Tim Case RubyonRails Developer

Initially I was brought in to work on the frontend of a rapidly evolving rails app and later my role expanded to being the principal developer of the app. The challenge with a greenfield startup trying to find it's position in the marketplace is in trying to figure out what features should be built that showcase what makes an app unique and attractive. Working with the CEO and CTO I was able to quickly iterate on a voting feature of the app that allowed potential co-owners to vote on a vacation home that they were interested in. This feature ended up being one of the most popular features of the app and was a key differentiator from other vacation home co-ownership apps.

In the next iteration of WingTask I replaced the Material Components based UI with a custom UI of hand built web components. The benefit of this is a UI that can serve IOS users and Android users with a neutral bias. Abandoning Material Design also allowed me to create a branding for WingTask that was more unique, and finally I think it just looks better.

1bios is a complex set of RubyonRails applications that serve different populations of users. It has a web admin area that is mostly Rails and React. It also has a mobile frontend that is React being served from a Rails API. The app is unique in that it's a monorepo containing about 3 or 4 different Rails apps being serviced by a Ruby middle tier library.

I did everything for WingTask from the graphic design of the Logo to the provisioning of the servers and everything in between. For the look and feel I designed the app in Sketch and then coded the front end using a combination of Elm's Material Design Components for Web library along with Zurb's Foundation 6 for responsive layout. Elm was chosen as the frontend framework because I feel it's a lot more productive for developer than other frameworks, particularly React. A Rails api only backend provides access to the data for the separate Elm frontend app. The Rails app makes use of a custom ruby gem I wrote to execute taskwarrior commands. Taskwarrior is a CLI app written in C and is the only part of the WingTask stack that I didn't build. Finally both the front end and back end are hosted on as single Linode server which I keep provisioned using Chef configuration management.

Worked on an unreleased app called Docsketch which is an electronic signature signing app similar to HelloSign or RightSignature. Using React I created the ability for a person to drag and drop signing elements onto an uploaded document in order to specify what needs to be executed for the signing. For example dragging a date from the sidebar onto the document would specify a date needed to be added by one or both parties. The drag and drop was provided React's DnD library and all of the advanced features both of it and HTML 5 drag and drop api were utilized so that the user interface was intuitive and worked as expected.

I created the initial version of the Taxjar Ruby API wrapper.

Econify created an app for selling parts in an Ebay like market for the large machine industries. For instance, it allowed people who had spare parts for locomotive trains to sell parts to one another. I worked generally on fixing bugs and adding features to this marketplace app.

Harvard Law commissioned End Point to build an app called H2O which is a platform for creating, sharing and adapting open course materials. While this app was adapted for many other institutions initially it allowed Harvard Law Professors to upload PDF copies of US court cases that would be part of the curriculum for Harvard Law students. I worked on an annotations feature which allowed a professor to share annotations of a document to their class as well as allowing a student to add their own annotations. There was a versioning component to this that also allowed viewing annotations at different points in time.

This was another standard launch of a greenfield Spree store.

Soletron wanted to add faceted search to their Spree store. I custom implemented faceted search for them by replacing Spree's search functionality to instead use Solr. Solr did the heavy lifting of faceted search and so I created a user inteface to support the facets that Soletron specified (color, size, price, type of shoe, etc.)

This store was another standard Spree store, with the only thing unique about it was that they had a large product base that I had to write custom scripts to import.

Rails 3 was almost complete rewrite of Rails introducing completely new internals and often a completely new interface for every aspect of Rails. Upgrading from 2 to 3 was not a small undertaking. Compounding things further Spree also introduced its own version of a dramatic rewrite between versions that also mirrored the Rails upgrade. The net effect was that upgrading a Spree store was no small undertaking. Cosas de Regalos contracted me to upgrade their Spree store which had been customized to both handle their type of ecommerce as well as handling different tax and shipping requirements to support their business in Barcelona.

This Spree store was customized to first have a seller's admin type page where seller's of content could upload their content and then place it in the store for sale. Content could be pdf files, videos, or audio so each file type was customized for display in the store based on file type. For pdfs the first page of the PDF was displayed in the store, for videos a clip was generated from the first 15 seconds of the video and displayed, finally for audio another 15 second clip was automatically generated. Additionally, the seller could also upload their sample to be shown in the store.

