I'm currently actually in the middle of transitioning between two jobs. Right now I'm still technically a developer with Atlantic 57. They're a creative consulting agency, part of one of the east coast magazines called The Atlantic--we're a subdivision of that magazine. Starting next month, I'll be working for a software company that's called Bbot. They focus on mobile, contactless ordering and payment for in-dining services in restaurants, which has kind of taken off due to COVID. So that's currently where I am now. I was able to get my start at Atlantic 57 after attending a boot camp. Before attending that boot camp, I was working as an attorney for about seven years in Hawaii. I had worked in criminal defense, did some work at the capitol here doing some legislative research and analysis, as well as some plaintiff's civil rights litigation. I kind of decided after a few years that it wasn't for me, and I wanted to do something a little bit more creative, and the web development scene just kind of looked interesting to me. It was something I just started to learn on my own for about a year and decided to go ahead and join a boot camp. The boot camp that I had signed up for in Hawaii called DevLeague, they focused mainly on JavaScript--just those kind of core web technologies. And it was a 16-week program and that's basically how I got my start.

I would say as a web developer, principally what you're doing is building websites, web applications. So, at the end of the day it's pretty much about delivering that product. And I would say, probably your three priorities are the same as your three pain points, which is getting things done on time, getting it done on budget, on getting it done within the scope that you have, and being able to balance all of those things. But it's always a competing trade off between someone wanting something done fast and cheap, but you're not gonna get a whole lot for your money. And getting that right balance to make sure everybody's on the same page and happy is kind of a delicate thing. So it's never just about just being coder or a programmer, but understanding how to identify priorities, what's really important, and how to go to the negotiation table with your clients, other stakeholders and try to find some middle ground when necessary. But a big part of that is always being proactive. Don't just wait for things to blow up on you. You always have to kind of keep your head in the game. Make sure you get a good big picture of what your work is all about so that you can always communicate effectively. Keep track of details. Be organized. I think as long as you can do that, it's been manageable.

Doing web development, basically, your browsers--your major browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox. You wanna be familiar with each of them. They have their own set of developer tools internally--kind of your way of seeing under the hood of what's really going on with your website. That kind of understanding is critical. Having your integrated development environment (your IDE) or your code editor. For me, I use VSCode. It's a Microsoft product. I recommend it, it's solid for me. In terms of your version control systems keeping track of what the current state of your code is on one day versus how it changes over time, we'd be using Git for that. And depending on how much your company or yourself can get into the design aspect of things, not just strictly the web development, having some design tools. We tend to use Sketch or Figma--kind of the big ones that we've been using. And, otherwise, in terms of specific languages: definitely JavaScript and the attendant knowledge of HTML and CSS for the structure and styling of your web pages. PHP if you're going to be using WordPress sites, which is something that we do. Definitely some Python knowledge is something that has been useful as well. And SQL just for being able to interact with databases when you need to. I'd say for the frameworks, definitely React would be our biggest JavaScript framework for developing websites and applications that need it. And we've done some work with Django for Python, but I'm sure there's a whole host of options there, but that's what we've had a lot of experience with.