About Me —Nevin Katz
Tags: webdev, javascript, programming
Published: 2021-08-07 14:28:09

<img src="https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*TZ3x1CRyjNzGPN7B_4QNhQ.jpeg" /><figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@intricateexplorer?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText" class="eg ip" rel="noopener nofollow">Intricate Explorer</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/windy-road?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText" class="eg ip" rel="noopener nofollow">Unsplash</a></figcaption>

Hi there, and thanks for dropping by. I am a web and app developer and private tutor living in the Boston area. While I grew up in Virginia, I have now spent more of my life in Massachusetts. Outside of work I enjoy illustration, running, writing about technology, and losing to my son at chess.

My history as a developer is a fairly roundabout journey. I started programming in BASIC on my Commodore 128 during the age of floppy disks, following tutorials from _3–2–1 Contact_ magazines and building pint-sized games. After middle school, my interests veered towards track, cross country, the sciences, playing in a college band, teaching, and illustration—and I ended up taking a long break from programming. I then came back to it as an adult when my interests in education, visual media, and technology started to converge.

### Education, Media, and Tech

In earlier days, I majored in Biology at Swarthmore College and graduated with an interest in pursuing a career with a focus on education and an emphasis on science and technology. I earned an Ed. M. in Teaching and Curriculum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I then went on to teach science at the middle school and high school levels in Cambridge and Western Mass. While teaching, I wrote and illustrated [Dr. Birdley Teaches Science](http://www.birdleymedia.com), a nationally-published series of nine comics-based science resource books for grades 5 through 12.

<div style="text-align:center;"><img src="https://miro.medium.com/max/349/1*Tyzt4q23DoWcND6tjGcPbg.jpeg"/><figcaption>Dr. Birdley, the title character in the book series.</figcaption></div>


After teaching for eight years and writing the _Birdley_ series, I gravitated towards writing a science curriculum and developed a renewed interest in web development. I remember reading Lynda Weinman’s book on _Designing Web Graphics (5th Edition)_ and realizing how the advent of the web was giving programming a new visual realm that captured my interest. I started learning programming again on my own, learning ActionScript and building an early version of the Birdley site as an initial portfolio piece.

While I was initially looking for freelance tech and design work, I was asked to come onboard as a full-time online learning specialist at [Education Development Center (EDC)](http://www.edc.org). It was 2008, so Flash was still a thing, blogs and wikis were proliferating, and online learning was still thought of as the “wave of the future.” In addition to facilitating and writing online courses, I consulted on developing a Physics CD for government schools in India and developed graphics for our online courses and conferences. I also created Flash multimedia and coded up course pages using HTML, CSS, and occasionally jQuery. (Back then, building a jQuery show-hide felt like a big deal.) Around that time, I started to become interested in mobile development and felt I was hitting my ceiling as far as my coding skills. I did not feel developed enough to build what I wanted to build.

Around this time, I started working with students and adults as a private tutor, homework coach, and test prep coach. I found that the opportunity to work directly with students and impact their growth helped to balance out my work in web development, and I have always enjoyed seeing my students grow and succeed.

### Coursework and Coding Coherence

While at EDC, a supervisor of mine noticed my inclination towards programming and encouraged me to seek out formal coursework. In the Spring of 2012, I enrolled at the Harvard Extension School and started out with a web development fundamentals course. It was there that I noticed that my coding journey felt more coherent with an organized learning path. My next course, CS50, was where I really became entranced by programming, and I went on to earn a Software Engineering Certificate by 2016.

#### Projects

Among the highlights of the certificate program were the projects. Along the way, I returned to my interest in game development, building a small dungeon crawler for the iPhone, a cross-platform marble labyrinth game, and a Battleship Game in Objective-C and Java. And as an homage to a Commodore game I built, I remember staying up until 3am finishing a multiplayer white water rafting iOS game with three other guys over Skype. I also took a brief foray into bioinformatics, developing a gene sequence alignment tool in Ocaml using the Needleman-Wunsch Algorithm.

#### Exams

Most of my coursework involved taking CS exams alongside undergraduates, which were quite challenging. Preparing for them helped me to sharpen my CS knowledge and taking them gave me a renewed appreciation for the challenging tests my students go through. In fact, some of the test-taking strategies I recommend to my students come from my experience with what worked when preparing for and taking my CS exams, which had strict time limits and stressed higher-level thinking.

#### Recent interests

Since completing my certificate, I have focused on learning vanilla JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Drupal, and Android app development with Cordova. While I handle back-end work when I need to, I still gravitate towards front-end web development. I am currently learning Vue and React and enjoy exploring the HTML5 Canvas API and SVG animation. Since I also tutor AP Computer Science, I also try to stay up on my Java skills.

### My role at EDC

Over time, my role at EDC has morphed into a tech lead for a group of websites in our U.S. Division and an app developer for our International Division. As a tech lead, I manage the development of Drupal sites, which entails a mix of custom web development, project management, and collaboration with other web developers. I also have had the opportunity to mentor junior developers and other staff with webmaster responsibilities.

#### Stepping Stone

As an app developer, I am building an internal app authoring system known as Stepping Stone, which consists of two components: an authoring site where staff can build app content in a no-code environment, and a suite of apps that can run that content offline. As part of the project, I built an API that allows the apps to either download directly or import a content package from a flash drive. Stepping Stone apps serve a range of purposes, including reading literacy evaluation, teacher training, early grades phonics and reading, and mental health provider workshops. The apps have been used in a number of EDC projects in a range of areas, including Mali, Zambia, and the Philippines.

Aside from my work with Stepping Stone, I also consult on how best to integrate eLearning solutions, such as Articulate Rise, Twine, and H5P into our eLearning products.

### Tech Writing

As a relatively new writer on Medium, I enjoy writing tutorials and articles about technology, web development, and science. While [All Things Science](https://medium.com/all-things-science) publication is the home for my science articles, I have also written coding tutorials and tech articles for [Geek Culture](https://medium.com/geekculture), [JavaScript in Plain English](https://javascript.plainenglish.io/), [Better Programming](https://betterprogramming.pub), [Bootcamp](https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/), [The First Time](https://medium.com/the-first-time), [About Me Stories](https://medium.com/the-first-time), and [CodeX](https://medium.com/codex).

### How to Reach Out

Subscribe to my [email list](https://buttondown.email/nevkatz).

Check out my tech blog at [nevkatz.github.io](http://nevkatz.github.io).

Find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/nevkatz), [Medium](https://nevkatz.medium.com), [Codebase.so](https://codebase.so/user/nevkatz), [Polywork](https://polywork.com/nevkatz), or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nevin-katz-7744244/).

Take a look at my side projects on [Github](https://github.com/nevkatz).

Wander through my front-end experiments on [CodePen](https://codepen.io/nevkatz).

Reach out through [Nevin Katz Tutoring](https://nevinkatztutoring.com).

And feel free to shoot me an email at [nevkatz@gmail.com](mailto:nevkatz@gmail.com).