My Story

I have been developing solutions in code since 1997. I started coding professionally in Visual Basic 5 and dabbled in Delphi before discovering HTML. My boss gave me a stack of printed papers and said, "Make us a website." That stack of papers was the HTML 3.1 specification, and my first website was written using Notepad.

As I was quick to discover, the internet does not stay still for long. I soon moved from HTML to ASP (again, dabbling in PHP from time to time) and landed a job as a webmaster. I was fortunate enough to work alongside some great teammates and we presented our first working e-commerce concept to management in 1999. We were ahead of our time and management turned the project down.

The internet was moving ahead, and in 2002 I discovered Microsoft.Net. Again, I was privileged to work with a great team that recognised the potential for .Net and we put our efforts into implementing it as soon as humanly possible. I found that all most examples online were in C#, so I set about learning that to replace Visual Basic.Net. Two years on and another company - this time as a web developer. I continued developing in .Net, but as time went by I found myself using C# more and VB.Net less.

As is always the case, new technologies were coming out all the time, and I found myself experimenting and then using the latest and possibly greatest feature of web browsers of the day: AJAX. This enabled me to create even more performant web-based line-of-business (LOB) applications and once again we pushed the envelope.

Time goes on (as it tends to do), and I rather abruptly found myself as the head of a team. My passion remained (as it does to this day) in solving problems with code, but my domain of expertise had expanded to data analysis and financial systems - both of which I still use to this day. I was fortunate enough to work with several fantastic development teams, choosing to move into a senior development role since my first foray into leadership. I was able to use my analysis and cross-language skills to rewrite several VB6 applications in C#, reviving LOB applications that had reached end of life. (Fun, but ultimately boring)

The latter part of my career (2011 - 2021) has seen many great projects that I am unable to share here for reasons beyond my control (can anyone say NDA?). I have created LOB web applications for corporate use that I can be proud of, but you will in all likelihood never see them. I have been part of a team that has successfully rewritten an inherited code-base - and moved forward at a speed that the industry had never seen. I have been privilaged to lead a team, and be a product owner. Still my love for creating solutions remains.

All this drivel leads me to this point: I have been developing for 20+ years and have nothing to show for it.

I have been using free and open source software since my young days. The FOSS movement was critical to opening up code in such a way that we can now drill into the .Net source code, for example. I use open source libraries in my own solutions, yet I have not given back since my early days.

Until now.

What you see on this small portfolio is a smattering of contributions which I plan to grow over time. You can go to my GitHub repository directly (link in the footer), or you can browse the Contributions page for a quick view.

Thanks for popping by.