Developer Apprentice Program Update: Part 2

Today we continue our three part series from our Developer Apprentices. Today's post is from PJ, who has been working on some of our great Ruby on Rails projects.

As a developer apprentice, the most important thing I’ve learned so far is how to effectively utilize version control tools like Git to better collaborate with a team of developers. Prior to starting the apprenticeship, I mainly utilized Git on my own personal projects in which I was the sole contributor. However, in just my first week at SmartLogic, I had already started to break my dangerous habit of working on the master branch, worked with pre-commit hooks to establish better coding practices and keep the code base uniform, and submitted my first ever pull request and merged my changes into the master branch of a production level project. Git has always been a somewhat intimidating tool for me, so it’s been great to start getting a better handle on it.

For the remainder of the program, I hope to learn and use technologies like Elixir and React Native. Working with Elixir will give me an in-depth look into functional programming, and React Native will be my first exposure into any sort of mobile development. My hope is that, by working with these technologies, I will be challenged to grow and stretch the paradigms through which I approach programming. By better understanding how functional programming works, I think I will also gain a better understanding of object-oriented programming, and I’ll be a better programmer for it. In the end, I’m always excited about the opportunity to learn and grow as a developer, and I’m confident that the SmartLogic developer apprentice program will continue to equip me to become a better developer.

- PJ Frias

Header photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash