Meet Amanda Raymond. She just finished the web development course at General Assembly and would love to be a part of the local startup culture. Check out her profile below, and keep her in mind when you’re looking to hire local tech talent.
What projects have you worked on during the course?
The first project I created was LVE, Live Venue Entertainment, an application that allows users to search and save musical artists and upcoming concerts to a personal dashboard. It was built with Ruby on Rails and implemented Test Driven Development through Rspec. I employed PostgreSQL and the gem bcrypt in the authentication and authorization of users and I extracted concert and artist search results from Last.fm’s API using the gem httparty.
I worked as part of a two person team to conceive and build Connect.us. Connect.us allows users to browse WiFi-enabled meeting places around their group’s central location. We utilized Ruby on Rails for authentication and authorization, converted users’ addresses to usable coordinates using the gem geocoder, and stored users’ information using PostgreSQL. We extracted suggested places from the Yelp API and provided users the option to text the selected group members the address of the desired meeting place through Twilio. We incorporated AngularJS, Angular Google Maps, and Bootstrap to enhance the user experience.
For the final project of the course, a classmate and I worked to raise awareness about human trafficking, the modern day slave trade, through an engaging interface on our app Can’t Be Bought. We utilized Ruby on Rails and MongoDB to build and consume our own API of researched statistics. We employed AngularJS with UI-routing and nested views to increase the user experience. We also crafted algorithms based on statistics to provide the user a simulated journey of a possible human trafficked victim. We engaged D3.js, Highcharts, Bootstrap, and Adobe Illustrator to display statistics and increase the impact of the figures.
What are your best technical and/or creative skills?
My best technical skills are Ruby on Rails, AngularJS, and JavaScript.
What’s next on your list to learn?
I have a strong desire to continue strengthening my object oriented design skills. I also wanted to continue practicing TDD and reinforce my testing habits.
What’s your ideal internship/job?
My ideal job is one that is surrounded by smart, helpful and fun colleagues.
Interested in startups?
I am definitely interested in startups and would love to be a part of the startup culture. Coming from the corporate world, I can see many benefits to being part of something that needs and rewards passion.
Post graduation plans?
My post graduation plan is to continue to learn and grow as a web developer. My number one goal is to obtain a position that will allow me to continue the immersion I started at General Assembly.
