Project Showcase and History

Further information on Nolan Abbott

Tackling the IT field with a strong work ethic and out-of-the-box thinking, I began my path in Information Technologies by attending Northeast Community College , curious about what the field had to offer. Almost immediately, I took intense interest in the "Introduction to C#" coding class and found myself putting in extra work into all of the projects and classwork that our instructor threw our way. The most notable project that I had worked on at that time was a final project where I had created a pho-database project where I had used a CSV file. Despite my very limited knowledge at the time, I had taught myself how to create and use a very basic LINQ query that allowed the user to sort the information in the CSV file by one attribute (each item contained multiple attributes).

After that class, I took two classes called "Introduction to Java" and "Introduction to HTML, CSS and JavaScript". In my Java class, I got more use to working with creating console applications, and in my HTML class, I got to better understand how to create more graphically appealing projects. To further explain, outside of the final project in that class (which is the Weather API program), I also worked on several smaller applets to learn and showcase different functionalities of the Java programming language. This includes, but is not limited to:

• An interface example that uses conditional statements and randomizers to alter sentences describing a city.
• An applet that demonstrates recursion by converting an IPV4 address into binary code.
• Some code that showcases how heap sorting works.

In my next semester, I took the "Advanced C#" class, which is essentially learning about how to incorporate on-premises databases into a C# program. The most notable things we were taught in that class was how to hook up our C# programs to on-premise databases. This included learning how to do this with a few different database programs, like "SQL Server Manager", "Mircrosoft Access" and just regular "CSV Files". The most notable project I have from this class is the final project, in which I expanded upon the Java mid-term project talk about prior and made it into a more functonal program that functions as a more of a "playlist program" than a "music program".

In terms of my methodology when it comes to coding, I often like working on more of the technical aspects when it comes to this kind of stuff (Not what you see, but what you feel) which has in turn, caused my programs to have a much more "minimal" feel to them due to the lack of me working on making it look pretty. That being said, I have always found that the more interactability that I have given the project, the more people seem to enjoy working with it; a program that gives no meaningful response will lose its traction rather quickly. Additionally, while I do use Artificial Intelligence (i.e. ChatGPTand Microsoft Copilot), I try to treat it as more of a supplement to my IT skills than the solution to it, as I have found that it works best when I give it surface issues or when I am using additional research resources with it (i.e. Stack overflow and Microsoft Learn).