Jun 19, 2021Collab Lab RetrospectiveLessons learned about how best to contribute to a software engineering team — For two months earlier this year, I had the privilege of working with a team of three other developers and three mentors during the spring 2021 cohort of Collab Lab. If you’re not familiar with the Collab Lab, according to their website they provide participants with an opportunity to “gain…Software Engineering4 min read
Jun 3, 2021Job Hunting as a Junior DeveloperA small mindset shift that can make a huge difference — I recently started my first software engineering job at a company and on a team that I’m really excited about. While I was job hunting, one small mindset shift made a huge difference for me: View the job interview process primarily as a learning experience, and secondarily as an opportunity…Software Engineering4 min read
Dec 23, 2020Building a Wedding WebsiteUsing Javascript, React, and Gatsby — Amidst the craziness of 2020, on top of the craziness of a career change, a job hunt (and adopting a puppy for good measure), I got married! For the health of our loved ones, my husband and I had a very small ceremony with only immediate family members, but we…Java Script5 min read
Published in Building Couch Potato·Aug 20, 2020Couch Potato RetrospectiveReflecting on the process of developing Couch Potato — Working on Couch Potato was a huge learning opportunity for our team. It was one of our first times developing a project from scratch, without any kind of starting template. …Software Development4 min read
Jul 20, 2020How to Use GitHub as a PortfolioUtilizing the new GitHub profile readme feature — For software engineers (and particularly for those that are job hunting), it can be helpful to have a portfolio to highlight noteworthy projects. For developers that enjoy front-end work, this can be a fun project in itself. …Github3 min read
Published in Building Couch Potato·Jul 16, 2020Optimizing for UXHow we incorporated feedback to improve the user experience — In our last post, we outlined our process for collecting feedback from users of our Chrome extension, Couch Potato. How did we then incorporate this feedback into our product? Based on the feedback from our users, we identified a few areas for potential improvement. First of all, while some users…Software Development3 min read
Published in Building Couch Potato·Jul 9, 2020Working RemotelyAdapting our coding workflow for WFH — So far in this blog series, we have detailed the technical challenges we faced in creating Couch Potato, the Chrome Extension we developed allowing users to stream video content together remotely. …Software Development4 min read
Published in Building Couch Potato·Jun 25, 2020Adding Functionality to ReactHow we began utilizing React libraries to optimize our Chrome Extension — After working through the challenges of converting our code to React, we were eager to incorporate all the additional functionality that React allowed. To begin, we created React components to allow users to start or join “couches” (chat rooms) upon launching the extension. Utilizing React components for this purpose allowed…React3 min read
Published in Building Couch Potato·Jun 11, 2020Getting Started with Couch PotatoHow we began the process of developing a Chrome Extension allowing multiple users to stream video content together remotely — So you’ve decided to create a piece of technology that lets people watch shows together from the comfort of their own homes and chat while doing so. Where do you start? That’s the daunting question we faced when deciding to create Couch Potato for our bootcamp’s Capstone project.Socketio3 min read
May 3, 2020Hello WorldWhy I’m passionate about software engineering — I recently graduated from coding bootcamp at the Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack Academy of Code in New York City, and am now in the process of relocating to Washington, DC and looking for a job in software development. Admittedly, it’s not the greatest time to be entering the job…Software Development2 min read
