Introductions... Me and My Blog

Hi. My name is Riley Rangel, and I am a software engineer based in beautiful Southern California.

Learning in public

As you are arriving on this page from one place or another on the internet, one of your first thoughts might be, "What is this blog all about?". Well, let me tell you a little about that.

Being a software engineer, one of my primary responsibilities is to continue to learn new things, so that I can solve new problems for myself of my teammates. As a friend, mentor and and co-worker, Duncan Leung, has told me time and again: "Learning in public is one of the best ways you can internalize a new concept". Therefore, in the spirit of "learning in public", I have created this blog to write out any thoughts or learnings that I may come across in my day-to-day and put them up for peer-review.

Here goes nothing...

About me

Now that we know why I am writing this blog... what makes me qualified to write about these topics? So, here's a little bit about me:

I was born and raised in sunny Orange County, and went to several local schools before moving into the workforce. Initially, having been brought up in a family of accountants, and not knowing what I would like to pursue in life, I started a career in accounting at a large retail company in early 2014.

After several years of learning the inner workings of a business and how all of it comes together to provide a service to their customers, I decided to try something different. I had always been interested in computers, websites, and applications, so I decided to get into programming. But, like many people, I was stumped on where to begin. Fortunately, I found Orange County Code School.

Going to a coding bootcamp is a daunting experience, especially when you have no idea what you are actually going to do. However, in mid-2017, I attended OCCS for a 12-week immersive program aimed at giving me the skills to jump-start a career in web development. Without going too in-depth, I learned the basics in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and used those to build simple, single-page applications and REST APIs to power them. It was a real blur. Upon completion, I began working as a web developer and the rest, as they say, is history...

I have been fortunate enough to work at several companies in the Orange County area. Each team has provided opportunities to push my skills further. Most recently, I worked on several sites for AutoGravity, based in Irvine, including: turncar.com and autogravity.com.