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

Jessica: 00:00:01

I just want to kind of practice some coding challenges.

Jessica: 00:00:03

That's what I like about it.

Jessica: 00:00:04

It's just very fun, approachable, but you're still learning a lot

Jessica: 00:00:09

I had this idea to create a project called the Black Excellence Music

Jessica: 00:00:12

Project that, highlighted musicians in the jazz world and just promoting

Jessica: 00:00:17

more diversity in those fields

Eddie: 00:00:19

Welcome to Episode 2 of the WebJoy podcast.

Eddie: 00:00:23

I'm your host, Eddie.

Eddie: 00:00:25

In this podcast, we interview guests about their origin story and what

Eddie: 00:00:28

makes them excited and joyful to be part of the tech community.

Eddie: 00:00:32

I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Eddie: 00:00:34

"A fun, approachable way" with Jessica Wilkins

Eddie: 00:00:38

Hi, Jessica, how about you, share who you are, what you do, where you work,

Eddie: 00:00:44

brief introduction about yourself.

Eddie: 00:00:45

If you will.

Jessica: 00:00:46

Sure.

Jessica: 00:00:47

I'm happy to be here.

Jessica: 00:00:48

My name's Jessica Wilkins.

Jessica: 00:00:50

I'm based in Los Angeles, California, and I'm a software developer

Jessica: 00:00:53

at This Dot labs and I'm also a technical writer for FreeCodeCamp

Jessica: 00:00:57

I changed careers from a classical musician.

Jessica: 00:01:00

So before being in software, I spent all my time, performing,

Jessica: 00:01:04

teaching, and recording.

Jessica: 00:01:06

Since I'm been in LA there's a big recording scene here.

Jessica: 00:01:09

(laughing) so that was my life just running all around Southern

Jessica: 00:01:11

California and living that life.

Jessica: 00:01:14

Then the pandemic hit and everything obviously changed and

Jessica: 00:01:17

it didn't go away anytime soon.

Jessica: 00:01:20

Like I had thought and so I had an idea for a project that I had started

Jessica: 00:01:24

in June of 2020, because race relations were really bad at that time.

Jessica: 00:01:28

There was George Floyd's murder that we were going through and all of that.

Jessica: 00:01:31

And then also COVID was just really really, really bad at

Jessica: 00:01:34

most places around the world.

Jessica: 00:01:36

So tensions were just high.

Jessica: 00:01:37

I had this idea to create a project called the Black Excellence Music Project that,

Jessica: 00:01:42

highlighted musicians in the jazz world and just promoting more diversity in those

Jessica: 00:01:46

fields and to bringing forth those stories of musicians from past and present.

Jessica: 00:01:51

So I decided to learn how to code because I had all this free time

Jessica: 00:01:54

now, since, COVID was just forced us to all be at home pretty much.

Jessica: 00:01:58

So I started just learning how the code bounced around a different

Jessica: 00:02:01

resources and landed on FreeCodeCamp.

Jessica: 00:02:04

Started learning, HTML and CSS and JavaScript and started to really enjoy it.

Jessica: 00:02:08

And so the first year I bounce back and forth between if I wanted to

Jessica: 00:02:11

make a career change or not, but then finally decided make that plunge.

Jessica: 00:02:15

I did end up building the project there and launching that and then making

Jessica: 00:02:19

a version two, but then I decided to switch careers for certain there.

Jessica: 00:02:23

That's how I ended up here.

Eddie: 00:02:25

I love how, in the midst of a really unfortunate time, with COVID,

Eddie: 00:02:32

with all the tensions being high because of such horrible decisions

Eddie: 00:02:37

that were acted in our country that you said what can I do about this?

Eddie: 00:02:41

you found a proactive way to uplift people and, say, Hey, listen, I'm going to

Eddie: 00:02:47

do what I can to create more visibility.

Eddie: 00:02:51

So that people have something to look to rather than being dragged down into

Eddie: 00:02:57

the bad things that people are doing.

Eddie: 00:02:59

Of course we need to address that, but also to say, while people are looking

Eddie: 00:03:03

at this what if we have a way to uplift and raise those black voices so

Eddie: 00:03:08

that people can see them and amplify them and, really uplift the community

Eddie: 00:03:13

in a season that was so difficult

Jessica: 00:03:16

Absolutely.

Jessica: 00:03:17

Yeah,

Eddie: 00:03:18

I can't imagine what that time was like.

Eddie: 00:03:20

what do people have to kind of break out of that heavy time?

Eddie: 00:03:27

And I love that.

Eddie: 00:03:27

You're like, let me bring a little bit of inspiration, to

Eddie: 00:03:31

that time to help people through.

Eddie: 00:03:33

I think that's awesome.

