It’s no secret that I love creating projects tied to entertainment. With my previous experience working in that industry, combined with my passion for combining entertainment and technology, it made sense for me to create several projects related to TV and Film during bootcamp. My final project was a React application that allowed users to sort and search movie suggestions from a user-submitted database. For the sake of project requirements, it did not make sense to fetch from an already existing API. But for the sake of the application, I wish it had. …

This week I had a phone call with a fellow Flatiron alum who currently works at a company I admire. I got a lot out of the call and she provided a lot of detailed and helpful advice — more than she needed to for a stranger, which I greatly appreciated. But one piece of advice from our call really stuck with me — to keep hammering home the topics we learned in bootcamp until I master them. Since the end of bootcamp, it has been somewhat overwhelming trying to decide what to learn or practice next. It’s easy to…

I love front-end development. The back-end is important because it is often the backbone of the functionality, but there is something so magical to me about the way you get to see everything come to life when working on the front-end. My favorite unit in bootcamp was React because of how easy it made it to create beautiful projects. However, I want to make sure I never get rusty when it comes to the basics of front-end development. Because I’ve known HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript since I was a child, it can be easy to ignore them for fancier…

Programming languages are constantly evolving. It’s not enough to learn a language once and not keep up with it. As a result, one of the most valuable skills one can have in this field is the ability to learn new concepts quickly and thoroughly. However, everyone learns differently. Knowing how to study and what works best for you is half the battle of learning anything. I’m grateful that this is something we are taught at Flatiron School in addition to the technical skills in the curriculum. It allows us to continue learning effectively long after graduation. Since it has been…

In the streaming age, there are more options than ever for movie nights. An issue I’ve heard many of my friends and family face is that it is that much harder to decide on a movie to watch because of the overwhelming number of choices. For my final project at Flatiron, I wanted to create something that would help make that decision process easier. To do so, I surveyed people about the things that are most important to them when looking for a movie. Overall, I found that people could often only narrow it down to the genre of movie…

rendezvous: to meet or come together at a particular time and place

-Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Rendezvous is a single-page application dedicated to crowdsourcing event information. Users can find upcoming events recommended by members of their community, as well as add their own. Rendezvous is people-driven — it works best when members are actively viewing, adding, and updating events.

Building Rendezvous’ Back-End — Using a Rails API

Before getting started with the front-end, it was important to get the back-end set up so that the front-end had something to reference and work with. To do so, I created an API using Rails. …

As we progressed through our Rails unit, I often found myself thinking “this is just like better/easier/more efficient Sinatra.” We were constantly learning new techniques that I wish I had known while building my Sinatra project — an application called Green Light that allowed users to keep track of their feedback on scripts that they had read. So when it came time to start my Rails project, it only made sense to take that idea and adapt it.

Since I didn’t want to do the exact same project twice, the functionality of the Rails edition of Green Light differs slightly…

Before making the jump to software, I worked in entertainment. Many of the jobs I had involved the development process — reading scripts and pitches, finding ways to improve them, and deciding if the writer or script should be represented or produced. I loved this part of the job. So much in fact, that I still work as a freelance script analyst providing notes, or coverage as it's called in the biz, for writers, producers, and screenwriting competitions. One problem that I’ve encountered is that it can be difficult to keep an efficient running list of each project I’ve read…