Patrick Desjardins - Senior Software Engineer

About Me

Polyvalent

I adjust fast and efficiently to any environment. The proof is in my route. Moved from a French world to an English one while changing country far from every anchor previously established. Moved to many teams and projects while being promoted continuously. Had to learn quickly new technologies and being efficient within a few days. Moved from top companies to incredible ones while still moving across the United States. Swaying from Microsoft to Mac and Google while still be able to ship features.

Leader

In every position I was placed, I took the lead to improve the current situation or to put in place practices with the people around me. I am not a loud talker, but I bring pieces to every system at a regular pace to have a final result that could benefit every engineer as well as the company. I cannot stay in place and do the minimum -- I am naturally entrepreneur and want to innovate and push the limit of every assignment. I convey my love to perform to everyone who works with me and share as much as I can by presenting, emails or Slack any detail to bolster the team.

Doer

Expert in doing. Think, plan and execute. I design and write just enough to have the team understand the direction and to lift apparent impediments. Always having daily objectives and jumping in code until a first version can be presented and then iterate. The balance between brain and fingers is mastered for many years which allows me to have a steady delivery cadence. I polish user interfaces slowly while bringing more features which, with time, create the best experience for the user. Same for performance, usability, and tests: iterating is the key to success. At every step, a little "wow" factor is inserted and some innovations to try to go beyond what is asked.

My works

An excerpt of some of my works from the last few years.

Limited list for only few last years; see resume for full entries

Netflix - Partner Portal

Open Connect ISP partners with embedded Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) can use the Open Connect Partner Portal to do some basic monitoring of the appliances in their network and some other administrative tasks. Responsible for the whole portal.

Microsoft - Teams Web App

Developed in Microsoft Teams web application pre-release and post-release version 1. Responsible for the notifications and feeds.

Visual Studio Teams System Delivery Timeline plan

Microsoft - VSTS Delivery Timeline

Leader for the front-end of the page named Delivery Timeline Plan which was the first page built entirely in React and Flux. Heavily optimized to support thousand of complex components with virtual scrolling and lazy loading.

Microsoft - VSTS Dashboard

Main developer on the rebuilt of VSTS Dashboard. Responsible to create to implement the grid system, the concept of the edit mode, the blade menu for configurations and catalog of widgets. Worked on the third-party SDK as well as creating few widgets.

Microsoft - MSDN

Part of the team that maintened MSDN.com. Participated to the recast of the editing system to be more open for external contributions.

CDPQ - CMG

Developing the whole application architecture, acting as a team leader for the team and coding critical part of the software. Private web application to handle the management of financial assets.

CDPQ - DRT

Took the lead of an existing project by modernizing the user experience with drag and drop features and remove the dry CRUD website experience into a rich web application. Private web application to handle data, risks and transactions of billion of dollards.

CDPQ - RDP

Advisor to guide the team with best practices for web and testings. Performance improvements and usability improvements of the existing system.

Dynacom - Nutcache

I had the role of a Web expert for a team constituted of 6 developers for the whole 8 months. It was their first web project and I had to guide them for best practices for the architecture of the software but also with the use of Asp.Net MVC. I was the first resource for everything concerning Javascript and CSS.

Tenrox - Timesheet.com

Working in many areas of the existing systems to improve features. Worked mainly in the visual graph that allowed to configure the flow of work.

StockVirtual.com

Owner of StockVirtual.com which is a Asp.Net MVC, Entity Framework, Redis website hosted on Azure that has above 65 000 users that trade stocks in a safe virtualized environment. Thousands of unit tests, Application Insight for telemetry, Stride for transactions and SendGrid for email.

Online Course: Rapid Web Application with Typescript

A fast-paced guide that will take you on a journey through the various new features of TypeScript, with the help of real-world, practical videos that show you how to dive right into web application development using TypeScript’s essential.

Online Course: Building Pro Web Apps with TypeScript

In-depth content balanced with tutorials that put the theory into practice. The focus of this course is on giving you both the understanding and the practical examples that will allow you indulge in the art web development with TypeScript 2.x while taking you through core programming concepts.

Visual Studio Condensed

Visual Studio is one of the most sophisticated integrated development environments in the world today. With hundreds of features and several different editions available, it can be hard to learn your way around, and hard to know whether you're using it to its full potential. Visual Studio Condensed gives you a quick and systematic guide to the features that matter most for your productivity, tagged clearly by edition and user level.

.Net Knowledge Book Volume 1: Web Development with Asp.Net MVC and Entity Framework

This book is a melting pot of several articles about Asp.Net MVC, Entity Framework, JavaScript, CSS, C# and SQL. They are scenarios that happen in the everyday work of developers who use these technologies.