Jessica: 00:03:35

Yeah, it just came out of nowhere.

Jessica: 00:03:37

Cause I was, getting all these messages from people because one of the, I guess,

Jessica: 00:03:41

good things that came out of COVID was we were finally having a deeper

Jessica: 00:03:45

conversation about lack of diversity in many industries, not just in music.

Jessica: 00:03:48

And it was talked about film and television and whatnot.

Jessica: 00:03:52

And so within the music industry, specifically within the classical

Jessica: 00:03:55

world, there really isn't a lot of diverse representation

Jessica: 00:03:59

for Black and Latino musicians.

Jessica: 00:04:01

There've studies done about it, and it's like as low as three and

Jessica: 00:04:05

half percent, which is really low.

Jessica: 00:04:07

It's been pretty steady for the past, like decade or so.

Jessica: 00:04:11

I had people messaging me on Facebook and Twitter asking me about resources

Jessica: 00:04:15

to learn more about, black musicians the classical world and jazz worlds.

Jessica: 00:04:19

And so I started just sending them all these different sites

Jessica: 00:04:21

that I found over the years.

Jessica: 00:04:23

And I was like, there should really just be one site and it should have some games.

Jessica: 00:04:26

It should have some good teaching materials.

Jessica: 00:04:29

I was like, I guess I'll just build it.

Jessica: 00:04:30

And so that's where it came in.

Jessica: 00:04:32

I was like, I guess I'll learn how to code.

Jessica: 00:04:34

And I kind of just went down that crazy path and ended up loving it there.

Eddie: 00:04:38

That's so cool.

Eddie: 00:04:40

I know a lot of people who are trying to get into tech that I've met on Twitter.

Eddie: 00:04:44

A lot of times they're trying to figure out like, oh, what should I do?

Eddie: 00:04:47

How should I improve my skills?

Eddie: 00:04:49

And it's funny because one of the biggest things I always come back

Eddie: 00:04:52

to is what's something that you're interested in that you wish existed

Eddie: 00:04:56

and figure out how to build that.

Eddie: 00:04:58

You may have to rely on grabbing stuff from tutorials or stealing

Eddie: 00:05:01

stuff from other websites you see, but have a vision for what you wanna

Eddie: 00:05:04

have and then figure out what skills you need to be able to build that.

Eddie: 00:05:09

Because your passion for what you're building is what's gonna

Eddie: 00:05:12

drive you to learn rather than.

Eddie: 00:05:15

Just following a curriculum because you wanna learn a thing.

Eddie: 00:05:19

That can work, but it's also very hard to stay passionate about it.

Eddie: 00:05:23

It's a lot easier to fall the bandwagon.

Eddie: 00:05:25

So I love that's literally how you learned.

Eddie: 00:05:27

It wasn't, I'm just gonna learn HTML because you thought, Hey,

Eddie: 00:05:30

I want this thing to exist.

Eddie: 00:05:32

There's no other obvious way to have it exist than to build it myself.

Eddie: 00:05:37

So I'm gonna figure out what I need to figure out.

Eddie: 00:05:38

I love that.

Eddie: 00:05:39

That's that's so awesome.

Jessica: 00:05:41

Yeah.

Jessica: 00:05:41

There were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way where it's like,

Jessica: 00:05:44

okay, I guess we can't do that.

Jessica: 00:05:45

Or I guess this doesn't work and all that, but it's, it's all

Jessica: 00:05:48

part of the learning process.

Jessica: 00:05:49

I'm glad that I went through that journey and I give the exact same advice

Jessica: 00:05:53

to people that are getting started.

Jessica: 00:05:54

Just find it a passion project of yours and just start building it there.

Eddie: 00:05:58

Well, so, you shifted away from music and into tech,

Eddie: 00:06:03

amid COVID and all that stuff.

Eddie: 00:06:06

You started learning it for this project, but what kind of captivated you about

Eddie: 00:06:10

tech beyond building this one project as something that you wanted to keep

Eddie: 00:06:14

diving into and that you wanted to make this a sequence of jobs or a career.

Jessica: 00:06:19

Yeah.

Jessica: 00:06:20

So as I started diving a little bit deeper, I just love the aspect of the

Jessica: 00:06:24

possibilities, what you can build.

Jessica: 00:06:26

And I was like, oh, there's so many cool music applications that you can build.

Jessica: 00:06:29

I was thinking about all these problems that I experienced as a musician.

Jessica: 00:06:32

There should be an application.

Jessica: 00:06:34

And also just by perception of what is developer specifically

Jessica: 00:06:38

within web applications?

Jessica: 00:06:39

I think a lot of people, especially non-technical people think, oh, build

Jessica: 00:06:43

up a simple little page and whatnot.

