Before we get started...
You may be asking yourself, "Brian, you know your site looks... ugly... right???"
The short answer is, "Sure do!". My journey into web development started officially on January 16, 2018. I don't have a ton of uninterrupted free time (damn toddlers...), so I decided to focus on learning code prior to focusing on the visual elements that are obviously necessary for an aesthetically pleasing website. Once I feel my grasp of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is strong enough, I will start educating myself on the basics of graphic design so I can update this portfolio and get rid of this disclaimer. Until then, embrace the ugly!
Who is Brian Pirot?
Profesionally, I am (was?) a forensic DNA analyst with extensive experience in casework and validations. I have worked in public, private, and federal labs, including a year running DNA in a glorified shipping container in Afghanistan. I have extensive experience with many different DNA technologies and methodologies and excel at troubleshooting data with unexpected results. If something goes wrong, I am usually the first person to be consulted.
Personally, I am a 34 year old man-child who excels in self-deprecation, beard growing, and sarcasm (you have been warned). I am fueled by Diet Coke, chicken parm, and Reeses. I am an avid supporter of the Oxford comma. I grew up in New Jersey and have lived in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas. Hobbies include playing (though my wife will argue it is more 'collecting') guitar, golf, snowboarding, ice hockey, photography, and driving my Jeep as far off the road as I legally can.
So what can a career changer with no formal computer science education offer you?
Glad you asked...
- HTML and CSS
- Sass
- Responsive Design
- Git/GitHub
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Python
- MySQL
- Breaking Code
Perceived Skill Level: Intermediate
Self Assessment: I am comfortable using both HTML5 and CSS3 to build a site from scratch and can write well-formatted and thoroughly commented code. I may not know the properties needed to create a certain effect off the top of my head, but I am confident in my ability to find them. I am very comfortable creating layouts using flexbox and plan on learning CSS grid in the near future. In short, I feel confident I can take any mockup of a static page and create it.
Perceived Skill Level: Advanced Beginner
Self Assessment: This page is my first foray into styling with Sass (specifically scss). I understand the syntax and expected formatting, and am experimenting with modular scss files. I am comfortable creating and using varibles, mixins, and placeholder classes, though I may not always recognize all instances were I can use these features. I understand the concepts of loops and conditionals, but need to do some more reading up on them before feeling comfortable using them in a project.
Perceived Skill Level: Intermediate-ish
Self Assessment: I am comfortable identifying break points where page content no longer behaves as desired and using media queries to apply new styles to the affected elements. I am aware of frameworks such as Bootstrap that can aide with responsive design, but currently have limited to no experience with them.
Perceived Skill Level: Intermediate
Self Assessment: I know how to initialize git repositories, check status, stage and commit files, and work with remote repositories (GitHub and TFS) using the command line. I'm comortable using branches and have a basic understanding of the differences between merging and rebasing. I wouldn't say I am a git expert by any stretch, but I am comfortable enough with it to pick up any new functionality quickly.
Perceived Skill Level: Intermediate
Self Assessment: After blasting through a few coding courses on CodeCademy and Udemy without writing a ton of code and having a hard time getting things to stick, I have resolved to reviewing my JS basics while learning React and Node, and will be beginning my first from-scratch application in the coming weeks (posted on January 25th, 2020). I may need to look things up more frequently than a seasoned JavaScripter, but I am confident in my ability to find the tools necessary to get most jobs done.
Perceived Skill Level: Advanced Beginner
Self Assessment: I have not played around with jQuery plugins at all, but I am comfortable selecting elements, traversing the DOM, adding event listeners and using jQuery for the occasional interactive element (though I am trying to do more of this with CSS as I become more familiar with it). I have spent a good deal of time in the jQuery documentation and can typically find and implement new-to-me methods quickly.
Perceived Skill Level: Advanced Beginner
Self Assessment: I know the default data structures and their basic usage/functionality as well as how to create functions, import and use modules, get user input, and read from and move files. I've taken an introductory course to AI, and have created an image classifier using a pre-trained model with a custom classifier, but I will not claim to be more than a novice with data science tasks or using libraries like Numpy or Pandas. After solidifying my web development skills, data science will be my next focus.
Perceived Skill Level: Lower Intermediate
Self Assessment: I can write a query to find any data I need to extract from a database, but don't know the nuances yet between what makes a query efficient or not. I am comfortable with the ideas of primary and foreign keys, and can create a new table on occasion when I need it, but I would not yet claim to be comfortable coming up with a database schema from scratch. In short, I know enough to pull data to present to a user and how to add or update entries, but would not consider myself a DBA by any stretch.
Perceived Skill Level: Jedi Master
Self Assessment: Only way you can learn to fix something is to break it, and I have no shortage of learning opportunities (though I pinky swear I will never leave something broken).
What I've Made
Landing page for fictional school. Served as the capstone project for Codecademy's "Building Websites from Scratch" Pro Intensive course.
Website GitHub RepoColmar Academy
This is where I come to mess around with JavaScript. Not meant to be responsive, so may look wonky on smaller screens.
Website GitHub Repo