Learn to Code in Simple Steps. If you are considering to start a career, or a career change to programming or other tech-related fields, my guest and Learning Coach, Pamela Price, brings you an inside look with her YouTube channel Jumpstart Code, and why diverse voices matter in tech! Your creativity, combined with her unique and effective methods of teaching, can make possible for you to learn the fundamentals and have a rewarding career in technology.
Learn to Code in Simple Steps. If you are considering to start a career, or a career change to programming or other tech-related fields, my guest and Learning Coach, Pamela Price, brings you an inside look with her YouTube channel Jumpstart Code, and why diverse voices matter in tech! Your creativity, combined with her unique and effective methods of teaching, can make possible for you to learn the fundamentals and have a rewarding career in tech.
As an engineer, programmer, professor, and learning coach, Pam is indeed a woman who has made history.
Time Stamp:
(01:36) Meet Pamela
(03:26) Teaching the Fundamentals in Simple Steps
(05:20) Other jobs in tech that are important in terms of you having an understanding and appreciation of technology and coding
(06:34) Careers available in this field, from finance to marketing
(08:39) Pam’s journey in tech
(10:32) Learning Coach in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C++, Java and more
(11:17) Overcoming obstacles and student feedback
(13:31) Creative and unique teaching style
(17:07) Pamela’s video advantage
(21:48) Diverse voices matters in tech! Importance of point of view for the products and services that are created
(25:07) Making history - Probably the 1st
(25:35) What’s ahead and contact information
Pamela Price:
Tweeter: @pamrprice
YouTube: Jumpstart Code - https://www.youtube.com/c/jumpstartcode
LinkedIn: Pamela Price - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelarprice
Stay in Touch⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Instagram: @Life100Podcast⠀⠀⠀⠀
Website: Life100Podcast.com
Email: Life100Podcast@gmail.com⠀
YouTube: Life 100 Podcast
Rosie, Host (00:18):
Welcome back to Life Podcast. It is so good to be with you today and to bring this episode full of possibilities and information. If you are considering to start a career, if you're considering changing careers, specifically, a career in tech, in programming or other tech related fields, my guest today brings you an inside look as an engineer, programmer, professor, and the founder of courses on how to learn to program, how to give instructions to the computer, to execute what you want. Pamela Price is indeed a woman who has made history and her YouTube channel, Jumpstart Code, shows you how your creativity, combined with her unique and effective methods of teaching, can make possible for you to learn the fundamentals and start a career in this field. So Pamela, welcome to the show.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (01:18):
Hi Rosie. Nice to be here with you.
Rosie, Host (01:21):
It is so good that you're spending this time with us to help us understand and to learn more about the resources and importance of coding. So tell me about your journey and forming Jumpstart Code.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (01:36):
I'll tell you about how I got into this field. I've actually been in this field for quite a while now. When I was in high school, I liked math a lot, and I had an opportunity to go to a weekend workshop at MIT. They were basically recruiting minority students to come to school there to be in their engineering program. I went to this workshop and the one thing I remember is the person who talked about electrical engineering said that electrical engineering was basically applied math. And that is really what determined my major. That is what made me decide to go into electrical engineering in school. I took my first programming class during my freshman year, during my second semester. And I really, really loved it. I loved the idea that I get to control the computer. That's what kind of started my journey. Years later after actually working in industry for awhile, I've moved into teaching about 20 years ago, teaching is my second career. My parents were both teachers, my grandfather was a teacher, so I'm a third generation teacher and I've been teaching coding for the last 20 years. So Jumpstart Code came about because I really love explaining programming concepts to students. I love explaining it in a way that makes it understandable. I want to create videos that really help to encourage people to enter this field and make it more accessible.
