The Iron Yard academy teaches intensive, three month courses that are churning out junior-level programmers into the Atlanta tech talent pool. Meet one of their recent graduates, Diego Medina to hear about his experience at The Iron yard and what he is looking to do next.
What program did you just complete?
I just finished a three month long Ruby on Rails bootcamp at The Iron Yard. I learned about the fundamentals of Rails, testdriven development, agile development strategies, and most importantly, I learned how to solve problems.
What past tech projects have you worked on?
As part of The Iron Yard, I was required to build a new project every week for homework, but my favorite projects are some that I worked on outside of class. Here are a few choice examples that I particularly enjoyed working on.
- Lucid Lit: For my final two weeks at The Iron Yard, I decided to create a project that I’m passionate about: Lucid Lit. Lucid Lit is a website to crowdsource book annotations and to make it easier for people to read classical literature. I am the Lead Developer and Designer of this project.
- Connector: I volunteered at Code For Atlanta to create a website where users can keep track of current and past Code For Atlanta projects. I am one of three rails developers working on this, including a developer from Salesloft and Nebo Agency. I am currently in charge of the projects feature and design.
- Seeded: Seeded is a website I worked on for the Atlanta Start Up Weekend. This is a resource for students and teachers to reach out to their community to get volunteers for and crowd fund their projects/ideas. I was our team’s lead front end and back end developer.
What are your best technical or creative skills?
I am confident with Ruby on Rails, and after working on my final project I now have a good amount of experience with Javascript. I’m knowledgable about rspec and have been getting better at using testdriven development on every new project I work on. I also take great pride in designing clean and intuitive user interfaces.
What’s next on your list to learn?
AngularJS. There are a lot of interactive features that I want to add to Lucid Lit to improve its usability, and AngularJS will help me get these features running quickly and smoothly.
What’s your ideal internship/job?
I would love to work at a small business where I will be challenged. I want to find a company with an environment that will encourage me to continue learning new things and hone my development skills. Above all, I want to work at a company where I can make an impact and contribute to the company’s success.
Interested in startups?
Definitely! Startups are where the action is!
Post graduation plans?
My plans after graduating are to apply to Ruby on Rails positions and to continue working on my portfolio. In particular, I want to take Lucid Lit to the next level by gamifying the app and adding more interaction with AngularJS.
