Justin LeFurjah

I decided to give Treehouse a shot and I loved it. For me, being able to choose exactly what skills I wanted to work on and doing things at my own pace was key.

What first drew you to the web industry?

I've been pretty hooked on the internet since I got my first dial up connection in the 90s. I built a website with my favorite bands and movies as was common in those pre-Facebook days. So when my career as an English teacher peaked in Germany, the web industry was a natural place for me to think about beginning a second act.

What work were you doing when you first joined Treehouse & what

encouraged you to learn with us?

When I first joined Treehouse, I had just finished a semester of Computer Science at the University of Bergen in Norway. Originally, I thought about going down a more traditional learning path, but I found that I was doing more math than coding and I wanted to end up doing web stuff, which wasn't really part of the program anyway. So in the winter break I decided to give Treehouse a shot and I loved it. For me, being able to choose exactly what skills I wanted to work on and doing things at my own pace was key.

You recently landed an awesome new job working alongside Sass creator Hampton Catlin as part of the Wordset team. Tell us a little about how your career has evolved since learning with Treehouse and the work you're doing with Wordset now.

At Treehouse, I focused on Web Development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby). My job at Wordset is Community and Content Manager. As we are a small team, we all wear many hats. I do everything from writing blog posts to thinking of new features to reporting and fixing bugs. The skills I learned at Treehouse are essential to me being able to understand our code base and jump in there and make changes. If I hadn't learned about Rails and gained a proficiency in JavaScript, I would be totally lost because our site has an Ember front end and a Rails back end.

What has the value of a Treehouse education meant to you?

If it weren't for Treehouse, I would not be working at Wordset. I started following Hampton on Twitter because I thought he was a cool teacher and would probably tweet interesting stuff. He tweeted about Wordset and it sounded pretty awesome so I signed up, gave it a spin and fell in love. When they announced they were looking for their first employee, I jumped at the chance.

The Treehouse platform is a great value for the money. It provides the basic tools for success, but students have to put in the effort to learn to make the most of it.

What are your plans for the future and what’s up next on your learning path?

I plan on helping to grow Wordset into the most useful, most used dictionary on the internet. Wordset is a friendly, growing community of language lovers and I'd like nothing more than to see it become everyone's default dictionary choice. My next coding goal is to become a skilled writer of Ember tests.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with new students who are just

getting started?

Build your own projects. It doesn't matter what it is as long as you built it and you stand behind it. People love that. Also, don't be afraid to reach out. People in this field are pretty friendly in my experience.