I took a break from work during this period due to some health challenges.

I worked as a mentor at MountBlue, a coding bootcamp where entry-level developers are trained for 3 months on popular web and mobile, technologies with the goal of finding them rewarding software development careers in startups.

I mentored primarily in the Python / Django stack and also mentored a cohort in the JavaScript / React stack.

During 2020, as the company had to go remote due to Covid-19, I automated many of our manual processes, recruited 100s of candidates and also helped run a problem-solving and computational thinking course for students new to programming.

Here's an overview of one of my projects for a client name Jed-i.

You just watched a Thodio(portmanteau of Thoughts and Video) embedded in a Jupyter notebook. I built the entire app as a consultant for Jed-i's Machine Learning course.

The software has three components:

Thodio Creator

This component is an HTML5 Canvas interface used by instructors to create content using a drawing pad.

Thodio Player

This component, used by students, plays Thodios created by instructors. Like any media player, it supports operations such as play speed, fast forward and rewind. It also has a special feature where students can seek to the section of the thodio where an element is active, by clicking on it. I used a static KD-Tree, a spacial data-structure, to implement this feature and it was quite fun!

Jupyter Extension

The ML course is delivered as a bunch of Jupyter Notebooks. So I built a Jupyter front-end extension to embed Thodio Players inside the notebook by executing an IPython magic command. I also extended the Markdown syntax to support features such as highlighting and underlining.

You can also see the app used in a classroom setting here.

I watched a "Papers we Love" talk by Armon Dadgar of Hashicorp on YouTube. In parallel, I was learning Elixir from the Programming Elixir book by Dave Thomas. So I thought, why not combine the both and built a side project to illustrate how "Vivaldi", a distributed algorithm used by Hashicorp's Consul works behind the scenes. You can find out more about how it works and also find the repo on GitHub..

A desire to build adaptive-learning experiences motivated me to learn web development in the first place. So I built a minimalist learning management system where instructors can break down a large topic into small concepts and specify dependencies between them. The instructor can also create text and embed multimedia content, quizzes and coding exercises belonging to each concept in the topic.

When a student visits the site for the first time, Concept Coaster guides the student through an adaptive pre-test to identify the student's current knowledge level so they can start learning at the edge of their knowledge instead of wasting time reviewing known concepts. Also, the entire concept graph is visualized on the main page so that the student can choose a learning path optimized for reaching their target concept as quickly as possible.

The application is not currently up since I haven't had the time to maintain it. However, you can find the repo on GitHub.

As a freelance web developer, I built web apps for clients using Python, Django, JavaScript, Backbone.js and React.

In parallel, I also ran a coding bootcamp called Intense, where I created customized learning paths for students, reviewed their code and helped them land freelancing contracts and full-time software development jobs.

I also worked as a senior instructor at another bootcamp, CodeKraft, where I taught web development, created engaging projects and coached students on software engineering best practices.

I worked at New Rubric Solutions as a software developer. Here are some of my accomplishments during my time with the company.

• Led the design and development of the company's flagship single-page web application along with senior engineers

• Contributed to architecture/design and lead the development of a reporting application used by parents to keep track of their child's progress at school

• Developed core abstractions used by product engineers to build maintainable applications

• Helped interns and teammates with front-end development