DEV Community: Kristen Coy

Apprentice Blog: Double Feature

Kristen Coy — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:08:22 +0000

I'm playing catch-up after having my normal blog day (Monday) off last week for Labor Day. This week's blog post will feature not one, but two(!) posts in one. Woohoo!

You’ve been a software engineer for a few weeks now. How do your day-to-day responsibilities differ from what you expected? Have you been surprised by the breakdown of work each week?

Oh gosh, a "software engineer". I still don't feel worthy of the title, despite the insistence of everyone around me that I do actually qualify for it. This feeling of not being a "real" software engineer yet is exacerbated by not having yet been placed on a project with my host company. As such, I don't have solid day-to-day responsibilities as much as I have an amorphous lump of time to devote to learning as much as possible (right now working through an agile/scrum course) and to working on my umbrella project. While I'm definitely loving this time to learn, I think I will be better able to answer this prompt/question after I've transitioned onto a project. Will come back and do an update once I reach that point!

Where do you fit into South Carolina’s ecosystem right now, and where would you like to contribute in the future?

This is a great question. Right now I feel like I'm on the fringes of integration into the SC tech ecosystem, on the cusp of becoming a meaningful part of things, though not quite there. I think that (as I mentioned before) being placed on a project and contributing to the work that project is doing will help to solidify both my place in the ecosystem as well as my confidence in myself as a developer. Down the road a bit, I would like to encourage other women/moms/career-changers to consider the idea of joining the tech ecosystem, and to show that this is a diverse field that truly is accessible to all types of people. I've mentioned this before, but programming is something that I never considered myself capable of until being kindly introduced to it by a loved one. There are pervasive stereotypes around the types of people who are well-suited for this field, and I never even considered that I may have a place here because I don't fit into those stereotypes. Though I don't know what my contribution will look like exactly, I'm hoping to be lucky enough to know it when it finds me and to contribute something meaningful back into the community that has supported me so completely.

This week my goals are to: make some excellent headway on the umbrella project, complete a course on scrum/agile, begin learning Unity/C#, maintain a grateful mindset, and feel even 5% more competent/confident than I did last week (a trend that has been holding steady throughout - I've learned so much!)

The journey continues!

Stacktacular

Kristen Coy — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 21:10:44 +0000

This week's blog prompt:

"You just completed your Umbrella Project demos, and introduced your tech stack to the team! In your blog this week, take some time to discuss the technology you’re using and why you chose it. What problems does this stack solve for you, and what challenges do you see it posing? Were you stuck between a few choices, or was this an obvious decision for your team?"

Kayla and I have chosen the stack detailed below.

She made this super awesome visual, which was a great way to present our tech stack at this past Friday's project demos. In determining what to use for our tech stack, we drew from a variety of sources. First, we discussed what technologies we had used in the past, and found that we have a lot of common ground with Node.js and React. Next, we checked out the Stack Overflow developer survey to see what technologies are popular amongst professional developers and to ensure that we're choosing things that are marketable, employable, and have a lot of documentation associated with them. Third, we explored some of the documentation for things that we were thinking of using in order to compare them with other similar technologies.

A nice feature of this tech stack is that we are not having to learn an entirely new language (i.e. Java for the backend), especially as we will both likely need to learn a new (yet unknown) language for our employer host projects. Working with this tech stack ensures that we get continued practice with technology that we're already familiar with as we continue to learn and grow in new technologies. By that same token, we are also not using this as an independent project to solidify the learning of a new language (i.e. if we were both learning Java or Ruby for our employer host projects). As of now, though, we still aren't sure what tech stack we will be working with with our employer host, so getting that practice in was less of a concern at the time of our umbrella project planning.

Overall, I'm excited! It's been a while since I've really dug into some code, and it's been great to start getting back into the swing of things.

Laugh hard, it's a long ways to the bank

Kristen Coy — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 13:15:48 +0000

As I sit here in the Charleston Subaru dealership thinking about the way things have gone since I committed to the career-change-to-software path, two things are apparent:

I've come a long way since day 1
There's a long way to go

My "coding journey" started with a desire to get more out of my career. Healthcare was a hard place to be when COVID hit, made even harder by the constant stripping down of Medicare reimbursement for rehab professionals, lack of upward mobility, and general exhausting nature of working in the healthcare system. Even before the apocalyptic early-days of COVID and its devastating effects on healthcare, I was planning to apply for PhD programs in Human Factors Engineering/Psychology. To that end, one of my goals was to learn data manipulation and visualization creation with Python and R in prep for PhD applications, a task that led me to appreciate the beauty of programming. I remember pulling a CDC dataset from Kaggle, messing around with it, and creating an interactive visualization about the incidence of CVAs by state. When what I created in code was manifested on the screen, I genuinely felt amazing. I would call that first feeling of success and craving for more Milestone Number One. Then, as it did with many things, COVID changed that new career trajectory with limited funding for PhD programs leaving me to reconsider my path forward.