Rosie, Host (03:02):
Yes, and those videos explain so well the concepts. One of my favorite videos is Coding is Fun, because the way that you explain things that could be complicated, but you do it in such a way that is easy to understand. And for beginners, what is about coding, what is about it, that might be a good career for them?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (03:26):
Oftentimes, in my beginning classes, I like to start off trying to explain to them what coding is, because I really think this word has become a very generic word and not everybody understands what coding really means. One of the ways I like to explain it is that internally in a computer, the only thing a computer understands is zeros and ones. So everything in a computer's memory has to be basically encoded in a zero and one, that's the language, that's the native language of a computer. Clearly, that's not a very easy language for us as humans to write everything in zeros and ones. So we understand English or whatever our languages is. A programming language is the bridge. So for example, if we think about us Rosie, if your native language is Spanish and my native language is English, suppose we're trying to figure out how to communicate. If we discover that maybe we both know French, then that becomes the common language for us to speak, but programming languages, the common language, so that you can basically make a computer, do whatever you want it to do. And that's what's really exciting, is the creativity that comes along with being able to give instructions to the computer and have it thought because computers are basically stupid, if we are not writing programs for them, they're really stupid. So we are the ones that make computers interesting and fun.
Rosie, Host (04:52):
Fun, indeed. I mean, that is a great way to see it because isn't it a way that a lot of things are approached. And when it is explained that way, it's just opens this world of possibility. Something that can be done, because exposure is important. And when we only hear one thing that seems to be not even reachable, but then, we hear another way that are opportunities, then it changes everything. Doesn't it?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (05:20):
It really does. And technology is the key to everything nowadays and learning these kinds of skills opens up lots of doors. And what's also interesting is it doesn't mean that you actually have to be a coder. My journey was, my major was electrical engineering and did more hardware related things, which is the actual computer , in school other than software. But I got into my first job and I actually discovered, I didn't really like engineering that much. And I thought for a minute that I had maybe wasted five years of my life because I had gotten master's degree. But what I discovered is that there are lots of jobs in tech just because you're going to be in tech does not actually mean you have to be the designer or the code or whatever. There are a lot of other jobs in tech that are important in terms of you having an understanding and appreciation of technology. But you may not because some people think, do I want to just be sitting and coding all day long. Some people get excited about that, but some people think that maybe that's not what they want to do, but the knowledge of understanding how computers work and how coding works, you can apply that to lots of different careers.
Rosie, Host (06:34):
Absolutely. And can you give me examples of what type of careers are available in that particular industry?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (06:42):
So after I discovered that I didn't exactly like doing engineering, I was actually working at Hewlett Packard at the time. It was my first job out of college. I looked around, I was talking to people all around the company and I discovered people in lots of different areas that had a technical background, salespeople are selling a technical product. And so you have to have the knowledge to be able to talk to the customer about it. There are support kinds of jobs that actually support the customers and even product marketing. When someone comes up with a great idea for some gizmo, right? Some software person or a person comes up with an idea of something that they think is real clever. Should you make it into a product? I don't know. There's a lot of questions you have to ask just because they can do it. You have to decide, is this something that people want?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (07:31):
Is it something that people will pay money for? How much will they pay for it? Are there competitors out there already? What kind of features do you need? So there's a whole number of questions and people that do that kind of work, people that are in product marketing jobs, they help to determine is this a new product that the company should do? How much is it going to cost us to make it? What can we sell it for? Will we make any money? There's a whole lot of things to ask about that. So just because you get this background of this knowledge and coding, you may decide you actually want to be the software developer to actually create things. Or you may be able to be involved in lots of other areas in the end.
Rosie, Host (08:13):
Yes, because that is where the combination of entrepreneurship and finance come together for products to be available to the final user, from the target market, and other things like that. Now ,you have a comprehensive experience and an impressive educational background. Can you tell us more about it so that the listener understands the person who is teaching these courses?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (08:39):
I'm originally from Texas. And when I graduated high school, I went to Rice University, which is in Houston, Texas. And that is where I went into electrical engineering. So that was my major at Rice. I graduated with my degree there in Electrical Engineering. Although the focus of my degree was a little more hardware, I was kind of a closet software person. And when I say hardware and software, hardware means people who actually build the computer that you touch the actual mechanics of it as software or the programs that run on it. So I was kind of a software person, but didn't really claim it. I really enjoyed those classes, but I took a lot of hardware classes. Then I went to Stanford University and I got my Master's in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. That's my educational background. And then I worked in Silicon Valley at companies, as I said, Hewlett Packard.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (09:31):
I worked in some smaller startup companies and I worked in engineering and application support, marketing support. And then I worked in product marketing. So I had a wide range of different things that I did in what I call the first part of my career. My parents were teachers. My grandfather was a teacher and I really have enjoyed teaching these last 20 years because I enjoy setting a good foundation. I'd really enjoy teaching the foundational classes of software that gives students a good foundation to go into more complex things, because what's really the biggest focus is learning how to solve problems. That's what you use programs for, right? That's why we have different programs. Every program has to be something that addresses a problem or solves a problem.
