About me...

A former professional musician, I wrote my first lines of code in the late eighties on my primary school's BBC Micro. This early enthusiasm for programming was soon thwarted when the BBC Micro was upgraded to an Acorn Archimedes - when I eventually found out how to get at the command line I was told to stop mucking about with things I didn't understand because the school didn't want their new computer broken! I promptly abandoned programming and turned my attention to music, leading to a career playing bass and guitar in the entertainment and travel industries.

Through working in the theatres aboard cruise ships I've seen more of the world than I ever thought possible. I've also worked contracts in luxury hotels in Europe and Japan, and even played guitar and trombone in a travelling circus for a couple of years in Denmark.

In 2020 the merry go round came to a halt, and I finally had time to start mucking about with things I didn't understand again. The process of researching a new laptop had led me to a lot of terms I didn't understand, so with plenty of time on my hands I simply started googling anything and everything about computing that I wasn't aware of. It seemed that the more I googled, the less I understood - but my curiosity was piqued and I'd started to feel the same thrill that I had in my childhood at the BBC Micro writing my first lines of BASIC.

That thrill has been with me ever since as I've set about learning to code, learning about the web, learning how software works, how things are done. Starting with the frequently recommended freeCodeCamp courses, and most recently enrolling on a 16 week immersive fullstack JavaScript development bootcamp at the School Of Code, I've enjoyed every new discovery and "a-ha" moment, worked tirelessly through every blocker and bug, and constantly tried to improve the standard of code I produced.

The bootcamp in particular was a huge learning experience - my tech skills have certainly improved, but I think the main takeaway for me was the workflows and industry practices that we implemented from day one. All work was 100% collaborative - either pair programming or working in small teams of 4 - 6 people. We constantly followed Agile methodologies and workflows, used version control throughout, and were drilled incessantly on the importance of breaking down the problem, thinking through the solution, and planning things out in detail before writing a single line of code. We also learned about approaches such as test driven development and CI/CD, and looked at DevOps practices and tools - something I'm extremely keen to explore further.

The amount of learning ahead of me is simultaneously daunting and exciting, but the enjoyment I get from learning about technology and development is huge, and I look forward to seeing where this new journey can take me.