My Story

This is my story so far 😊. I will be adding more and more as time goes on.

The current story

My programmer career started at a startup called codecareer.io where I was a Front-End Engineer specialising in React and mongo. During my tenure at the startup, I concentrated on developing a variety of responsive and accessible web applications using React.js, Next.js, Gatsby, and styled with tailwindcss. I was the driving force behind four new features for the hiring system's job board.

One features involved cleaning all the job data from the API services into a new API. As the named fields where not consistent between the API's. To make it possible to have job data with consistent names. He created a python job that made API calls to the services and then cleansed the data fields into a new JSON file. Finally populating the MongoDB with the new cleansed data.

After implementing this feature, I became interested in full-stack development and started to play a greater role. In my spare time, I soon began studying full stack development. While continuing to work on improving the lighthouse performance score of the react web application.

After the startup disbanded I then took some months off to upskill my skills in full stack development. Soon after I landed my second developer role, still rocking 😎the startup scene, where I continue to enjoy building rapid greenfield projects to help clients get their vision to market first. My current goal is to embark on a journey to become a senior engineer with hiyield.

How I got here

My first coding experience came from the Commodore 64 (CBM 64). Which remained in the family for quite sometime. It was the closest thing we had to a computer at the time. With the Commodore 64 (CBM 64) we both shared time typing the code for "Blue Meanies from Outer Space" into memory. We achieved this by using the code from "Creative Computing Issue 61" magazine. I was so excited to see it running, however, not so for my mom. She claimed all that time for a space invaders clone 🙂.

Span a few years to when I started college. I needed to buy a PC to submit assignments. So during the summer of 2008, I worked cleaning hotels and chalets with my mother. Soon I had enough money to buy my first computer a "Packard Bell iMedia x2414". Which had an enormous amount of Ram totaling 2GB 😯 and an Intel Celeron with duo cores 😯. The best part was it was running everyone's favorite Windows version Vista 😑.

The Windows operating system failed one fateful evening. I had no idea how to fix the DHCP server and no other computer to look for a solution. To discover a solution, I headed to the public library. The suggested solution was I needed a Windows CD, but this appeared to be impossible I would have to pay for a new disc 😑. So I began to research what Windows is and whether there is an alternative. The answer was Yes! Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). So I asked canonical for a disc and enclosed a cheque to cover the shipping. Due to Windows issues, I have used Linux ever since and started his journey into programming.

During my time in college (2008) I liked the idea of making games after buying an Xbox 360. I discovered that to make games for Xbox you needed to use XNA but, to use XNA you needed to know C#. I then pursued C# as my first language by continuing to study it in my freetime after lessons on college computers. I managed to build a RPG game by using an XNA RPG package. But I encountered problems as I couldn't make games at home, because my computer ran Linux. So then I moved onto using python to make games with PYGAME and even took part in some PYJAMS.

In my pursuit of finding some python learning material. I discovered codeacademy and learned python. I then took their web development courses which began a real shift for me getting into web development in.

In 2012 I took a university course in BSc Psychology and primarily focused on neuroscience. In my final year of the course I needed to create a group project. The project required a program to be built to display images and time reactions of users. In this moment I discovered programming as my calling I enjoyed building things.

After graduating, I enrolled in freecodecamp (2016) and CS50 introduction to computer science. By 2017 I was freelancing while continuing to improve my skills with udacity. In 2019 I finished freecodecamp and improved my fundamentals of web development. Despite continuing with freelancing I lacked the confidence to become a Front-End developer. But by 2020 I drew out a plan to become a full time developer by planning a schedule with #301DaysOfCode. The plan involved studying with coursera to improve my softskills and by using udemy to sharpen my developer skills here is all the courses I have taken.

After 6 months intensive training and practice I was approached for my first role and continued to cement himself as a Front-end react developer.