I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. I went to school for a long time. Too long, perhaps. Like, I have a doctorate. I did doctorate stuff for 7 years; until discovering software development in the summer of 2021.
My good friend Will said in August of 2021 that if I could make it through a bootcamp he would hire me as a junior dev. That sounded great. In the meantime I would get up early before my real job, like 4 a.m., and work through Mike Dane's freecodecamp python course. My first "Hello World" app was now behind me and I was hooked.
Fast forward to Dec 13th, 2021. I began General Assmembly's immersive bootcamp in HTML, JS, and React. I finished in March of 2022, and started with BrandNewBox as an intern. On June 1, 2022 I became a junior engineer and then became an associate in December 2022.
At BrandNewBox we code in Ruby, on the Rails Framework. We are likely the oldest Rails shop in the world (this is disputed). But we do have 50 production apps, all on Rails, covering industries like education, asset management, space travel (what!?), and oh yeah, French nuns. Technically the nuns are on Rails and also React native, but yeah nuns on Rails.
I have a wonderful wife, Lydia, who has let me pursue all the crazy things I have pursued. We have three children, which is a lot of fun. We live on 6 acres in the country south of St. Louis. I like working with my hands, and a wise YouTube video once said that "those who work their mind should rest with their hands". So if you are a dev, I would highly recommend buying some tools and taking some tangible object apart.