Melissa Holmes Sofware Developer

Hi, I’m Melissa!

I made my first website in high school - a simple art portfolio hosted on Geocites and coded in Notepad. I taught myself all of the HTML I needed, and though I didn’t need something very advanced at the time, I’ve always been interested in learning how to make more complex sites.

When I started college, I planned to major in Graphic Communications, but I quickly changed my mind and started taking computer science classes. I was interested in many other topics as well, so I graduated from Clemson University with a major in Computer Science and a minor in fine arts.

After graduating, I got a job at Drake Software working on file conversion applications in C++. This was interesting and very challenging for a while, and I was able to learn more about C++ and large data files, but after several years, I really wanted start building new apps instead of maintaining ones that other people wrote. I had just started dabbling in Ruby on Rails, when I heard there would be a Rails Girls workshop in Atlanta. I was accepted to participate, and at the workshop, I met many amazing and kind people involved in the Ruby on Rails community in Atlanta. I started learning Ruby more seriously after that, and in the summer of 2013, I left my job at Drake Software to becoming a Ruby on Rails intern at the Big Nerd Ranch. I found that consulting with so many brilliant developers was so much more interesting and and challenging than my previous job. I loved being able to be paid to learn once again. My internship ended in December of 2014, and now I’m working as a web developer at Rentpath, continuing to add to my personal apps, and leveling up my web development skills.

I also enjoy making and building things off the computer. I do quite a bit of knitting, and I love the process of knitting as much as the finished projects. I’m always up for learning a new technique or figuring out how to modify instructions to get what I want. I love nature and gardening. I have a small vegetable and herb garden at my apartment as well as a succulent collection. I also enjoy drawing, reading sci-fi and fantasy books, drinking coffee and tea, and petting cats - preferably as many of those as possible as the same time! I try to work some yoga into my day even though all of my other interests are a distraction.