From Data Entry Drudgery to Software Engineer with Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder [Podcast #132]

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On this week’s episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder. She’s a software engineer has worked in the field for more than a decade. Interestingly, she studied photography in school and never took a programming class.

We talk about:

– How she and her sister ran a dial-in Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in the pre-web days

– How her first year as a dev she “was just living in abject fear of losing my job.”

– How she stayed at her first developer agency job for 7 years, and went from imposter syndrome afflicted newbie to getting promoted

– Her philosophy on creating programming tutorials: “You don’t have to be on the cutting edge. I don’t operate on the cutting edge.”

Can you guess what song I’m playing on my bass during the intro? It’s from a 1993 rock song.

Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Links we talk about during our conversation:

Jessica’s 7-hour “How to Build a Website” freeCodeCamp course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-simple-website-with-html-css-javascript/

Jessica’s coding journey animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA14r2ujQ7s

Kevin Powell, the “King of CSS”, who has also shared courses on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/kevin-powell/

Jessica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecodercoder

Chapters

0:00:00 Introduction and Background
0:07:53 Early Days of BBSs
0:15:36 Transitioning from Photography to Web Development
0:34:15 The Changing Landscape of the Photography Industry
0:46:08 Progressing in Career and Taking on Bigger Projects
0:55:43 Blogging and Building a Developer Community
0:59:08 Transitioning from Freelancing to Content Creation
1:04:37 The Role of a Supportive Partner in Freelancing
1:08:42 Navigating the Challenges of Freelancing
1:10:34 Staying Motivated and Learning New Skills
1:13:19 The Importance of Authenticity in Content Creation
1:15:19 Ethical Considerations in Web Development
1:20:09 Research and Preparation for High-Quality Tutorials Read More freeCodeCamp.org

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