Skills & Technologies

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  HTML5

  Semantic markup language for the web, used in every web-based project so far to add the structure and content of the page. Proper use of semantic tags makes it easier for anyone using screen reader technology, and can improve searchability of the site.
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  CSS3

  How all web content gets its look. From basic layout and fonts, up to fully responsive pages that keep looking beautiful on every screen. Used in every web-based project to arrange elements and give them a practical, aesthetic style with accessible levels of contrast and sufficient whitespace for enjoyable use.
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  JavaScript

  A scripting language responsible for making webpages interactive. Enables user interaction & provides core functionality right in the browser keeping things quick. All except my earliest projects make use of features brought in with ES6 (let, const, arrow functions, promises etc) and later releases (eg asynchronous functions).
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  PHP

  Server side scripting language which provides all the logic that can't be done at the client's end. Used in projects for example in connecting users to shared information in a database, fetching geographic location data for adding pins to a map based on user position etc.
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  SQL

  SQL is a language used for organising and accessing databases, which I have applied to multiple projects where information needs to persist beyond the session of one user. MariaDB is a community developed fork of MySQL & so shares most features with it. It comes shipped with the XAMPP development environment, hence my early use of it.
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  Android

  My first project in my coding journey was to learn how to program mobile applications, which involved working through Google's tutorial for Android in Java & XML. My first app was "Sailor's Mate" which helps people navigate at sea (see Projects). I have since concentrated on web technologies, as Progressive Web Apps provide almost the same capability as native code.
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  JSON

  A way to parcel up information for storing and sending between systems, even if they use different languages or operating systems. I have made use of this when transferring information between the client/browser (in JavaScript) and server (logic written in PHP), for example sending information being stored on a server about a live event to multiple remote devices which are taking concurrent actions. (see Projects).
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  Python

  A high level general purpose language, which can be used in a huge array of applications, as object-oriented or procedural, with a large standard library. I have begun learning Python straight after HTML/CSS/JS/PHP as it is so popular and will be a very useful tool for problem solving in future projects.
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  React

  A JavaScript library, originally developed by facebook, which allows for lots of reuse of common components of a user interface. I learned React as part of the Codecademy full stack course and can see its usefulness in more complex websites with a lot of similar components. I had already built much of timerthing.com before learning React, but would probably use it if starting that project from scratch. React's main impact has been on my thinking about how best to design a website keeping component reuse in mind.