Fullstack Developer, Recovering Academic

Once upon a time, before I got into web development, I thought I wanted to be a philosophy professor. It turns out I was wrong about that, but the skills I honed during those years in academia - logic, critical thinking, analysis - have helped smooth my transition into the tech world. There are few things I've found more satisfying than grappling with a logic problem until getting to that magic moment when the code works - it does what it's meant to, the web page renders as it should, and life is beautiful.

Initially, much of my learning was self-paced, taking online courses and even briefly enrolling in Flatiron School's online program. With the support and encouragement of my friends from the local women's networking group the Rubber Ducks, I took the leap to enroll in the Deep Dive bootcamp at the beginning of 2024. Graduation from the bootcamp is coming up quickly, but I know I will continue to learn and grow my skills throughout my upcoming career in tech. That is, after all, why I've chosen this path: I'm a lifelong learner at heart, always ready for opportunities to expand my knowledge.

Ruby

Burque Trails CLI App While in the Flatiron School program, I completed the first major project - an application built with Ruby. The app runs in the command line, where, if you are a resident of Albuquerque, you can find a park near you that hosts one of the city's prescription trails. The video walks through the process of searching by zip code, or looking at all the parks, and getting more information about a specific park. The app was originally written with a web scraper to get the information from the city website. Future plans for this project include using data from the city's API and converting it to a web app.

HTML & CSS

web dev process shot

Several times through my learning journey, I've practiced these skills by creating a website from a mockup. Sometimes, as with the CSS challenge assignment at Deep Dive (GitHub), this did not require writing both HTML and CSS. In other cases, such as with the Rogue Pickings project at Skillcrush, creating the site was an extensive process. As a student, I was provided with design assets, such as a mockup, a style tile, and the text, from which to write up the HTML and CSS files for the site.

TypeScript & React

snippet of TypeScript code

In preparation for beginning work on our capstone projects in the Deep Dive bootcamp, we layered TypeScript onto our knowledge of JavaScript. We then learned to use TypeScript with React to build components, and applied this to building the frontend of the capstone project.

JavaScript

screenshot of a color picker with sliders

The pre-work for both Flatiron and Deep Dive involved lots of practice with JS. For Deep Dive, we built a color picker and a shopping list. During the bootcamp, of course, I've gotten even more practice with fundamentals and JS events (GitHub). The capstone project uses JS for both the frontend and backend, with React, Next.js, and Express as the backbone for the app.

Python

snippet of Python code

Early on in my self-directed learning journey, I took Dr. Charles Severance's course Programming for Everybody on Coursera. Through both the course and the textbook, updated for Python 3, Dr. Chuck taught me the fundamentals of programming - variables, data types, data structures, and flow control. (Even regular expressions!) I also learned how to run the small programs I wrote and debug them.