Justine Solano

developer | writer | gamer





















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about


Hello, my name is Justine! I am a junior full-stack developer & knowledge enthusiast 👩🏻‍💻 🧐. I am based in London and enjoy watching films, listening to music, and travelling.

I first got into coding in 2015 when I discovered an app called Episode which allows you to create a visual and interactive version of your story through a coding language called 'Donacode', developed specifically for the app. This allowed me to marry two of my favourite hobbies: writing and creating. As a multipotentialite who is, as Frederickson et al. described, someone that "when provided with appropriate environments, can select and develop a number of competencies to a high level", I truly feel that being a developer is one of these competencies.

I love learning and progressing in places that I am passionate about. After graduating university, coding was the only thing that excited me. Enrolling in the Software Engineering course at GA was where I truly felt that I could pursue this.

Outside of being a developer, I love writing and have been doing it since I was young. I have been working on a coming-of-age novel since 2016. I am currently writing/coding an original fantasy story with 12 published chapters and over 9000 reads. You can check it out here on your phone! I also make a lot of my own backgrounds and props for the story using Photoshop.

I also love playing video games. My favourite games to play are Overwatch, Valheim, Minecraft, and my all-time favourite RPGs are Skyrim and Witcher 3. I am also a master at Tetris 👾.

development

HTML

CSS

JavaScript

React

SASS

Bulma

Node.js

MongoDB

Python

Django

PostgreSQL

Yarn

npm

management & design

Git

GitHub

VSCode

CLI

Slack

Heroku

Netlify

Photoshop

Trello

currently learning

C++

currently building

React/MongoDB app - Coming soon!

React/Django app - Coming soon!










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experience & education

Software Engineering Immersive

London, UK | Feb 2021 - April 2021


12-week immersive course that helped progress my skills and knowledge of programming fundamentals. Focused on front end web development and also learnt backend programming using MongoDB, Express, Python & Django. Involved daily stand-ups, daily homework and feedback, workshops, independent, pair and group coding, hackathons.

Philosophy BA Hons

Liverpool, UK | 2017 - 2020


Modules covering topics such as ethics, politics, language, logic, conflict, video games, justice, existence, consciousness, religion, metaphysics etc. This degree helped build my problem-solving, analytical, communication and public-speaking skills. My favourite modules were Chinese & Indian Philosophy, and Philosophy of Play & the Virtual where I had a chance to make a short analytical video focused on the gamification and generation of empathy in the RPG Witcher 3. For my final year, I wrote a 10,000-word dissertation titled "Are religion and human rights compatible?"

Ward Hostess, part-time

London, UK | 2012 - 2016


As a high school student, I worked part-time at a private hospital in Cheam, London. I was in charge of catering for a specific ward and worked closely with chefs, nurses and doctors to serve food to and correctly regulate diets of hospital patients.








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projects

Project Four: GreenHouse


Solo project. Full-stack Django/React app using an API with CRUD functionality. Allows users to browse the database of houseplants for decor purposes. Also has a social-media function where users can post their own pictures of, like and comment on plants.

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Project Three: Jetflix


4-person project. Full-stack MongoDB/React app using an API with CRUD functionality. Netflix-inspired travel destination app. Allows users to browse for different travel destinations around the world & add them to 'My List' just like in Netflix. Also has an Instagram-inspired component where users have a profile page, can add pictures of their travels and like/comment on each other's posts. I focused on making the Navbar and Explore Page components.

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Project Two: LotR Quiz


2-person hackathon. Front-end React app using an external API. Users can play two 20-question LotR quizzes: "Guess who said this quote" & "Guess which movie this quote is from". Scores are tracked and players get a different reaction gif at the end depending on their score.

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Project One: Frodder


Solo project. Lord of the Rings-inspired Frogger game created using vanilla JavaScript. The player plays as Frodo who needs to get past rows of Nazgûl and catch the raft on the river to Bree where he needs to meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony Inn.