Ex-Googler joins Journey
Meet Jacques Le Normand. This ex Google Software Engineer is now VP of education at Journey. He holds both a bachelor and a master’s degree in Computer Science as well as an MBA.
We sat down with Jacques to get a little more insight on his background.
How did you get into programming?
I developed a passion for programming at a very young age. My dad was a computer enthusiast and he introduced me to programming when I was a child. We had something called the Radio Shack Colour Computer in the early 90’s — The coco 2. It was a very interesting system because you could play games on it, but you could also just write your own programs using a language called Basic. My dad showed me a few cool things. I remember him showing me how to write a For Loop, which blew my mind.
Eventually he started buying me these books full of code, that I would copy line by line. At the end, you would run your program and you would see a cool animation, like fireworks for example. It was super rewarding when you hit that play button and see the fruits of your labour.
How did you start your career as a Software Developer?
That’s actually an interesting story because I was finishing my masters in computer science, and I was actually building a new programming language. When I was done with the project and it came time to publish it, I realized that I needed to make a decision between going into Computer Science Research or going to work in the industry. I realized that I was much more excited about programming rather than research so I decided to take an internship as a Software Developer at Jane Street in NYC.
I moved around a little, finally ending up at Google in Mountain View. While the perks were awesome, I decided to come back to Montreal and pursue an MBA, which ultimately led to my first teaching job.
Any advice for someone wanting to start with programming?
Personally, I’m very much into visual arts, interactivity, and seeing things on screen. My suggestion is to look into something like Processing. It’s a programming language system which lets you draw on the screen. It’s very visual, and fun to make. There are a ton of tutorials online. Although it’s not really useful for Web Development, it will teach you the thought process behind programming. It would really help you when you jump into other programming languages.
Any final comments?
Programming seems intimidating, and it seems like there is so much to learn. But at the end of the day, we all do basically the same thing, and you just need to start. It doesn’t matter what you choose in the beginning, as long as it motivates you.
