Matt Eland
Instructor at Tech Elevator
Founder of Side.dev
Summary
Matt Eland, an instructor at Tech Elevator, began Side.dev during the pandemic to help new developers track and share their side projects with the community. With Syncfusion’s Vue UI library, he was able to give Side.dev rich features and an impressive UI that was ready for his students by the end of their 14-week bootcamp.
Overview
Matt is an instructor at Tech Elevator where he helps students complete programming bootcamps. He created Side.dev as a supplementary outlet for students and a side project of his own. The platform is a lightweight tool for fledgling developers to keep up with projects and share knowledge about technologies and libraries they have succeeded with.
Challenge
Matt noticed that because of the pandemic, it was taking new programmers slightly longer to land their first developer positions. He started Side.dev to keep postgrads inspired and engaged in their programming journey. One of his goals with this project was to grant his students access to Side.dev before the end of their 14-week bootcamp. Introducing them to Side.dev during the bootcamp would open the door for them to organize their own projects, explore others’ projects, and expand their horizons.
Matt’s employer, Tech Elevator, fully supported him investing in the success of his students through Side.dev. But as an instructor, Matt was already dedicating many hours preparing for lectures every day, so his time was limited. He was only able to allocate a few nights per week or per month to this venture.
Solution
With Essential Studio for Vue, Matt was able to sidestep the process of building an interface from scratch. He said, “Syncfusion helped me focus my time on adding the key features I needed to deliver the largest benefits to the people I care about. On top of that, I could style the components the way I’d like.” The controls he used most heavily were drop-down lists, toast notifications, combo boxes, and rich text editors. So far, Matt has been able to help about 30 students share their side projects with his app. “I would not have been able to offer the feature set I wanted to offer in my time frame without Syncfusion’s support,” he said.
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