Tres Allen Spicher
developer
About Me
Well, I'm a developer! More specifically, I love bringing concepts for desktop, backend, and web applications to life. I feel like a perpetual newbie since I love learning, and it's a bit hard to write something meant to show how wildly skillful I am. Still, people I respect and admire have told me I have a distinct knack for communicating well, getting projects done well and on-time, so I'd like to think there's something to it. Nothing I've accomplished could have been done without the help of countless others.
I'm a quick learner with a diverse enough skill set to come up with a pretty, functional solution to just about any problem, along with documentation, testing, and all the extra goodies that are every bit as necessary as working code. I pay attention to best practices and love beautiful, clean, functional code.
Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
Sample Work
-
Fast, accurate, scalable grammar checker service
Role: Lead developer Skills: Java EE, Tomcat, linguistics, machine learning, multithreading
Used globally
-
Cold atom magnetic field visualizer
Role: Developer Skills: Python, C++, UI design, asynchronous networking
See it in action -
Secret Santa Generator
A fun project I started for my family that now has thousands of users. Skills: (Cake)PHP, XHTML, CSS
Check it out -
-
Predicting stock movements
For my graduate research, I predicted stock price movements using natural language processing. Skills: NLP, Python, Ruby, SQL
Read the paper -
Web controller for ultra high-speed disk cabinet
Role:Lead Developer Skills: Ruby, Rails framework, C, XML-RPC
Experience
Software Engineer
Boulder Labs — software for scientists and inventors
3 years, 2008 — 2011
I hit my stride as a developer working for Boulder Labs. From starting as a junior engineer to leading development on a grammar checker for an internationally known education client, I learned most of what I know about real-world software development here.
I co-developed a networking library using C++ and Boost for reliably transmitting and decoding arbitrary objects asynchronously for use in safety critical emergency dispatching software deployed in some of the biggest cities in the US. It proved so useful we went on to use it in our flagship LiveAtom tool.
I did a lot of front-end work as well. I redesigned the UI of LiveAtom, redesigned the company website, and did the front-end for other applications I coded, including a PyQt remote file synchronization tool and a Ruby on Rails remote disk controller.
references
Robert Gray, PhD
David van Wie, lead engineer
Developer
Level 3 Communications — telecom giant
1 year, 2007 — 2008
I got my feet wet with professional software development at Level 3. I started out doing regression test automation. I got bored with how tedious that was, so I figured out how to automate the task itself and used my spare cycles to help design a Ruby-based SIP call flow analysis tool for a coworker.
Before I knew it, I was getting handed tasks of ever-increasing difficulty and importance. I started working on the enterprise Java call provisioning system, my first time working on a huge project with dozens of other developers. I wrote a data visualization tool using Seam, and for the first time really got comfortable working with databases.
reference
Rachel Kim, Senior IT Project Manager
Education
M.S. Computer Science
University of Colorado, USA
2006 — 2008
GPA: 3.98/4.0
Relevant coursework included: advanced operating systems, natural language processing, software engineering, computer graphics, network systems, artificial intelligence, database systems
B.A. Linguistics, Computer Science minor
University of Colorado, USA
2003 — 2006
GPA: 3.90/4.0
Relevant coursework included: data structures, algorithms, statistics, digital logic, computer architecture, human-computer interaction
My skills
Roughly from most comfortable to least comfortable, left-to-right
Programming
Python, C++, Java, Ruby
GUI toolkits
Qt, wxWidgets
Front-end web
XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Javascript
Back-end web
CakePHP, Rails, Java EE, Turbogears
Databases
MySQL, Sqlite, Oracle
Operating systems (for development)
Linux, Windows, Solaris
Version control
Subversion, Clearcase (next big goal is learning git!)
This list is most definitely (and thankfully) not exhaustive.