Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Background: Network Administration
Goals: Prepare for a career switch
Pre-Thinkful Skills: HTML, CSS3, Illustrator & Photoshop
About Rose
Rose has spent the bulk of her career as “the only woman in the IT department.” She has network administration experience and a background in web design. With range of skills, Rose is ready to delve into her programming education in preparation for a career switch. Rose recently learned her current position was being eliminated and she is setting out to learn to code, or what she calls “the skills of the future.”
Hey Rose! Tell us why you’re learning to code this summer.
I’m a single parent and I was told in May that I’d be losing my job in three to four months. Web applications are clearly the future of the tech industry so I decided to take the plunge.
What skills did you have before Thinkful?
Most of my career has been in help desk and network administration. I came to Thinkful with CSS3, Illustrator, and Photoshop skills. I also have a smidgen of pure Ruby and some Rails experience.
What language are you most passionate about diving into?
JavaScript. Ruby comes in second because of the popularity of Rails.
Our curriculum is project-based. Tell us about building projects from scratch with your mentor.
I’ve completed three projects, and am in the middle of my fourth. All projects have been designed to advance my skill set gradually. My goal with each project is to write code that a programmer with two years of experience will not cringe at. My mentor, Bess, has been instrumental in making that happen. She has many years of front end development experience, and has given me solid guidance.
There are lots of aspiring programmers learning to code. What advice would you give someone starting out?
Don’t worry about writing bad code in the beginning. Everyone starts out somewhere. There is no “right” answer for any programming problem. Do not let perfect become the enemy of good. Lastly, be prepared to be a lifelong student. The industry never stops, your education will not stop.
What are your other friends and colleagues up to in the tech industry?
They are all still doing help desk or Cisco-related work. I will be the first one to make a career change.
What do you think the tech world will look like in 2 years? In 10 years?
2 years: Wearable and mobile computing — such as the FitBit, Jawbone UP, and forthcoming iWatch — will be normal. Smart homes and associated devices, such as the Nest thermostat and Smart Lock will be the start of a trend connecting everyday items to the web.
10 years: I suspect a much greater percentage of high school students will pursue a career in tech — software, engineering, aerospace, or clean energy. I envision that Elon Musk’s SolarCity will take over. With a renewed need for skilled programmers, there’ll be a second renaissance. But that’s just my prediction.
If you had one developer tool to use, what would it be?
An iMac or Macbook Pro with either Textmate or WebStorm. Coda 2 and SublimeText 2 are ok. No Magic Mouse. Those things drive me crazy!
Walk us through your first few projects from Thinkful.
Hot or Cold Game
- See the code.
- Check out the site.
- What I learned: Abstraction, Control Flow, CSS3 transitions, and jQuery DOM traversal.
Recreation of the 37Signals Homepage
- See the code.
- Check out the site.
- What I learned: CSS3 Positioning, jQuery DOM traversal, DOM events, best practices for hiding and displaying of text when considering SEO.
Join our next class on June 10th to start working with a mentor of your own! Learn more about our course.