Hi, I'm Paul and I code stuff!
My interest in coding started in the 1980s, when my parents bought a Commodore Plus/4. As well as coming with a collection of games (all on tape), it had a variant of BASIC built in. Since then I have tried my hand at coding on any computer that I've had the opportunity to.
Whilst at college, I studied Computing and Electronics, which gave me exposure to coding not just for desktop computers, but also for microcontrollers such as the PIC16x84.
In 2004, I graduated from university with a BSc (hons) in Computer Systems Engineering. This again covered both the computing and electronics side of things, however I decided to specialise in web technologies.
Other than coding, I like to get out in the countryside for a walk, pop down the pub for a pint or two of real ale, and have the occassional game of pool.
Over the last 20 years I've seen a lot of changes. Whilst Cloud Computing 'existed' back in 2004, it wasn't really something that was readily available to the masses. Throughout the 2000s, the companies that I worked for relied on dedicated servers to run web based platforms and ecommerce sites. These were expensive and there was also a lot of time spent on making sure that they were kept up-to-date and that security patches had been applied.
Between 2008 and 2010, I worked for a company that provided a portal to estate agents, solicitors and domestic energy accessors across the UK. The portal was hosted on three dedicated servers, each costing around £3000pm. The same system now could be hosted on a cloud environment such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a fraction of the cost, probably significantly less than £1000pm. A cloud environment is also built for reliance and scaleability, whereas beforehand these were factors that often got overlooked, or ignored due to cost.
The majority of work that I do now is either cloud-based or on systems interacting with a cloud-based system.
Another two big changes have been the availability of reliable high speed internet access and the use of video conferencing.
Video conferencing has been aided by more reliable internet access, along with the progresses made in cloud architecture.
Both remote working and interacting with clients are now easier than they have ever been and that was proven throughout the Covid-19 epidemic.
I predominantly use the Microsoft Stack and am proficient in .NET technologies from .NET Framework 1.1, right through to the latest version of .NET Core. I've been writing web apps, desktop apps, APIs and services for the last 20 years.
Recently I have started to use Blazor, which has been an interesting experience. I think it has great promise and is certainly easier to use than frameworks such as Angular. Maybe I'll blog about my experience soon.
If you're looking for an experienced developer for your project, or you're looking for a contract developer to add to your team then please get in touch.