I started programming when I had a startup idea I wanted to pursue back in 2010.
My friend Jason convinced me I could learn to make a website just by following a few tutorials. Learning to make a website was always around the next corner. 300 hours, 3 months, and 8 HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials later, I made my first website. If Jason had told me up front it would take me 3 months to build my first website and 3 years before I was skilled enough to be dangerous, I would never have started.
This might just be the most fortunate deceit in my life : )
I am so grateful I learned, and continue to learn, to code. It unlocked a whole new creative medium and a world of possibilities for me, but it also expanded the way I think about everything else. I have a whole new way of thinking about issues of scale, modularity, complexity and more not just in application development, but entrepreneurship, economics, and a variety of other fields.
Learning to code has made me a better thinker, problem solver, entrepreneur, and investor.
Some quick bullets:
- 😁 I try to code mostly in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no frameworks.
- 🧰 I'm well acquainted with AWS, Node.js, NoSQL, SVG, and I feel pretty good about my design skills.
- 🤔 I’m looking for help with Neovim (specifically getting acquainted with making syntax files for stylus and pug).
- 🖥 I can't wait for WebRTC to actually be ready for production, and accessible to regular web developers like me.
I love being a part of this giant developer universe. I'm blow away by what this community can do : )
I actually don't work full time as a developer.
I work primarily with scientists and business leaders, designing and facilitating workshops and conferences for NASA, large enterprises, the National Science Foundation, small businesses, and various universities.
At its core, my job is about helping diverse groups of people think in innovative, interdisciplinary ways to solve wicked hard problems. Things like building synthetic cells, searching for life beyond Earth, innovation tournaments, creating new products, developing novel approaches to understanding and treating cancer, improving life science education, and a whole lot more.
I LOVE my job : )
🤿 Also, I can dive to 100 feet under water with just one breath of air. I teach freediving and underwater photography on the weekends and it's awesome!