Hi there. Today with you again for the monthly column - “Interview with stranger”. And today our guest is front-en developer - Julia. Julia, I have a couple of questions for you. Ans the first one, have you wanted to become a developer since childhood?
No, of course not. Because in my childhood I wanted to be a fashion model. But I loved mathematics and solving different task, so after 9th grade I entered the physics and mathematics class of Lyceum No. 1 Grodno city. But then I again turned in the wrong direction, because I took part in the regional olympiad in chemistry, took second place and decided to enter the Chemistry Faculty. I think at this moment everyone will imagine the famous Heisenberg from the TV series Breaking Bad, but in reality everything was not like that. And only after 6 years of working in a chemical laboratory I decided to try a new field - IT world specifically frontend.
Sounds interesting. But why frontend, because there are many other areas that maybe more suitable for girls, such as business analysis, project management, design?
It was also a long and difficult way too. Because first I completed courses to become a project manager and even worked as a Scrum Master in a law company. But constant meetings, negotiations and calls really exhausted me. And I always wanted to see the concrete result of my work, which was impossible in such a profession. So one day my friend sent me a link to a video on YouTube about website layout and I decided to try writing code. And It turned out to be very catching and exciting for me.
Such an inspiring story of finding yourself. And how did you learn frontend, yourself or maybe with some courses?
After some month of myself study, I found an excellent free community school, Rolling Scopes, where there is a whole training program and activists and mentors help students at every step.
Sounds excellent to start, I think. Was it easy for you or maybe challenging?
No, it was really challenging for me, because it was a very large amount of new information in a short time. But the program was well structured, so from the basics of HTML and CSS, we moved on to learning javascript, then OOP, asynchronous programming, typescript, and finally react.
Julia/ and my last question. What motivates you on your way?
I loved writing code and seeing how elements appear on a new page, take the right place and the user can interact with them. I like learning something new. I understood that I could develop in a new profession endlessly, because new technologies are constantly appearing. But I always had a backup plan, because I’ve been doing pole dance for 6 years now.
Thanks for your honest answers. Wish you good luck and interesting tasks in our company