Its been a minute since I’ve had time to write. Things are moving forward. At the beginning of the month – on April Fool’s Day, no less – I graduated from Lambda School. It was a long process, and I haven’t documented all of it yet, but I plan to as time permits. This is my post from LinkedIn, which shows my certificate:

Since graduating, I’ve been moved into the job hunt segment of the program. There are daily Zooms which focus on career-related skills and insights, networking activities, online resources for applying to and tracking progress with developer positions and more. I’ve split my time between some of these activities as well as building projects and I also recently started reviewing my JavaScript via Web Dev Simplified’s JavaScript Simplified course. I’m about halfway through the basic package (its about 75 videos, some of which are an hour long each) and plan on moving onto the complete course later on. I think that adds on around 70 more lessons. I also grabbed Brad Traversy‘s new Next.js course, because I’ve been building with Next.js and really enjoy using it. I’m sure the course will cover features that I’m not fully utilizing and can’t wait to dig into it.

JavaScript Simplified has been a great refresher, so far, and moving at my own pace has been a lot more manageable than learning at Lambda’s pace was. I think it helps that I went through Lambda, because I understand a lot of the concepts in JavaScript Simplified already. Its given me a better understanding about certain topics though, like closures and pointing to data by reference vs. value. I’m excited to see how Kyle from WDS simplifies more advanced topics, and I’m excited to build projects with a stronger foundation in JavaScript.

Iconic Web Studios

I mentioned at the end of December that I was starting a web development company, in addition to looking for full-time work as a developer. In January, I did so. I formed an LLC and created Iconic Web Studios. My intention was to start looking for clients to build websites for in February, but at the time, I was still finishing Lambda and had started Labs, which is the final group project that we work on. Labs ended up dominating most of my time, so I was forced to move more slowly with Iconic. I ended up adding 3 other developers to my team, two of whom are Lambda graduates and one who is in the middle of the curriculum right now. There are 6 more who want to join, but I’m holding off for now so that things don’t balloon past my ability to control.

For me, its fun working with a team as well as working solo. I’ve been advising two of my teammates with projects they’re working on. One of them is building with Next.js for the first time, after I helped him to get set up. His project is a website for a company that produces Raspberry Pi projects and kits. Another already had a job at a cryptocurrency company. She’s been working with VueX and Tailwind since last fall. She took on a project to build a website for a market by where she lives that’s been family-owned for 3 generations. I think its been in their community for 70 years. She’s doing it using React and is getting back up to speed with it after using VueX for a while.

Its been interesting working with this group. I’m mentoring two of them and advising the third person (the VueX developer). Seeing people who have graduated Lambda operate at different levels of confidence and proficiency is an insightful experience. Its interesting to see how our skills have all diverged as well. The person who works with VueX is using a different stack from what we learned at boot camp. Through her experience, I’ve gotten curious about Vue and Vuex. I plan on learning them sometime in the next few months. She likes it more than React, finding it simpler and finding their implementation of state management easier to work with.

The person who’s working on the Raspberry Pi site has had a harder time revving back up. His design skills are strong and his portfolio really showcases that. His background is more in design and even photography and videography. He makes his own SVGs using Photoshop – when I was using Photoshop more, it was raster-based. It didn’t support vector graphics. I didn’t know that new versions do. I actually grabbed Inkscape in January to learn how to make vector graphics, but haven’t gotten to dig into it yet because I’ve been more focused on coding. I find it interesting that he reaches for libraries before trying to code out features for himself. I take the opposite approach. He also builds by coming up with a layout first. I also take a different approach here. I’m very content-driven. I plan my projects around available and planned content. After I know what’s going on each page or in each component, then I do the design for them.

The third person, who is still going through Lambda, looks like she’s going to be a strong developer, to me. She has a good understanding of accessibility (so does the VueX person, actually) and tackles projects head-on. She’s working with another group of Lambda students who are making games with Unity and donating the proceeds to charities. She showed me one of the websites she’s building for a game they’re working on and it has a lot of promise. I also know some of her team there, because they were in other cohorts with me and in some other groups I’m either in or helped start. They have strong work ethic and are personable and helpful, so she’s in good company with them.

Breast Cancer Comfort

I rebuilt the website for Breast Cancer Comfort right after I graduated Lambda, this time using Next.js. There’s one piece left that I’m sorting through – ecommerce. Once I have a storefront embedded into the website, I’ll make it live and it will replace the existing WordPress/Divi one. I’ll be happy to have that done. I’ve said before that I’m not the biggest fan of Divi.

So far, I’ve experimented with Shopify’s Buy Button and their StoreFront API. I’ve looked at Stripe and Square, and I briefly reviewed BigCommerce and Magento. I looked at Commerce from Next.js and a few JavaScript and React libraries as well. I haven’t made a decision as to which way to go yet, and there are a bunch of other technologies I looked into that I can’t remember the names of. My main goal is to integrate a storefront into the existing website, so visitors don’t need to use an external site to shop. I worry a lot about security around shopping carts, so that’s a significant feature in my search as well.

I also removed Comfort Connections from the BCC website in the rebuilt version. I’d like to spin it off into its own site and own project. Its the work of one of the interns (who is currently studying medicine at Harvard!) and although it has overlap with BCC, it comes from a different place and can grow better and have a stronger identity independent of the organization.

The developer who is still going through the Lambda curriculum is also interested in joining me at BCC. I let the team there know about this and they’re happy to have her. She would be joining in a marketing and social media management capacity, if schedules mesh. She currently handles these tasks for the game development group she’s part of, as well as being their treasurer. In 2 weeks, during out next BCC meeting, I’ll see if I can get us all connected so we can meet and iron out details. It’ll also give her time to get through her first build week at Lambda as a React developer!

Baltimore Corps

Finally, I have a new project starting on April 26th and going on for 2 weeks. I landed a contract to build out a website for an application that Baltimore Corps is developing. I can’t talk more about it yet, because of the contract that I signed, but it looks to be a fun project and they have more work that needs to be done, both on their website and with some applications that are in development, so this could potentially turn into a longer-running contract or series of contracts. I’m excited for it.