I'm a huge coding enthusiast with a degree in English Language and Linguistics. Several years of commercial experience in a number of industries has helped me to develop my problem-solving and creative skills, as well as understand what it is that drives me. More than anything else, I'm looking for a company that will help me to continue my learning journey and allow me to make valuable contributions within a team that really 'clicks'.
| GitHub Repo | Live URL | Project Description |
|---|---|---|
| STEMettes Royalty Loyalty | stemettes-master.herokuapp.com | For my final project at Makers Academy, I worked with three other students to deliver an app that gamified the feedback experience for a charity. Following the brief provided to us by our client STEMettes, we produced a responsive web app built on Rails with a front-end for users and back-end for administrators. |
| Journeats | journeats.com | Having just been introduced to manipulating the data from APIs, I took part in a hackathon and created a restaurant aggregator with a team of four others. I was responsible for the UI and utilised AngularJS to manage updating the view with the data received from various public APIs. |
| Multiplayer Rock, Paper, Scissors | rockpaperscissors-tomcoakes.herokuapp.com | Working solo, this was my first foray into building a fully-tested Sinatra app that follows the MVC design pattern. At the time I worked on this I hadn't yet learned about databases and ORMs so instead made use of browser sessions to implement the multiplayer functionality. |
| Angular Todo App | toms-todos.herokuapp.com | I built this simple application using the JavaScript framework AngularJS. Although it's currently incomplete without a database to act as a persistence layer, it's built on a node/express back-end which was a learning experience in itself. |
| Twitter Clone | chitterapp-tomcoakes.herokuapp.com | Through working on this project, I learned to create a user management system in Ruby without relying on technology like Devise/Warden. It also gave me vital experience of using SQL to directly manipulate a database - which has come in particularly helpful for debugging issues with ActiveRecord migrations. |
As my first programming language, Ruby will always have a special place in my heart. I love the syntactic sugar, but what I enjoy most of all is the thriving global community. I have a solid working understanding of the following frameworks and technologies:
- Rails/ActiveRecord
- Sinatra/DataMapper
- RSpec/Cucumber/Capybara
- PostgreSQL
- Rake/Karma
- Twitter Bootstrap
I've begun to explore the worlds of client-side and server-side JavaScript but feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible. I'm excited to experiment with up and coming frameworks, as well as build something substantial in node with a websockets library.
- Node.js/Express.js
- Jasmine/Protractor
- AngularJS
- jQuery/AJAX
- Bower/NPM package managers
- Grunt
I have an appreciation for clean and effective design that is as functional as it is beautiful. I'm not the most technically proficient designer, but I have a good eye for what works and what doesn't.
- Previously the in-house designer at Just IT Training and Recruitment, responsible for all print and web material.
- Very experienced at using Adobe Creative Suite to produce easily maintainable branding or mockups for web/mobile sites.
- Designed the front-ends of both Journeats and the STEMettes Royalty Loyalty app (designed for mobile devices)
I developed my writing style at university and learned to apply it within both B2B and B2C contexts whilst working as a marketing executive and chief copywriter.
- Through personally managing and writing the applications for several awards and accreditations, my previous company were shortlisted for Great Place to Work, REC Awards and Sunday Times Top 100 Companies.
- I often wrote articles about jobs in tech whilst working in the IT recruitment space, a few of which are below:
I wrote about my experience of the three-month long bootcamp here and developed the following skills during my time there:
- Versatile pair programmer and collaborator
- Independent learner and problem-solver
- Object Oriented Design following SOLID principles
- Model-View-Controller design pattern
- Test-Driven and Behaviour-Driven Development
- Agile project management, SCRUM and Kanban
- BA English Language and Linguistics - 2:1
- Media and Marketing Officer for Darwin College Student Committee
Makers Academy (April 2015 to present)
Alumni Helper tasked with assisting current students with their coding issues and helping them to work through the course material.
Just IT Training and Recruitment (April 2013 to December 2014)
Versatile Marketing Executive serving lead generation and brand awareness for three businesses in distinct sectors.
West Mercia Police Service (August 2012 to April 2013)
Member of a small team on an 8-month project involving the organisation of police crime files.
Lasercomb Group (July 2011 to May 2012)
Customer Services Executive for an industry-leader in the manufacturing of die tooling.
- 07545 215 358
- tomcoakes@gmail.com
- Personal Portfolio Site
- Twitter Feed
- GitHub Profile