Web Developer / Designer / Student
The Save Hillcrest Site was done as part of the IT-Amber Capstone. The clients requested a portable, none-modern looking site. In order to fulfull those requests, we modified a wordpress theme. The theme was modified to better fit the time-period the Historic Hillcrest Neighborhood was built during. This was a group project that lasted almost the whole semester.
As the final for my Mobile Web Development class, we had to create a site based on everything we learned. I chose to an early verison of this site.
In all my work. I am obsessed with correct naming conventions and commenting (in code at least). The reason being I try to remember I might have to do code maintenance and if anyone else has to read it behind me.
There is very few worse things in the world than reading poorly commented code or going behind a programmer to do maintenance on code that someone had the ‘just name it whatever’ convention. So I try not to be that person.
I’m not a fan of re-inventing the wheel, so my work is generally flexible so if I need to use it in other projects, I can. This means I spend a little longer coding in the beginning, but I save future-Vic time and a headache. Future-Vic tends to appreciate that.
I grew up with two programmers for parents, which means I don’t a remember a time when we didn’t have a computer in the house. My parents say I had a computer at 18 months. I remember that computer, mostly because my little brother inherited it from me. It had a colorful keyboard that was laid out in alphabetical order rather than QWERTY. The most was a giant yellow ball in a round plate that make a wonderful clicking noise when you pressed down. My brother liked to hit it in order to click, which is probably why they got that mouse in the first place.
The computer came with customer software written by my parents. It was a quiz game to help us learn basic things that you teach small children. When I got the question right, a female voice would announce “Great Job!” and when I got it wrong the same female announced, “Sorry try again.” I spent years making references to that program, without being aware it was custom software, and was very confused when my friends had no clue what I was talking about. I’ve been using a computer since.
My first foray into programming was when my father came into my room, a large python book in hand, sat beside me and pulled up a python turtle. As an eight year old, I wasn’t very interested in the concept. I do remember making the turtle move forward two spaces before moving back onto my trusty browser.
The next time I tried programming was the summer before my junior year in high school. I was required to take one programming class and they offered it during the summer. Jumping at the chance get a class I was sure was going to bore me out of the way, I roped my father into helping me learn the basics of java programming.
It wasn’t long before I fell in love with the idea of working as a programmer. I loved programming and I enjoyed building code that would solve problems so I spent the next two years learning diligently.
I graduated highschool and entered UALR with the intent to become a game programmer. I enjoyed the art and the fact we actually had a product at the end of the process rather than a theoretical concept. During my freshman year, I took a class called Internet Technologies.
Internet Technologies was a basic HTML and CSS course but it opened my eyes to a job I loved even more than programming. It was organizing information, design and actually making something and it was something I felt right at home doing. I did grow up on the Internet afterall.
Luckily UALR began their Web Design/Development degree and I turned away from the Computer Science department to the Information Science Department.
During IT-Amber, we were to keep a blog so we could talk about various assignments and improve our soft skills.
Read It Here
