Frankie Kastenbaum may only be in her teens, but she already has plenty of accomplishments under her belt. Not only does she excel at school and custom design shoes in her free time, but she was one of the original Flatiron School Pre-College students to attend courses in the summer of 2014. This summer, Frankie came back to T.A. and introduce other students to the power of code.
What was the first course you took with Flatiron School like?
I took Intro to Software Engineering , and I hardly knew anything about coding — it was my first experience with it! Learning so much in such a short period of time, though, was amazing to me. At first I thought I was way in over my head, but I walked out being able to more a lot more than I had expected. I knew I could really do something with the amount of coding that I had learned.
Had you tried to learn any other programming languages before attending Flatiron School?
I took a class to learn Python. It was still coding, but it wasn’t the same language we used in Software Engineering. It was confusing at certain points, but in the end I found it super helpful to learn, and I felt it helped me when thinking about the ideas behind Ruby.
What is your favorite coding language to work with?
I prefer HTML and CSS — I love designing the way things look. Front-end development is also more fun because I feel like you see the results more instantly than you would with backend.
Would you have been working on programming if you hadn’t signed up with Flatiron School?
It’s possible, but I probably wouldn’t have been pushing myself as much. Flatiron School definitely jump started my interest in CS. If I hadn’t gone here, I probably wouldn’t have taken any CS courses at school because I didn’t know how interested I actually was.
“I wanted to expand my knowledge because now I'm thinking of becoming a Computer Science major — so the more I learn now, the better!” – Frankie
Why did you decide to come back as a TA?
I had a great experience last summer with Flatiron School, plus I wanted to learn more. I continued learning how to code throughout the year. I wanted to expand my knowledge because now I’m thinking of becoming a Computer Science (CS) major — so the more I learn now, the better!
What was it like being in the classroom a second time around, this time with the knowledge?
It was a jump for me to come back into it, but the first day was a lot of review from the previous class and I was able to put the pieces back together. I liked being able to watch these kids come from knowing literally nothing to coming to the end process and see how much they really learned.
