Featured Projects
Grumbl
Breakable Toy
Grumbl is a web app that aims to address times when people are meeting up to eat out, but can’t figure out where to go. It allows a user to create a room, and invite their friends to it. Users can chat in real time about where they would like to set as their meetup location. Once they agree , they can get Yelp suggestions based on that location and each user will be shown a 'dating app'-like UI, where they can independently decide whether they would like to eat at that restaurant. Once there is a match across all users in that room, they will all be alerted that they have agreed on a spot.
This is a situation that I would comfortably bet that every person has encountered in their life at least once. What's more is, when people encounter this situation, they are often hesitant to make suggestions to the person/group they are meeting up with, because they are not sure if their idea will be shot down. To get around this, Grumbl's vote system is built on anonymity. Nobody in the group knows what anyone else has said yes or no to; users are only notified when everyone has said yes to the same place. It's a simple, elegant solution to a common problem, and its UI is inspired by the proven success of dating apps.
JavaSipped
JavaSipped is a web app that allows users to review coffee shops based on what it’s like to work on code at that coffee shop. Users can immediately see all the places that have been reviewed, post new coffee shops for other users to review, and write reviews of their own.
When our team first met up to discuss this project, we found that we all like coffee and the experience of boutique coffee shops. We thought it would be fun to have that be the subject of our project, but with a unique spin that sort of playfully pokes fun at those who commute to coffee shops to do remote work.
About Tim Tonelli
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Technical Interests
Native/Hybrid Applications, Desktop Development, Mobile Development, React Native, Electron, TypeScript, Swift
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University/College Attended
Husson University
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Degree Received
BA of Science and Communication, with a focus in Audio Engineering
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Hobbies/Interests
Custom Mechanical Keyboards, Video Games, Photography, Building PC's
Get to know Tim Tonelli
What are you looking for in your next role?
The ideal position for me would be one where I am encouraged to learn, pushed to grow, and have access to some form of mentorship. I do have long term career interest in getting into native/hybrid app development, and it would be a significant bonus to work at a company who also has a team working on those types of projects, so there is the possibility of internal movement to that team.
Why did you decide to change career and/or educational paths? What was your prior path and how did you end up down that road initially?
I decided to change careers because my prior line of work didn't align with what I wanted to be doing. I love working on challenging tasks and coming up with creative solutions to them. I was also craving a career path that I was passionate about and that I could take pride in. I was previously working in Healthcare Recruitment and, ultimately, I just didn't care about what I was doing; it was just a means of making a living for me. I felt like I had very little purpose in life and finally decided that 'just making a living' wasn't enough for me. I want to be making cool stuff. I want to take pride in my work, and I want to make things that make people's lives better.
Where have you been involved in the tech community (events attended, volunteer activities, etc.)?
My journey into tech started with Launch Academy, so I haven't gotten involved yet, but I am really excited to look into some open source projects and find one I am really interested in contributing to. I also really want to start networking by getting involved with Meetups.
What has been the most fulfilling aspect of your journey towards becoming a web developer? What's been your biggest challenge and how have you overcome it?
The most fulfilling thing so far has been the realization that nothing is magic and all the tools we have work for a reason; and that reason is a learnable thing. The freedom of being in a field where I am really only limited by my curiosity has been such a breath of fresh air and has me really excited to grow in this space. The most challenging thing so far was certainly in the earlier stages of this experience when learning programming fundamentals, when it wasn't clear to me what I was doing, why it mattered, and how it eventually was going to be a building block that was essential. Something as simple as a basic forEach loop in JavaScript was tough for me to follow, because unlike something like a for loop where you spell out everything you want it to do, forEach kind of gives you a lot for free, which is great for readability, but as someone learning, I didn't like that I couldn't observe what was happening. The way I overcame that was getting very familiar with the use of debuggers and the "step over" and "step into" functionality of them, coupled with the "Scope" section of the Chrome console. Being able to watch step by step what my code was doing was foundational in my early development, as it allowed me to visually unpack what was happening instead of just taking the MDN documentation's word for it. I have no doubt that I am only where I am at now because I learned this skill early, and used it often.
If you had an unlimited budget and resources, what would you build?
I would build a suite of productivity apps that are developed with ADHD in mind to provide tools with as little friction as possible to help those with ADHD organize their lives easier. ADHD is a very under-diagnosed condition, and there are many out there that don't realize they are actually dealing with it. Many modern apps like to do lists, note apps, calendars, etc. are essential tools for people with ADHD to keep things in order, but so many of them have been subject to feature creep. Opening the apps and getting your thoughts down requires users to click a bunch of things, navigate a few menus, and by that time, they may have forgotten what they opened the app for in the first place (this happens to me all the time), or it becomes such a cumbersome task, that users simply stop using the app altogether (also happens to me all the time). I would want to put together a suite of apps that are really comprehensive, yet streamlined, have snappy UI's that appeal to users that are motivated by visual/audio/haptic feedback, and minimize friction to using the apps to ensure that they don't get in the way of themselves.