coding challenge accepted ⇒ Pandemic Response!

15 Jul 2020

A Proud Professional Accomplishment

⌨️July 15, 2020 was an unusually fulfilling day for me despite the ongoing disruptions to “normal” life and the WFH slog of the pandemic, since I feel like I actually helped make some difference during the preceding couple weeks (of intense overtime work on an internal side-project nobody forced me to take on) in some small but significant way that will have somewhat of a regional impact on this crazy global situation…👨‍💻🙃

Most of the time, I can’t really talk about my work even semi-publicly (except in vague generalities) due to the nature of the federal clients I serve — so, while I’m a patriotic person, a diligent worker, and am certainly quietly proud of the work I usually do day in and day out (and typically over longer sustained timescales than many constantly sprinting/juggling “agency” or freelance coders constantly churning out MVPs), it’s nice when I can actually share (to an unusual degree) a specific short-term success milestone and accomplishment with a public release that I significantly contributed to and celebrate my role in making that possible!✅

Moreover, while most major technical projects are team efforts like this one was, and I’m fortunate to work on some exceptionally talented teams, I definitely happened to bring a lot of crucial front-end expertise that I’ve worked hard to build over the last few years to this particular effort — and I’m confident in saying that I can pretty much take personal credit for the fact that we successfully delivered a responsive site that looks good on mobile devices📱 by the go-live deadline to an entire state in these extraordinary circumstances, on a greatly accelerated schedule, and during a time when there is an intense spotlight on any obsolete or underperforming outdated government websites (or brand new ones!) that have not been adequately updated or are failing to properly serve their citizens (so the pressure is on for anyone providing technical services to the public on government contracts).👀

Candidly, even though this was merely a short-term project for me, I definitely felt a personal responsibility to deliver for the people of Nebraska (whatever it took) so they can get convenient, timely, and helpful information specific to their state and its response to the pandemic now and in the near-future going forward — as well as, perhaps equally importantly, transparency and public oversight into how their state is spending emergency funding allocated to address the pandemic and its economic impacts, info on how to apply for grants and relief, etc.

In summary, I’m proud of what we produced with the resources and timeline we had available; it was not an easy challenge, but it was a well-received and successfully launched result! I hope it serves my fellow citizens dwelling on the prairies “where the West begins” well in the weeks and months to come.🙂

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P.S.

💻Many of you who know me well are aware that it’s been a challenging (and, at times, stressful) but definitely interesting few years now since I switched careers quite drastically midlife to become a web-developer instead of continuing teaching — and I struggled with “imposter syndrome” for some of that time at various stages of getting started with this profession due to the difficulty of learning the trade of full-stack coding at a very accelerated pace compared to someone with an undergraduate degree timeline of more extensive preparation before entering the field.

In many ways, I’ve always been tech savvy — and the nature of the work of writing code certainly flexes some of my best spatial-reasoning, artistic, linguistic, and logical strengths — but, in other ways, learning to code has been one of the most intellectually challenging things I’ve ever done, especially compared to academic accomplishments in the humanities and social-sciences or fine-arts that always came easily and “effortlessly” to me whenever I applied myself, no matter how much I value and cherish studying those subjects.🧠

Anyway, while I’m no longer an entry-level developer (and my confidence and skills in many technical areas have been massively stretched and improved over the past few years), it’s nonetheless always nice and reassuring to feel extremely competent and high-performing every once in a while!

In conclusion, today definitely feels like a significant milestone of sorts in my burgeoning second career…🙂🔜⛩️

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back...
	—Robert Frost