On Wednesday, May 18, 2016, Ty Landercasper wiki.nospam@ibudesigns.com wrote:
I'm a self employed programmer who's taking a bit of time off
from his
current project as a way to gain some fresh perspective and I thought I'd use that free time to help out a community I really appreciate. Wikipedia
is
one of the best things the internet has to offer and it has certainly
helped
me out a bunch of times, so it seemed like the place to volunteer.
My problem is that is that I haven't done any sort of
collaborative
opensource project before, (the closest I've come to opensource is writing the compare plugin for Notepad++), and I'm not entirely sure what the best way to go about it is.
I was wondering if someone there is willing to play the role of
onboarding
manager. You know, show me the ropes, assign some good relevant tasks to
get
a feel for things, the standard stuff. I'd really appreciate it, and I
know
I can contribute a lot to the community once I get on my feet.
As for my skill set, while I don't have a lot of experience with
PHP, I do
have a lot of experience with just about everything else. I've done game development, mobile development, web development and even some good old fashioned desktop development, (not that anyone still uses desktop apps).
I
have no doubt that I can pick up the language quickly enough and I'm sure Google (the great teacher of all things) will help me figure out the rest.
I'm attaching my resume, so that you can get a feel for my
experience.
(Plus it just seems like the thing to do in this situation.)
I'm looking forward to getting started! Ty Landercasper Ty@ibudesigns.com
RESUME:
OBJECTIVE: I'm one of those programmers who got into it for the love of
programming
and it shows. I've programmed on everything from the TI-83 to the Xbox
360,
and if there's a skill I don't have than all I need is an excuse to learn
it
and I will. I turned a hobby project into a business that supported me for several years so I've learned a lot about how to make an amazing product that succeeds even in the ruthless market that is the app store, as well
as
the softer skills that you need to run a business.
I'm looking for a good home. A start up or a startup like environment
where
there's more work than time and everyone has to wear multiple hats, and figure out how to get things done and even what can be done, because those are the environments that I thrive in.
COMPUTER SKILLS: Visual Studio, C#,C++, Java, C, Visual Basic 4+ years iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile development Unity, Flash, Actionscript 2.0, ActionScript 3.0, Flex framework,
Silverlight
ASP.NET, AJAX, HTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript, JSP Thirteen years experience with .NETEXPERIENCE: Owner Pixelality, Seattle, WA (7/14 to present) Created The Virtual Window a device that keeps track of your head
and turns
your TV into a realistic window! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlEwnG-9O8A Used Kinect and Wii-mote based tracking Modified Unreal Engine to support Off-axis projection Used computer vision code to anaylize a video stream and find the
head.
Owner SupportStream, Seattle, WA (4/15 to present) https://supportstream.solutions/Supportee Funding model that allows people to donate a dollar a month to
their
favorite charities, artists or other things they care about. Created Marketing campaign that will eventually be used to drive
donators
to help their favorite causes : https://supportstream.solutions/ ASP.NET backend. Paypal integration for payments. Went through the application
process for
advanced functionality. Cross-Site scripting with iframes Used JQuery for animations and popups. Custom designed logo and various CSS changes
Contractor Big Finish Games (not Big Fish), Salt Lake City, UT (12/13 to
3/14)
Programmed puzzles for the continuation of my all time favorite
video game!
Scripted both 2D and 3D puzzles using Unity and C#Owner Comic Reader Mobi, Seattle, WA (4/09 to present) http://comicreader.mobi Software allows fullsized comics to be read on small screens Several unique and intuitive UI features to make using the
program easier.
(Clicking on text to have it pop out. Realistic page turn effect when dragging from sides. Drag page down from top to access controls) Automatically detects text in image and pops out when touched
(patent pending)
Out for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Android, Windows
Phone 7,
Linux, PC and Mac OS X (Even have a prototype for the Xbox 360!) Original version built from scratch for each platform. Latest version uses .NET/Mono technology to share code base among
all the
devices (Except blackberry) Was one of the top 100 grossing ipad apps Created Silverlight version which allows you to demo the app
without buying it
Reviewed on Gizmodo!
http://gizmodo.com/5511926/best-ipad-comic-reader-comic-zeal-vs-comic-reader...
Implemented effective piracy prevention for iPhone version. Resolution independent code scales to any screen size Modified jpeg reader to handle large progressive jpegs on low
memory devices
Built an entire object oriented UI library from scratch to easemultiplatform development
Mobile Developer Inrix, Seattle, WA (7/13 to 1/14) Developed parts of the Inrix Traffic app for both iPhone and
Android platforms.
