About John

Short Intro

I grew up in a military family and claim Radcliff, KY as my home. After some years in college and working full-time, I enlisted in the Army in 2007 as a 68K Medical Laboratory Technician. I served on active duty until 2014, including one deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan at the Role 3 Nato Hospital, and one re-enlistment for an overseas tour to Germany.

Learning to Develop

I was lucky to work with and share a common purpose with an amazing community of individuals in the Army, but it wasn't what I wanted to spend every day of the rest of my life doing. I wanted to move to a career field working with what I've always had a strong interest in - computers, the Interwebz, and technology. Originally, I planned to use the GI Bill to finish a 4-year Bachelor's in CS - but then read about how many people are now entering software development by teaching themselves or attending short-term "bootcamps". So, I crammed in as much online self-education as I could during free nights/weekends during my last year of active duty. After ETSing, I attended a front-end engineering bootcamp for 12 weeks, then interned with a company doing custom web application development. Since January 2016, about a year after I took 'Transition Leave', I've been working as a full-time front-end web developer in Knoxville, TN.

Why Eloquent Javascript

• I originally read & worked through the first 6 chapters of Eloquent Javascript when I was preparing to attend the bootcamp I attended. I've also read through most of the other chapters since, on and off. I think it'd be great to go through the book again with a group and discuss some of the problems with others. I wish I'd done more pair programming while in school/interning, and would love to engage with and discuss code with others more often, both at work and in my free time.
• While I think that Javascript SPA frameworks are great, the reality is that they'll continue to come and go over the years. They all have unique quirks and 'Domain-Specific Language' that won't always apply elsewhere. IMO, having a strong knowledge of the core fundamentals of Javascript is something that can lead to more long-term success (and make it easier to pick up on newer frameworks/libraries when they are released).

Why I like Javascript

• It's the language of the browser. Wanna work in web development? Gonna have to learn at least -some- Javascript.
• The community is incredibly vibrant. It seems like every day there's something new written in Javascript that you wouldn't expect. SPA web apps, Native Apps, IOT, Node.js on the server, you name it. You will never run out of stuff to learn with Javascript.
• It's incredibly accessible to anyone wanting to learn to code - no need to compile or download any special software other than a web browser. You can use the console of Chrome DevTools to test out code at any time.