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Linguist and translator by academic background, I've recently developed a keen interest in a completely new kind of languages: those that favour camelCase over word spaces, indent much more than just paragraphs, and really do not tolerate any typos (that's okay, I've always been a hard-line proofreader).

So far my coding adventure has felt a bit like entering the wizarding world where the wizards and witches of the tech community use words and numbers to form new spells and create wonderful, exciting things out of nothing. Finally after all those years, it seems like I might not be a Muggle after all.

Currently I'm pursuing an intensive 16-week software development course at CodeClan, Edinburgh's fantastic digital skills academy (graduating June 2018). During the course I discovered that my previous job experience helps me a lot with what we're learning: as a freelance translator and proofreader I easily find patterns in the programming languages I study and am a stickler for detail (I'll always catch that rogue semicolon!); as a former bookseller I tend to think a lot about user expectations and preferences; and as an academic Current Research Information System administrator with four years of experience working with Open Access I deeply care about unrestricted access to software.

I'm also very enthusiastic about engaging in the wider tech community - to that end, I regularly attend tech talks and meetups, I've started volunteering as a coach at coding workshops for children, and am keen to start contributing to open source projects.

So far I've gained experience in the following areas:

  • Object-Oriented programming,
  • Test-driven development,
  • UML diagramming,
  • the basics of UX,
  • using Git and GitHub for version control,
  • Agile methodologies,
  • Android development,
  • Java (my favourite programming language so far),
  • Ruby (a close second), including Sinatra and Jekyll,
  • JavaScript and jQuery,
  • Postgres
  • HTML & CSS (including Flexbox and Bootstrap),

...and am constantly looking for new things to learn.

Take a look at some of my coding projects in My Portfolio or visit my LinkedIn profile to learn more about my professional experience.