The Jr. Dev Philosophy
The Endless Cycle of Learning
In the software world there’s always something new around the corner. New tools, unexpected bugs, and ever-changing frameworks— as a modern developer you always have to be learning and keeping up to date with the latest technology. I have a pretty good grasp on Javascript and general programming concepts, but I still come across new and interesting problems all the time that trip me up. Programming is a never ending journey and It’s safe to say that we’re all “junior” in one area or another.
I initially started this blog to share a few of the issues I ran into where I couldn’t find any solutions online. You know those threads you find on the last page of google where someone finally has the same issue as you, only to reply later with “Nvm figured it out”. I’ve ran into countless issues like this having to dive into source code, docs and age old threads. Although at the times this is stressful, it puts hair on my programming chest and gives me the confidence to work through any problems life throws at me.
Meet the Jr. Dev
Greetings from the vibrant city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin! I’m Andrew. Outside of work I like to keep active – training MMA, volleyball, frolf, golf, basketball, or snow boarding – you name it and I’ll probably have a good time. Otherwise I love to cook, hang with friends (and my dog), play video games, and work on projects around the house. I’m always trying to learn some new hobby or advance myself in it and I think that aligns well with my work as a developer.
My first professional job was writing and delivering custom desktop, web and mobile apps. I had worked with individual clients along with small, and large companies across the world to solve and automate their everyday work. This gave me a lot of design and implementation freedom, but with great power came great responsibility. Being fresh out of college I’m not afraid to admit that I screwed up at times, especially being new to multiple languages and applications. Having this big of a responsibility early in my career taught me a lot of lessons, but the direct impact I had on peoples lives and the lessons I learned were so worth it.
I then moved out to Denver and got a full-stack job at a fortune 100 company. Here I currently work on one app using mostly Node, React, and Python. This felt more like a traditional software role, so at first there was a lot of quality control I wasn’t familiar with – sprints, ticketed work, thorough code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD, and all the other industry standards aside from coding and deploying. Luckily I was able to pick up on all of it fairly quickly and am now able to play a lead role on the Javascript team. I also help with grooming tickets, deploying/debugging processes, and server maintenance due to my previous experience with end to end development.
Both of these experiences make me the developer I am today, and I’m super grateful to be in this position. My first job was great to crank out a bunch of different software and solve unknown problems, and my current job I can focus more on the quality of my code and helping our team succeed. I really love what I do and if I can help at least one person out there through this blog I’ll feel like I’ve done my job.