Built a prototype turn by turn navigation system for the app.Mobile Developer Pulsar Informatics, Seattle, WA (2/12 to 5/13) Lead developer for app for iphone and Android that helped keep
track of
sleep and brain performance. Software was used by International Space Station, Fedex, Navy, and Department of Transportation for sleep and alertness studies. Worked with Bluetooth LE connectivity.
Flash Developer Microsoft, Seattle, WA (10/08 to 4/09) Wrote commercial websites in flash to advertise various products. Lead Developer for site: http://theguysmanual.msn.com/ Converted artistic vision into functional website
Software Engineer Interactive Alchemy, Phoenix, AZ (1/06 to 6/08) Flypaper: (http://www.flypaper.net) Won “The Viagra Award for Performance Enhancement Under Pressure” Full software release cycle. From prototype to final build. Improved “Story Map” layout performance from several seconds to
instant by
rewriting the layout algorithm. Cut page load times in half by creating a custom C#/Flash socket
connection
Wrote “Single Swf” implementation, which dynamically injects
files into a
precompiled swf. Wrote pure AJAX pager for website, which allows near instant page
changes
Used XAML to allow the program to render content off the website
as if it
were a winforms application Constantly worked with several different languages (Javascript,
C#,
ActionScript) on a daily basis, depending on the required task Modified network site to use NTLM/forms authentication, so
network users
didn’t have to log in, but allowed outside users to continue using the
Forms
sign in Used double buffering, caching and other GDI tricks to
significantly
improve the speed and appearance of the application Extended many winforms controls to have new look and feel Wrote memory file management system, preventing the need to
write files to
a temporary location Wrote custom logging for Flash application, dramatically
simplifying
debugging problems on clients machines Used ASP.NET’s URL rewriting to share common files among several
different
Flash applications Worked with clients on several projects which often required the modification of unfamiliar and undocumented code Interviewed several applicants for both the product and web teams
Programmer FLEXfone – Brussels, Belgium (6/03 to 12/05) FlexVoIP: (http://www.flexfone.net/flexvoip/prodinfo.html) Client side is written in C#, server is written in ASP.NET, MySQL
database
Makes use of alpha blending in order to allow the customer to
change colors
of almost any item. Automatically updates itself on startup NetGuardian: (http://www.ibudesigns.com/NetGuardian.ppt) Client side is written in C#, server is written in ASP.NET using
C#
Multilingual supportOpen source Projects: Notepad++: Compare Plugin (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/download.php) Shows the differences between two documents Written in C++ Highlights and aligns added, deleted, modified, and moved lines Included in version 4.8 and higher
EDUCATION: The University of Arizona – Tucson, Arizona Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, December 2003 Minor in Mathematics and Japanese Computer Science GPA: 3.424 Overall GPA: 3.035 Team leader for project to program the game Qubic Graduated in 3.5 years Awarded the Charles Blixt Scholarship BattleSharp: (http://www.ibudesigns.com/BattleSharp.zip) Uses unsafe code to directly access memory in order to speed up
rendering
Peer to peer mode allows players to play each other over a lanQubic: (http://www.ibudesigns.com/Qubic/) Written as a Java applet Pseudo 3d rotating grid Server side software allows online multiplayer matches Graphics Renderer: (http://www.ibudesigns.com/Graphics.png
)
Basic graphics engine Renders parallelepipeds (blocks and cubes) and spheres. Implements shading, basic, diffuse, and specular lighting and
raytracing
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi Ty, welcome aboard!
First off, if you havent seen it, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker has some helpful links.
While you are still learning the ropes, I highly recommend idling on our irc channels (#wikimedia-dev and #mediawiki on freenode) People on those channels can answer questions in real time, and there's plenty of learning opportunities just listening.
We have quite a large variety of projects. I reccomend poking your head in a couple to get a feel for what you are most interested in. Dont worry too much about lack of knowladge of php - it will probably be pretty easy to pick up given your experiance with other languages. Also many things are written in js or another language and not php
If you're interested in mediawiki core (the main wiki engine) step 0 is to set up a copy locally for development (see page i linked above). Then its best to choose a trivial bug to get the hang of things. If your not sure what to choose, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T117385 is a possibility (chosen out of a hat, if you dont like that one feel free to choose something else)
I hope that helps. Please dont hesitate to ask if youhave questions, get stuck, or need more guidance.
Cheers, -- bawolff