I am Gemma, a senior full-stack software engineer with 12 years experience who has helped teams develop products and software quickly, laying the groundwork that resulted in 20+ services deployed to production @ Kamma in 6 years, and led the delivery of features and releases to over 30+ live in-person event websites with a team of 3 @ WTG within 3 years.
My goal isn't just to produce software, but to:
- Help teams achieve optimal product velocity by improving the developer experience.
- Build products that customers need and are easy to use.
- Increase internal productivity through collaboration, and building/sourcing tools.
I love working with different languages, frameworks and tools across the entire stack including:
What am I up to?
- I recently designed and built version 1 of Uposcar, a simple free profit/loss calculator for those using the FIFO accounting method.
- I'm currently working on Melimundo, a visa application assistant for UK citizens looking to live and work in Spain as digital nomads.
- I'm currently deep-diving into Bun.
- I'm looking forward to either learning Solidity or Rust.
Writing Highlights
- 🔥📈 My most engaged article: “16 Principles for Tech-led Start-ups as a Software Engineer” on Dev.to.
- ⚡💬 My most controversial article: “NodeJS: 4.8x Faster if You go Back to Callbacks!” on Hackernoon.
- ⏱️🔍My fastest syndicated article: “NodeJS: We can run tests natively!” for “Software Testing Weekly #207”.
Ping me a message on Twitter @GemmaBlackUK.
Outside of work
uposcar.com - UpOscar is a frameworkless, free FIFO profit and loss calculator.
melimundo.com – Melimundo is a set of free tools for travellers and digital nomads.
It once started as document management software, but I decided to make free tools instead to help me with my travel compliance. Hopefully it'll be just as useful to others too.
If you're still reading my profile, I've somewhat managed to come across as remotely interesting.
- I use Plain Text Accounting for simplicity. Kudos to hledger.
- 🇪🇸 I decided to move to the heart of Spain where no one speaks English. I can attest that my Spanish is improving.
- 🔨 I'm renovating some beech-wood chairs that I was given for free.
- 🎹 I love making music on my phone and once upon a time released loops to practice my production skills @ Roxxibox Loop.
- 👩🏽💻 I created a Tailwind analog called Preons before I knew it existed, after realizing how useful functional CSS was and needing more flexibility than what Tachyons provided.