This was a pretty bog standard creation of their ecommerce store using Spree.

Novawhite was a Singapore company with a Spree store and they were having problems processing credit cards particularly with US customers. They decided to switch to a different payment gateway that was uncomon and specific to Singapore. I hooked up the payment gateway after figuring out how to inteface with it's clunky API.

I built features for their app that helped with the display of products.

I created their first store using Spree. Most notable was that they were clothing store where the each article of clothing came in a variety of colors and sizes called variants. The variants inventory was pulled from a 3rd party inventory management that exposed a REST api.

I was hired by a design firm who had built the site previously as a Rails CMS. They hired me to periodically update the site. Even though the site had a CMS admin section they preferred to just send new content for me to post up to the site. Additionally, when needed I would code new features to the CMS to support some new requirement such as the addition of a modal that greeted visitors of the first visit and verify that they were over the age of 21.

I built an online store capable of handling both sales for their live events as well as shipped to customer merchandise such as wine and t-shirts. The store had a hard calendar deadline of the last week of the year because the winery opened on New Year's Eve with a Joan Osbourne concert. A Spree store was created and modified so that rather than just entering products a different type of product was also supported which was an event. Events held at City Winery of course occurred at particular times and so they needed to support cut off dates where after a particular time passed the site no longer listed the event and sales were closed. Additionally patrons were allowed to pick their seat in the 500 seat venue with different seats being provided at different price levels. A CMS was also fused into Spree to allow more content to be displayed about the artist and event. This store was extremely complex, and although the job itself was very stressful, I singlehandedly delivered the project to the satisfaction of City Winery after the company who hired me as a contractor broke both obligations to both City Winery and me.

Analyzed slow performing pages and changed both Ruby code and SQL Queries to make the pages run faster. First indexes and compound indexes were added where possible. Expensive Ruby Array operations were analyzed to see if they could be better pushed to PostgreSQL particularly when it came to filtering and sorting operations.

I worked on the core features of the app, which in the initial stage was the importing of emails from both IMAP and Gmail. A rudimentary parser was built to extract email addresses and urls from emails. Attachments were analyzed and recorded for their size, type, and title. Next the data was packaged for the UI which would present the user a dashboard that included a list of all attachments or things like a 3-D cloud / graph of the user's email social network.

Wrote a Rails app that interfaced with a java backend and allowed for the purchasing on ringtones and other content for mobile phones. This mobile app was before the iphone so the app was very rudimentary and the actual transaction to place across SMS. Later developed a 3rd party ringtone app for selling Ringtones at Skype.

Discovered RubyonRails and quit .NET forever. A friend sold his startup to Microsoft and he wanted me to architect the next start up he was build after his acquisition obligations were finished. I started building an app stack for .NET using the best frameworks and tools available at the time. One afternoon I tried Rails and saw in an instant that it was better than anything else that existed. I knew I saw the future. Ruby at that time was unknown and my friend asked with incredulity that if I was switch to a dynamic scripting language then, "Why not Perl? They have Cpan." My story of switching from .NET to Rails was picked up as one of the first conversions soon to come.

Global investment bank RSM EquiCo Capital Markets LLC, was one of the US's most successful merger and acquisition advisory firm. They eventually became the mergers and acquisitions subsidiary of H & R Block.

Worked with the in-house development staff to build new features for software package that managed the workflow of the entire company. A deal comprised taking a new prospective company and doing the groudwork and research necessary for that company to receive a valuation and be sold to a buyer. Deals were tracked through various stages by large number of staff in various departments.

Created their warranty claim system as a windows app. Dealers submitted claims for work performed on scooters as part of their warranty obligations. I wrote a dotnet app that helped with the tracking of the claims, pulled in information from the Great Plains database, and allowed for the support of a workflow for staff who needed to approve the claims and send payment to dealers. The app was highly successful and was showcased when the President of Piaggio visited from Italy, as no other Piaggio subsidiary had a similar system.