Fatigued from working in industrial metal manufacturing, John Johnson began to research CNC machining and programming (automated control of machining tools and 3D printers). During his process of researching and self-learning, John came across software development and started to seriously consider it as his next career move. That’s when he discovered Nashville Software School (NSS).
“I found out about the [NSS] info sessions and attended one,” he recalls. “[I] listened to what John Wark had to say [and] saw that the reviews were excellent [so I] applied to the school.”
THE NSS EXPERIENCE
During his time in Part-time Web Development Evening Cohort 11, John shares that “Learning in a team environment really helped me to come out of my shell more.”
Listening to how different people can approach the same challenge helped me to open my mind to a different way of thinking.
John faced many difficult challenges while he was learning at NSS, both in and out of class. “However there wasn't anything that I didn't overcome,” he states confidently. When asked what advice he would pass along to current and future NSS students, he shared, “Please believe when the instructors tell you to ‘trust the process’, sometimes that little amount of hope is all I could muster, but it was enough.”
CAPSTONE PROJECTS
For his front-end capstone, John built Motoworx, an application for motorcycle owners to help them keep track of the maintenance and modifications of their bikes. Motoworx allows users to create and edit a motorcycle, track maintenance or modifications performed on the bike, and delete bikes from their lists when they sell a motorcycle. Before building his application, John researched existing motorcycle applications and found that most existing apps only allow users to track one bike at a time. “I wanted to do better than that,” he explains. “Some people own more than one motorcycle, making the app not as useful.” John used axios, Bootstrap, Firebase, React, ReactStrap, ReactRouter, and SASS to build Motoworx.
Super’s Choice is John’s back-end capstone which allows factory and warehouse supervisors to manage their employees. “When I worked in factories, sometimes there would be a lag in time at the beginning of a shift, to find out where everyone is going to be working,” he explains. “Also the supervisor would need to walk a lot, depending on the size of the building(s), just to keep on top of what was going on at any given time.” With Super’s Choice, supervisors can log in and assign employees to any registered machine / work area and employees can log in to see where they are stationed each day. John built Super’s Choice using React, ReactStrap, Moment.js, axios, C#, Dapper, and T-SQL.
HIRE JOHN
Now a graduate of NSS, John is excited to begin his search for his first job in tech as a junior developer. John enjoys the styling of front-end development, and the functionality of back-end development, “but my passion is with databases,” he smiles.
The continuous learning of the fundamentals and all of the new things in software help to keep my mind fresh and renewed for each challenge. Learning is my new career.
Learn more about John by visiting his website or listening to his podcast!
Check out all the recent grads at Part-time Web Development Evening Cohort 11's class website and hear the graduates share their experience at NSS and capstone projects in their podcasts below.
