James Baker - Developer

I have just completed part-time education with the Open University where I have been studying for a Bachelor's degree in IT & Computing with a focus on software development since 2014. I am predicted to achieve a 2:1 grade.

Doing my degree has solidified my understanding of practices and also taught me some new IT & Computing skills such as:

• Developing mobile apps
• Writing reports for non-technical and technical audiences
• Planning and designing software solutions
• Algorithms and modelling real-world problems
• Using cloud technologies
• Self reflection

As the business grew, my responsibilities moved away from general admin and now I am the Lead IT Tech, advising the admin team and liasing with third party developers.

My main responsibilities:

• Maintenance of the Magento websites including security updates
• Designing and implementing internal tooling to aid in productivity
• Specifying tasks and liasing with third party web developers and vendors
• Researching and learning new software and solutions useful to the company
• Setting up new virtual machines on the company servers, installing the OS and required software
• Maintaining Windows and Linux servers
• Maintaining the ERP systems and integrating them with the websites
• Configuring access to websites for third parties
• Aiding the content manager and MD with implementing SEO friendly features
• Supporting the sales staff with any issues they may have with systems
• Maintaining the office hardware
• Ensuring security practices are best followed - in the office and externally
• Documenting systems and practices
• Overseeing and advising the junior IT staff

Working at FFD has been a good experience in dealing with teams. I work closely with the whole office but especially the web admin and content team. I am also responsible for training the junior IT staff with general IT and development best practices.

I have learned a lot about Magento, composer and web servers in general in this role.

Some of the languages, tools and frameworks used:

• Magento 1.6 - Magento 2.4
• Python
• Django
• pip
• gunicorn
• AlpineJS
• php5.6 - php8.3
• Composer
• Git cli/Github
• TailwindCSS
• HTML5
• JavaScript
• jQuery
• CSS3
• SASS/LESS
• NGINX
• Windows server
• Ubuntu
• CentOS
• MageStack
• Docker
• Java
• Zoho
• Deluge
• MySQL
• SQLite
• Wordpress
• WSL2
• VSCode
• Mobaxterm
• Filezilla
• vi/nano
• Apache

During the 2008 recession I took back to studying, this time looking to game development. I joined the Train2Game developer program which used a study from home model.

This program taught me a large amount about programming in C++, libraries, using graphics engines, spriting and a lot of lower level functionality that is usually abstracted from higher level development.

I was introduced to:

• Pathing algorithms (Dijkstra, A*)
• Graphics engines (DirectDraw)
• Game loops
• Bitwise operations
• Memory management
• Threading

This course bought a much deeper understanding of how programs work and my most-lasting takeaway was of Object Oriented programming (OOP).

After school I attained a job as a junior web developer for Specnet Ltd, a small web design company located in Earl Shilton. I joined a husband and wife team who had various local clients.

My main responsibilities were;

• Minor HTML changes on client request
• Developing new features
• Aiding the main developer with implementation
• Maintaining web hosting accounts
• Uploading websites to hosting
• Populating SEO meta data

This was a rewarding role where I really got to cut my teeth on real-world web development. My greatest achievements at the time were implementing a search feature for the Small Business Forum website and creating all the graphics for a local car garage website.