GitHub Basics
October 19, 2019
At time of writing, I’ve just finished the second year of my CompSci degree and am taking a placement year in industry…
Introduction
Anthony is a developer with a lot to learn, trying to learn it. Alongside his full-stack development work, his current focus is accessible web design; he has designed applications previously attempting to meet WCAG 2.1 to an AA level.
Outside of work, Anthony enjoys music, writing, and fiddling with whatever gadgets he can get his hands on. When writing, he specialises in short, introspective fiction and has a growing anthology of poetry.
Anthony believes it is the responsibility of everybody to be actively anti-fascist & support marginalised groups.
Black Lives Matter · Trans rights are human rights · Fight wealth inequalityArticles
Rails with Vue Tutorials
May 07, 2020
Here is a short series of guides for using Vue with a primarily Rails-based application. They cover everything from the creation of a new app and installation of Vue through to having an inline, validated, editable table for your model.
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Dockerising Webpacker
June 10, 2020
An article following the creation of a dockerised Ruby on Rails application, complete with a dockerised Webpack development server running parallel. Worth a read if you're trying to dockerise a modern, reactive application
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Technical Skills
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails is a monolithic web app development framework; with a huge developer community behind it and an emphasis on convention over configuration, it enables rapid scaffolding of applications.
Ruby on Rails Experience
Young Forest
In advance of my placement at Plymouth Software, I taught myself the basics of Rails and created a test application following Michael Hartl's wonderful tutorial. The application earned the colloquial name 'Young Forest' following it's deployment to Heroku. The project was expanded upon during my first few weeks on placement to improve my Rails confidence.
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Plymouth Software
My tenure with Plymouth Software, a Ruby on Rails consultancy, formed the basis of my Rails education. Here, my role largely involved the maintenance of large legacy applications. This ranged from version upgrades and bug fixes to redesigning UIs to ensure WCAG 2.1 compliance.
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Scription API
Following my placement year, I dropped to a part-time contract & returned to complete my final year at university. My dissertation project for this, Scription, was my exploration of my ideal technology stack; a Ruby on Rails API, consumed by React and Flutter applications, with a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline managed by GitHub Actions & Heroku.
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This website!
This website is technically not a Rails application, but it deserves an honorable mention & is built using Jekyll, which itself is built on Ruby. This website started as a programming experiment - Dockerising a Jekyll app - but has evolved into the site you see now. It's deployed via Netlify, feel free to check out the repo on my GitHub for more information on how it's been built.
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React
React is a Javascript library for writing responsive & componentised front-end applications. I was interested in the topic - and have previously written articles on an alternative to it, Vue - and my final year at university provided an opportunity to learn the framework alongside my course.
React Experience
Plymouth Software
Working at Plymouth Software presented the opportunity to introduce React to existing web applications; largely, this involved working with various tabling packages such as react-table or react-datasheet. Learning how to produce production-quality React code was invaluable.
Vignette
One module required us to learn ME*N stack, Angular excluded for health and safety reasons. I took the opportunity to learn React as well. Vignette is the product of this; it's designed to help writers struggling with writers block by encouraging them to write flash fiction that is posted publicly, anonymously, and deleted after 30 days.
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Scription Web App
The web app element of my dissertation was another opportunity to experiment with React; I built a quick-reference tool for managing tabletop game notes. The application is live on Heroku, so feel free to visit it and try it out. I aimed to meet WCAG 2.1 to an AA level. However, even in the short amount of time since I submitted it, I've learned so much more. I'm absolutely still learning. Please get in touch if you have any tips!
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Flutter
Flutter is another UI framework, developed by Google, and is their push to make Dart a universal programming language. More support for cross-platform applications is gradually being introduced. My experience of it, however, is strictly in mobile development.
Flutter Experience
Plymouth Software
Plymouth Software was once again my introduction to this framework; I had a role in maintaining and upgrading an existing codebase for a Flutter application.
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Scription mobile
To complete my dissertation, I created a lightweight mobile application to provide users an alternate way of accessing their data. Being responsible for the entire process from initialisation to building to creating a Google Play listing was an invaluable learning experience.
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Experience
Plymouth SoftwareAs a placement year during my studies, I worked as a developer at Plymouth Software, a Ruby on Rails consultancy. I worked closely with clients in a "lower-case 'A' agile" team to complete feature requests and bug reports. Here, I gained valuable experience working with Ruby on Rails for web app & API building, dabbling with modern, reactive front-end frameworks such as Vue.
Beyond this, I worked with Flutter and Dart on an Android and iOS mobile application.
My tenure here continued part-time during my final year, returning to full-time work shortly after.
Education
| University Year Three | Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Dissertation | Final Year Project (Scription) | 87.16% |
| Full Stack | Full Stack Development (Vignette) | 84.1% |
| Project Management | Project Management | 71.7% |
| Alternative Paradigms | Alternative Paradigms (Quantum Computing) | 52.4% |
| Networking Infrastructures | Advanced Computing and Networking Infrastructures | 61.45% |
| University Year Two | Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Design Patterns | Object Orientated Software Engineering with Design Patterns | 79.35% |
| UX Design | User-Centred Interface Design | 74% |
| Database Development | Database Applications Development | 71.5% |
| AI | Computation Theory and Artificial Intelligence | 62.5% |
| Embedded Systems | Embedded Programming and the IoT | 63% |
| Integrated Project | Computer Science Integrating Project | 71.52% |
| University Year One | Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineering | Software Engineering | 80.89% |
| Database Design | Database Analysis, Design and Development | 71.4% |
| Infrastructure | Principles of Infrastructure | 69.33% |
| Cybersecurity | Cybersecurity Essentials | 70% |
| Algorithms | Algorithms, Data Structures and Mathematics | 74.39% |
| Introduction | Immersive Introduction | 65.75% |
| A-Level | Grade | |
|---|---|---|
| Biology | Biology | B |
| Chemistry | Chemistry | B |
| Statistics | Mathematics (Statistics) | B |
| Creative Writing | Creative Writing | A |
| GCSE | Grade |
|---|---|
| AAAAAAAABB |