Hello again! I hope you’re doing well.

I thought that I may spend a few minutes catching up on what I’ve been up to lately.

As one of the first two paid interns at Spectralux, the last four weeks have been a whirlwind. Coding Dojo set me up for learning new technologies fairly rapidly so I would like to think that I’ve been adapting well. However, the sheer amount of information required to efficiently test avionic software is astounding. It turns out, the machines crammed into those giant metal rockets that we all pile into are fairly complex.

I like to think that my relationship with my new employer is fairly symbiotic. I’m given the chance to learn about embedded systems, software test procedures, etc, while potentially bringing new perspectives to Spectralux. I would like to think that I’ll be able to use my web and mobile experiences to somehow benefit the company. Everybody wins!

As you would expect, the avionics industry does not move at a particularly fast pace. It has been fascinating to see some of the tools used. I’ve really enjoyed spending some time looking at unfamiliar languages. Aside from working with Python daily, I’ve had a chance briefly (very briefly) dip my toes into the water with Perl. Seeing the similarities and difference between how a Python script may handle file manipulation as opposed to something like Perl helps me to understand the pros and cons of multiple tools.

I can’t speak highly enough about the experience at Spectralux thus far. All of my coworkers have been incredibly helpful. I truly am fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to work on such a cool project. Going to bed every night with something new on my mind is a great feeling.

It seems that I’ve decided to continue packing new information into my overloaded brain with my newfound discovery/obsession, Kotlin. After reading a few articles that spoke very highly of this language and learning that the Android team recently gave it first-class support, I decided to dig a little deeper and see what all the fuss is about. I haven’t managed to make it far with Kotlin, but hopefully, I’ll  find a use for it.

Sadly, my brain doesn’t seem to currently have the bandwidth to come home after staring at a monitor all day and continue to do so. This means that progress on our mobile game has been a bit slow. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to work more on that soon. I suppose tinyEnt Studios wouldn’t be a proper software company without a missed deadline.

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. I’m showing you my new dog, Yzma. Enjoy. Now do me a solid and follow my blog if you enjoyed reading it. Or at least if you enjoy looking at that adorable dog of mine. Thanks 😉

After months of working on projects and searching for work, I’ve finally accepted a job offer. Today was my first day as a Software Test Technician at Spectralux Avionics! Our Coding Dojo career advisor emailed me several weeks ago regarding this position. I was called in for two interviews before receiving a job offer.

My training at Coding Dojo was focused on web and mobile development. At my new position, I will be working with embedded systems. I’ve had a love for working with hardware for some time, so this is a great opportunity for me.

Today was full of great information. Everyone at Spectralux has been incredibly helpful and friendly. I’ve been fortunate enough to sit with several bright engineers and learn about this new industry. Code running on critical airplane systems are understandably very thoroughly tested. This role will demand that my coding skills improve.

It’s been a long day, so I’ll have to cut this short. I’ll do my best to update here as often as possible.

Thank you for stopping by!

Hello!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, so I apologize for that. My life has been a bit of a roller-coaster since I decided to attend a coding bootcamp last year, so it’s only natural that the ride continues!

I was let go from my position as a Junior iOS Developer in December. The company I was working for had to make some cutbacks, and I was the most recent hire for the team, so I was the first to go. As you can imagine, this blindsided me quite a bit.

I’ve worked a bit with Coding Dojo to try and find work now that I’m back home in Seattle, but so far I have had little luck getting interviews. It would seem that finding a job in this industry is every bit as difficult as I had feared.

I’ve spent a lot of my free time learning some simple game design with Unity. This has been a great deal of fun for me. I felt like picking up some C# could be beneficial, so Unity was a no-brainer. Together with a few friends, we’ve managed to make progress on a mobile game that I’m pretty proud of. We’ve even began discussing some very cool ideas for a VR game. This has lead to some pretty exciting developments that I hope to share here very soon.

So that pretty much catches us up to where I am now. I’ll do my best to post updates here when I can, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for stopping by.

PS. If you’re looking to hire a developer in the Seattle area, I know a guy…

After finishing my 3rd and final stack at Coding Dojo, I took a week off to basically just not look at code. This was well needed, and I’m glad I had the chance to do so. Fifteen weeks of coding daily was mentally draining.

So where am I now? I’ve temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City for job training. I started early last week as a junior iOS developer. That feels really good to say/type. It took a lot of work to get here.

Every day has been consumed by iOS development. I want to meet whatever expectations my employer has for me, so I’m back to living on my Macbook.

Around my third day here, I submitted my first bug fix for our app. It was challenging, but actually fixing something that will be used by clients globally was an amazing feeling. It was a small bug to fix, but dammit, it was my fix.

