Community is a fundamental part of AppLand. Our community members and contributors span the globe, and play a key role in helping us make life better for developers. This blog series profiles members of the growing AppLand community and shares how they use AppMap in their daily work. Enjoy getting to know everyone! For more information on the AppLand community or to join us, check out our community site.
Hillary Kiptoo
On Getting Into Software Development
I first encountered software development during my third year of university. I was studying political science but started teaching myself PHP (Facebook was really popular here then). After graduation, I joined a coding bootcamp called Microverse and started to focus on programming more seriously.
A fun fact about me: One summer during university, I went completely off-grid and worked as an onion farmer! I wasn’t great at it, but my failures in farming actually helped me realize that software development was where I wanted to focus my time.
Today, I’m a full-stack developer at Powwater. Our mission is to empower the world through sustainable drinking water.
On Personal Preferences
I primarily develop in JavaScript and Ruby.
Most of the time I prefer using spaces, but sometimes I’ll occasionally use tabs 🤫
I’m always trying to level up my skills as a developer. I work really hard to not let myself ever get too comfortable.
On Finding AppLand
I first came across AppLand when I was freelancing. I used AppMap to find the N+1 anti-pattern in a Ruby app that I was working on. For me, using AppMap to visualize large codebases and objectively see how my code is executing is really powerful.
If I’m not very familiar with a codebase, AppMap also helps me quickly understand what kind of tech stack I’m dealing with and how everything interacts with one another. For instance, the ability to see SQL and models in a hierarchical way really helps me understand the flow of code that I don’t know very well yet.
On Community + Contributing to AppLand
I really appreciate how supportive the AppLand community is. If I’m ever stuck, I pop into Slack and get answers straight from the team.
I’m SO excited for AppMap for JavaScript! The capabilities of AppMap for Ruby have really impressed me, so I’m eager to see AppMaps in JavaScript codebases soon. I’m looking forward to helping test the early build of AppMap for JavaScript and provide as much feedback as I can, particularly on how it can benefit teams of developers working together.
On Life Outside of Work
I love spending time in nature. I also enjoy traveling and I’m a big football fan (that’s soccer for the North Americans!) Go Chelsea go!
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