For my first portfolio project, I built a CLI that pulls movie data from a Lord of the Rings API. We had the option of simply scraping data from a traditional Web site, but I wanted the extra challenge. I had also never worked with API keys before. Learning how different APIs accept keys was how I spent the majority of my time on this project. It was stressful at times, but I learned a lot.
I have always been enamored with computers. Starting at a very young age from the old Mac and Windows 3.1 computers my dad would bring home from work, I was hooked. How did these things work? Sure, I loved playing games on these wonderful, mysterious toys, but that wasn’t enough; I wanted to make the games. Poring over technical books my family had about computers, I tried to immerse myself in “code” and programming concepts far too complex for a younger me to understand. Little progress was made, but the seed had been planted. I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved it. I wanted more.