bespoke software development
I have 44 years of experience programming, on systems from the smallest to the largest. Since 2008 I've specialized in Ruby on Rails, with a side of iOS/OSX and whatever else is needed to get the job done - recent work also includes Elixir, VueJS, Sinatra, AngularJS,CoffeeScript, node.js, Arduino, Swift, and the Pebble SDK.
I treat my code as an expression of art and beauty, and often say:
software is to poetry as
architecture is to sculpture
In addition, I have a well-rounded interdisciplinary background with over 15 patents and three degrees - Computer Science, Art and Dance. Whatever your specific domain, I'm sure to catch on quickly and implement your vision with passion and enthusiasm.
Bring my agile and responsive development style to your project. I communicate well, will make sure you're comfortable with every aspect of the development process, and will not sell you anything you don't need.
I strive always to underpromise and overdeliver, ahead of deadline and under budgetemail me
resume
You'll find a very thorough and generally up-to-date version of my resume online at StackOverflow
stackoverflow.com/cv/stephancom
examples
You're looking at one! stephan.com is written in Rails, running on a Heroku instance. The current version took about two days to build and launch, thanks to ActiveAdmin. It will, of course, never be "done".
You can find samples of my code at github/stephancom
- open source
- gists
- stackOverflow
- CodePen
- coding tests
history
The following is incomplete - I cannot discuss every project, and some are too small to be worth noting.
2019
consulting as stephan.com 1q-2q 2019
Syntactx
Ruby CLI utility
proprietary data manipulation
- Ported from idiosyncratic node.js code
- 95%+ reduction in memory usage.
- collates JSON/CSV data for PowerBI
- Special challenges include
- HIPAA compliance
- inferring limited specs by reading code
- ActiveRecord without Rails to MS-SQL Server
- Dozens of separate Mongo databases
- streaming writes minimize memory overhead
- handling failed Azure Blob Storage uploads
stealth company/project
Green field Rails 5 project
launching 2q19, spinoffs planned
- Modular reusable platform
- Authorize.net/ Taxjar
- Lob.com mailed hardcopy
- PDF generation
- heroku puma redis sidekiq bootstrap coffeescript jquery slim sass aws s3 ActiveJob ActiveStorage circleci rspec capybara vcr
- stats after 12 weeks/600 hours:
- 16k lines, 12k LOC, ~20 models
- 1:5.4 code/test ratio
- 100% Test coverage @ 44 hits/line
- avg. 1000 LOC/week, or 20/hour
2018
- CTO (hands-on) at Photopon
2017/8
- Senior Full-Stack Developer, Social Media Link
- refactored and decoupled monolithic application
- improved overall application performance by 50%
- more than doubled conversion rate
- identified and resolved several serious security flaws not noticed in a professional audit
- upgrade rails 4.0 -> 5.1
- security audit & upgrade
- rewrite tests in rspec
- mentor junior developers
- create V1 API using Grape w/ Swagger
- front end work in Vue+Vuex+Axios
- attended AWS Big Data week
2017
- Pivot5.vc
- proof-of-concept development for stealth chatbot project
2016
- Senior Applications Engineer, Medidata Solutions
- Full time contract via Twenty Recruitment
- Worked on Medidata Balance™ clinical trial inventory management system.
- Primarily contributed to a large migration wherein several key models that had previously been owned by a single central model now needed to be shared between central models.
- join tables added
- hilarity ensued
- cucumbers repeatedly repaired
- Secret registration site for Dwimmer Ties.
- QR-code on back of tie leads to hidden site with registration and features
- Additional Unity3D VR work for (art) n laboratory
- reviewed in the Huffington Post
2015
- Full time for Xura (formerly Acision )
- Responsible for implementing, extending and maintaining AngularJS client for white label enterprise WebRTC messaging, voice and video conferencing
- Implemented cross-platform web-iOS-Android messaging protocol for Mobile World Congress demos and Microsoft Azure OAuth login
- Buildmaster - responsible for setting up and maintaining Jenkins automated build/deployment for Android/iOS/AngularJS to HockeyApp betas and nginx web servers
- Researched best practices for iOS automated testing, established system using bwoken & tuneup.js
- Collaborated with internal and external teams in Nice, Reading, Richmond, Brno and Kharkiv
- Unity 3D programming for (art)n laboratory
- Unity Pro coding in Javascript and C# for Oculus Rift
- VR Architecture tour shown at National Arts Club November 2-14 2015
- Reviewed in the Huffington Post
2014
- With architects.io
- MobileXlabs builder v0.1
- product recommendation startup in stealth mode
- two unreleased iOS apps with Rails back ends
- project for mass parsing of pdf documents
- iOS RSS feed app for mentoring high school students
2013
- Zertica (aka CADsurf)
- Marketplace to connect with providers of 3D print and CAD services
- Features include:
- real-time chat with PrivatePub/Faye
- file uploads with Filepicker(which is so cool!)
