Notes From Your Engineer Friend: Dispatch #1
- Allison Higgins
- Nov 11
- 4 min read
At midnight, November 1, 2025, millions of people lost their access to SNAP benefits due to the ongoing government shutdown. These are our friends, neighbors, family, and children among them. We have the ability to ensure that as many as possible don’t go hungry until this situation is resolved. In an effort to do my part, I have created an open source live web application listing food resources by county and zip code for Atlanta’s families. While optimization of this app is an ongoing process, I felt that the getting it published and accessible to those who need it most was more imperative. This React, Vite, SCSS app is an open source project, and actively seeking contributors. In the GitHub, you will find more technical information, and a roadmap for future enhancements. I will also continue to work on this project. Our communities need us 🫵🏾. Let’s start answering the call 💜💪🏾 💻🥦🥖
Monday - Student Life
Topic: Java Reflection
Explanation:
Java Reflection is a feature that allows for an executing program to examine or introspect on itself and manipulate the internal properties of the program. Aside from Java, no other programming languages have this feature. JavaBeans, software components that can be manipulated with builder tools if they are labeled as dynamic, are an example of Java Reflection in use. In this course, I intend to use Java reflection to instantiate newly loaded characters at runtime to demonstrate that not all character feature's are hardcoded.
Tuesday - Community Service + Mentorship
Where: Spelman College, Atlanta, GA
Why it Matters:
I volunteered with the Black Girls Code Atlanta Chapter to chaperone a tour of Spelman College for program participants, girls ages 11-18. I think that now more than ever, we have to show the next generation the dual powers of persistence and community. In spite of the ongoing jobs crisis facing hundreds of thousands of Black women right now, I and other volunteers showed up for these girls to give them sneak peek of what the future can hold. This is not a moment in which to lose hope. Instead, we must redirect, and show the next generation resilience in the process. On a lighter note, the best joke award went to one of my students who kind of correctly identified “Rudy Huxtable” as a character from “A Different World” but was too young to remember the name of the original show.
Wednesday - Prompt to Product Workshop hosted by Tyrannosaurus Tech
Where: Atlanta Tech Village
Why it Matters:
I am deeply grateful to the people at Tyrannosaurus Tech for both hosting this workshop and allowing me to have a special ticket. After reaching out to the company to explain why I would like to attend, and what I expected to learn (details here), I was overwhelmed with gratitude at the response. What made this workshop even more of a must attend was the opportunity to learn from fellow techie and Yellow Jacket, Andrew Schillinger. For the morning session, we mostly focused on viewpoint of a product manager, deeply understanding user requirements and the central goals behind a product before beginning the process of building it. In the afternoon, Andrew, walked us through entering our refined requirements into Claude to build an app. While my app had a few compilation issues, the idea behind it has inspired me to continue to tinker and solve problems for the city I love and call home.
Thursday - Atlanta Food Finder 2025 Hack Session with Jay M. & Aisha J.
Where: HQ
Why it Matters:
I had a call with two awesome, all-star ⭐️ contributing software engineers to strategize about next steps for the Atlanta Food Finder 2025 application. We decided that we will begin to build a robust backend, using Postgres as a central feature. Additionally, plans were made towards the goal of making the app fully open source and usable across different locales. Also discussed were intentions for expansion into other areas in Georgia and creating an official issues template to track bugs, features, and improvements.
Friday - Intentionally Good Summit
Where: Atlanta, Georgia
Why it Matters:
Tucked behind Ponce City Market, is a stylish and motivating office park with a deep love for the Purple One, and supporting Atlanta’s Black entrepreneurs. I along with other Black founders, innovators, and more gathered here Friday for the inaugural Intentionally Good Summit hosted by Joey Womack and Goodie Nation. Over coffee and pupusas, we made plans for expanding and better supporting the Black start up community in Atlanta, shared ideas with real community impact, and exchanged meeting links to organize our next big moves. I had some deeply inspiring conversations and I look forward to what collaborations will come from this gathering. Having known Joey, and the Goodie Nation family since my undergraduate days (photo on my website for proof), this is exactly what I expected and what we needed as founders. I am definitely excited to be a part of the Goodie Nation community and can’t say enough good things about them 💜
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