Rosie, Host (10:21):
And on your channel in YouTube, where you have the videos and you explain all the concepts, what is the final goal for each video that you create?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (10:32):
I've taught a number of programming languages over the years. I have different playlists there that address different languages, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. These are actually the languages that a lot of web developers are using. HTML is the language that you use to actually create a webpage. And JavaScript is what kind of gives it some action behind the scenes. But I also have videos on C++ and Java. These are all different programming languages. All of them were used to control the computer. So my goal is to develop them into sort of some mini courses. This is a way that you can kind of get a taste of what it's like and see if it's something that you want to continue to pursue in college.
Rosie, Host (11:17):
Exactly. It's more or less like a mini internship. It's an open window to see if this is something that you might be interested in, or if there are any other areas of the industry that you might be interested. And in doing so, after watching the videos, after being part of it, what obstacles can be experienced going into this field and ways to overcome them?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (11:42):
I'm a woman of color in technology. I've been doing that for a long time. And the field is primarily not. I like to always look at that as not a problem. I think as long as you get yourself trained and you feel confident. I tell my students all the time, nobody knows a hundred percent. What's important is that you like solving puzzles. You like the challenge. If you feel like you want everything to just go smooth all the time, well then, coding is not for you because it's not going to go smoothly all the time. I actually get excited when something doesn't work, because that means that's something that I can learn now. So I think the biggest obstacle is just for people to realize you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know it all. The challenge nowadays, the fact that we have all this information available on the internet, that's both the good news and the bad news, because you have to know what's the right thing that I need to search for.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (12:45):
And even when you get results, you have to kind of vet those results a little bit. The side of the internet that people have to realize is that anybody can put information out there. And so it is up to you to develop a skill of sorting out which site of which information, and also on YouTube, you can look up some people that have videos, channels on that and finding somebody that you like their style, you like the way they explain things. That's the challenge. And so that's what I'm hoping that my channel will be one that people really relate to the style of the way that I explain things. I had a student once tell me, "You teach this like you remember what it was like not to know it." And to me, that was the highest compliment that I've ever gotten from a student.
Rosie, Host (13:31):
And that is so rewarding because your videos, they are so well timed. It gives you enough time, not only to learn the information, but to absorb it and to apply it, because the way that you explain, like you did in the video with HTML, with the colors, and then it shows you trying different things on what it works and what it doesn't. And the reason why doesn't work. That's one of the things, because as a new programmer, when you are learning something new, everything is challenging, but then you keep practicing and you keep seeing and understanding why it doesn't work. It make things so much easier. And that is a beautiful objective, because then you will take that knowledge and you apply it to something else. That is something that I really like about your videos.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (14:18):
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
Rosie, Host (14:21):
And for the person who is new to coding, the person that has had no exposure, what are some of the resources that you think might be of benefit?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (14:30):
I would love to have them go to my channel. My channel on YouTube is Jumpstart Code. That's a very good resource. If you're interested in sort of front end development, web development, another really good resource online it's called W3Schools.com. Those are not videos. They're actually tutorials online, but they are very easy to follow. I reference them in my classes a lot. So that's a really good source as well. You just got to figure out which one fits your style, which learning coach. That's what I kind of think of myself as a learning coach. You need to find a learning coach that fits your style.
Rosie, Host (15:13):
Absolutely. And talking about coaching, what have you seen in your students, their progress from being a beginner student with limited knowledge, to being now exposed to the world of coding and all the possibilities that it brings, how have you seen them progressing and moving forward?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (15:31):
I have students who have done and are doing amazing things in industry. That's actually one of the best parts of being a teacher is when I hear back from some of my students. Sometimes they reach out to me on LinkedIn or different places, and tell me how they've used the things that they learned from me, how the foundation that I set really helped them in continuing along their journey. That's really rewarding because what I teach is the fundamentals. And I really enjoy that. I think every teacher, anybody who likes teaching, you'd have to have a passion for teaching, but then you'd have to discover the level of teaching that works for you. And what I hope my classes do is really get them excited and motivated about continuing their journey in computer science.
