I’ve honestly had a burning thought in my mind about the nuances that go into running a tech company but never honestly got around to surfing the internet for answers.

That was until a couple nights ago at about 3:00am when I finally got around to asking on the all-mighty Quora. The response was very intricate to say the least and made me reflect on how lucrative and time-consuming creating intellectual property can get.

It all starts with a simple idea where in which the amount of interactions dictate the direction this simple idea can go. If say, I create a web application that has clear momentum, then that website would force me to serve and maintain the site up to scale with the amount of users that drive it. Afterwards I can seek funding from VC’s typically but the project easily has the ability to collapse and your job is for that to NOT happen.

You think of new features which requires you to also hire new developers and just to add some spice you have to oversee DevOPs especially. You’ve got teams dedicated to front-end, back-end, marketing, etc. just to keep this thing a float!

At this point it’s somewhat of a reflection because the stress may have gotten to you and you end up questioning if this is even worth your time. If you asked me I’d simply say “only if it has changed the world.”

Things that positively impact the world are always worth it, if not very much necessary to the growth of a functional society!

After finally being able to accelerate my learning at a more consistent rate I got around to learning about jQuery! I must say that it served as a useful tool especially after struggling to even handle such minimal projects.

That being said, I think my interactions with JavaScript and jQuery will ultimately lead me in the right direction. At the moment I think I’m leaning towards front-end development but nevertheless I still plan to finish the course strong. On to the back-end we go starting with Node.js…

I’m on course to finish learning some fundamental concepts that involve the Bootstrap library and I’ve been seriously thinking how easy it can be to learn just about anything. When I say “easy,” I really mean that we live in a remarkable time where we can learn anything. That isn’t to say that some people are capable of learning faster than others; it’s simply my way of saying how accessible the ability to learn has become.

I know I’m not saying anything remarkable that’s pushing the boundaries of innovation when I say this, however, it’s important for one to remind themselves of this truly remarkable capability. More importantly, there may be far too many people that have little interest in expanding on their scope of reality and almost refuse or deny the idea that one can learn anything.

I get it. There’s this pessimistic feeling that can bombard us through the course of our lives that enables us to believe that we aren’t capable. Or better yet, “we are bounded by the structure of a working world,” where the only things that can get us ahead are pieces of paper with “majors” or certificates that are truly able to mean Nothing. You could have wasting years of schooling at the expense of practical utility or worse off—learned something you didn’t even care about.

We should not blind ourselves to believe that things in life are finite. The working world is evolving and so should you. The ability to learn anything is easy. It is new. And it should excite you.

As I’m wrapping up the semester with finals this upcoming week, I’ve decided to get back into the motion of the Web Development Course I’ve been more and more eager to learn from.

I’ve made progress in small increments these past few months as I’m still attempting to obtain my bachelor’s degree but I’m hoping my summer will be filled with a lot more of it. Nevertheless, I’ve finished watching a few tutorials dedicated to the Bootstrap framework and it seems like a good stepping stone for me if I’m look to improve on my front-end abilities. As long as it’s able to provide leverage and efficiency in the coding process I look forward to it.

After almost a week long of procrastination from just about everything in my life, I took the incentive to keep going with the Web Development bootcamp course I purchased last summer through Udemy. I basically refreshed my understanding of CSS by applying it to a personal website that I’ve been working on.

The key here is to simply take things slowly. I need to enjoy the learning process and part of that requires me to retain the information properly, hence learning on a day to day basis would most likely be highly effective. I need to enjoy my life and fall in love all over again.

I’ve been through a few interviews working on revisiting/retouching basic fundamentals including programming languages, algorithms, data structures, object-oriented programming, etc. This to me is equally, if not more important, than attempting to place one’s focus on learning many new things. It’s best to lend your time to things that will help in the long -run. (A bit pretentious but first principles is a good way to map your daily decisions)

If I’m fortunate enough my work will help me land an internship this summer. If not, I still consider myself fortunate because of how enjoyable I make it for myself. Teaching yourself is a lot more enjoyable when you cater to your needs and interests.

Side Note: my blog posts will be short and brief at times for time management purposes.