.Net Knowledge Book Volume 2: Web Development with Asp.Net MVC and Entity Framework

.Net Knowledge Book Volume 3: Web Development with Asp.Net MVC and Entity Framework

.Net Knowledge Book Volume 4: Web Development with Asp.Net MVC, Azure and Entity Framework

.Net Knowledge Book Volume 5: TypeScript, React and NodeJs

This book is a melting pot of several articles about TypeScript, React and NodeJs. They are scenarios that happen in the everyday work of developers who use these technologies.

Apprentifinancier - Bien débuter en Bourse

French book about stock investment (630 pages)

Holistic TypeScript

A book that cover every features of TypeScript.

Data Access Gateway Library

Main maintainer. The goal of this TypeScript/JavaScript library is to provide a tiny abstraction to cache data when performing remote HTTP(s) API calls. It eases the request by caching the data in memory and/or in the browser memory with a limited set of options. The cache works with two levels of cache: the first one is a memory cache and the second use IndexDB as a persistent cache.

Data Access Gateway Chrome Extension

Main maintainer. The goal of this Chrome Extension is to receive statistics about how the data is fetched and saved by the library. Build with TypeScript.

Technologies

Web Frameworks

JavaScript, JQuery, Angular, React, Flux, Redux...

I have built a dozen of web applications and web sites with many technologies. From classic ASP, to PHP, to ASP.NET with form or MVC I have embraced many eras where Internet Explorer was king and dethroned by Firefox and now Chrome. I built websites with custom frameworks to the most popular and recent with Angular and React.

TypeScript & C#

Professional TypeScript and C# developer

I have been writing C# for more than a decade and recently have focused mostly in TypeScript on many different scale project from few developers to almost a thousand. I love how TypeScript enhances JavaScript to be more efficient and reduce errors. I've been doing internal formation, created online classes and wrote many posts on the subject.

Azure and AWS

Develop but also deploy!

I have many Linux VPS around the worlds but moved in the last few years on Azure. Recently I had to touch AWS as well. Not only it's easier, faster but it also encourages better practice to separate systems to be more resilient.

Fluent in many systems

Windows or Mac, VSTS or Jira/Atlassian, it does not matter

I have been working mostly with Microsoft technologies but have experience on other systems. I am a fast learner, and even under high pressure like at Netflix, I was able to switch from a Windows to Mac environment within a few days. I am also quick to do 180 degrees. Configuring VSTS, or Jenkins or accessing third-party API is not an issue.

12

Compagnies

18

Years of programming

26

Projects finished

642

Blog Articles

My Skills

Experiences & Interests

Summary of skills that I have experiences and interests that I can help your team to work with.

Here is the outline of I have experiences and interests. I have work and created software with more than just this list. I built system in VB5, VB6, ASP Classic, ASP.NET Webform, PHP, but do not look forward to doing it again. The following list is the skill that I am interested to continue to improve. As you may notice, my interest is toward web technologies since early 2000's and I want it to stay this way.

TypeScript

JavaScript

HTML5

CSS

C#

Java

Responsive Design

React

Angular

Redux

Flux

Progressive Web Application

ASP.NET MVC

ORM: Entity Framework & Dapper

SQL (MsSql, MySql, PostGresql)

NoSql (Redis, Memcached, MongoDB)

3

Years of Master Degree in Machine Learning _{(in progression)} Georgia Tech

4

Years of Bachelor in Software Engineering at University ETS

3

Years of Pre-University in Computer Science CEGEP

26

Plurasight and Udemy Classes

10

Microsoft Certifications

Past and Present

During elementary and high school I did competitive karate and won more than 250 prizes over 9 years. Finish twice second in Germany in 1990 in the world championship. I continued my scholarship with three years in Montreal CEGEP in computer science and followed with four years at the University named École de Technologie Supérieur (ETS). During these years I worked on many side projects and always been a top performer. One of my side projects became a small venture and grew to above 65 000 users.

Mid part of University, I developed for few companies where I could use my web expertise to help a variety of software written in many languages like Asp, Asp.Net, Asp.Net MVC and I was a strong advocate to make website cross-browser wich the arrival of JQuery helped the whole process.

I continued doing formation and got my Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) et Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). The more the years advanced, the less I was doing VB or PHP or Java and the more I was touching C#, Net, Entity Framework and JavaScript.

In 2013, I became one of the sixth Canadian to be a Microsoft MVP in Asp.Net/IIS. A title that I got for two years in a row until I left Montreal to dwell in Redmond (WA) to work for Microsoft for three years. In 2017, I moved to Silicon Valley to join Netflix as a senior software engineer, bringing my React, Redux, TypeScript expertise into a brand new system that Netflix's partner uses to help to carry a third of the worldwide bandwidth. In parallel, I started a master degree in machine learning at Georgia Tech University, maintain few open source projects, and I deliver presentations at conferences.