Hi, everyone! 👋 I have been building frontend projects for over 5 years and have transitioned into full-stack these past two. I mainly use JS, React, Tailwind, Node and PostgreSQL, but I've been dedicated to learning Rust in 2024.
- 🌍 I'm based in Southwestern Ontario, Canada for family reasons, but I'm an expat at heart. 💗
- 🧠 I'm enamoured with Rust 🦀, and continuing on with React & TypeScript.
- 🤝 I'm open to collaborating on group projects, pair programming and open source. I love getting more practice with the team git workflow. But the best thing is combining our collective tech knowledge & talking code.
- ⚡ I was an English as a Foreign Language Teacher for 15+ years. I lived primarily in China, but also spent time in England, Canada and South Korea. There was actually one 6-month period where I lived on 3 different continents!
- 🥰 I'm addicted to celebrating my LinkedIn connections' achievements and giving encouraging likes and Tweets on Twitter.
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Most of the projects are made with the big three: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I've now entered the React-phase, where I'm building everything with Vite and Yarn.
I'm still learning SCSS in my free moments. I love Python and Vue and totally mean to get back into them after reaching the stage I'm comfortable with React. I use Figma to access designs and can do some cool things in Illustrator - even if I have to refer to my notes and/or guides!
My career totally flipped
That said I'm 100% community-taught, which is my preferred term (rather than self-taught), meaning I've learned from so many excellent sources! My skills in education really came out in choosing which resources to use; which free resources to use and when to actually cough out my limited cash... 🫦🤑
I started out learning Frontend Web Development, because I love design and instantly seeing my creations come to life - that simply rocks! 🎸 Of course (of course!), I encountered the amazing videos of Kevin Powell to explore the power of CSS. This lead to my discovery of Scrimba which became my guide. 🧭
But I'm getting ahead of myself! Sorry, I get so excited about code!
I knew I had to learn JavaScript; it being one of the pillars of the web. But, but, but...
It was so hard! Especially after my stressful repatriation with just a phone and a 7" tablet using apps like Grasshopper and YouTube videos from excellent teachers that were just way beyond my level. So... I switched to Python for awhile.
Enters Class Central's JavaScript Bootcamp using FreeCodeCamp's curriculum. It clicked!!! 💃
Scrimba showed me all kinds of awesome ways to make my humble sites interactive! And I could finally sink my teeth into DSAs through Codewars. Somewhere along the way, I advanced to the stage where I can just read the docs on MDN to find my own solutions.
This was 🔥!
I had a lot of fun creating apps that simulated the full experience, but I wanted more than an illusion - I wanted the real thing! So my goal of being a Frontend Web Developer morphed into a Full-stack track. I started out using Firebase, then Node & Express to complete the ever-popular (in learning paths, anyway) MERN stack.
Resources like CS50 and Exercism encouraged me to become a more rounded developer. The yearly challenges the former has offered got me excited to try out different languages. But more importantly recognize the pros & cons of them.
These represented the start of my journey into code that has only bloomed these last few years.
Nowadays, I spend my time building full-stack projects, tackling DSA challenges (mainly through Codewars, and learning Rust.
