I am a driven, well-rounded developer with over 10 years of experience, currently specializing in Ruby. While I am proficient with many languages, I find Ruby to be excellent for rapidly creating solid, high-quality web applications.
I have led teams of developers to success in multiple projects. During those projects, I mentored my fellow programmers to a level of high proficiency, not only in the programming language we were using, but also in best development practices.
I love learning and enjoy sharing the knowledge I gain with others. In the last year, I learned Scala, a JVM-based language, and implemented a simple Scheme interpreter in Ruby to better understand programming language implementation. I am a frequent contributor to open-source projects and speaker at conferences.
Led Durham-based development team and worked as lead developer on many Ruby on Rails projects for established businesses and startup clients. Highlights include:
Developed a platform for designing and selling custom fabric online. Initial site launched as a public beta within three months and is now a successful startup. Trained the client’s developer, who was new to both Ruby and Rails, to proficiency. He has gone on to develop many new features on his own.
Built a multi-lingual emergency preparedness application for a state government. As part of this project, extended Ruby on Rails' built-in internationalization support to handle multi-lingual pluralization and gave a talk about this at Conferencia Rails 2009.
Audited a startup’s codebase, then pair-programmed with their main developer and trained him in test-driven development and best Ruby practices.
Pioneered the use of the Radiant content management system within Viget and used it to build a site for a high-profile university department. Created an application for grant proposal submission and voting, complete with workflow and permissions, as well as many custom Radiant plug-ins to handle event management, easy-to-use blogs, and a staff directory. Was granted Radiant core committer privileges.
Led development team for community features at this startup, meeting the needs of hundreds of thousands of users.
Migrated million-lines-of-code application from PHP 4 to PHP 5 and led a team of four developers to refactor the codebase to the Model-View-Controller pattern over three months.
Designed numerous web applications in PHP and Ruby on Rails, including a conference registration system and a dynamic PDF creator. Managed information technology department of developers and information analysts and oversaw the IT administration of multi-million dollar trade shows.
Worked as a contractor, using Perl and PHP, for organizations such as Boeing, Real Networks, AT&T Wireless, and various government agencies.
Trained as a Korean linguist and signals intelligence analyst. Highlights include:
Worked directly with Republic of Korea army intelligence officers and analysts, using my Korean language skills to translate information.
Awarded two Army Achievement Medals.
Wrote graphical applications in Tcl/Tk for use in analyzing radar signal patterns.
My favorite programming books are Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers, Code Complete by Steve McConnell, and Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. I haven't used Java professionally, but I found Bloch's book to be applicable to object-oriented development in any language.
I play the ukulele.
I am the designer and author of several well-loved roleplaying games.