The Unconventional Path of Rita Codes: Art, Code & Community

I didn't follow a conventional path to become a software engineer. My [music] academic background is in performance arts which I studied at university. [music] Making a living as an actress is not easy. So I always had side jobs. I worked as a waitress and as a musician because I play violin [music] and as a game master in escape room. And after a long day, I thought [music] I cannot do this forever. I need a more sustainable job. I've always been a fan about maths and logic games. I just love figuring [music] things out. So, I figure why not giving computer [music] science a try? It sounded fun for me. I started with free online specialization by Rice University called Fundamentals of Computing. [music] It was fun. I love it. It wasn't easy because I had my full-time job and as I was still doing theater [music] stuff but I managed to finish it in over a year and after that [music] I just continue further. I was guided by my mentor Horgeia sensei for me and after 2 years of learning I landed my first job as a front end engineer. This is my treasure is from 19th century. Look [music] at this beauty. Look the side. It was fixed [music] it seems. And the other one is electric. This is to play [music] with bands. It's a Yamaha. And it's pretty cool too. [music] Impossible fail. Before becoming a software engineer, I spent many years working as a musician [music] as and as an actress. I had my own theater company and we created a brand new show per week. [music] We could make jokes with whatever was happening at that time. And this make our shows really fresh and [music] connected to the real world. I have this part full of [music] anime stuff. I have here One Piece characters from Mandalorian. Look at these cuties. The Kmensun Ja characters. And [music] this is amazing. It's a book of the making of of my favorite game ever, The Final Fantasy Remake, The Seven. Learning how to code can be challenging, especially at the beginning, because you need to shift [music] your way of thinking. Something that really helped me was my fascination on understand how humans [music] learn. I think that there are two points that are key. Gamification and creativity. Gamification because you need to approach learning like a game. It should be fun. You can fail and it's not the end of the world. It's just another chance to try again. As for creativity is just find original ways or new ways to [music] tackle problems. If you mix a little of creativity and gamification, you will learn faster because you won't be afraid of [music] trying wild things or you are going to experiment a lot and when you [music] are experiment you need to think about the thing and this is the ticket [music] to learning faster. A day in my life as a software engineer. [music] I wake up at 6:00 a.m. to make the most out of my day. First thing in the morning, I take a few [music] moments to think about what I'm grateful for. Then I make my favorite coffee and meditate for 30 minutes. I make my bed and sit at my desk ready to start my workday. [music] My favorite part of the day is the daily stand up. It's such a great way to bond with my team. The project of Rita Co's videos came to life to fulfill a need that I had. I just [music] missed acting and at the same time this project was a perfect [music] fit for me because my boyfriend Jav is a professional at video editing and [music] VFX. So, we were the perfect team. We [music] could combine our skills and create something good and have fun at the same time. I wanted to do something that mixes programming and humor because [music] as programmers we all love a good laugh. There's a lot of pressure in this [music] field. There are tons of programming languages and new frameworks that sometimes [music] it's just too much and you feel that you could burn out easily [music] or falling behind and if you don't have all the answers [music] you feel like a fraud. So I think that making jokes about silly mistakes that we make on daily basis [music] is a way to let people know that they are not alone because we are all quietly suffering through the same silly things and we [music] can just laugh it off and keep moving forward also without [music] any intention. We are creating a lovely community and this is awesome. And finally, the moment that everyone was waiting for, Tofu. Tofu. He's the star of my Rita's account. [music] And everybody know Tofu. So, Tofu, he's shaking. He's hungry and [music] he hates winter. My videos are quite short, less than a minute in in general, [music] and I mix there all the things that I love. I use a lot of gags [music] from anime, and I use a lot of my uh my pet. I don't talk on my videos. It's easier [music] to edit them if you don't have to deal with the sound. And as I work fully remote, everything [music] is on text. I communicate with other characters by Slack message or [music] email or things like that that appear in the in the screen. At the very beginning, the first [music] 10 videos had only I don't know 50 views and we were just doing this for fun so we didn't care and then suddenly just blew up and [music] I didn't expect that to be honest. Of course, when you have so many views, there are some not so pleasing [music] aspects. Some guys that are quite obsessed with trying to explain me the solution to my non-existing problem. It's a joke. There is no problem [music] here. And even once, some guy doubted [music] if I am a real developer. Why? I don't know. But I think that this is [music] pretty common on the internet and you just need to ignore them and pay attention to the other 98% [music] of the people that are who are awesome. As [music] a female working in programming, I think that as everybody knows, we are not in a very good place. We are less than 20% [music] of the workforce and most of women spend only 10 years in the field and then quit. And we are not quitting about [music] family [snorts] reasons. It's it's other thing. It's quite ironic because programming was at the very beginning a female thing. So I think this is a social issue that started to change in the 80s when advertising started to marketed computers as a boy toy [music] and all of this gigs culture thing as this is a social issue. [music] I think we can change that. And I'm an optimistic person. I think that we are in a better place than 10 years ago, but there's a long way to go. When I started learning how to program, I was 28 and I was a little bit afraid [music] of maybe it's too late for me and especially in the tech field that everybody is super young, but I realized that it's never too late and as long as you are enjoying it and and you have passion, you only [music] need to work harder and you can do it.