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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

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GeneralBlog updates Pin
Dominic Burford13-May-21 1:37
professionalDominic Burford13-May-21 1:37 
GeneralPublishing events into an ASP.NET Core webhook with Octopus Pin
Dominic Burford13-May-21 1:33
professionalDominic Burford13-May-21 1:33 
GeneralA quick update Pin
Dominic Burford2-Nov-20 8:33
professionalDominic Burford2-Nov-20 8:33 
GeneralHow do you know when it's time to move on? Pin
Dominic Burford19-Aug-20 0:19
professionalDominic Burford19-Aug-20 0:19 
GeneralInitial thoughts on deploying with Octopus Pin
Dominic Burford17-Aug-20 4:25
professionalDominic Burford17-Aug-20 4:25 
GeneralWhat makes for a good DevOps process? Pin
Dominic Burford5-Aug-20 23:00
professionalDominic Burford5-Aug-20 23:00 
GeneralExecuting async code from non async code Pin
Dominic Burford19-Jul-20 23:21
professionalDominic Burford19-Jul-20 23:21 
GeneralPassing dynamic queries between client and backend server Pin
Dominic Burford29-Jun-20 4:55
professionalDominic Burford29-Jun-20 4:55 
GeneralManaging your Azure resources using Powershell scripting Pin
Dominic Burford13-Mar-20 6:42
professionalDominic Burford13-Mar-20 6:42 
GeneralIntroduction to Azure Cognitive Search Pin
Dominic Burford28-Feb-20 5:39
professionalDominic Burford28-Feb-20 5:39 
GeneralUpdating the version number in your .NET build pipeline Pin
Dominic Burford24-Feb-20 5:33
professionalDominic Burford24-Feb-20 5:33 
GeneralFinding a solution to an Azure web app deployment problem Pin
Dominic Burford23-Jan-20 23:51
professionalDominic Burford23-Jan-20 23:51 
GeneralStructured Logging Pin
Dominic Burford24-Dec-19 1:28
professionalDominic Burford24-Dec-19 1:28 
GeneralEnabling TLS 1.2 on your .NET application Pin
Dominic Burford11-Dec-19 23:11
professionalDominic Burford11-Dec-19 23:11 
GeneralThe new version of the app is (almost) ready for release Pin
Dominic Burford7-Nov-19 23:28
professionalDominic Burford7-Nov-19 23:28 
GeneralChunking your lists into multiple smaller lists Pin
Dominic Burford11-Sep-19 3:40
professionalDominic Burford11-Sep-19 3:40 
GeneralWriting flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Dominic Burford16-Jul-19 6:11
professionalDominic Burford16-Jul-19 6:11 
GeneralRe: Writing flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Slacker00716-Jul-19 22:09
professionalSlacker00716-Jul-19 22:09 
GeneralRe: Writing flexible filters for your data using Predicates Pin
Dominic Burford17-Jul-19 1:17
professionalDominic Burford17-Jul-19 1:17 
GeneralBlocking Asynchronous Code Pin
Dominic Burford4-Jul-19 22:11
professionalDominic Burford4-Jul-19 22:11 
GeneralDesigning and implementing flexible RESTful services Pin
Dominic Burford14-Jun-19 0:50
professionalDominic Burford14-Jun-19 0:50 
GeneralWriting asynchronous code with .NET Pin
Dominic Burford10-Jun-19 3:34
professionalDominic Burford10-Jun-19 3:34 
GeneralWeird Minification Behaviour in ASP.NET Core Pin
Dominic Burford28-May-19 3:54
professionalDominic Burford28-May-19 3:54 
GeneralThe Importance of Structure and Dilligence Pin
Dominic Burford24-May-19 6:14
professionalDominic Burford24-May-19 6:14 
Whenever I'm mentoring a more junior member of the software development team, there are always two primary traits that I encourage them to learn. These are traits that transcend programming language, methodology, technical stack or anything else that may be relevant to their role. These are structure and dilligence. Both of these should permeate through everything they do in their every day work. Being mindful of these will help them become better as software developers. I will explain why these traits are so important to the software developer.

Structure
Approaching your work with a structured mindset allows you to demarcate and separate out the various elements to the problem you are solving. From grouping the different areas of the requirements specification, to grouping the components and classes in the class hierarchy, to grouping the related unit tests....having structure allows you demarcate the boundaries between these different elements. Everything has a structure. The trick is to clearly define it and communicate this to the rest of the team. If you are documenting the requirements to a piece of functionality, clearly structure the document to demarcate these different areas e.g. functional requirements, non-functional requirements, UI considerations etc. If developing a new component, your class structure should clearly demarcate the different behaviours and areas of responsibility from the class structure and their interactions. Anyone reading through the code should be able to quickly determine what the different classes do and how they relate to each other from the structure you have implemented. Group similarly related elements together and enforce this in your coding standards document. Everything you do should be structured, logical, and consistent.

Dilligence
Approaching your work with due care and dilligence will help in eliminating mistakes and make you a better developer. Be conscientious and mindful of what you are doing at all times. Before checking in that code, make sure you do a diff, run a full rebuild and execute all dirty unit tests. This may take additional time, but it will always be quicker than the time it will take to fix a broken build. If writing a document such as a requirements specification, take the time to proof read it, check it over for spelling and grammar as well as accuracy. Work smart, not fast. Reducing the number of mistakes you make by being more dilligent will earn you a reputation as someone who is dependable, produces high quality and takes their role seriously. Don't be that person who is known to constantly make mistakes, breaks the build or submits code that doesn't work because they didn't test it sufficiently enough.

By applying structure and dilligence to everything you do will have positive benefits on your work. These can be applied irrespective of your particular role (developer, tester, designer) or what tools and / or technologies you use. I would prefer to work with a developer who took these traits seriously than a developer who thinks producing more lines of code than the next developer makes them more productive. I would always pick quality over quantity. A customer is far more likely to forgive a slippage of a dealine if they eventually get something that is of high quality, rather than something delivered on time that contains bugs.

Be structured and dilligent and apply these with rigour and I can guarantee that the quality of the code produced by yourself and your team will increase.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

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GeneralWhen should you rewrite that legacy application? Pin
Dominic Burford22-May-19 0:03
professionalDominic Burford22-May-19 0:03 

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