Essi Jukkala— Games Programmer
Essi is a Games Programmer at Helsinki based gaming studio Shipyard Games, and has been a coach at several of the codebar Helsinki workshops.
You can find Essi on the internet at:
jjaine.github.io/ | @essijukkala
- What did you want to be growing up?
I don’t have a clear memory what I would have wanted to be when I was little, but when growing up, I’ve always been interested in technology and music, so first I wanted to be a professional musician and then I wanted to be maybe a producer. I almost didn’t go to high school as I thought I’d better study music producing. Then in high school I was really encouraged towards mathematics and such, which lead my dreams to a technology career and I wanted to work as an acoustics engineer.
2) When did your interest in tech start?
Since I was a little girl, I have always been interested in tech. I remember us getting the first computer and playing games on that. There are also pictures of me, when I was little, where I am taking apart a computer and a VHS player just to see what’s inside!
3) How did you make the transition to being a developer?
I first studied electrical engineering, but during the first year, I realised that programming was actually more fun. After that I started studying computer science and pretty quickly after that I started to think about myself as a developer.
4) What was your first development job?
The first job that I got was after my first year in university. I was doing a very basic website for one of the research groups. I still don’t think about that as my first real development job though. In my mind my first ‘real’ development job was when I was working as a course assistant, creating new programming assignments, making tests for them and setting up a server that would run them.
5) What is your favourite thing about being a developer?
I love the creativity! In my mind programming consists of the creative part where you try and figure out a nice way to solve your problem and then the logical part of actually programming and debugging the code. I love puzzles too, so a difficult bug or a hard configuration problem always makes me excited.
6) What is the coolest project you have worked on and why?
I think the coolest project is the one that I’m currently working on at work! We’re a small team building a new location-based city building game. It’s been a project that has taught me lots of new skills and my old skills have improved and they have also proved to be useful, which is great.
7) How did you get involved with codebar Helsinki?
I saw a post on Facebook about codebar in Helsinki when it first started. It seemed like a great initiative, so I attended as a coach.
8) Why do you keep coming back to codebar?
I love teaching and sharing my knowledge. And the fact that it might help some underrepresented people get more into coding. I’m always trying to encourage new people to try out programming.
9) What are your plans for the future?
In the near future I hope to complete my master’s thesis from a Game Design and Production major in Aalto. After that I hope to work at my current company and see how our game really takes off and become the next big thing in location based gaming! I’m definitely continuing programming, one way or another. I’d also like to continue teaching people about programming.
10) What advice would you give to aspiring developers?
My best advice would be to first learn the basics really well in one programming language. After that immediately start doing your own projects with the language and any other language you learn. Then use those skills to put together a portfolio site where people can use them and put the code openly available, for example, on Github. After that, network with other developers, take part in hackathons and jams. Following the industry news is a good way to go too!
