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15 Amazing Web Apps Built by Diverse Engineers

Hackbright’s 12-week Full-Time Software Engineering Program helps students learn the skills they need to become software engineers. During the program, students build web applications using the skills that they are learning through the course so that when they have completed the course they can show prospective employers what they are capable of. Today, we are celebrating eleven diverse graduates who have completed the full-time course. In this post, our recent grads will tell you what they created during the course and why.


Ada Cohort: December 2018


Alina Akram

Most recently she worked at her family business as the marketing director where her roles ranged from head of marketing to daily operations; designing, running a team and product development. While these diverse roles exercised various skills, she realized she preferred being in the technical and creative side of things.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Initiative;

The purpose of Initiative; was to give the user an easier avenue to look up mental-health professionals geographically. In this case; by simply entering a zipcode. Upon doing so, the application generates search results vg by providing a list of suitable options as well as their locations on a map via the Google Places API. Once search results are provided, the user is able to save their preferred therapists in the database for future reference. Which is useful for the next feature in this application, that will allow the user to set Google calendar appointments.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, CSS.

APIs Used:

Google Places and Geocoding API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

She previously worked for a tech company, Wish – Shopping Made Fun, on the content management team where she got to work closely with the engineering team. Her interest in coding developed a few months ago based on an educated decision which lead to her enrolling in Hackbright Prep and then the full-time program.


Angelisa Candler

Angelisa holds a degree in Film and Digital Media with an emphasis in Production from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her previous work as a Video Production Coordinator was centered on inspiring and invoking change through visual communication. By transitioning to Software Engineering, she hopes to directly impact way in which users digitally communicate on a day-to-day basis. She hopes to work with a company who shares that same vision in building products that solve user-focused problems.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Build a Crew

Build a Crew is a tool for Film Producers to add their projects, manage their crew and have a central location to keep track of their production process. The user dashboard utilizes Chart.js to visually represent completion measured by their project data. The Dark Sky API is used to give an up-to-date weather forecast, a very important factor when filming. Finally, production schedules and crew require quick and efficient updating, which is possible using AJAX requests and the Jquery UI’s draggable & sortable functionalities. Future goals for the app: Implement Google Maps API to map out shoot locations, generate PDF Callsheets for crew members, user-to-user interaction.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, HTML/CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, JQuery, JQuery UI Library, AJAX, Chart.js

APIs Used:

Dark Sky API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Hackbright Prep Course, Udacity Python course, Codeacademy: Python, HTML/CSS, JavaScript.


Celia Song

Celia graduated from Cornell University with a degree in mechanical engineering. Shortly after graduating she worked at an aerospace company, and then at a small engineering firm where she oversaw numerous projects from design to manufacture. She then took an opportunity to start a business with her friend where she taught herself HTML, CSS & Javascript to build the website for the business, which ignited her interest in software. As a former hardware engineer, she really appreciates the short feedback loop & fast pace that comes with creating software and is excited to build great products using her hardware background & business experience.

LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Hackbright Project: Yoga Warrior

Yoga Warrior will randomly create a yoga workout for you. Using Markov chains and a database of yoga poses, the app will generate a sequence of yoga poses that users can follow for your next workout. Users can adjust the difficulty level, choose a different emphasis, save their workouts, or choose from already created workouts. Users can also search and browse through the database of all yoga poses to find out more info about poses. With each saved workout, the app will improve its model to generate better workouts the next time.

Technology Stack:

Python (Flask, SQLAlchemy), PostgreSQL, Javascript

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Celia was first trained in Matlab as part of her engineering education. After college, she dabbled in some small software projects through an online Android course that required programming in Java. Her first big software project was teaching herself HTML, CSS, Javascript to create a fully functional web front-end from scratch for her business. Should you ever need it, she can also whip up 3-D models in CAD programs like Solidworks & Pro-E.


