Braden O'Guinn

Web Developer

Work

Stolen Bicycle Registry:

The culmination of my work with Epicodus. As part of a five-person team over two weeks, we completely rebuilt the old site that hadn't been updated since 2008. The project is built on Rails, and includes fuzzy search querying with Postgres' Trigram, interactive forms, and extensive validations.

The project is ongoing. We have two more very exciting weeks ahead to implement heat mapping, validations, an API, and an admin interface.

Javascript Projects:

These projects range from game AIs to API-integrators. The most complex and fun Javascript game is Conway's Game of Life. Be sure to try out the demo, the pattern dropper, and the high scores! You can find the source code on Github. Hangman grabs from an open-source dictionary API and finds words of a minimum length to guess. Music Search collects popular tracks from discogs and organizes them into a browseable list using jQuery.

Tic tac toe implements an AI that can win any game it plays, but is designed to make calculated errors to teach the user how to win with a forced cross strategy. Go Fish Is a little more devious: the deceptively simple AI algorithm here picks a guess based solely by weight of frequency of cards in its own hand. The deviation comes when the aptly-named bot, Steve Foo, thinks he's losing, and starts lying about the contents of his hand.

Ragusa Consulting

Previous design work: layout of a webpage for a consulting firm down in New Orleans.

Professional Highlights

tl;dr Agile Programming. Voracious Language-Learner. Github. Twitter.

The Best Stuff

I am a student at Epicodus.In a program less than 20-weeks long, I've written over 30 complete programs in Javascript and Ruby and have amassed more than 700 hours of coding, in addition to my past work in web development.

Our team constructs sites over multiple weeks. We manage content and collaborate with git. The projects are written in code that documents itself, with near-100% test coverage in Rspec, and integration testing with Capybara and PhantomJS.

Real Experience

I am a graduate of Tulane University with a degree in Linguistic Anthropology and Urban Studies. I'm interested in how language conveys meaning and intent, whether that's human, procedural object-oriented, or functional. I have a continued interest in complex systems and how human beings interface with them, from web apps to streetcar maps to social media.

In college, I studied ESRI's mapping package, arcGIS. I had my first taste of programming hacking into some of its Python algorithms to better get the datamapping results I needed for a project on New Orleans architecture and flood control. I was hooked.

July to November 2013 were whirlwind months of happy hacking, as my class of aspiring junior developers tore through two Turing-complete languages, Ruby and Javascript, and became proficient in Full-Stack web development with Rails. I love figuring out and integrating new tech into my projects. The enthusiasm and excitement to share and collaborate in the Portland tech community continues to inspire me to be a better programmer. Code Retreats and hackathons have much to teach.

What's Next

Our team couldn't ship apps without open communication and collaboration. My next team will already have good habits in place that ensure we work as well together as we can.

My next company is as passionate about open-source software as I am. They love making things with real purpose and value, and they take pride in their own business practices. They don't have to work in Ruby or JS most of the time. In fact, they encourage their developers to learn the newest languages and technologies!

Connect with me

Want to chat? Send me an email, or shout in my general direction on twitter.

The Resume

get it in PDF

Braden O’Guinn

bgoguinn@gmail.com | @broguinn | github
541-912-0695 | 623 NE Thompson St. | Portland, OR, 97212

Skills

Front-End:
- HTML5/CSS3
- jQuery
- Mobile-friendly Design
- Responsive Elements
- Asynchronous page updates
Back-end:
- Rails
- AJAX
- API integration and creation
- Comprehensive Test Suites
Languages:
- Ruby 500+ hours
- Javascript 200+ hours
- Japanese (Moderate)
- Spanish (Conversational)

Community

Hack + Help: Weekly coding meetup hosted by pdx.rb, where programmers teach, collaborate, and hack. Once a month is Ruby Newbies, where we attack a specific problem and explore the most elegant solutions to everyday programming tasks.
TechFestNW 2013 Hackathon: Our team proposed and mocked up a widget for ICANN and its many sister-sites to encourage colloquial definition and discussion of obscure terms. A crash course in team organization and brainstorming. The project was built entirely in Javascript and won the team tickets to next year’s TechFestNW.
Fall 2013 Code Retreat: Eight hours of code ‘sprints’, building Conway’s Game of Life in both Ruby and Python, with challenging design restrictions, from disallowing number declarations to writing entirely with (or without) objects.

Education

- Epicodus Web Development School
- July 28th - November 22nd 2013, Epicodus, Portland, Oregon
- Coursework: Ruby | Javascript | Rails | Front-end | 700+ code hours
- Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology (Urban Studies Minor)
- GPA: 3.7
- May 2012, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
- Academic Honors: Dean’s list | Reifler-Bricker Award for Excellence in Linguistics | Simon’s Rock AEP Full Scholarship Award
- Coursework: Linguistics | Urban Design | Geography | GIS