Rosie, Host (16:18):
That passion for teaching, is that passion for sharing knowledge, because when you see your students understand it, that gets it, that is the light bulb that goes on. There is such a great feeling because then you know that they can take that knowledge and apply it to solve a problem.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (16:37):
Yes. I definitely enjoy that. This is also not just for students, people, especially in light of what's been going on in the pandemic. Some people are looking to make career changes, and this is a great field to make a career change.
Rosie, Host (16:52):
Yes, and like you just said, because of the pandemic, so many positions now are able to be worked from home or remote locations. So definitely this is something for someone who is looking into a career change, can consider.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (17:07):
Definitely, somebody might be thinking about making this change. And this is a way to just get an idea of if you like it, because you do have to be the kind of person that kind of enjoys puzzles, curious, but you don't get frustrated because you will have problems. You spend more time in programming debugging, fixing things and solving problems. So that's the part you have to enjoy. I'll give you an example. The simplest problem has to be broken down. If I tell you we're going to play a game and I'm going to give you a number and you tell me what's the square of that number, the square of a number is the number times itself. So if I say three, then you tell me nine, well, that's the math that most of us kind of know. So now let's write a program to do that.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (17:54):
When you get to that part, you have to think about, well, what did I just do in my head? How did I know how to do that? So you have to teach the computer how to solve this problem. And there's actually three steps to what we just did. I tell you the game was going to be, I'll give you a number. You tell me the square. So the first step is you have to listen for what's the number that I need. So that's an input, the program has to get my input. The second step is, well, what did you want me to do? You want me to calculate the square? How do I do that? I have to multiply that number by itself. That's a calculation step. And then you have to tell me the answer. That's an output step. So you have input process, output, but all those things have to be written in a language in order for the computer to be able to do that for you. To me, that's the fun part of it. It Is figuring out the steps to solve the problem.
Rosie, Host (18:44):
Oh yes. Yes. And then with these steps is so much easier to figure out where things could have gone wrong. What needs to be changed? What needs to be adjusted? It's like a puzzle. Like you say, if you like puzzels, then you have the steps and it's so much easier to find a solution to the problem. And talking about that, for the person who is considering to start brand new in coding, or maybe do a career change from one area of this field, to another, what are some of the tips that you can give to turn this idea that they might have into a successful career?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (19:20):
That's actually a really good question, because I tell students all the time, the actual coding of whatever it is that you're trying to make, people often think that's the hard part. It's actually not the hardest part. There's two other parts that are a lot harder. And the first one is deciding what you need to make, and coming up with a plan for how to solve that problem. And you have to be able to articulate the steps to solve the problem, not in a programming language. You have to be able to write out a plan for how to solve the problem before you even decide what language you're going to code in it. If you do a good job on that plan, the coding will be the easier part. If you have people talk about the 80/20 rule, you really need to spend more of your time planning and designing.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (20:08):
And if you do that right, the coding will be a lot easier. The problem is that a lot of times we live in this instantaneous world with laptops and everything right away, and students don't always want to stop and spend the time to do that. Because like I tell my students, coding is sexy, right. Actually typing the code is what you really want to do, but you've got to do this planning to make that part easier. And then on the backend, in terms of having an idea, sometimes people don't think about this, but the other really hard part is getting people to know about your product or whatever it is, right? How many millions of apps are in the app store? So creating the app is one thing, but giving visibility to your app, that's a marketing problem. So even just with my YouTube channel, I just started it not too long ago. So marketing is always something that you have to be concerned with, how to get people to know that you exist.
