Full Stack Software Developer

James B.

I'm a professional software developer with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science. I've been writing software professionally for a decade, and as a hobbyist since I was 12 years old. I've been working with Python specifically for more than 8 years, and JavaScript more than 10. I'm very passionate about teaching software development, and in particular Python due to its accessibility and power as a programming language.

I was a Computer Science tutor at university, where I helped students work through problems and understand assignments in our weekly intro to programming lab.

My approach to teaching is to analyze where a student is, figure out where they want to go (both on an academic and personal level), and individually tailor my approach to them. I generally start more hands-off and see how far the student goes with respect to self-direction, and jump in when I see them straying from the most productive path or encountering difficulties that are just slowing them down too much.

For some students, this will mean simply helping them through more complex problems, or even just introducing them to the resources necessary to improve themselves. For other students, this will mean systematically taking them through increasingly complex tutorials and assignments. Most will be somewhere in-between, where they might bring particularly problematic assignments to me and ask for help, direction, and explanation -- at which point I'll do some blend of helping them directly and giving them the resources to help themselves.