- requesting/submitting/selecting bids/providers
- incoming and outgoing payments with Balanced Payments
- Client opted to publish site as open source
- Cuttle
- V1.0 of node.js site. Current site has greatly simplified spec.
- Introduced Rails-style conventions, testing, and order to the hipster junkyard
- LOTS of CoffeeScript, I finally get the difference between -> and =>
- exposure to backbone, jade, less, mocha, underscore, elasticsearch, stripe, others
- Coached CTO Dave Govea to write factory-castrado
- jsfiddle test
- Sand Hill Services Oy
- Pebble + iOS location-based demo
- Social geolocation service experiments
- (art)n
- OSX update of my 1995 program that originally targeted SGI workstations
- Except, literally, about 1000 times faster
- Implements the algorithm disclosed in our 1996 patent "Computer-Generated Autostereography Method and Apparatus", #5,519,794
2012
- Legacy Marketing Partners - internal site, "EventNet V3"
- Manages companywide operations for 350 employees located in 40 markets nationwide
- 7 months to rebuild site from scratch and rescue a project that was three years overdue
- I am extraordinarily proud of the massive amount of work I did on this project and wish I could show it - around 10000 LOC
- Features include:
- Scheduling events across hundreds or thousands of venues such as bars and supermarkets for dozens of brands and marketing campaigns.
- Drag and drop form builder to create custom event recap forms for each campaign, including ability for users to design new metric field types
- Collecting and collating event recaps in aggregate across brands/campaigns/markets
- System for tracking notes about venues such as hours of operation and features, including history of who changed what when.
- Upload of photos and receipts associated with venues, events, etc
- Employee document management
- Shipping, receiving, inventory and transfer of promotional items between markets with full history and reconciliation
- Admin control of access by groups of users to relevant records with CRUD granular control based on membership in markets/campaigns
- RingPlus
- Logical Reality Design- work on SalesBump(rip)
2011
- Cliques
- Privacy-oriented social network similar to Google+
- Which is funny, because G+ launched about halfway through development
- 8 weeks from start to launch
- Extensively tested, some of my best code
- On hiatus at present
- Watch for a resurrected demo server soon!
- Enfold
- iOS app
- Originally contracted for this
- Back end Java site was not ready; built my own, duplicating most site functionality, in 7 days so I could start working
- Core site rewritten in Scala, some work done integrating with back end in 2013
- Has not launched; still being used for internal demos connecting to my back end
- Front end work
- Contract extended to develop wireframes extending graphic designer's original plan for implementation by offshore Java team.
- I built the markup, javascript and CSS on top of my back end
- Offshore team simply had to copy the markup from my Rails app
- CSS/JS required virtually no modification to work with their Java app
- iOS app
2010
- Terpster
- My own iPhone app
- Playlist manager for dancers
- Still live on the app store
- I may rewrite this in Swift in 4q14
- shuttlefare
- Improvements to existing app
- Also worked on CityParkingUsa and other properties
- Abandoned project for affiliate tracking: Affiliated Pull (I may open source this)
- Crank Apps - Gazopa Answers
- iOS app to interface to image search question site
- Contributed to Rails back end for integration
- Gazopa project shut down, app never launched
- Methink
- "Project Bluefoot" - client identity under NDA
- Reports module for scheduling events such as birthdays and weddings across client's network of theme park properties
2009
- CIO - Dekasu: Your career. Your move.
- Dekasu is a free-to-use career management toolkit designed to give you the advantage you need in today's competitive job market. We provide a secure record of your career history, tools to easily generate tailored CVs and other career development resources.
- ~10,000 lines of code, more features than I can easily list
- Travelled to London to work with the rest of the team
- Currently on hiatus, may be redeploying to international markets in 2q16
<2009
- CIO - MobileGates
- Movietickets.com
- Movietickets.com iOS
- ~80% complete when I left company
- existing app appears to be substantially my code
- innovative horizontal-scrolling movie posters
- Movieticket.com mobile
- Implemented three times, in Ruby, Perl, and PHP
- I do not know which one is running; I hope it isn't the PHP one. I learned PHP in one day to implement this. I never want to use PHP again.
- Movietickets.com iOS
- Seven Mildly Embarrassing iOS Apps
- Three sound effects app with numerous features
- alarm
- motion sensor
- piano keyboard
- record your own
- wide selection of sounds
- But, um, yeah, these are fart apps
- FartMobile
- BurpMobile
- SnoreMobile
- Two pattern repeat games (like Simon)
- Simon Says Fart
- Simon Says Party
- These apps are, mercifully, no longer on the app store. They were quite good for the genre.
