Always learning

The first language I ever programmed in was Python. I saw an ad for a programming course online and decided to give it a try. Once I got a brief view of the power of programming, I was hooked. At the time, I was working in tech support for a security company and decided to test my newfound knowledge and build a small program (it even included a GUI!). I built an app to walk tech agents through troubleshooting security equipment with customers. No one ever used it, but I learned a lot in the process.

Towards the end of 2018, the manager of tech support asked me if I could build him an app to check the compatibility between different alarm panels and security sensors to help prevent the wrong sensors being sent to customers. The catch? It needed to be done with HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. I returned to the course I had previously started as it also taught the basics of web development. After about a month of coding, googling, and energy drinks, the Compatability Guide was hosted on the department's Wordpress knowledgebase.

In early 2019, our company was getting ready to open an additional support center. Managers and directors were looking for a good way to train new tech support agents quickly and consistently. By this time, I was knee deep in coding, and one day I had the idea to make a wizard to help agents troubleshoot every type of equipment we had. I made a prototype, showed it to my manager, who showed it to his boss, until it reached the call center director. Soon after, I was given the green light to start developing what is now know as the Troubleshooting Wizard. It averaged about 6,000 page views a month up until February of 2022. The prototype can be found here.

In December of 2019, I decided to leave my job to attend Dev Mountain, a full-time coding bootcamp with courses in Web Development, iOS App Development, UX Design, and more. I attended to increase my knowledge of web development. It was 13 weeks of fast-paced, high-intensity coding with the latest standards at the front of each lesson. We started with HTML5 and ended with React. By the end of the bootcamp, I had built a full-stack application with a clean UI, Authentication, and Data Visualization. The app was called Nutrification and allowed users to keep track of the micro and macro nutrients they ate using an API to grab food information.