Creating an entire project from scratch was one of the most stressful and intellectually challenging activities I have undergone in a very long time. Of course when I say from scratch, that is with the knowledge that there is a wealth of code that goes into my program before I even open a file tree. Prior to this all of my labs for the Flatiron curriculum had tests written so we could learn how to write code relating to the topic at hand, the file tree was set up with what needed to be required, and everything we could possibly need from Pry to Httparty was already installed for us. By doing all of this for myself, I developed a much deeper understanding for how gems, applications, and programs in Ruby work and how interdependent all code is on pre-existing code.
I haven’t always been interested in learning about technology and software engineering. Sure, I appreciated it for what it can do for me, but rarely thought of it as anything more than a tool to assist me in my daily life. It wasn’t until I volunteered in Mexico for a year that I saw how through technology I could impact other people’s lives and support social justice issues.