About me and what I do

Who I am

Pattern Detector: Be it in math, programming, art or anywhere else.
Developer: Being busy with this for 18 years, so far. Originally Flash desktop apps, then web.
Artist: Having made software tools for several animation and visual effects projects.

Career Path

3D Artist

Flash Developer

Web Developer

2001-2016

2005-2018

2016-2025

Tech Stack

Ember

Rails

TailwindCSS

Typescript

Vue

Kotlin

Neo4j

Swift

Svelte

Elixir

Actionscript

Database

SQL

PostgreSQL
MySQL
ActiveRecord

NoSQL

Graph databases

Neo4j: A powerful graph database with labeled edges.
Virtusuo: A graph database built on top of semantic web concepts.

Document databases

IndexedDB: The database inside your browser which usually gets overlooked.
MongoDB: I am not much interested in this one, though.

DevOps

I am 90% a programmer and 10% a DevOps guy.

That being said, I have some familiarity and experience with thee tools:

Heroku: I have a Rails app hosted on Heroku which utilizes AWS S3 for storage.
CI/CD: Some experience with GitHub and GiltLab pipelines.
Docker Compose: I utilize it quite extensively both in production and development environments.

Teamwork

Insightful reviews

The day starts with reviewing others’ PRs. I leave detailed explanations and suggest solutions supported by screenshots, code suggestions, and external links.

Lively approach

Speak: I tend to actively talk to my fellow developers rather than just leaving comments on their PRs.
Get in touch: I tend to do pair-programming as much as possible. The more engaged we get, the more cohesive we become.

Visual communication

I am a visual communicator, thanks to my artistic training. So, I frequently create diagrams, outlines, screenshots, videos, etc to illustrate a concern.

Mentorship

If I realize the lack of knowledge while reviewing a PR, instead of blaming, I contact them to share the missing knowledge.

If I realize lack of knowledge among the team, usually I don’t keep it as a secret to myself. I rather try to organize some sort of gathering to teach it to others. A series of lectures, coffee time talks, etc. Check the Recent Industry Experience section for some examples.

What sets me apart from the competition

Not overselling it but these are some attributes that not everyone possesses:

Ownership

I know well what it takes to create a successful app since I have built several of them from start to finish, used by people in real life. Here, you can check a few of them.

Projects

Harmonizer

Crystal Paint

Tavoos

Hashogir

Solid Foundation

Having learned and practiced web development from the very basics up, I love it all the way from HTML details, css tricks, javascript intricates to database query details, nginx configuration, and beyond.

Holistic View

I neither get lost in details nor overlook them in favor of the big picture. Rather, I seek the coherence across small all scales.

Designer’s Eye

Besides being a developer, I have an eye for UI/UX thanks to my designer/artist background.

Toolmaker

I tend to develop tools for streamlining repetitive tasks in both my professional and personal life, such as plugins, extensions or even complete web apps as needed. Check the Recnt Industry Experience section for some examples.

Challenge Driven

I often get called for challenging problems, and almost never decline. No matter what, I have earned an Olympiad medal in mathematics in the past.

Ever Learning

A considerable portion of each day is spent learning or applying the learned material in personal side projects.

The value I can bring to the company

Holistic view

The holistic view that I bring from my architecture background can contribute to the big picture of the job. Literally, it helps to improve the architecture and boost maintainability.

Problem solving

Curiosity and creativity, usually lead me to exceptional solutions for complicated problems.

Craftsmanship

I am a tool creator, by nature. Historic records show that my contributions in this regard have improved the team’s performance. Check the Recnt Industry Experience section for some examples.

Recent industry experience

Saas!

Since 2019, I have been involved in three SaaS projects implemented in Ruby on Rails, Ember, CircleCI, Scrum, .... More details below:

2024 Jun — now

Stage 2, a small startup in Gent, Belgium with a large number of users around the world.

No-code Development Platforms

Ember
Ruby on Rails
PostgreSQL
GitLab
Bootstrap

2020 Feb — 2024 Jun

Unit4, a large company with 4000 staff all around the world.

Human Capital Management
Enterprise Resource Planning

Ember
Ruby on Rails
PostgreSQL
CircleCI
Azure DevOps
Sentry.io
SonarQube
Tailwindcss

I have taken the initiative to organize, manage, invite guests, and deliver lectures as part of a series of weekly TechTalks aimed at sharing technical knowledge among the team, where I served as the weekly Ember lecturer. The lectures were recorded and archived for team’s future reference.

I have created several tools to assist the team’s daily work.

Code Refactoring Tools

Being assigned the task of updating an old codebase to some recent version of Ember I found out that existing tools were not much helpful due to some anti-patterns in the code base. So, I created my own tools to save time.

Two vscode extensions: To facilitate sophisticated refactorings not possible with Replace All feature of vscode. Check them out in VSCode’s extension market.
A bunch of Ruby scripts: To facilitate sophisticated refactorings not possible with Replace All feature of vscode.

GIT convenience scripts: We do a lot of rebasings on a daily basis which most often end up with confusing conflicts.To overcome the challenge, I have creaed a bunch of Ruby and Bash scripts to make it more convenient and reliable. Check them out in this GitHub repository.

2018 Nov — 2019 Nov

Redpencil, a small startup in Brussels with great ideas and talented founders!

Open Data
Semantic Web
Microservices
Graph databases

Ember
Node
Tailwindcss
Docker
Sparql
Elixir

2002 Mar — 2019 Nov

ASA and Pendareh, two small sized animation studios where I worked as a technical artist. Also, pero-project collaborations with some architecture studios.

Animations, TV Commercials, Visual Effects
Flash Desktop Apps
Architectural Previsualization

Tools to facilitate 3D work: Python, MEL
Tools to facilitate visual effects work: Python

I have initiatively trained the team of engineers while working in an architecture studio. they learned an alternative tool that changed their day to day job, entirely.