Perfecting human learning. Research into learning methodologies for the new millennium. I test hypotheses by regularly providing free training and coaching to new developers/testers.

Development of learning methodologies and curricula; training; mentoring; coaching; and public speaking. Consulting on talent acquisition/retention, training, team building, and career development, as well as reduction of cognitive footprint.

Most recent projects:

* HAT Teams, a year-long experiment in just-in-time training using the Paperhat methodology: four dev teams of volunteer junior devs and testers to architect and build serverless applications for charity and open source projects (legalcheckup.org.nz) while learning front-end development and testing with JavaScript, React, and Cypress.

* hanalytics.ltd, a serverless, Svelte/Sapper static site built on AWS using Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, API Gateway, CloudFront, Route 53, and Simple Email Service. Mobile-first, highly accessible, user-friendly, with full SEO.

In progress: a screening application for new hires following the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Founder, Director, Chief Investigator

Seasoned programmer, web developer, software architect, engineering coach, and consultant for hire for bespoke work on a contract basis. Permanent positions also considered. I have reached the point in my career where I do what interests and challenges me.

Currently, I focus on functional programming in JavaScript with React (or Svelte) and GraphQL or equivalent on the client side, and numerous server-side technologies and databases including AWS. When I teach programming, this is what I teach.

Owner

* Mentoring of students both short and long term for JavaScript, React, Ruby, Rails, HTML, CSS, node.js, Webpack, ES6/7, and more, all remotely.
* Long-term mentoring of a young woman in Nigeria who is now a successful senior developer in Canada. (This was through Andela, but I was subcontracted from Codementor.)
* Wrote and taught their first online React course.

Mentor/Teacher

Did coaching, mentoring, curricula development, talent acquisition, community outreach, training, and much more. Best job ever because it required such a diverse skill set and allowed me to help so many different people.

* As a member of the Digital Technical Leadership Team (architects, coaches, tech leads, led by the Director of Engineering), advised and assisted with significant and broad structural changes across all of Technology and Digital.
* Facilitated dozens of meetings to help various groups to work together and to adopt new technologies and processes. Generally, I was a problem solver.
* Architected and built a learning management system (LMS) called Learning Tracks for internal use to up-skill/cross-skill employees using just-in-time learning. Built with React, Redux, GraphQL (Postgraphile), PostgreSQL, etc. running on OpenShift fully pipelined.
* Created a "screening app" for screening job candidates to test not only technical proficiency, but cultural fit, attention-to-detail, interpersonal skills, and more.
* Helped to redesign the API layer from the ground up using best practices.
* Advocated for and coached developers, testers, etc. in the latest technologies, including AWS, OpenShift, Kafka, FP/FRP, Cypress, RxJS, declarative style, OSS, open standards, etc.
* Developed multiple curricula and other documentation to spread and standardise knowledge and practices and speed adoption across Digital with regard to development, testing, platforms (cloud), APIs, etc.

Much more. I repeat: Best job ever. Left when they disestablished the role.

Technical/Engineering Coach

18 months on a bespoke, greenfield project to build a custom form renderer, currently used on thousands of forms across the bank and has by some estimates saved the bank millions of dollars.

* Architected the entire library, from start to finish.
* Led the shift to a functional and functional reactive paradigm for the front end, including a strong emphasis on declarative style and referential transparency.
* Built the library as a set of npm modules used in many different code bases around the bank, including the rendering module (React), a state module (Redux/Redux-Observable), a validation module (FP JS), a common-code base module, and a "mapper" module that mapped legacy JSON schemas to a much more powerful internal schema.

Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

Hired to rewrite the curriculum from Ruby on Rails to JavaScript.

* Introduced just-in-time learning and other methods from my Paperhat Methodology for learning/teaching.
* Flipped the curriculum to put the most important topics earlier the course.
* Rewrote the "Phase 0" curriculum (the part done at home before the course) to state-of-the-art JS, CSS, HTML, HTTP, UX, and accessibility in a multi-threaded approach.
* Wrote dozens of JavaScript challenges with full documentation teaching the latest JavaScript (ES6) in a functional, immutable way (recursion; use of map, reduce, filter, etc.; simple monads; etc.).

Curriculum Developer & Senior Teacher

Web site and database development; front end design; UX; information architecture; user-friendly, usable, and accessible interface design; technical consulting.

* Architected and built dozens of sites and applications -- often including design, testing, etc. -- for businesses small and large, schools, non-profit organizations, and the government, including the University of Washington, PG&E, Roseville Electric, Alameda Power & Telecom, WADI Science Center (Egypt), various companies in Norway and Mexico, and more.
* Worked primarily with Scala (Lift, Circumflex, Xitrum), Ruby (Rails, Sinatra), JavaScript/CoffeeScript (Node.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS). Many databases, including PostgreSQL and MySQL, SQL Server, BaseX (XML), Neo4j, ArangoDB, MongoDB, RethinkDB, CouchDB, OrientDB, and more.
* Did technical consulting for various projects, most notably selection of a new CRM system for Alameda Power & Telecom.
* Wrote an on-line training program in DHTML (no, really, it was the '90s) for the California ISO (electrical power transmission).
* Lots of database work and data modeling, mostly with SQL Server (or Access) and PostgreSQL (before it became super popular).
* Maintained several Linux servers (also IIS) using Gentoo, CentOS, RedHat, Fedora, Ubuntu, PureOS, and more, along with Apache, nginx, lighttpd -- even used G-WAN (C-based!).

