About me

Overview

I'm a JavaScript and PHP specialist, and at different times have sold myself as both or either. In JavaScript Land I'm mostly in the Vue.js camp. I have a Stack Overflow rep of ~30K.

I currently head up development at Guide Education, where I built a video-based virtual learning/assessment platform from the ground-up, leading to the company receiving millions in investment. I've built everything from headless CMS's to static site generators (SSG) in my time. You can read more on the Projects page or on my Linked In.

I've worked in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod (also Russia), London and elsewhere. I was Senior Developer at Espresso Education (later bought by Discovery Education) until 2015, so I know a fair bit about e-learning.

Skills

In JavaScript Land I specialise in vanilla JavaScript, up to the latest ECMA spec (I blog and write guides mostly about this.) I also specialise in Vue and its various ecosystem breathren e.g. Nuxt, Vuex etc. I know jQuery inside out. I also use Node.js and Express. I've used headless CMS's (and even built one, in Desyn) like GraphCMS and Cosmic.js, mostly for JAM-stack-hosted apps. I'm comfortable with CLI.

In PHP Land I'm familiar with PHP 7 and 8, and often work in frameworks like Code Igniter and Laravel. I'm pretty strong in SQL. I'm done a lot of dynamic image generation with PHP via libraries like GD.

I'm also a RegExp sadist and know obscure things like XSLT and XQuery. I like my CSS to be SASS-flavoured, and I quite like Tailwind these days.

I've built a few apps and a couple (1; 2) of browser extensions.

Writing

I've written tutorials and articles in the past for trade press including .NET Magazine and Smashing Magazine.

These days I blog here and write deep-dive JavaScript guides, such as this one about JavaScript promises.

I've featured a couple of times in JavaScript Daily. I was also technical editor on the (terrible) Smashing jQuery.

Personal

I'm a musician, mainly a pianist, with a degree in piano and composition. I have a fledgling YouTube channel where I post my recordings. I also dabble with synthesisers.

I'm a passionate vegan and animal lover. Animal lovers are vegan. It's also increasingly believed that veganism is the single best thing we can do as individuals to fight the climate crisis.

I lived for four years in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. I speak Russian. I used to be a tennis coach. I don't tweet.

You can contact me at [email protected].