nice, friendly, helpful communities.
Jessica:I try to stay away from the toxic environments if I don't
Jessica:want to be involved with that.
Jessica:So that's what I love about FreeCodeCamp
Eddie:That sounds awesome.
Eddie:I've definitely heard different people on Twitter mention it over time, but, haven't
Eddie:really interacted with it much myself.
Eddie:So that's great to hear.
Eddie:Not just that, it's got good information to learn, but also it actually has a
Eddie:good community and things like that.
Eddie:We'll include a link to that in the show notes as well.
Eddie:Jessica, thank you so for coming on and joining the podcast.
Eddie:It's just been a pleasure to talk to you really
Jessica:Yeah.
Jessica:Thank you so much for having me.
Jessica:This was fun.
Eddie:Thanks for joining us for Episode 2.
Eddie:"A fun, approachable way" with Jessica Wilkins, you can find out more about
Eddie:Jessica on her Twitter @codergirl1991.
Eddie:You can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as a link
Eddie:to Jessica's Twitter in the show notes.
Eddie:If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating and reviewing it in
Eddie:your favorite podcast directory and follow us on Twitter @ WebJoyFM.
Eddie:Thank you for listening and have a great day.