Palm Beach Code School Graduate Starts His Career

As part of his final project in Palm Beach Code School’s Web Developer program, Rubens Jean-Paul created a speck website for Newburgh Banana, a small wholesale fruit company in Newburgh, NJ. When the owner of Newburgh Banana saw Ruben’s site, he decided to purchase it and became Ruben’s first client.  Ruben is now a busy website developer with two other sites in the works for other local businesses. We sat down with Rubens to talk about how Palm Beach Code School helped him start his new career.

Tell me about the website that you chose to create for your final project.   I created the website for a small wholesale fruit company in Newburgh, NJ called Newburgh Banana. The reason was because the owner is a friend of the family and I couldn’t allow him to have such a dated site.

What types of changes did you make from the old design of the website to the new design you created? Why did you feel these changes were necessary?   I formatted the text, images and videos to make it more clear and easy to read. Also, I gave the site a modern facelift that would attract the readers to key benefits and products offered by the company. Another crucial change was making the site responsive so it could be viewed on different platforms.

Congratulations on securing Newburgh Banana as your first client! Tell me about the process you used in showing the client your new site and how you made the sale.    I always start my pitch by showing the client how the site will benefit their customers. When the client saw that the same message could be conveyed on both his desktop and his mobile device he was thrilled.

I heard you have two other clients that also want you to build sites for them. Who are these clients and how did you find them?   I am currently working with a small online men’s clothier called Barry’s Menswear and a church called Olive Tree located in West Palm Beach. Friends and family referred me when they saw my skillset growth from classes at Palm Beach Code School.

What is next? What are your goals moving forward as a programmer?    This Fall I will be attending the University of Central Florida. I would love to learn more about coding from top to bottom in effort to become a full-stack developer or a software engineer. I would love to learn Ruby-on-Rails and get more in depth with the backend/server-side coding as well.

What was the most valuable thing that you took away from the course at Palm Beach Code School that has helped you in your new ventures?    The most valuable thing that I learned from PBCS was that to make it in this industry you have to always be learning and bettering yourself. That means in your spare time you should be working on projects that will strengthen your skills.