1. You started the 3-month Junior Software Developer course at SmartCoding on April 11th, 2018. Do you remember what you were thinking back then about learning programming? And what was the main drive for you to start learning?
I was both psyched to learn coding and ready to face frustration and challenges since coding was very different from what I’d been doing. My drive was basically my curiosity. I moved to Stockholm without having a clear idea of what to do with my life, but I knew I was willing to try out new stuff. When the course was looking for students, I was waiting for my SFI class to start and nothing else was going on, so I decided to give coding a spin.
2. Can you summarize your experiences with the Junior Software Developer course? What was the most challenging part, looking at it from a time perspective, and what can you describe as the best one or somehow rewarding?
I’ve had my fair share of frustration, but I’ve also grown a lot. To me, the most challenging part was to express my solution to a problem in such a way the computer understands. As for the most rewarding moment, it is when my program isn’t working as I expect it to, I’ve learned to take a step behind, read my own code and see what I’m actually telling the computer to do.
3. Has this course changed your way of thinking about programming and how do you feel about your new skills?
I used to think that programmers were glued to their laptops all day, alone, until they figured out the solution. But later I learned that such an image was totally untrue. Lots of discussions with their peers and working with paper and pen to brainstorm are actually professional programmers’ daily life. I feel very excited about all the new knowledge I’ve gained from this course and learning coding is what I do even in my free time now.
4. What are your goals concerning your future career? Are you planning to develop your tech skills?
I don’t have a specific plan (yet!), but now I know I want to work with coding. Hopefully, I can one day be hired and paid because I write good code and do cool stuff with it!
5. There are many women who might be still sceptical about learning programming. What could you tell them to give them courage and convince to start learning?
Learning to code is really not as hard as it might seem. You just need to have (a lot of) patience (especially at the beginning) and the ability to break a problem down into manageable pieces. There are times you just don’t get it, and it’s totally ok to walk away from it for a bit, ask for help, and perhaps read other people’s solution code to a similar (or even the same) problem. If you’re ever – even if just the slightest – curious about coding, it never hurts to try!
6. Would you recommend SmartCoding courses to women that want to start working as programmers?
Yes, definitely!
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