Hello, World!

Hi everybody!

I announced yesterday that, my original Jess Can Code content will be moving exclusively to DEV.TO! The blog posts that I wrote for Jess Can Code shares my story of transitioning into the software development industry.

Each week, I will review my post, write a reflection based 2 years after the fact and the original content will follow. You will see that I wrote a lot of rhetorical questions and now, I am in the position to answer the questions that I asked. Feel free to ask questions as a lot has changed since I sat down and wrote each post in all of their lightly edited glory!

Below is a preview of what I will be doing over the next few weeks. This post was titled "Hello World!" and published on April 16, 2016.

"Hello World" is a fitting way to open up your first blog post, no?

I have created this website to journal and document my journey into becoming a web developer. This blog will feature reflections, lessons learned, and thoughts about the latest tech trends. I also hope that one day, it can inspire other self-taught web developers to keep growing and learning, no matter how difficult the path.

Some of the things that are racking my brain right now:

• Do I have the discipline needed to be a self-taught web developer?
• Is there any way I can fit in design as I am interested in design?
• What do I do with Github?
• How are there so many resources out there!?
• Do I need to attend bootcamp?
• Will I ever move out of my mother's house?
• AngularJS?! Node.js?! What IS all this?!

So here we go...thank you for joining me on this journey!

Kale!

-Jess

Here are the answers to 2016 Jess:

1) I took the self-teaching route for about six months. I was feeling very stuck in my old job and wanted to speed up my career transition, so I pivoted to a boot camp.

2) Roles as a UX/UI developer are out there. As a front-end developer, it is very useful to have an eye for design and not be responsible for that aspect of work.

3) Github is my lifeblood as it is where I push/pull code for work and personal projects.

4) Everyone learns differently whether it be through video, reading, etc. It is also a very useful skill to be able to explain technical concepts through different mediums. So for that question, I would say that there are a need and a demand for 50 million different tutorials.

5) You do not need to attend a boot camp. I felt that it was right for me at the time because I really like the classroom-style atmosphere when I am learning things that are unfamiliar to me.

6) Still working on that, but I am in a better position to do that now than I was a few years ago. It is about getting my finances in order.

7) AngularJS is a JavaScript framework used to build single page applications. Single page applications are like websites, with some nuance. Node.js is a run-time environment where you can run JavaScript code from outside of the browse.

Note: "Kale" is an informal goodbye in Luganda, the language that my mother's family speak in Central Uganda 🇺🇬. Not to be confused with kale, the dark leafy vegetable.