Rosie, Host (21:07):
I agree a hundred percent because it's the same thing with industries like podcasting, for instance, there is something that you want to offer. There is something of value that you want to share and you need to let people know that you are there. Otherwise, how can they find you, right? That is the applied knowledge that you do when you're starting something new is what you know from this particular area, how can we take that and apply it to other areas? So for the person who says, okay, I have this experience and now I want to apply it to the work of tech, to the world of programming. How can they transfer that experience from one industry to the other?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (21:48):
One of the things I think that's really exciting, especially because of languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. What makes those languages kind of a good starting point is that you don't have to buy anything. All you need, if you've got a laptop, is an editor and there's free text editors that you can get, and a browser, that's all you need. And the wonderful thing, and the reason why we actually need more women and more people of color involved in the tech industry is because we need that point of view for the products and the things that are created. It's very important. That point of view exists in the tech world. And so the wonderful thing is you can apply coding to whatever problem you're trying to solve. We've been in a pandemic and people have been trying to solve problems. As a matter of fact, I saw an interesting story of a young boy back East because when vaccinations were first coming out, they were having a really difficult time getting appointments. And especially the the older people that needed to get vaccinated, oftentimes they didn't have access to computers and didn't understand all that. He created a site that basically said, "Sign up and I will get an appointment for you." And so the thing of it is you can come up with ways to really help the community and use technology to really bring a needed service. So that was a really necessary service. And he used technology to do that.
Rosie, Host (23:17):
Solving a problem in a timely fashion, which is so important during this pandemic that we have experienced. So that's the beauty about it. You see, I have seen, I have read about other people that now has come to light in one way or the other, who has contributed to be part of solving this problem that we are encountering while maneuvering through a pandemic. It's so good to see representation. So good to see women, people of color who are at the front of solving this problem. We are talking about scientists and mathematicians, programmers, developers, and everyone who has contributed one way or the other to solve this problem. So what I notice now is that people are more open in talking about the need for representation in these fields because they are there. We just need to bring them to the front for everybody to appreciate it.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (24:13):
Definitely we really are. It's becoming more accessible and students are learning so much younger. I teach a class at a community college and I have high school students that are in the class that I teach. These are going to be the people that solve the problems of the future. So I'm really excited about that.
Rosie, Host (24:32):
And in solving problems for the future, that imply changes, changes that were started long time ago. It is a path that people has to follow. And now we are talking about it in this way, and I commend you because you were one of the first, if not the first in your field, creating this path, who continue to do your very best and achieve things that some people might not think that they are possible. And you did it with grace, maybe not even thinking that you were creating this path for other people to follow.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (25:07):
I think back on it, Rosie, sometimes. And yes, I was the only female, as a matter of fact, I can't absolutely confirm it, but I really think that I am probably the first black female electrical engineering graduate of Rice University. I'm pretty sure I am. And I give my mom and dad a lot of credit for that because they were teachers. They always told me, all anybody can ever ask of you is that you do your best. You just focus on the learning.
Rosie, Host (25:35):
So what is ahead for you? What is the head for Jumpstart Code, and what would you like to see in the future in the technology field?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (25:44):
I want to expand the videos that I have. I think of myself as a learning coach. I'll love to have a community that helps people who watch the videos. I would love for them to make comments and let me know other things that they would be interested in the making videos, because I would like it to be a very useful community for people who are trying to get into this field.
Rosie, Host (26:08):
A community. This is the opportunity for you to be part of this field. If this is something that interested you, and even if you have questions, the best thing is to contact Pamela, to go to her videos in YouTube, to get in touch with her because she will give you a guidance and direction of what is available, or things that you might need to think when making a career choice. And in talking about that, Pamela, what social media platforms are available to get in touch with you?
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (26:35):
The YouTube channel again is Jumpstart Code. I am on Twitter @pamrprice. I'm on LinkedIn, Pamela Price on LinkedIn, so those are the primary ways of reaching out to me. I am going to have a website it's JumpstartCode.tech. There's no content there yet, but I'll be working on that this summer.
Rosie, Host (27:02):
Wonderful. I encourage you to ask questions, to visit the YouTube channel, to contact Pamela, to find more information. And Pamela, I truly appreciate the time that you have given us, your knowledge, your expertise, everything that you have done. And I'm looking forward to our next episode.
Pamela Price, Jumpstart Code (27:22):
Thanks Rosie. I have really enjoyed this. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun.
Rosie, Host (27:28):
What a great conversation. And I hope you will take that next step to make your dreams a reality. And remember to like, to comment, to subscribe, to share this episode, because like I always say, "Life is better when we live it at 100!"