About Me
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
My Story
When I was ten years old I was lucky enough to get a Sinclair ZX81, and that is when my love affair with the computer and programming began.
I put this blog together for many reasons, to write notes on my learnings, a place to have a good moan and a place for me to put some tutorials on for students that I mentor at Code Institute.
In my career I worked for myself, small companies, big multinationals like PwC and governments. The one thing that has stayed strong throughout my career, which on occasion has brought me many challenges, is my love for coding solutions.
The software I have worked with over the years include:
- Python (Django, Flask, FastAPI, Django REST Framework))
- Javascript (React, Vue, Express, Node, Stencil)
- Other Front End (HTML, CSS, SASS, SCSS)
- Clouds (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Databases (Postgres, MySQL, MS SQL, Mongo)
When I started my career agile wasn't a thing so I've worked in teams using waterfall and now work within a SCRUM methodology with all the usual Agile ceremonies.
Whilst at PwC I was a senior manager looking after four teams, a total of about forty people; I have learnt many soft skills and dealt with pressure though really at heart I'm a coder and despite being able to manage I'd prefer not to.
Hobby wise I'm into cars, travelling, chess, music, films and cooking - there's just not enough hours in the day... Have a look around and if you like drop me a message, it'll be great to hear from you!
Code Mentoring
I have been mentoring at the Code Institute since 2019 and thoroughly enjoy it. I help students through their course in full stack software dev. The technologies we cover are HTML, CSS, Javascript, React, Python, Flask with Mongo and Django with Postgres (quite often a eCommerce site using Strip payments)
Why do I blog?
Mostly for selfish reasons. I wanted a way to keep track of my software development over time – whatever I am thinking about or working on. I research and dabble with things I find interesting, then my plan is to document this with a post, which I can easily find and refer to later.
Where am I located?
I live in Northern Ireland, where they filmed some of the Game of Thrones, near the Giant Causeway.
© 2023, All Rights Reserved.
Quick Links
Legal Stuff