If you want to understand what Heleen exactly does, you first need to understand the following: “A front-end developer is someone who programs the front of a website in a special computer language,” explains Heleen. “That’s what the site looks like for users.”
When she was 11 she got her first iMac, after which she illegally downloaded Adobe software. “There was a program with which you could build websites. With that I built sites with birthday cards, with pictures that moved when you crossed them with your mouse. ”
Then she did not program for five years. “I did not want to be a nerd, and I got an increasingly busier social life.”
When she was nineteen she moved to Amsterdam, where she ended up with a number of internships at a web agency. “As an employee I mainly did bug fixes: repairs. But because I was in charge of the helpdesk mailbox, I gradually solved more small technical problems myself. After a while I also built new functions: think of a button to share something on social media. And finally complete web pages. ”
Since the summer of 2016 Heleen has been working for the creative studio Momkai, known for the design of the website of De Correspondent, a Dutch journalistic platform.
Heleen sometimes notices that she lacks knowledge, which other colleagues who have followed a study in the direction of programming do. “As an autodidact you always keep an eye on your knowledge. You do not study a subject from A to Z, but collect pieces of information everywhere. “Even though that has advantages:” I also notice that I have taught myself things that my colleagues never received during their studies – that’s how we can complement each other. “
