While in school, Michael Lohmeier was attracted to psychology. That education helped him understand consumer behaviors and social decision-making behind issues like budgeting. While in DigitalCrafts‘ Full-Stack Immersive program, Lohmeier’s favorite project was a budgeting simulation app that helps those lacking financial literacy skills to build up their savings.
“I genuinely love sitting down with people and learning how they code, sharing tips and asking questions,” says Lohmeier.
The junior programmer is excited to continue building on his knowledge of blockchain technology and immersive web-based experiences, as well as joining an innovative company that’s employee-first.
What is your previous education?
I loved psychology, so I decided to study that subject in school. On the weekends and hours between classes I studied what I wanted to, and began to realize that the best way to learn is to simply teach yourself. I still love psychology, but I maximize what I can learn about it by setting aside time to study my specific interests.
What projects have you worked on?
The most exciting thing I’ve worked on is a budgeting simulation app meant to teach proper financial decision-making, with the specific goals of our userbase in mind. Most Americans do not have enough savings to pay for the medical expenses of an emergency and lack the basic skills required to weather an economic crisis.
Our app is meant to be an engaging, accessible and useful tool to teach the financial literacy required to fix these problems. The simulation also includes, by necessity, an element of randomness. The random events may reward you for saving diligently, but they may also punish you for going to work instead of spending your time and money on leisure. This is an important distinction between our simulation and a game, which can be won or lost. In our simulation, the user decides what it means to make a good or a bad choice.
What tech tools are essential to you as a developer?
GitHub is quite possibly my favorite thing on the internet. I love the emphasis on collaboration, the stupefyingly rich wealth of knowledge, and the hard-coded helpfulness of the community. Pretty much every other tool I use is somewhat disposable and probably better in another format, except for Google, maybe.
What are your best technical or creative skills?
Music is my favorite skill, but writing is my best. I write in my free time and craft sentences with extreme deliberation and scratching of the head. Mostly, I write about my personal experiences, which lends an opportunity to choose what to learn from the past and to make my somewhat boring life somewhat interesting in the retelling.
What’s next on your list to learn?
The blockchain developer technology stack is my current desktop background and I get a little giddy every time I minimize all of my open windows and look at it.
Natural language processing is another thing I’m a little enthralled by and it’s on my ‘to-be-learned’ list. As far as web development goes, I’m planning on learning some generative programming to create immersive web-based experiences. Ideally, these would be mobile-friendly, so learning some Swift and Java is in the works too.
Are you interested in working for a startup, mid-sized company, or a corporate giant?
I’m interested in working for a company that makes innovative products, responds quickly and effectively to the needs of its employees, and builds a healthy work culture. Size doesn’t matter.
Interested in looking at Michael’s credentials? Here you go! GitHub and LinkedIn.
