about

who am i?

I am a middle-aged guy with a keen interest in software, from using to creating. Since I got my first computer back in 1994-ish and immediately took it apart (much to the horror of my parents), I quickly realised that software can change quicker than hardware and comes with much less risk of irrevocably breaking. Off I went down a rabbit hole that 30 years later I'm still very deep in.

From Basic through to Pascal, C/C++, and Rust through to Java, PHP, Kotlin and JavaScript, I've played with a lot of languages over the years and my absolute favourite has to be PHP. It's easily accessible these days with Docker and has plenty of support to get up and running in the cloud or on hosted servers, and is a very straightforward language to write code in.

who am i not?

I am not a designer 🤣. There's something magical about design that needs something extra - people who can do it well are great, and any project with a user-facing frontend should be properly designed.

I just do not have that bit of magic in me. However, if given a design I can create it. So that's a bonus. (This site, for instance, was purpose-built to hide that fact.)

what have i done?

I've wanted to be a computer programmer since I was at school but only recently have I been able to move into the field. I've done many years of customer service (face-to-face and telephone based), and done a stint of taxi driving - working in the family business for 7 years.

I believe those experiences set me apart from a lot of devs who just want to focus on the code. They've given me an insight into how stakeholders, managers and end users operate, and let me communicate much more easily with non-technical folks.

Since 2018 I've been working my way up the ladder as a software developer: starting as a junior and moving through positions as senior developer, tech lead and team leader. Nearly 20 years of hobby experience showed quickly that I wasn't at junior level - even though that was my first commercial position.

what do i do?

My preferred terrain is the back end - PHP on servers or in the cloud, running services like REST APIs or microservices. JavaScript or TypeScript for scripts on servers, usually interacting with third-party APIs.

I'm equally at home using plain PHP with no frameworks or using Laravel or Symfony to build with, and I have a huge interest in domain-driven design - I'm actively developing a couple of projects using it.

I do quite enjoy React on the front end, but I feel like I'm writing backend code when I'm doing it, because of the functional nature of it all nowadays.

Professionally, I'm the Head of Engineering leading a small team rewriting the company's core product from scratch - a mobile app (React Native), web app (React), and backend APIs (Laravel).

my professional goals

I'm still exploring this area. I've been in most developer positions apart from really leading a progressive team, so that's something I'm very interested in - provided I still get a bit of time to cut some code every now and then.

Beyond that, I like the idea of joining a business that hasn't quite got its processes down yet, or that needs a few pointers for optimisations and improvements. Planning a fixed-period path from the current position to an agreed-on target, then leaving once the team is purring along smoothly.

want to say hi?

The best way to reach me is Threads - come and connect:get in touch →