Hello π My name is Jim and I'm a software developer.
I live in Mesa, AZ with my family (see the π¦πΌ π©π» π¦π») and I grew up near St. Louis. I took an unusual path to software development... after 10 years in creative marketing, I was laid off during the pandemic. In between applications and job searching, I spent my free time learning to code and decided to officially change careers. I started a software engineering program (see π π€) and left marketing behind for good.
Showit is a no-code, drag-and-drop website builder. I'm a software developer on the Applications team, which mostly focuses on our Design App, the platform where users design, publish, and manage their websites.
Some highlights of my time at Showit:
From 2016-2020, I dabbled in content creation and started an outdoors hiking/camping/backpacking blog and YouTube channel. It didn't exactly go viral, but there were a few notable hits. Some of my content on popular Arizona destinations like West Clear Creek (see video) and Reavis Ranch were at the top of Google search results. I also had the chance to review some North Face gear for its official site. All-in-all, it was a fun era of my life and a great way to flex some creativity while doing what I love outside.
Before coding, or even marketing, I wanted to be a journalist. I was a writer and editor for my college newspaper, The Murray State News, and interned as a crime/fire beat reporter for the New Era in Hopkinsville, KY.
Hack Reactor was a 16-week marathon of full-time programming education...7 days a week, 11-12 hours a day. There's a good reason it's called an "immersive" and it was the best way for me to learn programming in such a short window. We covered computer science fundamentals, algorithms and data structures, front-end web development with React, and back-end web development with Node.js.
Family photo! My wife Abby and I met at work in 2013 (classic work romance) back when I was also a marketing copywriter alongside her. We got married in 2019 under the Superstition Mountains and our son Von was born the same day Albert Pujols hit his 700th home run.
My career in programming started at a sports data company where I was a full-stack developer working on React web tools, analytics dashboards, and two Node.js API servers that managed millions of requests, emails, sms messages, and AI-powered sports content.
Some highlights of my time at FanPower:
Some highlights of my old marketing career.
As Content Producer, I was responsible for online materials such as pet guides, product media, and producing YouTube content which included a Shorty award-winning series in 2016.
As copywriter, wrote for print, web, event signage, product labels, and long-form content from blog posts to magazine interviews.
I started at Clearvoice as an outreach specialist but moved into a writing role when content marketing took off as a trend in SEO. During that time, I wrote hundreds of blog posts and social media content for various clients.
A friend shared this article (NSFW-ish) on our Discord about writing websites with plain HTML and it inspired me to step away from React and all the frameworks and get back to basics. This site uses:
No frameworks, no libraries, no bundlers or imports... just a static deployment to GitHub Pages.