Christina Cuneo

Christina has a BA in Computer Science and minor in performance design from Colorado College. In the years since she has explored education in other fields of interest, particularly textile development at FIT. She’s excited about the future possibilities of electronic textiles and even took an electrical engineering course at Stanford to understand some of the basics of how those would work. She loves the puzzle-solving aspect of programming and the general satisfaction of manipulating/tweaking code to get it to finally do what she wants. She has an interest in accessible technology. She enjoys weaving in her spare time, appreciates the arts (tech-intersected or not), the outdoors, and her cat.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Glitche

Glitche takes inspiration from glitch art and Conway’s Game of Life. Users can select up to two images from a gallery (or upload some of their own) and run through one of three glitches (with more to come) which are implemented with Python Image Library and by editing binary files. Instead of just a static output, the glitched and the original are combined with a simulation of Game of Life, and then user can then step through the generations or let them run automatically. The results are visually interesting, fun images formed from an intersection of rules and randomness.

Technology Stack:

Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, Flask, Jinja2, Python Image Library,

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Christina received her BA in Computer Science from Colorado College where she was exposed to a range of programming and computer science concepts, including topics like Java, Python, computational theory, human-computer intelligence. She continued to audit CS classes post graduation to keep her skills sharp and to broaden them. One of these classes, at Pace University, involved being part of a scrum team that made an Android game using GameMaker Studio.


Cristina Estupiñán

Cristina graduated in 2017 with a BA in Computer Science from Boston University. She moved to San Francisco to work at Pinterest, leading a team in data collection and managing partner relationships. She loved working with engineers to learn and discuss problems and solutions in the product. Previously, during an internship at Pega, she led and shipped the redesign of a critical portion of their website using research-based design. She performed a majority of the usability research, sketch & design iterations, and prototyping. This combination of experiences has inspired her to get back into coding, and learn skills to become a software engineer after Hackbright.

LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Hackbright Project: GeoCrime

GeoCrime dynamically displays up-to-date police report data from the San Francisco Police Department using the Google Maps API. Reports included are “those for incidents that occurred starting January 1, 2018 onward and have been approved by a supervising officer”. Features include color coded incidents, tool tips displaying incident information, ability to clearly display multiple incidents at the same location, and dynamic filtering.

Technology Stack:

Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS

APIs Used:

Google Maps API, Overlapping Marker Spiderfier Library, DataSF, Bootstrap

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

BA in Computer Science from Boston University. Participated in AngelHack hackathon as a designer. Work experience at tech companies (Pinterest, Pega, Arc2Earth) with command line, HTML, CSS. User experience intern at Pega.


Emily Serota

Emily previously worked in the tech industry as a Senior Customer Success Manager. She was responsible for client relationships and complex project management for strategic accounts helping customers to implement software and platform. While she appreciated her role managing customers, she primarily enjoyed working on complex accounts that required technical problem solving. Her passion for looking deep within a project to fix technical issues drove her to study computer science and brought her to Hackbright. She is excited to learn the fundamentals of Full Stack that will make her a successful software engineer. When she is not studying Emily loves to travel and watch classic cinema.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: MYRecs

MYRecs is a user login based application that allows users to easily create, update, and search for recommendations when traveling to different cities around the world. MYRecs eliminates the time spent scanning travel sites, blog posts, and following up with friends for recommendations, as you can easily create or search for recommendations by username or city.

Technology Stack:

Flask, Python, Jinja2, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap

APIs Used:

Google Geocoding API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

• One year at Optimizely as a Senior Customer Success Manager
• Four years at Eventbrite as a Senior Account Operations Manager
• Hackbright prep course
• Coursera Introductory Python course


Judith A. Gray

Judith managed an independent bookstore before coming to Hackbright. She studied Medical Anthropology and did grant-funded original qualitative research at UC Berkeley. She co-lead the effort to establish an interdisciplinary path for undergraduates interested in the intersection of science, technology, and the social. Judith values doing work that is intellectually stimulating and socially useful, as part of a lively community. She is drawn to software engineering by her desire to create tangible solutions. Building things is deeply satisfying! Judith is seeking a full-stack software engineering role post-graduation where she can find patterns and build collaborative solutions, while always learning and teaching new things.

LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Hackbright Project: NextBook

NextBook finds readers something new to read based on books they’ve previously loved or hated. Users can also search through NextBook’s entire catalog, built using book metadata from Goodreads. Registered users of NextBook can modify past ratings and receive recommendations based on their entire rating history, while guest users can get recommendations based on as little as one rated book. NextBook’s custom algorithm, built in Python with the Surprise scikit, suggests five books the user may like. The app uses the Google Books API and the Open Library API to enhance the display of results. Users can also locate nearby libraries where recommended books are available using Library.Link.

Technology Stack:

Python, JavaScript, Flask, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, jQuery, Jinja2, Surprise (machine learning scikit), HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, AWS Lightsail, nginx

APIs Used:

Open Library API, Google Books API, Library.Link

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Before learning to code, Judith built her own desktop computers and enjoyed her introductory classes in statistics and logic. Her interest in programming was sparked by a Coursera programming fundamentals course and ignited by Hackbright’s Intro to Programming. There, she built an interactive game script to demonstrate the efficacy of the binary search algorithm. Most recently, outside of the Hackbright Software Engineering Program, she is working through the Algorithm Design Manual.


Kat Belle Hartling

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a BA in philosophy, Kat moved to NYC to become a Professor. She received her MA in Philosophy from the City Univ. of NY, and taught courses in logic, ethics, and eastern philosophy. While teaching, she also worked at the NY Foundling, where she increased graduation rates and college enrollment for youth in Foster Care. Kat’s time in academia made her passionate about social impact and helping those around her. She is excited to apply her analytical skills, background in logic, and passion for learning to her next career as a software engineering.

LinkedIn | Twitter | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Boba, The App

“Boba, The App” is a platform designed to help fans of boba (a tapioca tea drink originating from Taiwan) locate boba stores. They can use the geolocation feature to find boba stores near them, or they can manually input an address. Users can sign up for an account to receive promotions or to contribute ratings to the boba community.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, Jinja, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS/HTML,Bootstrap.

APIs Used:

Google Maps Javascript API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Prior to studying software engineering, Kat was a Professor at a design school in Manhattan. While there, she started to take courses in the computer graphics department. This introduced her to HTML/CSS, python programming, and user experience design. She decided to enroll in Hackbright’s prep course and for her final project wrote a program that determined which Philosopher you were based on answers to multiple choice questions.


Kritika Dusad

While Kritika was pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry at Cornell University, she realized she was not happy. She decided to leave with a Masters and find a more fulfilling career. In the process of trying different things, she became a product analyst at a software company. As part of her job, she interacted with engineers working on interesting problems. This led to an interest in software engineering. To further explore this career, Kritika took an online course-MIT OpenCourseWare’s Intro to Computer Science. This course bolstered her decision to attend Hackbright. Kritika continues to enjoy the constant learning and problem-solving aspect of programming. She wants to work on interesting problems that will have a high impact on the community.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: NewsFilter

NewsFilter is a web-application that provides a highly customizable news feed to the users. A user can customize news content and sources based on their preferences and triggers.
NewsFilter enables the user to filter out topics that they may find unpleasant. With a React-enabled user interface, news delivery is quick and seamless.

Technology Stack:

React, Flask, SQL, Python, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap

APIs Used:

Google News API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Kritika took a course called Python for scientists at graduate school at Cornell University. Before Hackbright, she also took an online course from MIT OpenCourseWare called Introduction to Computer Science. Kritika was a product analyst in a software company before she decided to become a software engineer.


