MEET CHARITY

Every web developer can recall the first time they were introduced to coding. For Charity Bunyon, she was teaching an English class when one of her students was coding a website instead of doing his English assignment. “I sat down beside him because the joy on his face made me so happy. I needed to know what possessed him to do this,” she recalls. “He started to show me how to code right there in class...It was that moment that I fell in love with programming and knew I wanted to be a developer. ” 

Charity was hooked on coding from that point on. She bought web development books and attended different tech Meetups in town where she met alumni of Nashville Software School (NSS). “They really encouraged me to apply to NSS and I couldn’t be happier with my decision,” she smiles. “It’s been a really great experience.” 

I chose to become a software developer because I wanted to create web and mobile applications that would make life more convenient.” 

THE NSS EXPERIENCE

Charity shares that her favorite thing about her time in Part-time Web Development Cohort Evening 10 was learning the programming language React. “[It’s] an amazing language that allows me to create projects in a more maintainable way,” she states. 

When NSS had to transition to remote learning, Cohort Evening 10 was less than a month into the second half of their bootcamp. This made learning C#/.NET even more challenging. “It was hard, but my classmates and I persevered,” she says. 

Advice I would give is to never forget the basics, do some code challenges, and learn SQL. 

CAPSTONE PROJECTS

Charity’s front-end capstone project is a web application called Create Beauty. Users can upload, store, and review makeup looks they’ve created or ones created by other users. “I built this app to save users time when referring back to makeup looks they created previously,” she shares. “You can login with Google, upload looks, and rate your makeup looks.” Create Beauty was built using React, Firebase, Bootstrap, and JavaScript. 

Activate Me is Charity’s back-end capstone that makes calorie counting, nutrition, and exercise tracking easy. “I wanted [to encourage] users to eat more plant-based foods and to exercise [more],” she explains. “Users create an account and start tracking the plant-based foods or workouts that they do and receive points and ultimately badges that get added to their dashboard for all of their discipline and hard work.” Charity created Activate Me using her own API that she built in SQL and C#, along with .NET, React, Firebase, and Semantic UI.

HIRE CHARITY

Now a junior developer, Charity is continuing to build her skill set by learning Python and taking a Data Structures and Algorithms course. “I’m also looking for a full stack or SQL developer position,” she adds. “I want to make sure I become a well-rounded developer, obtaining and strengthening my skills in order to be an asset to my team members.” 

I would consider myself a lifelong learner. New technologies and skills are always available. This excites me because I know that it will always be something or someone I can learn from and grow.

Check out all the recent grads on Part-time Web Development Cohort Evening 10's  and hear the graduates share their experience at NSS and capstone projects in their podcasts below.