Welcome
My name is Michael. I have been working in Front-end Web Development for the past 15 years for Capgemini, an international IT Services and Consulting firm. I am a very passionate troubleshooter, creative problem solver and I like to think outside of the box when debugging code. I have been using Bootstrap for about 7 years for responsive design. I am WCAG Certified and have experience with accessibility and screenreaders like NVDA and JAWS.
I have years of experience in troubleshooting problems and have acquired great technical instincts in approaching solutions to problems using past similar experiences as a reference.
My approach to development can be summed up in several personal common sense principles:
- Don't reinvent the wheel. If there is a fix for something that already exists in the codebase or other location, be aware of it and use it. Save time and maintain consistency throughout.
- My three methods of working for successful code delivery:
- Speed: Delivering code on-time. Be fast, but don't rush and sacrifice accuracy. Having the coding maturity to realize when the workload gets too heavy and you fall behind and ask for help from the team. Always be aware of changing priorities so you can deliver on-time.
- Accuracy: Taking the necessary time to do the work itself, spot check the work, review in mobile and desktop, have an awareness of the impact of the changes and avoid side effects. However, don't spend too much time being a perfectionist and sacrifice speed.
- Best Practices: Best practices is
not just about writing the code for yourself but also keeping your teammates in mind
as well. Writing comments and writing the code through the eyes of someone that has
never seen it before is key. Shortcuts and technical debt should be avoided if
possible so you and your teammates do not get slowed down by it in the future.
Following best practices can also help us avoid unnecessary validation and
accessibility errors.
“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live” ― John Woods
- Less code is more. Code that doesn't exist can't produce an accessibility error or produce a bug. Keeping code simple, refactoring and keeping it efficient for others.
- Have a "Microscope" and "Telescope" mentality: Like a 'football quarterback in the pocket', there needs to always be a timer in your head where you put down the microscope of deep code work and come out to see the big picture, check emails, messages and make sure that priorities have not changed.
- Always be situationally aware and keep the big picture and business requirements in mind. If something doesn't make sense or is inconsistent with the requirements, ask.
- Make sure there is a backup to fall back on in version control when experimenting with code or files if it needs to be restored.
Some other tools that I use for Accessibility and Validation testing are:
- WAVE Chrome Extension
- Validity Chrome Extension
- BrowserStack to debug device-specific issues