- Three sound effects app with numerous features
- Gemfo
- Abandoned concept for widget-based information dashboard available across platforms including WAP.
- My introduction to Rails
- It looked surprisingly like the iOS finder, which is funny, because I was working on it before the iPhone came out.
- Travmatix
- Movietickets.com
I could go on, with projects reaching back to 1986, including an assembly language for a game on the TI-99 and a Z80 system for driving a laser show projector; contributions to a programming language used for museum displays, including implementing the language for an unusual image processing board; scientific visualizations; OSX Widgets; more mobile web apps; etc.
- Testimonials scroll to see all 13
- Brad McEvilly
CEO Photopon, CTO Social Media Link - Stephan is 110% reliable and dependable... a very strong engineer with the unique ability to look at a problem from all angles... consistently produces optimal solutions in less time than it takes most other engineers... stands out and shines among others — he naturally thinks outside of the box... a top performer and always delivers on time.
- Zeth Dubois
CEO, Dwimmer - The key is your enthusiasm, and how quickly you grasp concepts and are able to self-direct, coupled with deep knowledge/experience of the complex and changing nature of web development. Undauntable!
- Jonathan Calmus
Co-founder & CEO, Cuttle, Inc. - Stephan is hard working and gets behind a project 100%.
- Ellen Sandor
President & Founding Artist, (art)n - Stephan delivered a superb Mac program for us in a very short period of time and he was wonderful to work with. The program works beautifully. I highly recommend him.
- Inder-Jeet Gujral
CEO, Enfold, Inc. - Stephan was asked by us to develop a prototype application for the iPhone. He certainly did that, but in addition he took the application to a point where it was not very far from production-quality -- as such, he considerably over-delivered.
- Pat Cheung
Founder/Head of Product, Townfave - Stephan is a solid developer with a mind to solve problems. He's a proponent of engineering best practices, but will always balance the need to hit real world budgets and timelines.
- Douglas Macdonald
CEO, Dekasu - Stephan has helped us take an idea and mould it into reality with a zeal and attention to detail that has easily exceeded our expectations. He is good-humoured, even under pressure, hard-working, and always remains passionate about the quality and elegance of his work. A real business partner and a creative maestro.
- Tony Meador
Co-founder and CEO, MobileGates - Stephan is a highly intelligent developer with very creative skills. I was fortunate to hire Stephan as CIO to develop mobile and web applications. He worked hard for several years for MobileGates and was always very reliable in completing projects timely. He would work late and weekends to meet deadlines. One of the areas that Stephan excelled in was the ability to get right to the solution and not over engineer the project. He was a quick study for new technologies and always stayed current on the latest web and mobile requirements. I was very impressed with Stephan's honesty and integrity and his passion to do a good job on whatever he worked on, whether it was a comprehensive back-end coding project or a front end graphic design and web development project.
- Michael Kantor
CIO, MobileGates - Stephan's willingness to experiment with new technologies helped ensure the success of a number of projects at MobileGates. I also worked with him on a number of projects where he was both easy to work with and effective at completing projects in a timely manner. He brought both technical skills (web technologies), artistic skills and new perspectives to MobileGates where he made important contributions. He is a person I've gone to for advice on CSS techniques long after we parted ways, and is someone I would hire if I had a suitable position for his skills.
- Raimo Malila
Vice-President, Nokia - Stephan is a very creative and innovative guy that can be trusted to deliver great results.
- Ari Aarnio
Senior Manager, Nokia - When I knew Stephan was very enthusiastic on creating new ideas and could express his thoughts in very nice way. I think his enthusiasm spread easily to other team members.
- Jouka Mattila
UX Specialist, Nokia - Stephan is one of the most creative person what I have met. He has good skills for writing and he knows a lot about different technological gadgets. He is future oriented but still he has a firm standing in present time. Stephan has also a good sense of humor.
- Steve Heminover
President, Aura Technologies - Stephan Meyers is one of the most creative individuals that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. His ideas and focus are unmatched with anyone else that I have hired in the past. His jokes, however, may still need some work...
Regarding 'We'
I see a lot of a consultants referring to themselves aswe, even when you know it's just one guy.
I think that sounds silly. I have a network of people I can call on if I need them, but I mostly get things done on my own.
You'll find that my cross-disciplinary talents lend themselves well to this. I'll be honest about the things I'm not great at, but for most clients, I can get it all done myself: faster, cheaper, and with better personal service
You can pay three times as much and get a team with a fancy office, wasting your time with mockups and endless presentations, only to have your pride and joy handed off to a kid just out of trade school...
or you can hire me and get the job done right.
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