¡Hola 👋🏼!
My name is Jesús Ramirez, I’m a self-taught, freelancer, front-end developer, and here’s a little bit more about my journey.
About Me
I was born in 1990, in a small city in Mexico, called Cd. Madero. I moved to Guadalajara back in 2008 for college, where I got my undergrad degree in Electronic Engineering, and this is where I had my first introductions to programming. I had classes where we use Java, C, and C++. But as college classes normally are, these introductions were bad and didn’t inspire me to pursue any type of programming life, even though, a lot of my classmates ended up working as software engineers, software was not my University's strongest focus in the EE program.
A year before graduation, I got an intern job as a Junior Field Applications Engineer for a Rep company (for those of you who don't know, Rep Companies in the electronics business, are companies that represent electronic component's manufacturers and serve as the first point of contact in a specific territory, basically, a local sales office), anyway, eight years later, I'm still here but now as one of the senior FAEs, mainly focused in Automotive Design and Automotive customers.
So... how did I get here?
Well, it's not a long and/or inspiring story, that's for sure. It all began in 2017 when I sort of had an existential crisis, after doing the same type of work for four years. I started to feel that something was missing because I've always considered myself a creative person, somebody that likes to explore that side, and even after trying, I was not able to fulfill that part in my 9 to 5, so I had to look outside.
I bought an entry-level DSRL camera, just for the fun of it, looking for a creative hobby, for something that could fill that little void. Obviously, I started following nice photography accounts on Instagram until one day, scrolling in the explore tab I found the Made Awkward account, with its nice office pictures, computers with code in them, and after a bunch of likes, more and more desk set-ups and screens with more code began to appear, until this post came along:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTyS63mDHlY/
After falling into an Instagram rabbit hole of images like that, I decided to investigate a little bit more, how could I do these things? was it easy? how did it work? It looked like something that could be entertaining, something where I could create things out of nothing, something where I could use the logic side of my brain, and bring that creative side that I was missing.
So, I began to look for free classes and videos, until I found Free Code Camp, and everything changed. Of course, I haven't finished all the modules there, and I've done a lot of other courses, I think I even sold my first ugly web page after just a couple of months. But FreeCodeCamp, CodePen, and all the Instagram/Twitter community helped path the way to where I am at the moment.
And, now what?
After almost three and a half years, I'm still learning something new every day, still enjoying the journey. I've designed and developed several web pages for small business, I've done a lot of different courses and challenges, everything with the purpose of keep growing and keep learning.
You can see a portion of my portfolio here.
I'm currently learning React, just finished Wes Bos's beginner course and I'm developing my first React App, a Star Wars SPA. After this, I'm hoping Wes Bos finishes his advanced React course, so I can jump back in to learn hooks, a little bit more of the backend to develop a full online store, I see a lot of potential for that in Mexico, a lot of companies lack that part, and I would love to keep adding my grain of salt.
My ultimate goal would be to get a job as a frontend engineer, hopefully somewhere outside of Mexico, so I can get myself and my family a better life.
Top comments (2)
Why do you hate it? Do you have anything specific?
I've seen tweets like this, where people gravitate more to Vue, but I haven't tried that one yet. So far, I like React a lot, but I've only built one thing with it, so only time will tell...