git me

7aab912 HEAD -> toon This is me now

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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

d4e32b5 jobs job: Professional career until now

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2a74a9b skills skill: All my technical skills

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87175c2 skill/golang skill: Use golang professionally

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When Toon moved to the Gitaly team his day-to-day programming language changed from Ruby to Golang.

17c3c5e job/gitlab Transition to Gitaly team

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82f3ab3 skill/c skill: Learning about the Git source code

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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

5bf285f job: Promoted to Senior Backend Engineer

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After years of hard work Toon's efforts were recognized with a promotion to Senior Backend Engineer.

d081774 skill/postgres skill: PostgreSQL database performance reviews

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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

225e784 achievement: Contribute to the migration to GCP

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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/

d592277 skill: Programming in Golang

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Because GitLab uses Golang for a few components, Toon started to learn about Go. He wrote some tools to learn about the language.

3296a7e job: Transition to GitLab Geo team

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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.

f342b8e achievement: Lead introduction of API v4

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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.

1d05764 skill/ruby skill: Backend with in Ruby

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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

96f6cb8 job: Start at GitLab as Backend Developer

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Toon started in the so-called Platform team at GitLab. That team was responsible for Git operations, Merge Requests, and more.

8d91d3c job: Switching jobs

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40f5e88 skills: End of using Obj-C

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After leaving 10to1 Toon never touched Obj-C again. No problem, because Swift was on the rise anyway.

0a88d6a job/10to1 job: Resigned at 10to1

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bfa7363 skill/web skill: GitLab web development

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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

9b120dd skill: First experience with PostgreSQL

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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.

5ed2e04 skill: Use Ruby professionally

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After playing around with Ruby in his free time, Toon finally got an opportunity to work with those technologies professionally.

f433428 skill/obj-c skill: Use Obj-C professionally

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Some projects at 10to1 involved building applications for iOS devices.

ee32a1b job: Start at 10to1 as Developer

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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.

3a57e61 skill: Build websites professionally

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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.

3d244b6 job/tokheim job: Resigned at Tokheim

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e829876 skill: Mobile development with Objective-C

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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.

f9a9597 skill: Advanced C++ course

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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.

3e68f6e skill: Programming in Ruby

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While working with C++ all day, Toon grew an interest in Ruby and started playing around with it in his free time.

a7d749f job: Start at Tokheim Turnhout as Software Engineer

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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

38d1aa4 skill: Use C/C++ professionally

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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.

cd31090 edu: Finished education

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This marks the end of Toon's education.

abae23f education edu: Graduation as Master of Science, Electronics - ICT

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In 2008 Toon received his Master's degree at the KHK in Geel.

Toon's Master thesis was about speech technology.

953a905 skill: Programming in C++

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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.

c941206 skill: Web development with HTML & CSS

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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.

ec1e9f5 edu: Start Education at KHK Geel

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671ae3e edu: Graduation in Industrial Sciences

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3303e36 edu: Start High school

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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.

77ce9a6 edu: Last day of elementary school

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783c704 edu: First day of elementary school

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Toon started going to the only elementary school in his home town Achel.

b8da42b Initial commit

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Toon is born on a Sunday, right at noon, "Between the soup and the potatoes" as they would say.