Beverley Newing — Front End Developer

Beverley is currently Front End Developer at Oxford Computer Consultants, she is one of those codebar greats who started attending as a student then came back as a coach, and has now started a new chapter in Oxford after moving there for an internship. She also won the Rising Star Award at the 2017 We Are the City Awards.

Find her online at:

@WebDevBev | GitHub | Blog

What did you want to be growing up?

I wanted to be an environmental conservationist! I ended up taking a different route, but this is still a topic that is very close to my heart.

When did your interest in tech start? ​

It started when I was a teenager! I grew up on a farm and there were no kids around nearby, and I was quite introverted anyway, so I spent a lot of time on the internet. I remember back then it cost 1.5p per minute after 6pm, so I was allowed half an hour a day! I joined forums to talk about books with people, and created a few of my own. We used to play around with the HTML and CSS, and it was really fun.

Huge congratulations on the new job as a developer, please tell us more about your journey to being a developer? ​

Despite having been interested in more STEM-oriented subjects, I actually then went down a humanities route. I didn’t do very well at Higher Level maths (the I.B. equivalent of a Further Maths A-Level) and so instead of Physics, decided to go and study English and German Literature, subjects that I was better at. But I realised at university that it was close reading that I’d really enjoyed, and looking at patterns and grammar, and that my degree didn’t involve a lot of that. After I left university, I floated for 6 months and then got an internship at Code First: Girls, where I learnt a huge range of skills including coding. From there, I then moved to another internship with Zooniverse at the University of Oxford, where I studied JavaScript and build tools, and then got another internship after that at Oxford Computer Consultants where I focused on my Front End skills. As of the 1st of June I now work there as a Front End Dev!

What is your favourite thing about being a developer?

I love having a problem and breaking it down into small pieces and then solving it. I actually love this so much, it’s so empowering and a constant reinforcement of that “hey I can actually do stuff”. It’s helped my general confidence a lot. It’s a great skill to get to practise on a daily basis and it’s helped me in other aspects of my life a great deal. It can be a bit frustrating at first when you’re working with something and it goes wrong and you don’t know why, but deconstructing what it is you’re doing and making sure you understand each and every part often flushes the bugs out and you always learn something.

I love having a problem and breaking it down into small pieces and then solving it

What is the coolest project you have worked on and why? ​

Definitely Zooniverse! The team was fantastic, and the impact it has on research is amazing. It’s such a cool platform — and it’s an open source project so anyone can contribute!

How did you get involved with codebar? ​

I heard about codebar when I worked at Code First: Girls, and went along for several sessions whilst I was based in London. I loved it and thought it was fantastic — so much so that when I moved to Oxford, I decided to bring codebar with me. I founded the chapter and lead it on my own for around 2 workshops, before realising I needed help. At this point I invited the wonderful Bonnie and Marten to come and join me, which they did. We’ve run 7workshops now.

Why do you keep coming back to codebar? ​

codebar creates a wonderful, fantastic community of both students keen to push themselves and coaches who are keen to help other people. Everybody learns — students learn, and coaches learn through teaching, and everyone always leaves happy. I’ve also made so many friends through codebar Oxford, and the atmosphere at each event is always so wonderful. I’m biased but I think it’s great.

What are your plans for the future? ​

My plans are to hone my Front End developer skills, and eventually become a Senior Dev and hopefully a Tech lead one day! I really love Front End — I love working with the beautiful things that designers create, and I love the skill and craft involved in creating them, alongside all of the heftier behind-the-scenes bit like JavaScript and build tools.

What advice would you give to aspiring developers?

The journey to becoming a developer can be long, but that is okay. There is a lot to learn and it does take time. One of the things that has consistently helped me throughout the past year and a half though is helping other people. I teach on Code First: Girls courses and I coach at codebar sometimes, and this really reinforces that I do know things and helps me with my imposter syndrome. This has the double-benefit of that the improved confidence you have comes across when you talk to other people (possibly in interviews) about what it is you know. How willing people are to help one another is also one of the great things about this industry and it’s great to be able to carry that on and be part of that amazing culture. That, and documentation! Documentation is awesome for so many reasons: it helps you make sure you understand what you’ve done and why; it makes your code more accessible to other people who are not on the same level as you, and it’s so useful to have when you return to projects after a while.