Before getting into web development, I earned an undergraduate degree in English literature and a graduate degree in creative writing. I've taught university-level writing in both fiction and essay forms. I believe that as crafts, writing and coding share a ton of skills, and I'll be thrilled to bore you with the details of that analogy if you ask!

Writing taught me to prioritize strong architecture/planning, clarity, and above all, user perception, and these have become my assets as a developer, too. To write quality code, you first need to have clear, quality thought about the problem at hand. To write maintainable, comprehensible code, you have to see it through the brain of another developer. To create a successful product, you have to see it through the emotions of the user. Being a self-taught developer has cultivated my tenacity and love for self-improvement in a craft as near-infinite, and as rewarding, as coding is.

I love the creativity and problem-solving inherent in coding, especially on the front end, where the feedback is quick and the raw potential to create something increases every year, as browsers get more powerful and APIs more ingenious. I'm no professional designer, but I get excited about beautiful UI and UX. There's something thrilling about creating a product that looks smooth and cohesive on the surface, but solves complex problems behind-the-screen. Maybe the task I love most on the front end is architecting React components and state for maintainability, extensibility, and efficient rendering.

I'm looking for a team where I can contribute immediately, but just as importantly, one where I'll be pushed to improve by learning better practices, more technologies, more difficult patterns, and more truths about the industry. A strong code review culture would be great. If you read all this, wow, that's pretty cool of you! I'd love to work with you! Contact me, and thanks for reading :)