My name is Christoph, and since the beginning of the year I am working as a frontend developer at ePages. I originally started at the company in August 2015 with an apprenticeship as a media designer. During that time I mostly did website maintenance, some designs in sketch app or photoshop, and the one or other bootstrap website.
What is my background?
My background was a solid but expandable knowledge of HTML, CSS, and the most basic design principles which I gained in a two-year schooling as a screen designer. I learned how to write concepts, how to create screen designs, and how to implement them as a static website. Fun fact: before starting out there I did not even know what HTML and CSS was.
The first few months in the team
Since the beginning of 2017, with the graduation of my apprenticeship in sight, I started out in Team 42 to get a glimpse at what the life of a developer looks like. Team 42 develops applications and tools that are both internally and externally used such as the Sales Analytics App, the API documentation for developers or a plugin to use your ePages shop within a WordPress website. I had a very warm welcome in an interesting small team of two developers and one product owner. They immediately introduced me to the product they were currently working on, which was the Sales Analytics App built in Rails. Without knowing anything about Rails, or the underlying programming language Ruby, I was nonetheless able to contribute with my knowledge of CSS respectively Sass, and give the product some styling. Apart from that I got a crash course in how developers work, for instance with Git, and what is important to keep in mind in order to become a good developer. Always staying up to date and being interested in the newest technologies for example was one of that.
Status Quo
Now, roughly six month after starting in the team, one big and interesting project which was the relaunch of our website epages.com and successful finishing my apprenticeship in June, I am still feeling very satisfied with where I am. What’s missing now is a deep understanding of basic programming. That’s why I am currently doing a lot of training in the fields of JavaScript, and everything related such as jQuery. In the long run I want to be able to contribute to all the projects the team is working on, which are built in Rails. Luckily, I have a very supportive team, that helps me wherever they can. We are currently doing some training sessions so that I get the fundamentals of computer science and programming in general. If I have any questions regarding the guided tutorials I am doing, I can always reach out to them at all times.
Outlook
In the upcoming months there will be a lot of work for me to do. I am looking forward to the one or other hour in the evenings and weekends where I have to sit and study as much as I can. I want to be able to get the necessary tools to help the team as a full stack frontend developer as fast as possible.
So stay tuned for an update from my side in a few months from now, where I can report from my newly gained skills in JavaScript and Rails.
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