Welcome

My name is Tara Larsen

I believe in lifelong learning., people., kindness., collaboration., determination., the power of technology, education.

About Me

"Every activity worth doing has a learning curve." - Seth Godin

My Coding Journey

For most of my career, I taught STEM subjects to middle school students. My interest in software started when I was asked to teach an "Intro to Computers" course. From that point on, I became more interested in what was happening in tech than what was happening in teaching. I quit my teaching career to follow my passion for tech. I went back to school and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology. However, the degree did not teach me how to code. I tried to teach myself to code by watching online tutorials, but that strategy did not help me reach the level that I needed to be at to get a job.

I applied to the Techtonica coding program and was accepted. Techtonica leveled up my programming skills and taught me how to be a full-stack software engineer. The program also helped me build upon my existing soft skills. After graduating from Techtonica, I completed a six-month Software Developer internship at Indeed.com. At Indeed, I grew so many technical skills that ranged from navigating the command line with Git, CI/CD, automated testing and completing production-level tickets. I am very grateful for the opportunity at Techtonica and at Indeed.

Following my internship at Indeed, I was accepted into the Major League Hacking Site Reliability Engineering Fellowship program. The fellowship kicked off with a hackathon where I collaborated with another participant to build a full-stack portfolio template using Flask and Jinga. Our template won the hackathon! I then customized the portfolio template to be my own and deployed it using a Digital Ocean Virtual Private Server. Along the way, I became comfortable with Linux fundamentals, the command line, Git, and shell scripting. After I deployed the portfolio on the VPS, I automated the deployment, added a MySQL database, set up a systemd service, and wrote unit and integration tests for the application. Next, I set up two Docker containers and orchestrated them to separate their responsibilities. Most recently, I learned more about CI/CD and set up GitHub Actions to deploy the portfolio application. I have a few weeks left of the fellowship where I will learn about monitoring, networking, and troubleshooting. On the side, I am working towards the Amazon Web Services Solution Architect - Associate Certification.

Outside of work, I relax and rejuvenate by seeking adventure in the wilderness. I am also an active adult volunteer for the UC Cooperative Extension 4-H program. 4-H is a program where kids complete hands-on projects in the areas of agriculture, health, science, and civic engagement. I hold the 4-H program close to my heart because 4-H helped me discover my voice and develop leadership skills that I use every day. I can easily develop presentations and speak at public events because of my experiences in 4-H.

Design Portfolio

Projects

About:
An issue/bug tracker that helps visualize a team workflow with a main kanban board. Users are able to create teams, create and modify issues via a modal.

My Part:
I implemented the profile user flow, navigation bar, and choose a team drop down.

What I would change next time or add:

  1. The modal does not scroll to show the comments. The background needs to freeze so the modal can scroll.
  2. The avatar images on the profile pages do not render in a perfect circle. I need to reshape/resize the imported images to a square.
  3. Add form validation to the user registration page
  4. Add accessibilty-A11y.

What I learned:

  1. Managing a team repo on GitHub
  2. I enjoyed collaborating with my team on this project. It is important to proactively communicate your team and even more so while working remotely.
  3. I didn't know much about Java before starting the project, but now I understand the concept of DTO's(data transfer objects).
  4. Our team did initial planning of our app at a very high level in the beginning of the project. When we started to build, we used Figma to visual how the api calls would be made to the backend which proved to be useful to refer back to as needed.

About:
A dashboard that renders data from a particular wildfire, a topo map of the area(GoogleMaps API) and the current forecast for one fire at a time(OpenWeather API).

What I would change next time or add:

  1. Test driven development is powerful. I learned about TDD towards the end of the project and wish I had implemented it from the start.
  2. I would like to go back and add more styling to the navigation.
  3. Add a login page and authentication.

What I learned:

  1. Always be a little generous in estimating the time it will take to complete a project. I had six weeks to complete the MVP.
  2. When encountering a tricky part or a bug, set a timer for ~ 30 minutes. If I can't find the solution when the timer goes off, Then read the applicable documentation. If I still can't find the answer reach out to someone who may know the answer.

About:
A responsive reusable, scalable portfolio template.

My Part:
I implemented the hero, about me, and education sections on the landing page. I also implemented the Google Maps locations page.

What I would change next time or add:

  1. Build a blog page to add to the portfolio.
  2. Add more styling to the template and resize images.
  3. Add accessibilty-A11y.

What I learned:

  1. My team worked well while working remotely. We set up zoom meetings to touch base and resolve blockers.
  2. How to create and locally deploy a Flask app in Python
  3. Using Jinja to create dynamic content for websites and serving data from Python data structures
  4. Incorporating the Google Maps API into the profile page to customize markers for specific coordinates

Testimonials

Ms. Larsen is the consummate professional...She was immediately accepted by her peers due to her high level of professionalism, and willingness to always go the extra mile for both her students and her colleagues.
Tara is a true team player and always goes over and above the call of duty. Students, teachers and parents can always depend on her.



Contact Me

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

San Francisco Bay Area, CA

talarsen74@gmail.com