Managing Partner

Immersive technical training and consulting on same: development of immersive curricula; pedagogy; assessments; instructor training; marketing of immersive-style courses; and more.

* Provided consulting on curriculum development and pedagogies for immersive training to MaGIC, Malaysia on multiple programs.
* Mentored and provided architecting advice to a new developer as he built his first app for a Hong Kong startup.
* Assisted in the early prototype development of WHUB (whub.io) -- founder Farzam was one of my students.

Director

Lead instructor for a 12-week immersive web development course (WDI), taking a couple dozen students at a time from barely tech literate to junior web developers ready for employment, while developing and refining the curriculum and coaching fellow instructors towards taking on the lead role.

* Opened the London market, then the Los Angeles market, then the Hong Kong market (for WDI) before teaching twice more in Hong Kong.
* Wrote my own curricula (there wasn't one when I started), gradually creating what would become the full Paperhat Methodology for just-in-time training. With each class, we made a major leap forward, with my final class learning more than I ever thought possible in just 12 weeks.
* Taught HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails 4, jQuery, fat-clients (AngularJS, Meteor), Node.js, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and more. Also, Agile process, scrums, project management, user stories, wireframing, estimation, deployment, etc.

WDI Lead Instructor

Developed and managed the Tales of the Cocktail web site.

* Built a bespoke content management system in Scala backed by the BaseX XML database -- everything in XML using XQuery to create the pages.
* The CMS included a bespoke caching system and was blindingly fast. Lots of temporal logic. And an administrative backend using ExtJS, which was, frankly, awful to use.

Webmaster/Web Developer

Worked with the School of Information on advanced personal information management systems using C#, .Net, and COM objects inserted into MS Office, as well as with RDF, Owl, and ontologies. Fun work.

For the UW's College of Education, I worked as the sole programmer/developer/architect (though briefly with an assistant) for both the BEACONS project and its successor, Check, Connect, and Expect -- a $4 million four-year government-sponsored project.

* Built a complex data entry application with PHP, S, and PostgreSQL for tracking elementary school students with behavioral disabilities as they moved through an experimental behavior modification program.
* Generated numerous reports in S (statistics) to support reports to the government.
* Rebuilt and improved the application in Ruby on Rails when it became available (before version 1).
* Built supporting websites using Scala, the Lift Framework (and others).
* All code fully standards-compliant and state-of-the-art.
* Wrote column-reflow scripts in JavaScript, and edit-in-place tables with AJAX in 2004, long before they were available elsewhere.
* Wrote possibly the first ever grid layout library for JavaScript, which I used in production.

Senior Programmer

I began writing JavaScript not long after Brendan Eich invented it. I have worked with a great many libraries and frameworks, including all the big ones. Currently, I focus on React/Redux/redux-observable, GatsbyJS and Next.js, and now Svelte/Sapper. I prefer an FP/FRP approach when possible. Happy to use TypeScript when it's called for. I'm also proficient with Node.js, Express.js, Koa, etc., have built npm modules and libraries, and am currently picking up Deno. I have also taught all of the above.

For the past 3+ years I've been moving into serverless tech. Even before that I was using Firebase, Heroku, etc. But now I use Netlify for small projects, and AWS for larger ones -- by hand, or with CloudFormation, using VPCs, API Gateway, Route53, S3, EC2, DynamoDB or RDS/PostgreSQL, Lambda, SES, and much more.

I  was an early convert to the semantic web and web accessibility through the W3C WAI. I sat on the W3C Working Group to update the WCAG accessibility guidelines to 2.0. I have worked with XML/XQuery/etc., RDF/OWL, metadata (Dublin Core), itemprops, SVG, MathML, and more. I have also taught most of the above.

HTML is not a toy language! I use it properly -- semantically and accessibly.

I have created over the past 2+ decades a methodology for learning (and teaching) in a just-in-time, fully-immersive way. I taught officers and enlisted personnel how to operate nuclear reactors. I taught industrial safety, welding and fitting to railcar and barge builders. I taught C, Java, HTML, UML, etc. to university students. I did freelance curriculum development for industry, and taught blueprint reading and more at community colleges. And I was one of the first people to teach web development in a 12-week bootcamp for General Assembly, opening their London, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong courses as well as converting the curriculum from Ruby on Rails to ES6 at Enspiral Dev Academy in Wellington. I have mentored or taught hundreds of people. 

I am currently writing a book on my teaching/learning methods in my voluminous spare time.

Personal details

Charles M.

Summary

Technical skills

Work Experience