About us

"What do you want to be when you grow up, son?"

I remember being asked this when I was five, the answer then was "Drive trains." When I was 10, it was "Join the Navy"; when I was 16, it was "Be an Accountant"; when I was 21, it was "Be a Graphics Designer"; when I was 38, it was "Be a Web Developer"

Web Developer it was to be. I never had that option when I was five, 10, 16 or 21; back then it was software development and that was for geeks in thick rimmed glasses and bad jumpers. Not wanting to be part of the bespectacled jumper brigade, I let it pass me by.

It was only when the internet landing on my doorstep in 1996/7 that I started to take notice of it. This funny little information service that would never take off, surely. By 1996/7, I'd been working as a Graphics Designer for a local newspaper for three years and the internet held some interest for me, but not a lot; i mainly enjoyed trawling the web for anything I could think of. For the next 10 years, I made my living, very happily, designed adverts and then moved on to the MoD where I drew designs for...well..my stuff; the OSA I signed precludes me from saying more.

Then in 2007, I could stand it no longer, I needed to know how this internet thing worked. I viewed pages using a browser's 'View Page Source' option and started to get a 'rough' idea of what was going on, picking up the basics of HTML tags and CSS styling. I learned very quickly, using Windows Notepad, that I could create a web page, make it look pretty and...well..livery information. With a head full of tags, attributes, styling, I began to bore because it was all very static. Nothing really did anything. A little investigating further revealed the engine that drives the client, JavaScript, and discovering that if JavaScript is the wheel, then jQuery os the axle that drives it. Within weeks, I was making web pages dance, images slide, text flow, and anything else that I could think of, even creating a Tic-Tac-Toe game for my son.

I then realised that I had become part of the bespectacled jumper brigade and that jumper was comfortable, however, I needed to know what happened server side. You see, when I was a child, I would dismantle anything I wanted to understand, I wanted to see what drove the tape recorder, what spun the turntable, what made the computer run (that last one was quite expensive in the end!), in fact, anything that had buttons, dials, switches, knobs, and flashing lights; by the time I'd finished, I had a lot of spare parts in a jar.

I found that I had two obvious choices, C# or PHP, but which one was best? There was only one way to find out (obvious Harry Hill answer removed). I gave each language equal time, learning their differences, learning what gave one an advantage over the other, looking into why people swore by one and not the other, something people get very impassioned about judging by a lot of the comments. Finally, I had a grasp of both in fairly equal measures; PHP could do this, C# could do that etc. My search was complete, I knew what made the internet tick...didn't I?

No, not by a long stretch and that's still true today. Emerging technologies are released regularly, some deigned to make certain tasks easy, some designed to make you re-evaluate how you code. What PHP and C# did, however, was allow me to enter this arena and select which technology works best for which website. MVC works well for large websites driven by data, both dynamic and static, not so much for a small brochure website; that's more like hiring a truck to take your kids to school, it does the job but it's a massive overkill for the task involved.

Every task I approach with the same methodology: What works best for this? What will enable me to get the most out with the least impact on performance? Do I have enough coffee?

This is, I believe, what makes me a competent developer. I will always find the best solution from the available technology and if that means learning a new technology, then so be it. I want the best for what you hold the dearest, whether that be your company, your club, or simply a place to share information with friends.

Skills

Graphic Design

Sector Experience

Computing (Software), E-Commerce, Information Technology

Clients

288 Group, Ayrmer Software, Create Marketing, Furlong Solutions, Historic England, Trakm8

Ranking
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Currently No Client Rating
Founded
2017
Size
1 Person
Creativepool member since 26 July 2017