HTML & CSS
Creating mobile first layouts using the BEM methodology and following the W3C standards. From simple layouts up to the most advanced ones using the latest techniques without forgetting about supporting the stupid not so smart browsers.
Hi, I'm Kevin. Passionate web developer, enthusiast LEGO builder (AFOL1), gadget freak and occasionally sporty too. Happily maried, and living in the Brussels area.
Since the age of 152 I'm passionated by the web. I had my first PC at the same age. It didn't take too long or I was building my first website in Microsoft FrontPage. Black background, limegreen text in Comic Sans MS and animated gifs overload. Those were the days. To make it public I used the well known Geocities.
As funny as it sounds now, back then it was a big deal for me. I created something that someone else at the other end of the world could see. How cool is that! So I knew what to do. Work hard to become an IT scientist. I was blessed. Some of us still don't know what they really want to do for a living, and I was 15 and I knew it.
People grow up. So do I. Started with a PC, evolved into Linux and became adult with a Mac. I find my way around all three of those systems, but my experience is that you can achieve so much more in less time with a Mac.
Good question. In the world of web we are at a point that no one can be good at all. So I made some choices based on experiences. I am a very good frontend developer. HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Am I the best? No. But I work hard to become the best. No day passes or I'm looking into new or existing techniques to become a better developer. I also am a good PHP developer. Not as good as frontend, but more than good enough to be part of your PHP developers team. PHP is my first love when it comes to dynamic websites.
Easy. I'm not a Java developer. I still know some things or two from the time I was learning it at school, and I have some work experience many years ago. So I can do small changes when I need to. But I do not have the pretense to call myself a Java developer. I am also not a .NET, C or Objective-C developer. So please don't contact me for such opportunities. You are wasting both our times.
I do not design either. Yes, I know my way around color usage, and yes I know how a good website looks like. But I don't do advanced designs. It's about getting the right people for the job, and I'm not a designer. I implement designs. Big difference.
I'm very interested in React Native, so that's what I'm currently learning. You can say it's too early to hire me for a React Native opportunity, or it must be that you can give me the time at the job to grow with it. I am a fast learner, and I have a great JavaScript background. It's totally up to you.
Creating mobile first layouts using the BEM methodology and following the W3C standards. From simple layouts up to the most advanced ones using the latest techniques without forgetting about supporting the stupid not so smart browsers.
The less the better. My number one goal when building a website is to make everything work without JavaScript, and then enhance it. Progressive Enhancement. Make it performant, secure and clean. Make it work.
My go to scripting language for personal projects that need to be dynamic. I used to build everything myself, but in the meantime I am klevr enough to use the Symfony framework. When I need a database, I go for MySQL. PHP and MySQL grew up together, it's a (cheap) killer combination.
I am a good developer. So I am a lazy developer. A good build system helps me being lazy. Gulp. Save a file, and the system takes care of it. Sass is compiled into CSS. JavaScript tests run. SVG icons are transformed into an iconfont. Images are optimized. Browser refreshes. I can work so much faster, and there is always checking someone if my HTML, CSS and JavaScript is by the rules. Love it.
Scrum. Kanban. Sprints. Daily stand-up. Retrospective. Product backlog. Product owner. Planning. Ok, enough. I know my way around Agile. I know what it takes to complete a sprint, and what the flow is. I do it on a daily base at work and I'm planning to do it at home too when I have kids.
Yes, I test my code. It's not the most awesome thing to do, but it helps a lot during development. When writing code you don't want to spend time going through the same scenarios over and over again to see if everything still works. No, you write some good tests that do all that for you. If your tests cover all possible scenarios, the end to end testing is a breeze. You can focus more on UI and other details. Don't get me wrong, you should still check all the written scenarios yourself, but it will go much faster.
No, I don't mean the video game. Or the movie. Although I played the NFS video games a lot. What I really mean is the performance of websites. Use a properly configuration for delivering static resources, gzip, caching headers, … It's impressive how so little changes can have such a massive effect. Last time I checked this current site had a 97 speed score on Google PageSpeed, and that's without the critical CSS part that I'm working on. It can mean the difference between a visitor that left the site before it was loaded because he was on a bad connection, and that same visitor who becomes a client after a succesful page visit.
More information will follow at the end of the project.
More information will follow at the end of the project.
Maintenance of existing websites that all shared a common codebase. HLN, 7sur7, De Morgen, AD, Goed Gevoel, Trouw, Parool and Volkskrant. Occasionally new features were implemented like Napoleon Games, FIFA World Cup 2014 support, … But most of the time it was fixing existing bugs and refactor code to prevent production issues.
Most of the time maintaining the existing Gopress platform, used by customers to read online newspapers, magazines, …. The platform is writen in PHP and uses XSLT and CSS to display the content to the customers.
Digipolis Gent was looking for a Symfony 2 developer for a short term project. An internal department of pest controllers was in desperate need of digitization. Until then everything was done on paper, and someone at the administration kept records of it on a computer. Thanks to the application the pest controllers could use an iPad to enter the information, and the administration could create / update appointments, get statistics, … Within two monts I've built it using the Symfony 2 framework, Twitter Bootstrap, some jQuery magic and an integration with Outlook to update the pest controllers calendars. They even won an award with it from the city of Gent.
My first client as a freelance developer. They hired me for updating some existing ATM screens. Those screens are driven by JavaScript to handle the interactions and pass through the commands given by the client to the backend. There is a custom framework that is used for all clients, and the possibility to adapt some features for each client. I worked mainly on the client feature side, not on the framework. For some changes I had to use my HTML and CSS skills too, but that was very basic.
At Keytrade Bank my main job was developing in PHP. Our web team had to maintain three websites. The public site with all the information about the Keytrade products, the secure site where customers are able to do all kind of transactions and at last the intranet site where coworkers could manage all the customers information, product information, … Beside PHP I also did the visual part of the websites. So HTML, CSS and JavaScript was also part of the job. I had a wonderful time at Keytrade Bank and I still have contact with some ex-coworkers.
At KBC I was active as a Java Developer on internal applications. I was responsible for maintaining existing and creating new functionalities. The engine behind those applications was Java in combination with an Oracle database.
Develop-it is my first professional experience. It's a small web development company creating and maintaining websites for businesses in the area. My main job was developing inside Dokeos (LMS & E-learning Suite) and KlasCement (a website made by and for teachers to exchange learning material). Both use PHP as main scripting language. Sometimes I had to develop inside Moodle, Joomla or Mambo.