James Johnson

Ended my journey as an Intern at BAE Systems and transitioned into a full Software Engineer!

Excited to join BAE Systems as Software Engineer Intern! 🎉

The first time I built my own website.
This is roughly when I bought my domain and decided to make a portfolio of sorts. The first iteration used Wordpress, since I thought it would be good enough for me and work out-of-the-box. However, the designs and layouts were subpar for what I desired. I remember hearing about this new technology Gatsby while watching a Twitch stream, and, after doing some research, decided to build my own site using it. 

Began my Software Engineering experience by learning Python with the help of codecademy. This resource was great since it had you read a little bit about a topic and then write some code or, in most cases, fill in some missing code to complete a problem. I don’t think I would’ve wanted to continue this journey without starting here. Python was the first real language that I learned, and it might be my favorite language to date. 

This is a very rough estimate of when I learned HTML. I had bought a HTML for Dummies book probably a year prior to this and actually really liked how HTML worked. I was very nerdy about learning HTML, so I would actually bring the book with me to school to read. After I had read the majority of the book, I decided to test my skills and see if I could make a website. This first site was very bland. I think there were a few pictures and then a lot of text, but nothing else. I used a little bit of CSS to make the background a light blue. 

Looking back on this, this could be where I decided what I wanted to do in life. Before, I had always known I’d work with computers, but I think this might have solidified my want to write code, I just didn’t know it then.