Leslie Park

Leslie graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in economics, and worked as a consultant at an economic litigation firm prior to joining Hackbright. For over five years, her role required project management, industry research, data manipulation, and data analysis to support or disprove antitrust injury in class action lawsuits. During her time at the firm, Leslie was exposed to various data analysis and statistical software, where her interest in programming and data visualization began to develop. The love of learning about the ever-changing nature of programming and finding various solutions to a problem led her to pursue a career in software engineering.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: UniMuse

A web application that consolidates music services, such as Spotify, YouTube, and Mixcloud. Through UniMuse, users can create playlists, search for, and play songs from the various services using one, easy-to-use platform.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, Jinja, React.js, jQuery, Selenium, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, PostgreSQL

APIs Used:

Spotify API, YouTube Data API, Mixcloud API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Leslie has experience working with large data sets and data visualization using Stata, R, and writing reports using LaTeX. In her spare time, she completed self-study online courses Python and SQL through online platforms such as Udemy and DataQuest. Leslie also learned Python fundamentals through Al Sweigart’s Automated the Boring Stuff with Python, and Eric Matthes’ Python Crash Course.


Liz Garrity

Liz has worn many hats throughout her career, propelled by a drive to experience the unfamiliar, to learn and lead in new, interesting contexts, and to productively contribute toward movements for social change. With degrees in finance and accounting from Tulane University, her formal background is quantitative but she has also contributed toward many cause-driven endeavors. Most recently she spent a year piloting a project in Portland, Oregon working to support and strengthen families living in shelter through trauma-informed recreational programming. A common thread throughout Liz’s career has been a passion for learning about herself and the world around her and Liz relentlessly seeks new ways to expand her personal growth and learning.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: At Home in Oregon

At Home In Oregon is a data visualization tool designed to help social services and education professionals in the state of Oregon gain insight into trends in student and family homelessness. This web application enables users to interactively view and compare K-12 student homelessness statistics at the state and county levels using data provided by the Oregon Department of Education, offering an array of visualizations for each county that highlights local trends in the data. This focus on statistics at the local level provides users with valuable insight around an affordable housing crisis with often hyper-local nuances. Visualizations are displayed through an interactive map of the state of Oregon using the Google Maps API.

Technology Stack:

Python, JavaScript, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, Jinja, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Vega, Observable

APIs Used:

Google Maps API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Liz first encountered computer programming in her undergraduate information systems courses where she learned to write custom macros in Excel using VBA to perform specialized functions. She later used these skills as a finance manager for a tech startup while working alongside software engineers, developing macros that downloaded thousands of financial transactions and compiled data to record revenue . Liz also has experience with predictive modeling techniques and financial analysis tools.


Mahnoor Shafi

After working as a research assistant throughout college, Mahnoor graduated from UC Davis with a B.S in Biological Sciences. She started working as an ER scribe to gain more clinical experience in preparation for medical school but wanting something less repetitive, she began teaching herself how to code through various online resources and books. In doing so, she discovered the same passion for learning and problem- solving that led her to medicine and decided to pursue programming full-time. Looking forward, she is excited to combine her analytical background with her technical skills to tackle challenging problems and build creative solutions.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Moodify

Moodify is a web application that uses the Spotify API to generate mood-based playlists. Once authorized, Moodify gathers and stores a users listening history in a database along with information for three audio features: danceability, energy, and valence. In order to uniformly segment the data provided by Spotify, Moodify normalizes the audio feature data for each user and an algorithm is applied to the normalized values to create a playlist with tracks specific to the user and their current mood. Once the playlist is created, the users can then view and play their playlist through Spotify as well as Moodify itself.

Technology Stack:

Python, Javascript, React, Flask, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, jQuery, Jinja, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap

APIs Used:

Spotify

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

During college, Mahnoor learned and used RStudio to analyze population and physiological data sets. She began learning Python, HTML, and CSS on Codecademy and went on to take Fullstack Academy’s online course in Javascript as well as Hackbright’s Prep Course all through which reading Learn Python the Hard Way and Javascript and jQuery: Interactive Front-End Development to supplement her knowledge.


