I’m an expert on (vanilla) JavaScript who was doing single-page Web apps 18 years ago, familiar with everything you can do natively in a Web browser, and also some things you can’t do yet but soon. I fight for the user with good UX and trustworthy data processing. I love complex algorithms and custom UI making things run smoothly and avoiding tedious workflows. I’ll figure out what the client wants and funny ways it will fail, and how to explain it to the graphic designer and the people over in marketing and their children.
My education covers mainly linguistics, NLP and software engineering, on top of a broad scientific and historical culture and deep sci-fi and fantasy lore. I have some experience in and am very good at localizing content and UI, and I am happy to write documentation, specifications, user stories, and roleplaying scenarios. I love good food, I skate everywhere, and I play harder than I work.
I am an active participant and organizer of our monthly internal meetups, game master for an RPG campaign with five colleagues, and resident expert on data protection. People also seek me out for restaurant recommendations.
I test candidates on algorithms, JavaScript and Web development during our recruitment process (the “Playoffs”).
Since (I am back after the RATP job)
Back-end developer (SFEIR) at
Python
FastAPI
langchain
BigQuery
Firestore
Redis
Cloud Run
Server-Sent Events
Lark
sympy
My role within the GenAI team is to bring software engineering to a largely data engineer population, and design and develop some of the more technical API features like access control and streaming. I also contribute to the front-end and the internal “framework”.
Tied for fastest and undisputedly the smallest client-side streaming ZIP generator out there. Zero dependencies. I wrote the first version over a long week-end after despairing that nobody had done a good job of it before.
I've optimized the code and pipeline quite a bit since then, implemented Zip64, and integrated contributions from the small community building around client-zip. There are dozens of projects using it, most notably Proton Mail.
I was the lead front-end developer on this quick project to provide bus ticket validation data to the bus operators taking over some lines from the RATP, with filtering, charts, CSV exports and custom table layouts.
I joined the “offers” team — mostly handling pricing, availability and delivery options — for invivo's agricultural marketplace Aladin.farm. I contribute to feature development (and testing, reviewing, etc. in a fairly agile environment).
I migrated the back-end to TypeScript soon after joining, introduced async generators and the Either monad to refactor an ugly callback-based CSV pipeline (other developers called the showcase “inspiring”, though the adoption of streaming is not proceeding as well as I could hope), and more recently set up proper i18n tooling for the front-end.
I joined a couple of colleagues at Hubside to work on a new Photos app. It's a fancy React PWA with a node.js (mostly graphql) backend hosted on the GCP and a custom ServiceWorker I played with, that handles the authentication layer.
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Node.js developer (SFEIR) at
heroku
BreezoMeter
Google Maps API 3
Azure
Azure Devops
fastify
Jest
PKI
My main responsibility was developing APIs for custom watch faces on LV's smart watch, and the related mobile app. I also evaluated and proposed improvements for the GDPR compliance of the whole system.
I discovered fastify and convinced my team to adopt it on a new project to replace express. It was a resounding success.
I came back briefly to design further improvements to the next version (this time using mTLS with a public key infrastructure). The idea is being implemented now by one of my colleagues.
My main mission there, and one which I enjoyed greatly, was to mentor the junior Front-end developer in my team. The other lead developers were astounded by how quickly his code style improved.
I tried to reduce the website's technical debt, faced organisational challenges to that and pushed — mostly in vain — for changes on that front.
I was brought in as a lead JavaScript developer to spearhead the group's transition to modern coding practices and frameworks for their Web apps, while keeping to the narrow, established timetables.
I developed a visualisation app for internal users: the Angular front-end, the node.js server that collects and pushes the data, the deployment of both, and the OpenID user authentication (writing a new, lightweight OIDC client with WebCrypto).
I then worked on some small-scale projects and prototypes, and another visualisation app in Vue.js. I also helped a team of Java developers learn front-end development.
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Front-end developer (SFEIR) at
HTML5
backbone.js
nd-json
ES7
pushState
jira
SVG
PMU is the French horse racing bookmaker, where I worked for 15 months on the online betting and racing information platform. I contributed heavily to some new features that are now in production (pushState navigation and SEO, video broadcast, a graphical overhaul of the page header, a new application that didn’t last but had some really good handcrafted SVG). I pushed a lot of code refactoring to reduce a large technical debt, solved many hosting-related issues as well as regular bugs.
I developed a node.js application with a cutting-edge (ES7, fetch, ndjson) vanilla front-end to automatically scan for configuration errors on our hosting partner and thus automate that part of my job.
I am known in the department as the guy with an educated opinion on every technical or design issue ever, and I must be more helpful than annoying, because they keep asking me.
I designed and developed a front-end Web interface to a physical access control system over Salto hardware. There was a lot of creative JavaScript involved on both client and server, including an efficient Canvas-based timetable input, and a connection library for the loosely documented, weird-XML-over-TCP used by the proprietary Windows back-end.
I contributed to another Web app, for the health sector. Mainly working on UI, localization, and cross-domain authentication.
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Localization editor and engineer on (as volunteer)
textbuilder
python
regex
localization
I translated thousands of strings into French for Wasteland 2, a crowdfunded game which makes heavy use of string interpolation. I advised InXile's text engine developer on internationalization, leading to better support for the grammar of eight languages, going well beyond what other games are capable of and breaking typical constraints on authors' and translators' creativity. I automated many error-checking tasks, and merging the work of the French localization team of volunteers.
I briefly stepped in as the French team coordinator, and started working on a Web-based authoring tool.
A JavaScript State Chart interpreter that almost fully implements the W3C's SCXML recommendation
I wrote it all, except the tests provided by the W3C. I devised an efficient JavaScript tree structure, worked around some tricky browser limitations. I built a graphical debugger and editor on top of it.
It began as my thesis subject, then I was employed by the university to continue working on it. I also began contributing to the development of the SCXML standard itself and published a couple of papers.
My proposal for mechanisms allowing an SCXML interpreter to behave consistently and sensibly when its State Chart is being modified at runtime. Implemented (WIP) in JSSCxml's editor, and presented at a W3C workshop on SCXML.
I defended my thesis on multimodal client-side Web application control in June 2013 (see JSSCxml). I passed with distinction, and continued working on that project.
Tutor in formal logic for other linguists (that position was created after I lobbied the institute on behalf of fellow students) and tutor on the computer literacy certificate (C2i) training open to all students. I also sang in the Nordic choir of the scandinavian department.
At first because of my Web-related skills, I joined the best and one of the most visited French-speaking websites on Harry Potter, around the height of the series’ popularity. I ended up doing some reporting, community management, translation, documentary production, and other miscellaneous stuff.
I think they kept me around because they trusted me as the guy who has access to the cleartext forum database and never looked at it, used my admin powers responsibly, provided alternative points of view to aid in decision-making ; to be the “outsider” inside the team.
KPS is my old engineering school’s tech and open source club. I officially joined the team during Summer 2004 after some informal involvement. I was responsible for the KPS website, developing a user-friendly Web app to manage a nation-wide humanitarian program, and overseeing the club’s free courses for students.
I took part in making the club a legal entity and in most of its activities, from teaching and writing documentation to fixing computers and preparing large events, writing about and promoting the club’s activities. And there was that big web app project that didn’t end well but taught me a lot.
Member of the school’s tech and open-source club, even after I quit studying. More on that in the previous article.
I was eventually exempted from both English and programming classes. In the latter, the teacher requested that I still attend the labs — to help my classmates.
TenTwentyFour.lu
Göteborgs universitet
La Gazette du Sorcier
Kernel Panic Systems