DEV Community

Elise Gaetz Ferguson for Epicosity

Posted on • Originally published at Medium on

A Little About the Developers — Elise

A Little About the Developers — Elise

I graduated college with a degree in Chemical Engineering with the intention of going to law school and delving into Environmental Law. I had been tinkering with computers since high school and I had started making my own websites when the University provided students with free space. This was pre-2000 so said websites consisted of maybe less than 10 HTML tags.

I took an 8 week course in Unix Administration and C/C++ and figured I’d give that a go while I waited for the next LSAT to come around. But in those 8 weeks I decided that 1. Unix Sys Admin was not my bag and 2. I didn’t think going back to law school for 3 more years was my bag either. So when the end of the 8 week course rolled around and they offered resume help and even onsite interviews with several employers, I looked towards web development. I had been making sites on my own time, so why not turn that into a job.

And that began my career in Web Development.

Though my first title was “Web Designer” I am most definitely not a designer by any stretch of the imagination.

Somehow “designer” turned into PowerBuilder and ASP and JSP and .Net and Visual Basic and Document Management Systems and Access and SAP and HotDocs and a whole pile of proprietary systems and then finally after many job changes either prompted by myself or by my employer, I found a position doing honest to goodness web development. Whew.

HTML, CSS, and maybe a little JavaScript was where I was meant to be. In my time at that first real web dev job I coded well over 500 websites. Sometimes up to 8 sites a week. And I liked it.

When I’m not wrangling code I’m wrangling children (3), cats (3 so far), a dog, chickens (3 so far), ducks (2), and a horse (plus the neighbor’s donkey and mini horse). My husband can wrangle himself, though that’s maybe why we have a full arcade in our basement. I have had a myriad of hobbies over the years (mounted shooting, knitting, sewing, classic cars, ballet) but let’s face it, who has time for hobbies with 3 kids. So right now my favorite hobby is sleeping.


Top comments (0)