For those that know me on a personal level know that I’m in love with the idea of tech so much to the point of having it present in all aspects of my life (in some way.) So, one day I simply to decided to follow a load of software engineers and dev’s on Twitter, whether self-taught or not and I just want to mention how great of a decision that was. This alone has made a huge difference towards my understanding of tech (Not to mention that this was how I learned about code2040).

Tech Tweets will catch my eye almost immediately because It helped me realise that this is still a learning process even for those that are firmly established within the industry working at very well known companies. Tech is continuously evolving.

Today’s interest had to do with the difference between website building platforms such as Wix (or a little site called WordPress) and building sites manually which is honestly something I’ve thought about recently on my own, primarily because of the web dev course I’ve decided to take.

So what’s the difference? Why should I invest my time into learning how to build a website from the ground up? The answer is simple if you know the purpose for your website. At least from my understanding, websites such as Wix shouldn’t be overlooked. If your primary focus for the site lies in creating a simple site focused on UX/UI and your budget restricts you then Wix is definitely a way to go. Bigger firms/businesses, however, may hire developers to focus on functionality and optimization to give their site individuality and that’s great for branding. Building a site manually also gives these firms the ability to handle bigger traffic and a need for a database. So while Wix may be of great assistance for some people, full stack web developers may have nothing to fear (🤞🏽). Ultimately, it still seems to me like it’s worth the learning experience and I’m excited to get into the smaller nuances of creating a website on my own.

While I’m no stranger to HTML and CSS I should mention that I had chosen to buy a course of my own at the expense of learning all of the essentials involved in Full Stack Web Development. Of course being a UX/UI designer is the ultimate objective but I feel like full stack web dev can offer me versatility.

Anyways, I’ve come around to finishing the 5th section to brush up on my CSS skills now looking to acquire knowledge in bootstrap 4 (honestly no idea what that is) but it’s going alright. What I appreciate most, however, is how driven the instructor is to help us not only learn but apply the material. From the very beginning, we’re taught to create a personal site through GitHub’s web domain and that’s what I call return on investment. What I’m really hoping to do is add to my portfolio but what better way to sell my image than to create a personal site to encapsulate and showcase those abilities?

Side note: I need to be more consistent so I can finally get rid of this imposter syndrome. Juggling school, work, and these courses takes huge discipline but I’ve built enough drive to power through this so I can do what I love for a living. (Very soon…)

I’d like to address something many of my peers fail to acknowledge. While learning computer science through a university/college curriculum is great for some people, it just isn’t geared to help students like me (well at least the university I attend.) Many of the students there had a good understanding of what computer science entailed and tutors while present weren’t entirely invested in the opportunity to mentor/advise.

When I say students like me I really mean students who come from less privileged backgrounds. For instance, I didn’t even have my first PC until my freshman year of college—all because of some high school scholarships I will forever be grateful for. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but to follow this new drive of mine.

I even had an advisor attempt to help me switch career choices because she felt I may not do as well as other students. Not what an advisor should be doing in my opinion…

In conclusion, following a college curriculum is great and dandy up until you’re left with little to no options like I was. Should I really be paying this much money for college so you can potentially weed me out of your courses?

So, I’ve been holding this thought in for a while—it’s fair to say that tech isn’t as diverse and inclusive as it should be. I hear this often especially after becoming a Code2040 finalist and going through that process. (Great source and incentive btw!!!)

I see it often even while still attempting to land my first job (lol). I often would go to my huge lecture halls and the majority were male and Asian or White—Very rarely would I see black or Hispanic students (and most obv female) attempting to enter the “wonderful” world of tech.

One could say that it is most definitely a structural issue. I know this from experience. Being 2nd generation Mexican-American in a low-income community we weren’t granted the funds to support a Computer science course at my high school and when I finally entered college I knew I was wayyy behind. I met kids learning to code at 14! Me being as open-minded as I can be, I took a shot at an introductory course on java (And fell in love.) So in reality part of the issue lies in one key word—EXPOSURE. Tech discrimination is most definitely real and it must be STOPPED.

Key point: I should mention Code2040 (huge shoutout to them!). Their whole mission lies on giving black and Latinx tech students the resources/community to enhance and pretty much bridge the gap so that they could enter the tech industry. Me being simply a finalist and not a fellow, I’m able to see what they can do for kids like me and it’s a beautiful thing!