The iOS team here has been very helpful. There’s a lot going on with their codebase, and it’s going to take some time to get familiar with it all. Having someone that will eventually rely on me to do a good job is a huge motivating factor.

I’ve started working through ‘Cracking the Coding Interview’ along with an iOS development book that I picked up. Both are helping me fill in what gaps I have, but I feel like the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. There’s a tremendous amount of information out there.

Every day I realize more and more that I have been incredibly fortunate to not have to struggle to land a job in this industry. The experience I’m gaining here will be invaluable.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this long overdue post. See you next time!

We are nearing the end of the 15(ish) week long journey. The MEAN stack has proven to be just as difficult as I’ve heard. Angular in particular has really given me a tough time. Despite spending a decent amount of time trying to better understand callbacks, I’ve struggled to wrap my mind around the concept. Callbacks are a huge part of Angular, so it’s understandable that I’ve had trouble. Hopefully with a little more time, that wall will crack and I can move on.

I actually enjoyed what I learned about MongoDB so far. The idea of just storing JSON objects in a database is an interesting one, and somehow I feel more comfortable with Mongo than I was with MySQL. I hope to continue learning more about the strengths with using MongoDB.

I’ve started casually working through some algorithms with a few friends of mine. We decided to try and work through 500 algorithms together and post our solutions separately. It has been very interesting to see how each of us tackle the same issues with different solutions. I am eager to be able to devote more time into this. Feel free to check us out at 500 Algorithms, just be aware that we’re still working on getting that set up.

I’ve also started building up my LinkedIn page. It seems like that’s a great way to network and keep up with what the industry is doing.

This week we will be tying everything together in full MEAN. This is supposedly the week that crushes most students, so I have that to look forward to.

Project week is the following week. I have some ideas that I think could be fun to build, but nothing concrete yet. I’m mostly just looking forward to a little break and some sleep.

I’ll try and make a follow up post soon to write about how full MEAN goes. Thanks for reading!

Today will be my second hackathon inside the iOS stack. Our cohort will be given a theme for a project and 7 hours to complete our idea and present. These have been a great way to get a feel for what I expect actual development to feel like. Working together with others to create something interesting can be a good learning experience.

I’ve spent the last few weeks working in Xcode, learning how mobile applications are made. I’ve really enjoyed being able to run assignments on my iPhone and see what the process looks like for creating apps on iOS. There are a lot of new ideas and systems to learn, but it has felt slightly easier than Django. Some of the projects we’ve created have been exciting to see come together. Early on, we had to create a sort of tip calculator. Seeing how Swift could be used to perform different math problems instantly based on input was really cool. I look forward to having enough free time to just play around with some project ideas.

Next week will be project week for this stack, and I hope to be able to show something that I’ve built on here. I’m still kicking around a few ideas on what to build, but I’m sure it will be a fun process.

For now, I’m just trying to absorb as much information as I can, as my job upon exiting Coding Dojo will be as an iOS developer. Hopefully I will be set up to succeed when I’m finished here.

The MEAN stack is next month. It seems to be commonly accepted that MEAN is one of the harder stacks. I hope that some concepts I’m learning now will make next month a little easier.

Onward!

Our first large test was last Friday. The exam had us build out a site using Django that allowed a user to login and register, then “poke” other users. This required a table showing who had poked you and how many times.

When I first started the assignment, I felt like it shouldn’t be TOO bad. I assumed a simple counter could be used to keep track of the pokes. Things were going fairly smoothly for the first 3 hours, but then I hit an error that had haunted me for days. This prompted me to make my first StackOverflow post. Sadly, I ran out of time an did not complete the assignment. I hope to do better Wednesday when we retake the test.

This week is our last week of the Python stack. This means we are all breaking into groups to work on projects that demonstrate what we’ve learned thus far. My ladypal and I are working on a project that we’ve been kicking around for sometime involving our cat, Cicero. We’re building a website that tweets out randomized tweets based on whether or not Cicero has been a jerk on that particular day. Cicero likes to shake his food bowl when he’s hungry, often waking us up during the night. The plan is to hook a Raspberry Pi up to his food bowl, and use a gyroscope to monitor movements. Once the bowl is moved, the Pi will tweet out that Cicero has been an asshole today. This could also be used to monitor less silly things, like a refrigerator door being opened.

Hopefully the project will come together and I will have something fun to show off by the end of the week.

IOS starts next week. I’m excited to get started with iOS, because that will be the bulk of what I should be doing for work outside of Coding Dojo.

As always, thanks for stopping by.