Milestone Number Two came quite a bit later. I had continued to work as an OT, casually learning HTML/CSS/JS as a toe-dip at the behest of my husband, thinking I would never be fully capable of making the career jump to tech. Somewhere in the hours and hours of learning it clicked into place that not only am I capable and I can do this, but I want to do this. Milestone Number Two was a full commitment to the road ahead. There were many smaller milestones after committing to becoming a software engineer. Milestones 3.1-3.x were the completion of projects that I created without reliance on tutorials. The satisfaction of implementing an idea from start to finish was huge, and kept me coming back for more.

Milestone Four was my acceptance into the Develop Carolina apprenticeship program. This is the point at which my somewhat freeform, amorphous learning took on a more defined shape, and I had a true path forward. Most recently my milestones have consisted of things clicking into place: my project partner, Kayla, and I successfully implementing our backend using technologies (e.g. Docker) that we had not used before, creating a shell script as part of an assignment, stopping to marvel at the amount of things that I understand now as opposed to 6 weeks ago.

It's hard to believe that we're already a quarter of the way through this program. I've learned so much, but know there's a long way to go and many more milestones to reach. Even though the hill I'm climbing still seems pretty steep, I am genuinely excited to keep going and am so grateful for the opportunity to grow into a skilled software engineer.

Time: A Non-Renewable Resource

Kristen Coy — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:30:14 +0000

Working from home is an entirely different beast from performing a job onsite. Where I would previously have my work-time compartmentalized into a neat little chunk bookended by the arrival to/departure from my hospital's parking lot, I now float seamlessly from personal into work time, in and out, lines blurred, no clear delineation of one from the other. I mean, I'm not complaining. Being about to throw a load of laundry into the washer, microwave some leftovers, and return to work tasks is pretty liberating. Despite the innumerable benefits of flexibility, though, I'm learning that successfully balancing productivity with my sacred personal time is a learned skill.

Honing of habits and routine is something I've been interested in since my bright-eyed days as an undergrad psychology student. There's quite a bit of interesting research in the pop psych world about habit formation - an issue that I believe is at the heart of using your time wisely (or if not the heart, at least some other vital organ). Books like James Clear's Atomic Habits have become very en vogue over the last few years, especially as the world tries to navigate the evolving expectations around "having it all". Side note: for another great read about habits that includes some illuminating situations where you habit data is used, check out Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit. I won't bore you with the details, but I will say that I employ the strategies outlined by this research to improve my personal habits, streamline my routines, and try to make sure that I have enough time in the day to get things done without constantly feeling like I'm drowning in my to-do list. It's a concerted effort without which my life would probably (/likely) devolve into total chaos.

At this early stage in my role as a software engineering apprentice, I'm spending the majority of my time either in meetings or trying to learn as much as possible. I start and end my work day with refinement of my Trello board. This is where I write out both work and personal tasks that need to be done (i.e. 'meeting from 9-11', 'fill out form', 'complete section 6 of SQL Udemy course', 'load of laundry', etc). As tasks are being completed, they're being moved from the To Do column to the Done column. I realize as I type this out that I sound a scooch insane, but this level of life micromanagement works for me. Between parenting a 3 year old, employer host tasks, Develop Carolina tasks, and general adulting, I've just gotta write it all down or the cognitive load feels too heavy. Anyway, those tasks make up the bulk of my day, and in the mornings and evenings I focus on exercise, playing with my son, hobbies, cooking for my family, and doing nothing - which brings me to my next point:

Taking time to do "nothing" is exceedingly important. I'm a firm believer in doing nothing, whatever form that may take. Watching Netflix and scrolling reddit is often my chosen form of nothing. Sometimes, sitting on the front porch drinking a cup of tea and appreciating the gentle sway of the Spanish moss is my chosen form of nothing. Taking time to do things that are "not productive" is completely vital to being a well-rounded human, so I try to make time for it every day. If I don't go out of my way to make time for it, it won't happen, and I'll burn myself out. It's definitely happened before and was a hard-won lesson for me to take time for myself.

I'm unbelievably grateful for the opportunity to control my time the way that I currently do. Having worked jobs that left me completely empty at the end of the day, it's a wonderful thing to feel gratified in what I'm doing without being exhausted.

Speaking of time, I've spent a lot of time writing this. Time for me to give my kid a bath, put him to bed, and go do nothing.

If Harry Potter Taught Me Anything, It's That The Power of Teamwork Can Defeat Even Voldemort

Kristen Coy — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 12:36:45 +0000

Collaboration: the subject of today's blog post, and an immensely valuable tool in the context of software development.

You know, it's kind of strange going from planning/designing/programming small projects in an isolated environment to working with other people. In a recent Develop Carolina workshop we were tasked with solving Codewars challenges in a pair programming exercise. Prior to this experience, pair programming was not something I had really experienced before. I have become quite used to sitting alone in a quiet room, listening to synthwave, and becoming absorbed entirely by the trial/error process of problem solving with no feedback from anyone else. As much as that probably sounds like a hip way to spend a Friday night, it's a really limited experience. If my brain gets hung up on something ("uhhh what's that method that does that thing..."), I have to awkwardly Google around until I find some sort of foothold to climb my way out of the hole I'm in. If I have no idea where to go next, I stumble around until I (hopefully) trip over the answer. With pair programming, there's another brain there to attack the problem. My weaknesses may be their strengths, and we are fortified in our togetherness. Challenges can be solved more effectively through collaboration. And while, yes, coding with someone watching was initially a nerve-wracking and kind of awkward experience, the pros far outweighed the cons when all was said and done. I'm looking forward to honing these skills.

