Experience

Let me start by saying: writing content is hard. Every project I put up, I have to write content, therefore it may be a while before a get a full listing.

Just to summarise my experience and explain the structure of this section I will give you a timeline of my progression as a developer.

When I was 12 I started doing some hardware maintainance, setting up networks and managing windows servers. I then started to learn Visual Basic and developed some simple applications for managing files on my schools network.

When I was 14 I really started to get into programming and began C++, Java and PHP. Using PHP I developed ecommerce websites but struggled to put C++ and Java to practical use.

At 16 I went to college and studied computer software. I gained some experience with 68000 assembly, Pascal, Delphi and Microsoft Access. I used C++ to create a very unoriginal pong game and used Microsoft Access to build an order processing database that integrated with the ecommerce websites I'd built.

At 18 I went to the University of Kent to study Computer Science and studied Java and Object Oriented Design in great detail. I built many applications during university including an instant messenger client/server, an application that implemented many common encryption algorithms, a database backup application, some basic games for the Nintendo DS and some warehouse machinary to fill bottles. My third year thesis was a study into making games based on graph theory, this included a 3d spring embedding application, a graph creation application and the game it self.

After university I joined Assertis as a PHP website developer and developed a CMS. I was well aware of the problems of seperating code from logic in PHP and implemented an object oriented PHP/XSLT based system that was based on many popular design patterns. It is still in use today and runs all of Assertis' current websites. The front end of the CMS has been redeveloped but the framework and backend behind the system remain largely unchanged. Development of websites during this time gave me skills in XHTML1.1, CSS, XSLT, PHP5 and MySQL.

One year into my employment at Assertis I was promoted to senior developer and I begain to work on larger projects such as the Chiltern Railways ticketing system. This gave me experience with planning, project management and a more enterprise level of development.