About me
Hello there, I'm Alan!
...I'm a 29-year-old Senior Software Developer based in Belfast in Northern Ireland. My current full-time role is Frontend Development Lead where I lead all core development and vision for the team from a Frontend perspective. Our current stack is NextJS/React, TailwindCSS inside a NX mono-repo where we are building a new platform and framework for our local government web solutions. I am also a Senior React Developer where I develop cross platform mobile apps for local government councils for our company using the Ionic Framework and React JavaScript. I also have a strong passion for development in my spare time where I spend countless hours learning new technologies to better my experience.
I am a Queens University Belfast graduate with a MEng in Software Engineering. I started my university journey in the Computer Science field and switched into Software Engineering after second year. I undertook a 18 month work placement as a Software Developer in Tascomi Ltd as part of my course.
One of my big passions is sharing my knowledge and skill with others who are eager to learn. A big love to me is teaching people how to code, make things look slick, and making coding tutorials, transferring my web development/coding skills is very fulfilling for me.
I am very active on Twitter - Over here, I post lots of content related to web development, mobile app development with a strong focus on Ionic with React!
I have a blog and a YouTube channel, where you can expect to see How to posts/video about coding on all aspects of HTML, CSS, Javascript (JS), ReactJS, NextJS NodeJS, PHP, and even the odd review of cool UI Frameworks or libraries that I've found.
I am also the host of a podcast, which I created called Mobile DevCast. My podcast is dedicated to chatting about mobile app development and raising awareness about web native technologies like the Ionic Framework and CapacitorJS. Mobile app development is my passion and I love talking about it, learning and teaching about it so this was a perfect idea for me. You can check it out here.
As I am a huge fan of the Ionic Framework and mobile development, I decided to create The Ionic React Hub. This is a place where I post lots of UI Examples and tutorials related to using Ionic with React. I also try and be as creative as I can and show you that, as a developer, you can also design slick, beautiful mobile apps.
Fave Tech
Javascript
React
NextJS
TailwindCSS
NX
Ionic Framework
Skills
React
Self taught. I've had over 5+ years professional experience with React JavaScript. My knowledge and expertise in this area, enabled me to bring this into my workplace and build a mobile framework on top of the Ionic Framework for our mobile products.
NextJS
Having a massive love for React, the transition to NextJS was very natural. The ability to easily pre-render content either by SSG or SSR is incredible. I still have a few avenues to explore, but my overall understanding and expertise in NextJS is high. This site is built using NextJS.
TailwindCSS
I had been using utility type styling as part of my Ionic React development through Ionic Utility classes. This drove my interest to learn tailwind - I use tailwind when I'm developing side projects that aren't apps and couple this with NextJS.
NX Monorepo
I lead the Frontend Development in our workplace and as part of the early architecture of the repos, I opted to encapsulate all future and ongoing apps and products in a monorepo using NX.
Ionic
My knowledge of Ionic is very high, I've built cross-platform mobile apps for IOS/Android using Ionic and deployed to the respective app stores. As well as knowing all of the components available, I've also built a custom framework on top of the Ionic Framework which is at the forefront of local government applications. I'm also an Ionic Community Expert.
Capacitor
Starting out with Cordova, the predecessor to Capacitor, I gained strong knowledge early on of how to use these plugins efficiently and effectively. I would now say that I have a lot of experience building with Capacitor native API plugins for mobile apps having used pretty much all available plugins in one way or another, combined with the above, Ionic.
Next Auth
I've utilised next-auth to create multiple services to login in to web applications via social accounts such as Twitter, Google and Github. I would say my understanding is very high.
Angular
I have been part of several projects using Angular. Whether that be in conjunction with Ionic or standalone projects, I posess a strong skill in this area of which could be furthered if I wanted, however I'm not actively using Angular and I have no plans to revisit it in the future.
HTML
Having been the first for me, and probably for every developer, HTML has been in my vocabulary since I was around the age 11. I have a strong understanding of all elements and patterns as well as experience using templating languages for HTML as well as HTML5.
CSS
Just like HTML, CSS pretty much goes hand in hand with it. I love design, and making things look slick and professional. I have a very strong understanding of all CSS properties however I lack the knowledge in the CSS animation area.
SASS
A natural turn to SASS from using CSS led me to learn most of the basics and some intermediate SASS/SCSS functionalities. I would say I have a good understanding of SASS.
JavaScript
Again, just like HTML and CSS, JavaScript came as the three-fundamental package for me. I've had years of experience writing JavaScript which led me into my React and modern library/framework knowledge and expertise.
JQuery
Before the modern era of JavaScript frameworks, JQuery was at the forefront. I have strong understanding of all JQuery syntax and functionality. I could further this a bit more if wanted, however I do not plan on learning anymore than what is needed to maintain legacy code.
Node
I have strong experience creating Node applications to enhance SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of React websites as well as using Node to serve static content to some projects using Handlebars.
StrapiJS
With my love for the JAMstack growing, I reached out and started to learn about headless CMS's. I had tried contentful in the past but for me, it lacked control and customisation. I found strapi and I have built numerous amounts of apps, web apps and websites using strapi as the main API and backend.
PHP
My experience in PHP is very high. I use it on a day-to-day basis in my full-time job to manipulate data on the server side. My experience ranges from 5.6 to 7.X. I have used OOP style PHP for a number of years now.
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is always my goto database. My experience in this area includes migrating massive databases from different sources into one PSQL source. I've also migrated data from different schemas into one, on many ocassions for very important information in local government councils.
MongoDB
Coming from a strong background of PostgreSQL, I found the transition to using a document based style database hard to get used to. But as soon as I saw the benefit and advantage this could bring to me for creating scalable databases, coupled with NodeJS, I fell inlove with it!
GIT
I have years experience of using GIT on the command line as well as through a GUI. My perferred is CLI. I also have experience using Github, Gitlab and Bitbucket to a strong degree.
Command Line
I don't like GUI for CLI things. I would turn to the command line for almost everything. Navigating through directories, manipulating database values, quickly editing code, creating new files etc etc.
VIM
I have strong experience in VIM and VI. Often I have to alter or make changes to code on a server through the use of vim. I use ohmyzsh and iTerm2 with lots of customisations!
NGINX
My experience in NGINX comes from setting up my own server using Digital Ocean on a Ubuntu 20.X environment. I have experience setting up custom domains and routing to static sites, as well as node-powered sites using reverse proxy and PM2 services.
Apache HTTPD
I use Apache on a day-to-day basis in my full time job. I have a good understanding of Apache and how to get a local environment setup fully from start to finish. I've often had to help new starts get setup and share my knowledge in this area.
Firebase
I have a strong understanding of Firebase, including Auth, Firestore database, Real-time database and also notifications through cloud functions.
