Welcome!
My name is Barbara (she/her)
Some of my favourite activities are playing the violin, pub-quizzes and knitting (also: making lists)
Currently, I am working on becoming a Web Developer
Background
During the studies for my BSc Economics at SOAS, University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), I learned to:
- Research new topics in collaboration as well as independently.
- Solve real-life problems analytically through abstract models.
- Understand the causes and societal cost of unequal opportunities and unused potential, as well as international development issues, incentives and interactions between individuals, businesses and societies.
- Enjoy the international environment and diversity of ideas from teachers and peers, around 50% of us being international, from all walks of life, cultures, ages, classes and personal identities.
- Value the creativity and brain power that can be sparked through respectful, open-minded dialogue.
Discovering Coding through a coincidental advert for the Google Grasshopper app felt:
- Immediately comfortable and logical.
- Like lightning struck – why had no one shown me this at school?
- Inviting – I had always assumed it a secret club for teenage boys.
- Exciting to imagine the life-hacks I might learn to create with a few lines of code!
- Like a path to get my life unstuck.
Personal Values
Through improving my coding skills, I hope to:
- Contribute in preparing us for a better future.
- Play an active part in fully digitising society, opening it up to less tech-savvy consumers.
- Support people and organisations already on that path, lend my brain-power to “good tech”.
I wish to contribute to technology that enables people to thrive and is:
- Accessible & Inclusive: affordable/free, proactively non-biased, open to all physical and learning abilities.
- Sustainable: anticipating impacts on the environment, society, mental and physical health.
- Responsible: consensual, considerate of data and consumer protection, protecting vulnerable groups, preventing misinformation.
- Supportive: strengthening community spirit and personal wellness (financial, physical, emotional).
- Bridging opportunity gaps.
- Solving everyday problems for ordinary people.
- Easing decision fatigue and the burden of emotional labour, especially for women and underfunded communities.
Ideas
If I could learn the coding skills to solve 4 life problems through apps...
- All available for free, because £1 can be an access barrier.
- Information provided by certified professionals in the relevant fields.
- Use of assistive (voice) technologies.
- Guaranteed data protection – this is tech to serve its users, not exploit them.
1. Live healthier
- For healthier habits with nutrition, exercise, sleep & sustainability
- Simple, personalised, realistic
- Planning tool for Recipes, Shopping Lists, Meal Plans, Workout-Schedules...
- Smart nudges on healthy swaps, seasonal vegetable calendar, rain forecast, carbon footprints...
- Potential link-up with your GP/nutritionist.
Completed Projects
Beethoven Bootcamp
Covid-19 has been a lonely time for passionate amateur orchestra players (especially us thriving in the second row)...
So what do you do when your fingers tingle and the feet tap a rhythm?
Step 2: Recommended movements from Beethoven Symphonies:
With links to IMSLP and YouTube (please respect copyright)
Coding Goals
What I hope to work on next
Improve on:
- Design Creativity
- Using JavaScript in real context
- How does a Pop-up work?
- Using Terminal and Version Control
- Return to previous versions
- Use different branches
- Collaboration
- Plan Projects
- Pair Programming
- GitHub
New skills:
- Standards for Visual Design & UX
- Standards for Accessibility and Assistive Technologies
- Frameworks
- Bootstrap
- Libraries
- Databases
- Prepare for Coding Interviews
- Land a Developer job
Why Founders and Coders
The Structure of the Course and Apprenticeship would provide the invaluable:
- broad coverage of my coding goals.
- guidance on technical employer interviews during the Pre-apprenticeship that could help overcome my confidence issues.
- financial security and peace of mind to fully immerse myself in the Bootcamp.
- full package of Bootcamp, certification and 1-2 years of experience to set me on the career path I would enjoy.
A place in this upcoming Cohort 22 in Autumn 2021:
- Participating in the Coaching Programme has already felt like a Bootcamp.
- Working in the Dragonfly Study Group, we already had several fantastic "aha!" moments.
- The last weeks supercharged my progress, motivation and gave me more support and confidence on the path to being a developer than I could have imagined.
- It would be an absolute privilege to continue growing in tandem, to keep up the pace, have some progress accountability and explore collaborating on projects and GitHub.
- It would be exciting and immensely valuable to be able to mix my analytical problem-solving aptitude with the fantastic visual design creativity of my fellow current coachees.
- While creating this website, I already considered several times how tasks might have been shared with partners.
To continue as part of the community:
- It felt safe to be invited to an environment that values mutual supportiveness over competitiveness. Collaborating with people with different life experiences is an opportunity to learn, not a complication!
- The special emphasis on pastoral care and respectful and encouraging communication has made a lasting impact on how I wish to conduct teamwork, with values and inter-personal dynamics I will be more proactive in fostering in work environments going forward.
- Already, I have greatly benefited from countless alumni and feel inspired to continue carrying the torch of mentoring. Because I am convinced that coding could be a path for others to get themselves out of much stickier life situations than mine.
- I would be especially excited to be involved in workshops for complete beginners – writing first HTML in a text editor or starting the first Codepen.