4ab3346 (HEAD -> toon) This is me now
|\ \ Date:You can find me on Twitter at @to1ne[1]. I sometimes blog at | | | writepermission.com and there's more to read about me at | | | iotcl.com. | | |
| | | [1]: twitter.com/to1ne | | |
You can find me on Twitter at @to1ne[1]. I sometimes blog at | | | writepermission.com and there's more to read about me at | | | iotcl.com. | | |
| | | [1]: twitter.com/to1ne | | |
When Toon moved to the Gitaly team his day-to-day programming language changed | | | | | | | | | from Ruby to Golang. | | | | | | | | |
Interest in the Git[1] project kept growing, Toon wanted to be involved in that | | | | | | | | | project. Toon participated on the mailing list and when he was getting into | | | | | | | | | SHA256 support[2] he managed to get his first changes merged. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | [1]: git-scm.com | | | | | | | | | [2]: git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition | | | | | | | | |
After years of hard work Toon's efforts were recognized with a promotion to | | | | | | | | | Senior Backend Engineer. | | | | | | | | |
There was a need for people to review changes related to database use. It was | | | | | | | | | then Toon stepped forward and dove deep into PostgreSQL and became [1] a | | | | | | | | | database maintainer responsible of reviewing merge requests that make changes to | | | | | | | | | how the database is used, and ensure those changes work at scale. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | [1]: gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/issues/4710 | | | | | | | | |
In 2018 GitLab decided to migrate from Azure to GCP. GitLab Geo played a key | | | | | | | | | role in this migration. It allowed us to have a hot standby in GCP, so the | | | | | | | | | migration could happen with a minimal on downtime. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | Many skilled people, including Toon as one of the experts on the Geo team, made | | | | | | | | | the migration happen as smooth as possible. | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | [1]: about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/06/25/moving-to-gcp/ | | | | | | | | |
Because GitLab uses Golang for a few components, Toon started to learn about Go. | | | | | | | | He wrote some tools to learn about the language. | | | | | | | |
After working in the Platform team, Toon moved to the Geo team. That team is | | | | | | | | responsible of building a Geo-distributed solution into GitLab. With GitLab Geo | | | | | | | | customers can install GitLab at their different offices and have them | | | | | | | | synchronize data between those installations. This allows their employees to | | | | | | | | have quick access to everything to do their job. | | | | | | | |
Toon was responsible of the maintenance of the REST API, and he led the path to | | | | | | | | introduce API v4. All deprecations and breaking changes we wanted to make had to | | | | | | | | happen in the upcoming major release GitLab v9.0. | | | | | | | |
Most of the GitLab codebase is written in Ruby. While working in the GitLab | | | | | | | | Platform team, Toon dealed a lot with background workers powered by Sidekiq[1]. | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | [1]: sidekiq.org | | | | | | | |
Toon started in the so-called Platform team at GitLab. That team was responsible | | | | | | | for Git operations, Merge Requests, and more. | | | | | | |
After leaving 10to1 Toon never touched Obj-C again. No problem, because Swift | | | | | | | | was on the rise anyway. | | | | | | | |
During the interview process Toon was tasked to build a button (and backend | | | | | | | | code) to delete all branches that are merged into the default branch[1]. This | | | | | | | | change made him get the job and also was awarded as MVP for GitLab 8.14. | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | More of that work would follow once he was hired. | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | [1]: about.gitlab.com/releases/2016/11/22/gitlab-8-14-released/#delete-all-merged-branches | | | | | | | |
At 10to1 the first experience was gained with the awesome RDBMS PostgreSQL. | | | | | | | Thanks to the friendly and skilled colleagues, Toon learned about things like | | | | | | | proper Index practices, Enumerated Types, Materialized Views, and more. | | | | | | |
After playing around with Ruby in his free time, Toon finally got an opportunity | | | | | | | to work with those technologies professionally. | | | | | | |
Some projects at 10to1 involved building applications for iOS devices. | | | | | | |
At 10to1 projects for customers were built to demand. It was a great mix of | | | | | | different technologies with plenty of chances to learn new things. | | | | | |
The job at 10to1 also involved frontend work, mostly HTML and CSS. Although we | | | | | | mostly used static HTML with Ruby on Rails there was also one project where | | | | | | Ember.js. | | | | | |
After teaching himself Ruby, Toon wanted to get into mobile app development for | | | | | iOS. So he picked up a book from The Big Nerd Ranch and learned app development | | | | | with Objective-C. | | | | |
| | | | | He once pitched a mobile app at his employer, with a working prototype, but | | | | | there wasn't any interest because they opted for a web app instead. | | | | |
After a few years Toon got the opportunity to follow a three-day Advanced C++ | | | | | course. This was really insightful to learn about the internals of iterators and | | | | | traits and what not. | | | | |
| | | | | C++11 was around the corner, and there was plenty exciting stuff coming to the | | | | | language. | | | | |
While working with C++ all day, Toon grew an interest in Ruby and started | | | | playing around with it in his free time. | | | |
Software development for embedded Linux outdoor payment devices. | | | Achievements: | | | - Linux driver programming | | | - Hardware integration | | | - Event-driven & object-oriented application design in C++ | | | - Design & implementation of software authentication & encryption | | | - Maintenance & Certification of EMV Level 2 Contact Terminal Application Kernel | | |
At his first job Toon worked in C++. His job was building software for an | | | embedded Linux payment terminal device. These applications were written in C++, | | | but his job also involved bits of plain C when working on GNU/Linux kernel | | | drivers. | | |
This marks the end of Toon's education. | | | |
In 2008 Toon received his Master's degree at the KHK in Geel. | | | |
| | | | Toon's Master thesis was about speech technology. | | | |
C++ was the first real programming language Toon was thaught in school. A pretty | | | advanced language to get started with, but it thaught him a lot about | | | programming in general. | | |
Around this time, or maybe earlier, Toon started to build websites. Nothing | | exciting yet, mostly small projects for fun and friends. The interest in web | | technology never went away since. | |
There was an interest in technology from the start. So Toon chose to follow a | | Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education called | | "Industrial Sciences" at TIO in Overpelt. This included plenty of mathematics, | | combined with chemistry, physics, strength theory, and electronics. | |
Toon started going to the only elementary school in his home town Achel. |
Toon is born on a Sunday, right at noon, "Between the soup and the potatoes" as they would say.