Associate Software Engineer.
After taking time out to be at home with 3 awesome little people and realising that the roles I had previously didn't interest me as they once had, I decided to shake things up a bit.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I love learning; I love maths and figuring out problems.
I began my coding journey almost accidentally. I did some maths courses online and this led me to some coding courses. It was only after messing around with code for a few months, talking to people and attending meet-ups that I realised that this was something I wanted to do full-time. I was self-taught for over a year and then got accepted into Makers Academy Remote, a highly intensive coding bootcamp completed over 16 weeks. I graduated from Makers Academy in December 2016 as a Junior Developer armed with many of the fundamental skills a developer needs in today's agile, digital world.
I run and coach at Django Girls Belfast which provides free one-day workshops to women who want to learn to build their own web apps using Python and Django.
I recently started a new evening called Women Tech Space which provides a dedicated space to learn to code, collaborate with others, without time constraints with someone always on hand to help. The first event which will be held on 25th September sold out within 24 hours.
I wrote a blog during my time at Makers Academy.
And you can find me on LinkedIn.
Languages
- Scala, Akka
- PHP
- Ruby: Rails, Sinatra
- JavaScript: Node.js, Meteor.js, AJAX, JQuery
- HTML, CSS
Data storage and streaming technologies
- Postgres
- Mongo
- Hadoop
- Kafka
Tools and Frameworks
- Git
- Docker
- REST APIs
- Testing frameworks such as Rspec, Jasmine, JUnit.
- sbt
- IntelliJ
- bash
Principles and Practices
- Object Oriented programming
- Functional programming
- Test Driven Development
- XP Practices: Code Pairing, Code Reviews
- SpotX leads the way in programmatic video advertising in a highly data-intensive tech industry. I work with a broad tech stack including: Docker, Kafka and Hadoop. I have been very fortunate to work on both green and brown-field projects using the functional programming language Scala.
- Organiser and coach of Django Girls Belfast, which helps women learn how to code using the python web framework Django.
- Preparing finances for quarterly and end of year processing, including VAT returns & PAYE, managing financial data.
- Preparing finances for quarterly and end of year processing, including VAT returns & PAYE, managing budgets.
- Website, delegate and sponsor management.
- Maintain project data, manage income and maintain donor information in a data sensitive manner.
Makers Academy instills valuable qualities in their students during their time on the course. These include vital skills such as teamwork and communication, independent problem-solving and XP practices.
Instead of formally being taught a language (although we did learn Ruby & Javascript during the course), we were taught how to be language-agnostic focusing on how to write clean, testable, readable, maintainable code.
We were also involved in agile development, TDD and BDD, with a focus on delivering value to a user, rather than writing lines of code. We had regular code reviews, either as part of a large group or in smaller groups.
As well as my coding skills improving massively during my time at Makers Academy, my approach to learning has changed. How I tackle new problems and how I can communicate those to other people has been refined so much I'm much more comfortable expressing my ideas.
I met a lot of new people through Makers Academy. I assumed that a remote course would make for a solitary experience, however the opposite was true.
The use of XP practises meant that we were assigned a new pair partner each day. This was quite daunting initially, but it was something that I really got a lot out of and I believe it helped progress our learning a lot more than if we were on our own.
- BSc Business Economics - 2.1
- Some modules I really enjoyed included Game Theory, Statistics, Advanced Micro & Macro Economics, Marketing, International Business.
- BSc Mathematics - N/a
- I did not complete this degree. However I picked up some really useful skills and interests during my time, such as Mathematical Reasoning, Functions & Numerical Analysis, Calculus, Set Theory, Statistics and Operational Research.
- Front End Web Development track on Treehouse - April 2016
- Microsoft Technology Associate: HTML5 Application Development Fundamentals - June 2016
- Social Network Analysis course on Coursera - February 2013
- Tech used: Using Sinatra, Datamapper & Postgres, Unit testing and test automation with Rspec & Capybara
- Code
- Tech used: Rails, ActiveRecord & Postgres, Unit testing and test automation with Rspec & Capybara
- Code
The projects above were completed during my time at Makers Academy. They are a mix of group and solo projects completed over the course of a few days. All involved a front-end using HTML5, CSS and CSS templates such as Bootstrap or Pure and developed using TDD.
- I was part of the organising team that delivered the Belfast summit. We sold out an event that delivered inspiring talks from key Northern Ireland women in tech. As part of this, I also organised an evening of Codebar workshops covering a breadth of languages with 45 people participating and 12 coaches in attendance.
- Our group of 4 spent the day building a web application called Volunteer Me to make Belfast better. We made use of Open Data NI to build a social network that could bring together volunteers and charities in a fun way and make better use of the amazing people that live in Northern Ireland. This was a fun and eye-opening day. Being surrounded by so much talent was really great and provided a lot of inspiration as to the type of developer I would like to become.
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent