DEV Community

Cover image for Hello, world! I'm James :)
James Cox
James Cox

Posted on

Hello, world! I'm James :)

It's nice to meet you

www.jamescox.dev

Being my first post, I thought it would be fitting to share my newly-hosted portfolio site, made from scratch with React, Material UI, HTML and CSS.

I have been coding for 3 years now, and graduated from Flatiron School this past March. I recently moved to Austin, Texas with my wife and daughter, and looking for my first dev role.

What will I post?

  • highlighting tough challenges and how I overcame them
  • specific obstacles that aren't well-documented
  • coding, networking and looking for a job during a pandemic
  • my take on other developers' posts, projects, insights
  • my own projects with specific code examples
  • whatever else I am inspired to share

About me

I'm 36 years old and do not have a technical background. I graduated from University of Memphis in 2008 with an English degree, but found myself progressing in the restaurant industry, eventually ending up in management. After 10 plus years of working in kitchens and dining rooms from Memphis to Nashville, Tennessee I was BURNT OUT. I needed a change. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Flatiron School fell into my lap in late 2018, and after taking a couple of their free prep courses, I WAS HOOKED. I still had no idea what being a "developer" really meant, but once I saw things I coded alter what I saw on my computer screen, I wanted to know more. No, I wanted to know it ALL.

A year and a half later I turned in my final project (check out Memes Vs Gif, a Meme and Gif generator) and I was a Flatiron graduate!

Since then I have been consistently creating new projects and honing my chops.

My favorite project

Alt Text

GIF FIT, is a home workout app I designed to help with the challenges of COVID-19 and quarantine. After a few weeks of use, I already notice a huge improvement in my own fitness!

I learned so much building this app: using more React hooks, integration of a React component library, Material UI, better Redux design, strengthening my understanding of reusable components, and discovering my LOVE/HATE relationship with setTimeOut() and setInterval()

(Also, can we talk about how AWESOME the useEffect() hook is????)

Wrapping up

If you made it this far, THANK YOU for reading my first post. I hope you will connect with me. If I can learn from you, I will! And if you can learn something from me, I hope I help you in your own journey.

Follow me on Twitter, @MemRook

Connect with me on LinkedIn James Cox

I can't wait to meet all of you!

Top comments (17)

Collapse
 
valentindududu profile image
Valentin D.

Hello James, I'm world

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Hi Valentin! Touche!

Collapse
 
hxii profile image
Paul (hxii) Glushak

Firstly - welcome!

Great work on your portfolio and projects! I do hope you're open to some criticism though.

Imagine yourself being a visitor (even on dev.to) from a less privileged country when it comes to internet connection quality. Let's say the best you could muster is a Fast 3G connection. How annoyed would you be with this?
16 seconds

Let's assume you somehow, miraculously got a fiber connection (let's say 600/85, based on fast.com) and you revisit the page. You see this. How annoyed would you still be?
5 seconds

Do you see where I'm getting at?

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Paul,

Thank you for your compliment and your feedback! I admit that I hadn't considered the load speed on different connections. I will have to look into the longer load times on slower connections. My first instinct is my picture files are probably a lot larger than they need to be. But I'm sure there are other factors at play. Thank you again and I appreciate you taking time to comment!

Collapse
 
jwp profile image
John Peters

Welcome to Dev.to James!

I can assure you the IT world needs English majors in the worst way. It's always a nice surprise to read well crafted technical articles. Please post often!

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thanks John! To be honest, I haven't written very much since graduating. I worked on a novel for a couple years, but it never really took off.

I am currently working on a series of blog posts about using various React hooks, and I hope to have the first one out soon (maybe by the end of today?)

Collapse
 
nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Congrats on your first post and welcome to DEV!

Spiderman swinging by to say hello

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thank you, Nick! Nice to meet you! I already prefer DEV to Medium. Wondering why it took me so long to switch over!

Collapse
 
tlylt profile image
Liu Yongliang

Looking forward to your articles🦄

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thanks, Liu! I hope I don't dissapoint ;)

Collapse
 
pholisa_fatyela profile image
Pholisa Fatyela

Welcome, James

I truly loved your post. I can't wait to read more

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thank you, Pholisa! I can't wait to write and share more! I hope to have my first technical article up later today!

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

Welcome to DEV James!

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thank you, Andrew! Happy to be here!

Collapse
 
sanderdebr profile image
sanderdebr

Hi James, welcome to Dev! Awesome post to read and GIF FIT looks cool, if you ever want to do a project together hit me up :-))

Collapse
 
jamesncox profile image
James Cox

Thank you, Sanderdebr! That sounds awesome. I am currently idea-less for projects at the moment. So I'm flling my time with a series of blog posts using React hooks based on a simple timer function I created. If you have any ideas let me know!

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

It is well optimized for mobile, nice. But wouldn't it be good to involve less click on desktop as well?