Professional Bio
I am a web designer and developer. Back in 1999 I started hacking Perl scripts and playing around with Adobe Photoshop. I continued to develop my skills creating websites for several small companies until 2002, when I took a break from computers. I went to Agriculture University chasing my childhood dream – to become a genetic engineer. I spent the next 4 years learning Chemistry, Biology, Genetics and other cool stuff.
In late 2005 I was accidentally asked for a web design advice. I made a small research about the current web trends, and discovered something amazing – the web had turned into a vibrant and fast evolving media. I decided to give it another try, and in 2006 I got my first web related job – a Front End Developer at Netguard. I spent the next two years dealing with countless IE 6 bugs, creating shiny designs and competing in various design contests.
At that time I realized design was not enough for me. I began hacking PHP scripts – first plain scripts as in the old Perl times, then I explored CodeIgniter, CakePHP and Zend Framework.
In 2008 I quit my job at Netguard and moved to another city. At that time I was also involved with an ajax based online game called "Never retreat". The game was pretty complex with a lot of formulas and calculations. This project helped me expand my programming skills. That's why in the middle of 2008, when looking for a full time job, I could choose between a design/front end oriented job and back end development. In July 2008 I began working for Firefly Studios as a back end developer. Three months later I became Senior Web developer responsible for all technical decisions and code quality. I was also in charge of three other programmers. We were mainly working with CodeIgniter, Zend Framework and Wordpress. At that time I created two PHP platforms, Crystal and Emerald, and we switched most of the new projects to them.
I started exploring new ideas for web applications and I soon found out that PHP was not flexible enough for what I wanted to do. I needed a more powerful language, so I began searching for one.
My choices were Ruby/Ruby on Rails and Python/Django.
Right now I am using:
PHP – because it's very easy to deploy
Ruby – because it's great for creating well tested web applications. I like Rails and its metaprogramming capabilities
Python, because of its mature syntax. I am particularly using Django, and I really like the "reusable applications" concept. Nothing beats Django in terms of development speed, when you need to create a web application with lots of forms.
My most notable achievement at Firefly was creating an enormous website for king Simeon The Second, the last Bulgarian king. The site contains thousands of images, videos and articles describing the life of the Royal family for the last 100 years.
In May 2009 I quit my job at Firefly Studios. For a couple of months I was concetrated mostly on personal projects - web applications involving some Comet hacking and my platform Crystal. In September 2009 I joined a new interesting project. Payner Media, the biggest music company in Bulgaria, invited me to work on their new video platform. I am currently employed there, creating the biggest Bulgarian music site with all their video clips from 1993 to 2010.
