A Love for Programming

Starting with basic websites when I was 13 years old, I have always been interested in building and desiging my own websites. I began with no knowledge, using sites like Geocities, which required no actual knowledge of HTML and CSS. Being an adolescent, I starting building them around the things many adolescents were into (namely music, videogames, and television). I used it to display my graphic design skills, as well as write reviews of my favorite movies and tv shows. MySpace was very big at the time, so I built many MySpace layouts. I taught myself HTML and CSS to manage the site, aswell as to allow people with no HTML and CSS knowledge to use my layouts by building templates for them. OVer time, I began to find Geocities too limiting, so I hosted my own website, which I built from scratch. With the training wheels off, I began teaching myself the basics of the aforementioned frameworks.

This is where I found my love for building and programming. Curiousity began to take over. I started learning PHP and JavaScript, and it wasn't long before I saw this as an outlet to impact the world through my skills.

Taking My Skills to the Next Level

After working a job in sales for four years, I decided to take the front end experience that I had, and combine it with back end knowledge. This would allow me to make my sites more interactive by incorporating log in functionality, as well as things like databases.

After doing some research, I decided to attend a code school called The Iron Yard in Durham, NC, and enrolled in their Ruby on Rails course. There, I not only learned how to be a developer, but I also learned many important methodologies such as:

  • Agile
  • Test-Driven Development (TDD)
  • Object-Oriented Design

A Hunger to Learn More

Completing the Iron Yard invogirated me. I wanted to learn as much as I could about all aspects of programming. I now not only attend Ruby meet ups regularly, I also attended an Ember meetup hosted by Ember Sherpa.

I now treat the world of web development like an ocean. I aim to dive into that ocean and let it wash over me. My ever-growing skill set includes:
Ruby, JavaScript, Ember, Perl, HTML, CSS, and JQuery

And while I know this is only the beginning in my journey into the world of programming, I an exteremly excited to continue my journey and embrace all aspects of what the future holds for me.

A Glimpse Into My Work

Since I began at the Iron Yard, I have developed or contributed to a number of apps.

Communicant

Designed as a means of communication for people in the midst of divorce or child custody proceedings. Court-appointed mediators can access the app and help facilitate communication. Built using Ruby on Rails, with Angular front-end components.

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Github Clone

An app designed to mimic the GitHub profile page. Built using Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and implementing the GitHub API.

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And Many More

Want to see more examples of my work? Then head on over to my GitHub page!

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