Jessica: 00:06:45

Why do we need a developer?

Jessica: 00:06:46

We can just use Wix or something.

Jessica: 00:06:48

Like, I don't know where all these developers come in, but there's so

Jessica: 00:06:50

much complexity when you're building out a really cool application.

Jessica: 00:06:54

So I had all these ideas and this is cool.

Jessica: 00:06:56

If I could keep learning this stuff and build a career, build

Jessica: 00:06:59

some really cool projects.

Jessica: 00:07:00

And so the potential of what you could build with these skills

Jessica: 00:07:05

really attracted me to it.

Jessica: 00:07:06

And the fact that it's always changing, I didn't want to be in something that

Jessica: 00:07:09

just, I learned it and it's okay, well I'm not gonna grow anymore.

Jessica: 00:07:12

I think that's one of the great things about music is you're

Jessica: 00:07:13

always learning new repertoire.

Jessica: 00:07:15

You're always challenging yourself.

Jessica: 00:07:16

You're always in these wacky, crazy situations as a performer.

Jessica: 00:07:20

So it never a dull moment being a musician there.

Jessica: 00:07:23

So that's what I really wanted is to keep challenging myself and

Jessica: 00:07:25

not just hit a level where it's all right, I've learned everything

Jessica: 00:07:28

and I'm just gonna cruise along.

Jessica: 00:07:29

I want to keep growing and being challenged and work on very unique,

Jessica: 00:07:33

problems and provide solutions there.

Eddie: 00:07:35

That's really cool.

Eddie: 00:07:36

That's a perspective I haven't always heard a lot of.

Eddie: 00:07:39

Well, you know, we're on this podcast cuz we come together to talk about

Eddie: 00:07:43

different things that bring us joy.

Eddie: 00:07:45

And so I was just curious about, what is a product, tool or community

Eddie: 00:07:50

that you found that you really enjoy using and brings you a lot of joy.

Jessica: 00:07:56

Yeah.

Jessica: 00:07:56

So when I started using the past few months is exercism, which is website

Jessica: 00:08:00

where you just solve a whole bunch of different coding challenges, but it's

Jessica: 00:08:04

different from a lot of the other ones that are more, like computer science.

Jessica: 00:08:07

We all know of leet code and stuff like that.

Jessica: 00:08:09

If you're preparing for a job and whatnot, but they're just

Jessica: 00:08:12

also code wars and hacker ranks.

Jessica: 00:08:14

But I really like exercism because you could still focus on those problem

Jessica: 00:08:18

solving challenges, but they make it in a more fun, approachable way.

Jessica: 00:08:22

So you're not just like, slogging away being like, ah, binary,

Jessica: 00:08:25

search trees and all this stuff.

Jessica: 00:08:26

They come up with these like really cute little fun problems, and

Jessica: 00:08:29

they're still teaching a lot of the basics and advanced concepts.

Jessica: 00:08:32

So you can get yourself lost and just solving all these problems.

Jessica: 00:08:35

You're not trying to rack up points or anything like that.

Jessica: 00:08:37

You just go through the different challenges and there's so

Jessica: 00:08:40

many supported languages too.

Jessica: 00:08:42

So if you're picking up a new language and you're just like, oh, I just want to

Jessica: 00:08:45

kind of practice some coding challenges.

Jessica: 00:08:47

That's what I like about it.

Jessica: 00:08:48

It's just very fun, approachable, but you're still learning a lot as opposed to

Jessica: 00:08:52

sitting there going I gotta do this cause I got a job interview coming up there.

Jessica: 00:08:56

so that's what I really like about it and that community is just, really friendly.

Jessica: 00:09:00

I like communities that are friendly atmospheres that are welcoming and not

Jessica: 00:09:04

really focused on this ultra competitive situation where we're here to learn.

Jessica: 00:09:09

And it's also open source.

Jessica: 00:09:10

So if you wanted to contribute and build your own challenges, then you could do

Jessica: 00:09:14

that as well, which is kind of cool.

Jessica: 00:09:15

So yeah, that's what drew me

Jessica: 00:09:17

. Eddie: I had never heard of

Jessica: 00:09:19

and checked it out when you told me , Hey, this is what I want to talk about.

Jessica: 00:09:22

And what's really cool that stuck out to me is: I was actually just

Jessica: 00:09:26

having a conversation with one of my coworkers the other day.

Jessica: 00:09:29

A lot of times, People can design gamified systems to always be

Jessica: 00:09:35

competitive and that's good and everything, but not everyone.

Jessica: 00:09:40

Like, I am not someone who tends to like competitive things.

Jessica: 00:09:43

It's okay.

Jessica: 00:09:44

But it definitely doesn't get me really excited.

