Gabriel Wamunyu
Full Stack Engineer @ Pass It Down
Gabriel is a full-stack software engineer at Pass It Down working on empowering cultural institutions with new technologies. Since freshman year at Vanderbilt University, pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering, he has expressed his passion for software development and entrepreneurship by founding a startup in Kenya for online grocery delivery, a video platform for college students to share events happening around campus and soon after college, founding Tryall, an award-winning software application for tracking subscription software for small and medium-sized startups. He began his journey in Elixir over a year ago and has an ever-growing passion for learning and applying it every day. When not glued to a screen he is probably cycling, running or reading.
Talk:
Functional Juniors: Leveling Up Your New Elixir Devs
We aim to provide unique perspectives on software engineering from two unique backgrounds and the applications of these views to the training of junior developers. This presentation will be a summary of our time learning Elixir as a CS college graduate and a self-taught graduate, the contrast between these, and the benefits of a diverse team. The methods we used include aspects of our unique approaches to solving problems, how our mentors set us up for success, why TDD matters, the naive approach vs optimal solution, and how our results differ in a junior/junior pair versus a senior/junior pair. We will go on to discuss the comparisons of how we felt learning Elixir through projects we tackled together and how our backgrounds provided strengths in our problem-solving and code creation. By providing our unique perspectives on this process we will present useful takeaways for other devs to use when hiring junior devs from either an academic background or a self-taught background.
Talk objectives:
- Assist senior developers looking to interview and hire new Elixir developers, by considering their educational backgrounds and fit with other junior developers
- Provide the junior perspective on learning Elixir for seniors to consider when creating project objectives
- Facilitate smoother pairing between junior Elixir developers and give an overview of possible pitfalls and learning strategies
Target audience:
- All levels, most useful for seasoned seniors onboarding bright-eyed juniors and hopeful juniors looking to overcome the initial Elixir learning process