Tovah Kirkman has been involved with IT support for about 15 years and has always wanted to move over to the development side. As a hobby he has been working with Ruby/Rails for the past few years and thought it would be a great time to change his career. Most of his knowledge about programming has come from books, tutorials, videos, and katas. Although these methods were great for teaching him coding practices and high level concepts, they weren’t very helpful with assisting him in applying these skills in his projects. What Tovah needed was hands-on experience and pairing with a senior developer.
And so, Tovah came to Codementor to pair with an experienced JavaScript/Ruby on Rails mentor. Since working with Codementor, Tovah has been able to be hired as a developer.
Tovah’s Experience with Codementor
What drew you to use Codementor?
What drew me to Codementor was that I would have the opportunity to get all my questions answered by an expert in the field. I would literally spend hours online looking for answers to technical questions that I had, and would not know how to gauge the accuracy of the answers I received. Just because an answer works doesn’t necessary mean it is the solution to my particular case. Also, it is great to have someone with more experience watching me code to ask me why I am taking a particular approach and advise me on how they would implement a solution.
How did you use Codementor?
I have used Codementor to level up my skills and build out my portfolio. When I initially started, I was learning best practices for Ruby and Rails but quickly realized that I had a bunch of gaps in my understanding of associated technologies such as JavaScript, AJAX, etc. To become a full stack developer, I needed to acquire new skills and continued to use Codementor to code with experts to resolve this.
Since working with Codementor, I have been able to be hired as a developer. I’ll also be launching my new app, Timeworthy shortly as well.
Can you please describe in details a few sessions you’ve had?
I worked with two different mentors on Codementor. Han for Ruby/Rails and Mehran for JavaScript/Reactjs.
Typically if I was learning a new concept, the mentors would describe in detail the overview/big picture of the topic and then dive into the specifics.
If I was working on a particular project, I would open the project and work through my sticking point with the mentor to help me resolve it. The main thing that I got from working with the mentors from Codementor, is perspective from a senior programmers eyes. I am able to learn the next steps to do without spending years of banging my head against the way.
Any key takeaways or learnings from using Codementor?
My key takeaways or learnings is that “you don’t know what you don’t know”. What this means to me is that I had no idea what skills I needed to improve on without someone from the next level providing the guidance and feedback. Once I became aware of improvement areas, I was able to build a plan to fill in the knowledge gaps.
What do you like the most about Codementor?
The thing I like most about Codementor is the monthly mentoring program. I can fill out the form on what I need to learn and then get matched with someone with the necessary skills to help me level up.
I would definitely recommend Codementor to anyone who wants to upgrade their coding skills or wants to find a career as a programmer.
