My name is Addy López. I am a full-stack developer from Las Vegas, Nevada, and currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In my projects, I'm interested in exploring the creative potential of coding. To me, coding is not only an essential tool for rendering professional services but also an expressive medium for the exchange of ideas, the transmission of knowledge, and the diffusion of culture. In designing this personal website, for example, I drew inspiration from the ancient material culture of the Southwest. My family has deep roots here, and as I built this website, I began reflecting on my own role as a 21st-century participant in a millenium of design in these lands. The background images are geometric motifs that I extracted from Ancestral Puebloan pottery, available digitally to the public domain care of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access Policy. These images are subtle metaphors. A website is a bottomless vessel--not for storing water or grain, but for storing our ideas, what we value, and who we are. If you would like to read more about my ideas, what I value, and who I am, please scroll down. For technical specs and links to my work, head on over to the Projects page. To get in touch, feel free to write me an email!
GET TO KNOW ADDY
What inspired you to learn coding? How did your background lead you to this new field of study?
The determination to pursue this line of work arose in me after the turning point in my life, when I let go of self-limiting attitudes and opened decisively toward transformative change--toward cultivating in myself the very qualities that I wanted most deeply to see in the world around me. As a deep personal expression of that commitment to my values, I became a full-time caretaker of my 101-year-old grandmother to ease the burden on my mother, who was also juggling a full-time job and needed more support. In the midst of the pandemic, as I looked into opportunities to further my education through remote learning, I discovered SheCodes, and a door opened for me. SheCodes “teaches coding skills to busy women” and is dedicated to diversifying the male-dominated tech industry. With its sensitivity to the various circumstances that impede women's professional advancement, SheCodes offered me the affordability and flexible schedule I needed as a caretaker to work towards a viable career without abandoning my family responsibilities. Although I identify as nonbinary (pronouns: they/them), as a queer feminist, I see myself in deep political and human solidarity with all women. And, since a guarded public face contributes minimally at best to making the tech industry or the wider world more inclusive, please know that I am proud to be a gender-nonconforming lesbian of mixed European and detribalized Indigenous ancestry ("Hispanic") entering the tech field. I hope that in saying so I was able to open the door for another, in turn, and help make it easier for you to be free and who you are, too!
Do you enjoy learning languages, and has that helped you learn programming?
I love studying languages! Actually, before I moved to Albuquerque, I spent a year teaching in the bilingual program (English/Spanish) of a high school in Torrelavega in northern Spain. I also taught an adult class and freelanced as a private language instructor in Santander when I wasn't skateboarding badly along the coast to the beach. My students really inspired me to think creatively and tap into my own passion for learning in order to empathize with their experience and design memorable, interactive lessons for them. So when I returned to the United States, I felt a strong desire to be a student again. I definitely believe that a strong grasp of linguistic concepts and grammatical categories has helped me quickly learn to identify how different patterns of code function. But learning a programming language is not nearly as challenging as learning a spoken language--and making a mistake is far less mortifying!
As a student of the humanities, do you feel at a disadvantage in the tech industry without a degree in computer science?
Not whatsoever. Even more helpful to entering this field than my experience in studying languages was my undergraduate training in critical thinking. I completed my Bachelor of Arts in comparative arts with a minor in art history and archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. My interdisciplinary major was nested in the comparative literature department and involved the joint study of literature, languages, the visual arts, history, critical theory, and music. I learned how to parse and analyze the relations between structure and content across various media/texts and to develop arguments for the interpretation of their meaning. Front-end development has strong textual and visual components that I feel at home with, given this background. It requires a lot of attention to structural details, the recognition of semantic patterns, and flexibility in approaching unforseen problems. The "information architecture" of a web page is much less mystifying if you can compare it to a well-structured research paper and recognize that many principles of clear writing carry over to coding good HTML. Moreover, in dealing with the presentation of images, other media, and text, I find it extremely useful to be able to put them in cultural context and move beyond “That's cool!” or “That's interesting!” to “That's significant, and here's why.”
What about coding is most challenging or fun?
I heard in an interview with a software engineer at Codecademy, one of the learning platforms I use, that being a software engineer means being a professional learner. The current of technological change is so swift that you can easily feel swept up in the undertow, overwhelmed by the sheer number of skills you have to acquire and the pressure to keep pace with the industry. It's almost inevitable that much of what we developers spend so much time learning will become obsolete, so this profession isn't for resting on your laurels! It requires a steadfast commitment to your own growth and renewal. Patience and persistence in equal measure are key. I strive to bring forth those qualities in all that I do. And while the prospect of a lifelong learning sentence might feel daunting to others, to me, that's precisely the appeal. The opportunity to learn each day is one of the reasons I get out of bed in the morning. When I am learning and also solving problems, I feel like I am tapping into what I do best and channeling my passion for life. Strangely enough, "challenging" and "fun" are often synonymous to me, and the way toward understanding brings me great peace and fulfillment. (You might see these dimensions of my character reflected in my very first coding project.) I am tremendously grateful that this profession gives me the opportunity to make meaningful use of my talents.
What do you intend to do in the future with your new coding skills?
With respect to employment in the near future, I will probably work remotely at first, perhaps freelancing. But I also want experience working on a highly competent team at a values-aligned company or organization. Not only will that help me use my skills to collaborate with a broader professional community of amazing people I have yet to meet, but, over time, it will give me an opportunity to gain valuable insight into how applications and platforms that are complex beyond what a single coder can maintain actually get built and how they are run. I think it would be a fascinating base of knowledge for eventually learning System Design. To me, the more perplexing the problem, the more gratifying the solution! I can see myself owning my own business or helping others improve theirs. For now, though, I am working toward becoming a full-stack engineer, and I'm focused on learning the specific skills that are empowering me to carve my own path.
How do you spend your time when you're not coding?
DRUMMING! Yes, I forgot to mention... I am pursuing two careers in parallel but along separate timelines--and both in male-dominated industries. I have a dedicated somatic art practice and spend time each day on the slow crawl towards becoming a fully realized professional musician, a lifelong dream of mine. To tell the truth, coding appeared to me in a flash of insight as the perfect solution for me to leverage my unique talents to lead a creative life, support myself, and live well without having to starve for my art. I believe that the technical skills I'm learning will help me protect my artistic independence and creative autonomy as digital culture evolves and that sooner or later these two life pursuits will become mutually supporting. Along the way, I found out that I actually love coding! I've also discovered that there are a lot of appealing similarities between the drumming and coding worlds: a professional community of resourceful life-long learners, use of an abstract and logical notational system, rich creative possibilities, and no end to the skills to master.... Ask me about the rest if we ever sit down together to chat! My mom affectionately calls them my two "black-hole careers," which makes me laugh. The question should have been, “How do you spend your time when you're not drumming or coding?” That's simple! Listening to music, reading, FaceTiming my twin sister, or taking my fierce and adorable bow-wow, Hiroshi, for a walk in the Bosque!