I come to coding from a creative background. I was a designer first, with a passion for all things web. When I took my first frontend course in college I knew I had found where I belonged. I took more web development classes after that, and more after I finished those, until all that was left were the very intimidating “Computer Science” courses; where algorithms and complex mathamatical formulas run rampant. And quite frankly, those classes scared the hell out of me.

Being heavily right-brained, I’ve never considered myself much a an analytical/mathamatical thinker. But as I delved deeper into web development, I found that a lot of the applications and crazy web ideas I was dreaming up in my head couldn’t realistically be executed in just HTML and CSS. It was only a matter of time before my curiosity brought me to the figurative fork in the road.

Did I want to be a web developer, or designer?

Was I smart enough for development? And, would I have to be good at math, or worse, like it?! (cause that definitely was not happening). Would me being so right-brained hurt my chances of becoming a well-adjusted web developer? But on the flipside, would I be fulfilled with just designing? Can’t I do both?!

Though the lines sometimes can be blurry, there is a distinct separation between the two, especially in my work place now. Developers and designers do a very different set of tasks, and rarely do those tasks overlap. In fact, they sit on opposite sides of the building! Very rarely do you see a job description with both development and design duties. Sadly, they are usually segregated.

I started Bloc in August, 2016 in the full-stack web development track because I wanted to turn my ideas into fully functional applications. I wanted to gain the skills I needed to work as an exceptional freelancer. I wanted to move my career in the right direction. But as I started the program, I quickly learned that I thoroughly enjoyed it too. Even the hard stuff. Were people like me out there? Can you design *and* develop?

My mentor tells me these people are called “Unicorns” in the industry. I’m not sure if they are received as jacks of all trades (masters of none?), or magical, pixel pushing code magicians, but I’m shooting for the latter.