Richard Thewma portfolio

About

Hi there. Welcome to my site.

I build software for the web.

Get in touch with me here.

Background

I built a rudimentary search engine in Python through a guided setup for an introductory computer science course. This was my introduction to programming. Later on, I wrote some scripts for web scraping and dabbled with AI. However, my featured body of work is based around web development, specifially in fulfilment of the Odin Project, which is an open source curriculum developed and maintained by software developers in the field. Here I gained the ability to independently build projects across the whole stack.

Skills

I can build accessible, responsive, cross-browser compatible frontends and I can implement database schemas and models and handle routes on the backend. I also have experience with unit testing, APIs, Git and Bash. My experience is based on JavaScript frameworks so: TypeScript, Express and Node.js, React, Mongoose, Sequelize, Passport, and Jest. However, my programming fundamentals are agnostic, I have, for example, been able to translate my Express knowledge to Flask in Python seamlessly.

Hackathons

I have participated in two of Bellingcat's hackathons to build tools for open-source researchers. These resulted in a social network analysis tool and a front-end interface for a preexisting command-line tool. Both hackathons had a timeframe of three days, which pushed me to develop minimally viable products under time constraints. For the first hackatahon, I had the opportunity to pair program with another participant. We had to divide the work between us, and we had limited windows to communicate because we were from different timezones. This is the article featuring the tool.

Mentoring

The Odin Project has a thriving community on Discord where I participated in mentoring other learners. I reaped great rewards from this practice, because I gained an insight into programming habits different from my own and varied ways of approaching problems. Having to guide learners towards their solution, without imposing your own preferred way is difficult. I found that in explaining something, or at times, realising I do not know something as throughly as I thought I did ultimately made me a more rounded developer. Not to mention the inherent satisfaction of helping a total stranger get unstuck.

Open source

Weather forecast renderer

Repository Live Demo

Built with:

Html5
CSS3
JavaScript
Webpack