In terms of my overall fellowship project (the "umbrella project"), collaboration and communication will continue to play a vital role in my success. I am so lucky to be paired with a teammate who exemplifies excellent communication, and am grateful to learn from her strengths in my areas of weakness. Though I have done my fair share of group projects throughout my 20+ years of schooling (cue mild existential crisis and feeling super old) and my fair share of professional teamwork within the healthcare setting, this is something entirely new to me. Looking ahead to working within my host company, I'm excited to observe the way that an actual real-world software team(TM) works together to solve actual real-world problems in an actual real-world software company, and to take those lessons with me as I work towards being a valuable team member myself.

Alright, relatively short for my verbose nature, but that's all I've got for today. Here's one more memetastic representation of the last few days for the road:

The Beginning of a Journey: Wrapping Up Week 1 as a Software Apprentice

Kristen Coy — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 18:57:42 +0000

Alright, here we go.

I haven't written a blog since the days of LiveJournal. Does anyone remember LiveJournal?

This blog was created as a means for tracking my personal and professional growth throughout my journey as a software engineering apprentice. Today marks day 4 of Develop Carolina's apprenticeship program. The team behind DC is incredibly supportive, my mentor is an amazing/inspirational tech supermom, and my cohort is comprised of truly lovely people with diverse backgrounds. I'm so ridiculously grateful to be here and to have this opportunity.

Okay but... Who are you?

Oh, right. Introductions. I'm Kristen! I'm an occupational therapist turned developer (still don't feel right calling myself a developer quite yet, but let's go with it). As an OT I worked daily to ensure that my patients were able to do the things they wanted to do, whether that meant being able to shower safely after a hip replacement, being able to manage money independently after a traumatic brain injury, or being able to return to Marine Corps basic training after a hand/upper extremity injury (my most recent role prior to pursuing tech full-time). While my transition sounds like a complete 180 these two fields actually have a decent bit of overlap, though I think I'll save that comparison for a future post. I'm also a mom, a wife, a book lover, an embarrassingly slow runner, a bubbly water and caffeine addict, and an inconsistent weightlifter.

In thinking about what I'm hoping to accomplish on my apprenticeship journey, a number of things come to mind:

1. Improving my confidence

This is huge for me. I have a constant, unending stream of anxiety surrounding entering the tech arena. Unlike the origin story of many of my peers in this realm, I didn't grow up loving computers and technology. Yeah, they were cool. Yes, of course I edited the HTML/CSS of my aforementioned LiveJournal page to "reflect my personality". But I did not, at any point, think that I would be well-suited for a career in tech/development. All of my career-path-finding questionnaires in school pointed me towards the humanities: counseling, nursing, teaching, rehab/therapy. I thought that I wasn't "smart" enough to pursue computer science or programming. Those thoughts persist now, even as an adult who has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to sponge up as much information as I can about this field and who has grown enough to realize that interests and skills evolve over time. All of this to say that my primary goal for this experience is to feel worthy of having it.

2. Improving my technical skills

I am self-taught, which is another way of saying that I self-directed myself towards available resources to learn the things that I chose to learn. I cobbled together "lesson plans" from the myriad resources of the internet, though I was mostly rudderless in a sea of information. This means that there are inevitable gaps in my knowledge. Having the opportunity to learn software best practices in a safe-space from people far more knowledgable than myself is something I'm so grateful for and that I believe will positively benefit my growth as a dev.

3. Learning how to work on a software team

As an OT, I worked on an interdisciplinary team: OTs, SLPs (shoutout to my cohort member Lauren!), PTs, nurses, hospitalists, specialists, case management, social work, respiratory therapists, neuropsychologists and countless others worked together to determine the best path forward for a patient. This required constant collaboration. Though I've not yet worked formally as a software engineer, I imagine it requires the same level of communication and teamwork to achieve goals. I'm absolutely looking forward to learning those relationship dynamics and communication best-practices moving forward throughout my apprenticeship.

4. Learning how to give myself a little bit of grace

This goes hand in hand with improving my confidence. Currently, if I'm having trouble solving a problem or difficulty remembering something that I feel like I should know, my brain kicks into "Why don't you know that? What have you been doing this whole time? Why are you having so much trouble finding the answer?" mode. Obviously this is a maladaptive reaction. I'm hoping that my apprenticeship experience will show me that it's okay to be in a growth stage, that I'm not expected to have memorized the entire MDN, that just because I'm having trouble fixing a bug doesn't mean that I'm not cut out for this field.

Alright, that's all for now

If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking with me.

Hopefully blogging becomes a little more intuitive for me; I actually found it kind of difficult to start writing about myself. It's taken me a couple of days to warm into writing all of this out and even while doing so I found myself really distracted by making memes.

I'm excited to start this journey, and am looking forward to the day when I can re-read blog post number one and appreciate how far I've come.