Jessica: 00:09:47

I actually like co-op stuff more than competitive.

Jessica: 00:09:51

and that's what stood out, what you just said, like looking at it, it seems

Jessica: 00:09:54

more like a co-op than a competition.

Jessica: 00:09:57

You're not trying to beat people.

Jessica: 00:09:59

And in fact, they have mentors to help look at your code reviews and

Jessica: 00:10:03

it's more like you're on a team than you are trying to be the best on the

Jessica: 00:10:08

leader board or something like that.

Jessica: 00:10:09

Exactly.

Jessica: 00:10:10

You're not worried about like leveling up or how many points you get.

Jessica: 00:10:13

It's just let's go through these fun challenges and they have that mentor

Jessica: 00:10:17

program where people look at your code and talk about ways you could

Jessica: 00:10:20

optimize it, they also have a built-in tool where they'll check your answer.

Jessica: 00:10:23

And if you have a lot of extra repetition or stuff like that, it'll make suggestions

Jessica: 00:10:27

like, you have some repetition here.

Jessica: 00:10:29

You might want to consider refactoring this part.

Jessica: 00:10:31

So you dive back in the challenge, oh yeah, I guess I could refactor

Jessica: 00:10:34

this here, make it cleaner.

Jessica: 00:10:35

So it's fun there.

Jessica: 00:10:36

It takes away that ultra competitive, oh my gosh, I'm behind.

Jessica: 00:10:39

Or I don't measure up to so-and-so.

Jessica: 00:10:40

it's just, you're just going through fun coding challenges there.

Eddie: 00:10:43

Nice.

Eddie: 00:10:44

How did you stumble acrossed it and find out about it yourself.

Jessica: 00:10:48

Yeah, I think I discovered on Twitter because

Jessica: 00:10:50

someone else was talking about it.

Jessica: 00:10:51

And at that point I was using some of the other sites and I was like, oh, okay,

Jessica: 00:10:55

what's cause it's such unique name too.

Jessica: 00:10:58

I've never heard of that for like a coding site there.

Jessica: 00:11:01

So I clicked on it.

Jessica: 00:11:03

Started working through it.

Jessica: 00:11:04

I'm like, yeah, I really like this.

Jessica: 00:11:06

I'm glad that I found it.

Jessica: 00:11:07

So there's so many cool things you can find on Twitter.

Jessica: 00:11:09

Just poke it around and it's like, oh, what's this, you know?

Eddie: 00:11:13

Yeah, I definitely have a list of way too many things that I'm intending

Eddie: 00:11:18

to check out one day cuz I see it on Twitter and well if I don't save it now

Eddie: 00:11:22

it's gonna disappear from my timeline.

Eddie: 00:11:23

So I'll send that tweet to a note on my phone.

Eddie: 00:11:27

And then I tell myself, I'm gonna check out that note one day, but,

Eddie: 00:11:31

really it just keeps growing.

Eddie: 00:11:33

It's probably got like 120 items on it that still need to be looked at.

Jessica: 00:11:37

Right.

Jessica: 00:11:38

Yeah, same here.

Jessica: 00:11:39

I have a whole bookmark folder of just programming resources that

Jessica: 00:11:43

it keeps growing and growing.

Jessica: 00:11:44

I'll get to it eventually.

( Eddie: 00:11:45

laughing) Exactly.

( Eddie: 00:11:48

Well cool.

( Eddie: 00:11:48

What languages have you tried out on exorcism?

Jessica: 00:11:52

Yeah.

Jessica: 00:11:53

I've mainly been working with JavaScript and then also playing

Jessica: 00:11:55

around a little bit with TypeScript and a little bit with Python there.

Jessica: 00:11:59

And so they have a great range of beginner, intermediate,

Jessica: 00:12:02

"expert challenges" and whatnot.

Jessica: 00:12:04

And so it's great if you're just picking up another language, you're oh, okay.

Jessica: 00:12:07

Yeah, let me go get started with this and it's still engaging.

Jessica: 00:12:11

They try to create these like different stories with the

Jessica: 00:12:14

problems that you're solving, just to help keep you engaged there.

Jessica: 00:12:17

So it's not just solve this problem.

Jessica: 00:12:19

You'll be like two sentences or something.

Jessica: 00:12:20

They'll give you an actual story.

Jessica: 00:12:21

They're like, oh, can that be makes sense there.

Jessica: 00:12:23

So I like the engagement factor with.

Jessica: 00:12:25

it.

Eddie: 00:12:26

Yeah.

Eddie: 00:12:26

I think when I was looking at it, that was one of the biggest things

Eddie: 00:12:30

that popped up is that you have this story or something to go into.

Eddie: 00:12:34

Like for example, I just randomly pulled up this medium one that