In fact, he went to college to study psychology. He said he hoped one day to be a sports psychologist working with professional golfers.
But on Monday, Van Ruler spoke to a class of coding students at the Monroe County Public Library about his career in front-end web development for IU and how he had stumbled upon an interest in coding when he wanted to design his own blog in 2006.
“I watched a lot of videos on Lynda — I watched all I could,” Van Ruler said. “Eventually I got an interview and got a job in it.”
Van Ruler had been invited to the class by Brandon Pfeiffer, who teaches JavaScript and jQuery coding.
“For the remainder of the semester we’re going to have someone come in from the tech community,” Pfeiffer said. “The goal is kind of for you to see from other people’s perspectives what the path to learning code looks like, but also to connect you to mentors outside the code school program.”
AJ O’Reilly teaches web design. He said he’s been with the program since it started in June 2014.
“Someone reached out to me when the program began, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” O’Reilly said.
The classes are free, designed to foster a more technically-savvy workforce in Monroe County, according to the course’s website. The courses available include Java Script and jQuery courses, web design, PHP coding and front-end web development — one of the processes by which a user interacts with a website.
