This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Jessica Wilkins, a self-taught developer and a staff author for the freeCodeCamp News publication. Jessica talks about how to get started with tech writing, how to differentiate between constructive criticism and negative feedback, and how to avoid gatekeeping by eliminating assumptions from your writing, avoiding terms and phrases like "it's so easy!", and sometimes adding prerequisites to your posts.

About Jessica Wilkins

Jessica Wilkins is a self taught developer and technical writer from Los Angeles, California.

In her previous career, she was a professional oboist, educator and owner of JDW Sheet Music.

Jessica's interest in programming came during the pandemic when she wanted to build the Black Excellence Music Project which celebrates black artists from the jazz and classical fields.

She now works part-time as a junior developer for a small tech company and is a staff author for the freeCodeCamp News publication.

• Dev.to profile
• @codergirl1991 on Twitter
• @jessica-wilkins-developer on LinkedIn

Links from the Show:

• Eastman School of Music
• Jessica's Lunch & Learn: How to grow your tech career through writing
• Freecodecamp news
• Freecodecamp forum
• Quincy Larson
• George Floyd murder
• The Black Excellence Music Project
• Github for it
• Virtual Coffee November Monthly Challenge
• Gatsby
• Voices of Gatsby: Fighting Back Against Imposter Syndrome
• How to Use Repl.it: a beginner's guide
• How to Use Codepen: a beginner's guide
• NodeMailer

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Please vis

Sponsor Virtual Coffee!

Your support is incredibly valuable to us. Direct financial support will help us to continue serving the Virtual Coffee community.

Please visit our sponsorship page on GitHub for more information - you can evensponsor an episode of the podcast!

Virtual Coffee:

• Virtual Coffee: virtualcoffee.io
• Podcast Contact: [email protected]
• Bekah: dev.to/bekahhw, Twitter:https://twitter.com/bekahhw, Instagram:bekahhw
• Dan: dtott.com, Twitter:@danieltott