Colin Taylor is a Javascript junkie with heart – working for a nonprofit in Cambodia and ultimately uncovering his passion for web development. Taylor is cool, calm, and collected (007 style) when thrown into challenging and competitive environments. He’s ready to tackle your next problem – so fire away!
What program did you just complete?
The Web Development Immersive at General Assembly.
What prompted you to take this class?
I was looking for a challenge and I’ve always loved building things. I spent 2 years managing a non-profit in Cambodia and a large portion of that time trying to develop and produce water pumps. The whole process of designing, research, building, and testing was fascinating to me but we were very limited by the material inputs and existing how-to information. When I discovered web development, I loved it because I was only limited by what I knew and there’s so many how-to resources.
What past projects have you worked on?
I worked on a number of projects during the past 12 weeks but the two I most proud of are:
MarketMental – A simulated stock trading app with current and historical stock data and Twitter sentiment analysis. A MEAN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, NodeJS) Stack app that allows users to trade stocks (with fake money) and watch their portfolios change over time. It incorporates Yahoo Finance and Twitter APIs.
Party Generator – A Ruby On Rails random party idea generator that uses the Big Oven and Soundcloud APIs to let users get randomly suggested recipes and playlists and save them to their profiles.
What are your best technical or creative skills?
I really excelled with front and back end Javascript, especially AngularJS and NodeJS. Javascript is everywhere now and it’s a very exciting team to be writing with. I’m also very good at keeping myself on track and finding the right balance between writing great code and meeting a deadline.
What’s next on your list to learn?
I’ve been studying up on Ecmascript 6 (the next version of Javascript). It has some features that will make a lot of developers lives easier. I’m also interested in learning ReactJS and Javascript design patterns.
Why the interest in startups?
They are very challenging and competitive environments where you can make a real impact on its growth. Also, you can end up getting involved in a lot of different projects, which is something that I love to do.
What’s your ideal internship/gig?
I’m interested in a product that is solving a relevant problem, as well as software as a service company. I want a position where I solve really interesting problems every day.
Post graduation plans?
To keep busy with Meetups, interviews, and working on side projects. I have a ton of tutorials to do and books to read as well.
