I am a BCS (Professional Member) registered and RITTech certified Full-Stack Software Developer with 2+ years of full-time experience and a real passion for creating robust applications through the medium of clean and reusable code.

I have worked on web, mobile, desktop and API development to name a few, but I have a real passion for modern web and mobile development specifically and have ambitions to work with technologies such as React/React Native, Vue, Flutter etc. From a backend perspective I generally prefer working with APIs and am particularly keen to transition to .NET 5/6. Commercially however, my main experience is with C# .NET Framework MVC web applications.

I have a passion for user experience, doing things properly and pride myself on a high standard of work. I’ve had numerous comments in the past about the quality of my work with bugs being rare due to my meticulous nature and testing policy.

Agile work practices are at the core of how I like to work and I’ve used a few tools, such as Confluence/Jira, Azure DevOps etc. to plan and manage workflows for our team in the past.

What Interests Me

Working with modern technologies
Working in a positive team with a passion for software
Strong work/life balance - Remote and flexible working
Working on exciting, greenfield projects that allow me to express my creativity
Opportunity for personal development and always learning
I enjoy collaboration and working effectively as part of a team

Server-Side Technologies

I started my programming journey by learning basic C++ in the console and C# in Windows Forms. This is where I learned all the basics of programming (conditional statements, passing parameters between functions etc.). From here I quickly moved onto object-oriented programming using C# (in both Windows Forms and ASP.NET).

When I started my second year, I began to broaden my horizons and learnt object-oriented programming in C++ as well as learning Java from the ground up. I like going the extra mile when learning new skills in order to give myself the best possible chance in my career. I do this because it is something I genuinely have a passion for and enjoy doing every day.

In terms of back end development, I feel that I now have very strong knowledge when it comes to the Microsoft stack (C#, .NET MVC, T-SQL etc.) as well as the LAMP stack. I began learning PHP at the beginning of my second year in University and it's used in this website amongst other projects.

Web Technologies

Web Development is a big passion of mine (as you may be able to tell by this website) and is also the aspect of software development that I am most comfortable with. My first foray into Web Development was at the beginning of my first year in University and it was creating a personal portfolio website like this one. I learnt a considerable amount about HTML and CSS in this time however it wasn't until my role with TSS where I really got my teeth into the finer details of Web Development. I learned JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap and went much deeper into HTML/CSS (alongside other back end/database languages).

I decided that with the additional skills and knowledge I had compared to when I first created my personal portfolio website, that I could recreate it to be considerably better, more user friendly and functional than the old one. That's when I decided to create this website. I have left the link to the GitHub repository for the original site in the projects tab in order to display the progression of my skills.

Between the massive step up in focus on web development in my second year of University, and getting hands on experience working for TSS, my web development skills came on leaps and bounds. I now find myself being a competent web developer with a good eye for detail and design and a massive focus on User Experience.

Planning, Source Control & Databases

Source Control

For University and personal projects, I use GitHub Desktop for all my source control. This is partly because it gives me a platform to share my work to a wider audience and also because I find it to be a really user friendly bit of software. TSS introduced me to Team Foundation Server as a method of source control and through using it every day I am comfortable in using that too.

Project Planning

Project planning is something I consider to be extremely important to any software development process. I have used the Atlassian package (as part of a University project) including Jira as well as Azure DevOps which I use on a daily basis at work. I use these tools to their full effect for implementing agile processes and using scrum boards, user stories etc. I also use them as an effective bug logging tool and find they are a great way to manage work between developers.

Databases

I have used SQL and databases in a number of projects, both in University and in the workplace. In University I have used both Oracle SQL Developer and MySQL (alongside PHP) whereas I have used SQL Server Management Studio in a commercial environment. SQL is something I feel very comfortable with irrespective of environment. I also have experience in using the NOSQL database, firebase.

Mobile Development

My main experience with mobile development came from a University project. The spec was to build an app as a prototype for a local company in Sheffield who wanted to scope out a project before they undertook it themselves. The app was built in Android Studio with Java and was for door to door salesmen to use in the field.

It featured a login system followed by a map that showed a pin to represent every local business in that salespersons catchment area. There was then colour coding to display whether the business was a current customer, previous customer or new prospect. The pins were then of a different opacity value depending on how rich of a prospect they were based on a formula I worked out. You could then click on the pin and it would then display all the known information about that company. It was linked with a firebase database to handle all the necessary transactions.

Josh Warburton

About Me