Bio
A little about me. I had a pretty typical upbringing born and raised in the Washington DC suburbs. Growing up in the late 80s and 90s, I marveled at the advances in technology that occurred when I was a kid. I remember seeing things like the Sega Genesis and a 56.6kbps modem and thinking Wow, I can’t believe this is for real. To think of where we are now….
I was quite curious even from a young age and got into a lot of stuff. Computers fascinated me. So did MTV. While I programmed in C++ throughout high school, I was more into chemistry, as nerdy as that sounds and got into Northwestern University’s chemical engineering program.
While I wish I could say I was very studious in college, I spent most of my time noodling with my electric guitar and trying to land gigs with various bands that I formed. Still, I hit the books when I needed to and managed to graduate after 4 years.
I lived in Chicago an additional 4 years with most of my time and money going to concerts, music festivals, and simply enjoying youth in a big city with many friends from college in the area doing the same thing. However, people gradually started to move on with families and careers and I felt it was time to do the same.
I moved back to Maryland and got into tech because I find it interesting and have a natural aptitude towards it. I started doing a lot of database work, including running an ecommerce store through an ancient WordPress backend. I would change jobs and eventually get into programming with VBA and Windows Forms, working in an Agile environment from very early on.
I eventually got into Javascript and didn’t look back. It clicked with me a lot more than compiled languages and I started my full stack career shortly after. For whatever reason, I’m able to grasp concepts quickly and find good solutions to problems. I honestly think it’s a gift and I feel lucky to have it.
Today, I’m determined to be part of the move towards cloud computing and the evolution of the web. I love making single-page apps with ReactJS and using fast, single-threaded servers like NodeJS. Like when I grew up, I continue to want to be at the forefront of the changing landscape of technology.
Some things don’t change, though. I still spend much of my free time making music. Flora Fahna ( https://florafahna.com ) is my current musical project. I also have a lovely wife and kid who give me the emotional support I need on a daily basis.
Skills
I’ll just divide this up into what I know and how well I know it. I’ve tried most of the web things out there and I have my preferences, but at the end of the day I will program in whatever language or framework that is needed of me.
Stuff I know really well:
Frontend: HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, ReactJS, Bootstrap
Backend: PHP, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Python, Django, MySQL, REST APIs, Apache, Linux
Stuff I know pretty well but have only used on personal projects:
NodeJS, Redux, MongoDB, Express, Git, Ubuntu, nginx
Favorite 3rd party libraries / APIs:
Google Maps, Leaflet, D3, Materialize, Modernizr
Stuff I’ve only touched and want to learn more:
Unit Testing, Containerization (Docker / Kubernetes), AWS, ReactNative
Stuff I’ve never touched, but would be curious to try:
Java, Kotlin, Android Studio, XCode / ioS, Ruby on Rails
Stuff I’ve used in the past but don’t actively use now:
.NET (C#), Laravel, SASS / LESS, Angular