A few years ago after building computers for friends and family, I decided I wanted to continue learning about computers and I wanted to be able to contribute quickly. I didn’t want to go to school again, which would require four years before I could contribute to something. I began to teach myself programming through tutorials like Codecademy and Treehouse. A few months later, I discovered that programming “bootcamps” were popping up all over the US. This led me to discover Code Fellows and, in February of last year, I enrolled in a night class. I ended up taking the Rails “development accelerator” and helping in other classes as a teacher’s assistant. I am currently looking for my first full time position.

Learning to code seemed like the next logical step after understanding high-level hardware. How computers work is something to which I have dedicated a lot of my life, and I wanted to continue that.

Most of my experience is with Ruby, which was a great choice of language to start. Compared to other languages, it’s rather simple to get started while still being very powerful.

I am currently experimenting with server-side JavaScript, creating web applications and command-line tools with NodeJS. Some of these projects are available on my GitHub.

My most popular project is a Ruby gem called Eefgilm. Eefgilm automatically modifies a Ruby Gemfile to make it easier to read by alphabetizing the gems, removing comments, and removing whitespace.

I try to contribute to other open-source projects and create tools to solve problems for others and myself.

Code Fellows was a great decision for me. I had very little programming experience at the time and quickly became confident in my abilities. I wouldn’t have been able to be where I am without the program, and I really appreciate the Code Fellows team for that.

As previously mentioned, I am looking for my first full-time position. I’d like to find one as soon as possible so that I can begin to contribute to this awesome community.

Stick with it! Development can be very frustrating on your own. I find the best way is to connect with other developers, whether that’s at local meet-ups, conferences, or hackathons. Collaboration with others is key and makes software development fun. If you have any questions about Code Fellows or want more information of any kind, contact me on Twitter at @enilsen16.

Happy coding!