Working With Rails

Interests

I am a keyboard player and a keen writer/producer of electronic music. I also cycle, swim and play squash.

The code section of my blog shows the open source projects I work on. I’m also interested in learning more about Erlang and functional programing.

Skills

• Relatively recently: Ruby and Rails
• Expert in PHP 4 and 5; used since early 2004; written framework and libraries
• Expert in standards based XHTML and CSS 2.1 since early 2004
• Javascript: JQuery and pre-framework DOM scripting
• SQL (chiefly MySQL 4), XML, XSLT 1.0
• BASH: Shell scripting
• Confident test-infected developer: TDD including mock objects
• Strong grasp of all common web security principles and vulnerabilities
• Familiar with all major design patterns and refactors as well as core enterprise patterns
• Subversion and Bazaar version control
• Usability advocate
• WCAG 1.0: accessibility awareness
• Ubuntu Linux web server administration and setup skills
• Adobe Photoshop since 2002 and Illustrator since 2005

Profile

Since first being introduced to programming I have always been passionate about code. This led me to seek all the skills and knowledge necessary to write the most elegant code possible. I studied everything relating to the agile methodology: object-oriented programming, design patterns, refactoring and test-driven development. I have demonstrated these skills during the creation of my own PHP web framework.

Now familiar with all the traditional wisdom, I have spent the last year becoming a developer in the true sense; making judgement calls that lead to a better product and faster delivery in a sustainable way. I believe in convention over configuration, reducing feature sets to the core, early usability testing, iterative design, never compromising on code quality and release early, release often. These principles define my present thinking.

Looking forward I am interested in learning move about behaviour-driven development and some aspect-oriented programming techniques. I have a growing interest in the role domain specific languages and metaprogramming will play in the future of web development.