Digital Resumé of Ryan Heath

Education

West Virginia University

• December 2007 MSSE → Master’s in Software Engineering
• December 2005 BSCpE → Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering
• December 2005 BSEE → Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering

All degrees were achieved with honors.

Experience

Professional

• Summer Internships 2004 and 2005 Information Research Corporation
• Full-time since January 2006 Information Research Corporation

Most of my professional experience was provided by IRC, a small software company. I’d say 80-90% of the projects I’ve worked on were related to e-learning (LMS’s, CMS’s, content tools, collaboration, etc). The beginning half of my career with IRC was with ASP.NET (VB and C#) and the latter half was/is with Ruby on Rails.

Rails is becoming the choice framework at IRC, as we currently have several applications in progress and a few more being mapped out.

I’m was/am also responsible for designing the front-end’s of the web applications produced by IRC.

Personal

Personal projects really allow me to push myself and what I can do. There are no clients, managers, bosses, etc to guide requirements or decisions. That’s where I believe my talents shine the most.

I’ve been developing personal applications and maintaining a personal site since around 2004. I’ve been using Rails since 2005. Needless to say, Ruby on Rails is what I choose to develop in.

Programming Languages

• Ruby on Rails → I’ve built over 15 applications in Rails and I know Ruby as a stand-alone language. I love it.
• XHTML/CSS → I have extensive knowledge of quality markup and cross-browser CSS programming.
• Javascript → I have experience producing my own Javascript, as well as complying with libraries such as: prototype, jQuery, script.aculo.us, mootools, etc.
• C#.NET → I’ve written a couple of applications in C#.
• VB.NET → I’ve assistance with the maintenance of a LMS written entirely in VB.NET.
• PHP → PHP was my first dive into web application programming, as it was free and easy to learn.
• C/C++ → Mostly from college projects, but I have years and years of experience with it (although, not concerning the web).
• SQL → I have several years of experience with SQL and relational-database design. I’ve used Oracle, PL/SQL, SQL Server, Transact SQL, and MySQL.

Web Technologies

• AJAX → I have extensive experience with AJAX for performance intensive reasons and simple UI reasons.
• MVC → I’m quite familiar with the Model-View-Controller web architecture, as that is what’s used by Rails. It’s a perfect way to organize a code base.
• Web Services → I have experience with REST, SOAP, and XML-RPC. I’ve exposed and consumed web services of all three of those types. My preferred method is REST.

Best Practices

Object-Oriented Programming & Design

I have a solid grasp of OOP principles and can design a code base accordingly. Ruby is completely object-oriented and I have learned a lot from using it over the years. Plus I’ve had several courses on the topic in my graduate studies.

Testing

I believe in testing code with code. A good testing framework is efficient, accurate, and trustworthy. I have experience with the standard Unit, Functional, and Integration tests as provided by the Rails framework (courtesy of Ruby).

While there are several great testing options for Rails these days, rspec is my framework of choice.

Version Control

I keep all of my code under version control, and my current means to do that is via Subversion. I’ve been reading more and more about Git, and may be making a switch in the near future.

References

Available upon request.