Road to Code

Ruby, JavaScript, and all the languages to come…

Of all the icebreakers and conversation starters I’ve experienced at tech meetups, “tell me about your road to code…” is likely my favorite. For those well-established in the tech realm, hearing how they got their start, and what keeps them engaged is fascinating. And for those starting to code, hearing how they pivoted their career and/or life to learn to code is humbling!

My own journey is somewhat haphazard, in the way all good journeys tend to be. Several years ago, in the spirit of adventure, I moved to China. To fully immerse myself in the culture, I enrolled in a Mandarin Chinese language course at the local university (Shenzhen University - 深圳大学), which transformed my communication abilities and allowed me to secure full-time employment in a Chinese-speaking office environment.

Upon returning to the US, I continued to grow my office management career, which also allowed me to dip my toe into the tech world. The progression was slow at first - I built wireframes, took HTML & CSS workshops, and pushed beyond front-end design to dabble in JavaScript and Python. While I worked to establish a firm foundation of best practices through workshops, courses, and meetups, I started to evaluate full-time fullstack and web development programs.

Long-term, to combine my passion for language with my passion for programming, I aim to work on machine translation and/or natural language processing. My experience living and working in China helped me hone my ability to meaningfully connect with people unlike myself, but it also showed me how difficult cultural assimilation can be with language barriers that often confuse and frustrate. This ignited a desire to transform the realm of language learning and translation. I would love to participate in creating programs that more eloquently bridge cultural gaps and serve to document languages and linguistic families that are dying out.

Right now, I’m somewhere between here and long-term. Absorbing all I can as a Women Take Tech scholarship recipient in Flatiron’s Web Development Program, while greedily consuming all the computer science books, tech blog posts, and YouTube videos I can locate. And processing my knowledge with my very patient tech and non-tech friends (and my rubber duck - my beloved cat).