David's first exposure to React came in the spring of 2018 while
working at Deloitte, when he was building a workforce planning and
data visualization tool for a federal government client. The front
end quickly outgrew its original architecture of HTML and jQuery,
and David took it upon himself to find a more robust solution. He
decided that was best-suited for this challenge, as its
lightweight footprint allowed for a more gradual refactor process.
David rewrote the HTML templates as JSX, and designed a Webpack
configuration that allowed the back end to serve each page as a
bundled React app, removing the need for a routing module and
subsequent architecture redesign. Since then, David has deepened
his knowledge of React at Microsoft, where he has spent the last
5+ years working on the Teams Web/Desktop client and delivered
features such as Teams Live Events, Teams Webinars, and Teams Town
Halls. While it's not the only tool in his front-end toolbox,
React is David's go-to framework for new Web-based projects due to
its flexibility and unopinionated nature.
When David first began using Python in the fall of 2017, he was
taken aback at the versatility and extensibility of the language,
as well as by the breadth and resourcefulness of the developer
community. Python offered David his first introduction to the
world of MVC Web frameworks while at Deloitte, where he was tasked
with building a bespoke, Web-based data visualization tool for a
federal government client using the Django framework. David
designed and wrote a flexible ETL system for a workforce planning
application that leveraged Django's powerful ORM to churn through
thousands of records at once and return reports specifically
tailored to the user's request. At Microsoft, David has used
Python to handle UI automation testing for the Teams client, and
has also worked on a hackathon project to auto-generate data
visualizations in Excel based on Microsoft Forms data. At home,
David likes to use Python as a multi-purpose scripting language
for building Web scrapers, basic Web APIs using Flask, and other
small data projects.
David has been using TypeScript since the spring of 2019, when his
project at Deloitte brought on a new manager who recommended the
team rebuild their stack using Angular and NestJS. David's
background of using strongly typed langugages in both academic and
professional settings made the jump from vanilla JavaScript to
TypeScript feel very natural. David's experience using TypeScript
spans across both front- and back-end development, and he has
spent the last 5+ years at Microsoft honing his TypeScript skills.
TypeScript is now David's language of choice for new Web-based
projects, and he has used TypeScript in a number of personal
projects.
David has been a part of several projects that utilize Microsoft
Azure for various aspects of the application lifecycle. Most
notably, David has integrated a number of enterprise applications
with the organization's Azure Active Directory (now EntraID)
system for single sign-on, and became known as an authority on
authentication solutions among his circles at Deloitte. David has
also helped create a CI/CD workflow using Docker and Azure DevOps
to deploy to an Azure cloud service, as well as built an Azure
DevOps pipeline to automatically run daily load tests for the
Microsoft Teams Townhall feature.