Mimosa Takagi

Mimosa’s career lies at the interface of sustainability and technological innovation. She studied chemistry because she loved the logic, problem solving, and creation of tangible solutions. She especially loved building computational programs to analyze data. She taught Green Chemistry at UC Berkeley Extension and earned a Fulbright grant to Sweden to research waste electronics policy. Most recently, she was phasing hazardous chemicals from Adidas’ footwear supply chain. While she loved this policy work, she missed digging into code and building tools. She moved back to the United States to attend Hackbright. She looks forward to building creative solutions for social and environmental challenges as a full-stack software engineer.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Oh Pear!

Oh Pear, an au pair work schedule validation app, creates a calendar in a user’s gCal account and validates scheduled work hours against US State Department rules for au pairs. The app allows users to create, edit and delete work hours.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, SQL, SQLAlchemy, Jinja, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap

APIs Used:

Google Calendar API

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

Mimosa took computational and computer science courses in MATLAB and Java. Her undergraduate and graduate studies in physical chemistry involved the use of various modeling and computational programs. She taught herself Python prior to attending Hackbright.


Shabnam Shomail

Shab is an energetic programmer with an environmental science background. In addition to attending Hackbright, she is a part-time environmental educator for young adults in the East Bay. In her previous role, she worked as an environmental consultant where she used intricate forestry knowledge alongside applications of GIS, google maps, and LIDAR data to inspect, identify, and evaluate vegetation related hazards along utility lines. As a GIS software user, she was interested in learning how to interact with the software more efficiently using coding. She would like to combine her passion for sustainability and education with her newfound programming skill set into a full stack software engineering position after Hackbright.

LinkedIn | GitHub | Website 

Hackbright Project: Finglish

Finglish is a learning language app that helps you learn new Farsi words using a flashcard system. Inspired by the lack of pronunciation features in google translate for Farsi, Finglish brings you pronunciation and translation of most common Farsi words. In addition to the word search functionality, users are provided with digital flashcards that aid in memorization, as well as quizzes to help validate the words users have learned.

Technology Stack:

Python, Flask, JavaScript (AJAX, JSON), HTML, CSS, SQL, jQuery, Bootstrap, Jinja, SQLAlchemy, PostgreSQL, AWS(lightsail)

APIs Used:

forvo.come, a publicly sources pronunciation dictionary that hosts more than 100 languages.

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

As an undergraduate student and a research assistant at the University of Florida School of Natural Resource Conservation, Shab learned to analyze and visualize forestry data using Excel and R. She developed an automated procedure, using R and ArcGIS, to map the locations and percentages of the top 5 invasive plant species spanning 200,000 acres in Tampa Bay, Florida. In preparation for Hackbright, she took the Hackbright Python Prep Course during which she built a multiplayer blackjack game.


Victoria Khramova

Recently, she started a software engineering program at Hackbright Academy, where she is learning full stack web development and computer science fundamentals in preparation for a career in software engineering. Before that, she worked as QA Engineer/PM at Machine Zone where she was responsible for End to End process of payables/creatives production/testing and managed multiple external development teams. Working closely with the developers, she found that she love the challenge of constantly problem solving and creating solutions that programming provides. She’d like to combine her previous experience and her programming skill set into a full stack software engineering position after Hackbright.

LinkedIn | GitHub

Hackbright Project: Frozen Tomatoes

Frozen Tomatoes is a website that give users ability to look up movies by name and see full description and additional details including ratings from other websites.
Users need to create an accounts in order to use the website.
Each user has their own movie list where they can add movies.
Users can leave comments and rate any movie they choose.

Technology Stack:

Flask, Python, Jinja, Bootstrap, jQuery, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy

APIs Used:

OMDB Api

C.S. or Related Experience Prior to Hackbright:

– Strong understanding of MRAID, VAST, VPAID, HTML5 tech
– 5 years of experience in testing: Mobile/Web/Native Apps, Relational Databases, RESTFul APIs
– Strong SQL skills and experience with MySQL/PostgreSQL
– Expertise in data modeling and normalization, database design and structure


Interested in hiring one of our recent grads? Contact our  Partnerships team to let us know about your current openings!

Want to learn to code? Check out our upcoming Prep Course and our immersive 12-week full-time or 24-week part-time Software Engineering Programs. 

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