Hi, I'm Andy 👋 from 🇬🇧

I'm a self-taught developer with many years experience across a range of industries, but recently spending my time leading teams (although I still like to stay active in coding).

• 📜 Fellow of the British Computer Society and Chartered IT Professional.
• 🪚 Chief Technology Officer of FounderCatalyst building an innovative Lawtech platform for helping British entrepreneurs to raise funding for their companies.
• 🪚 Co-founded Civo and worked (from startup in 2016 to mid-2022) as Chief Technical Officer leading teams building the next generation of cloud-native Kubernetes managed services.
• 🌱 Learning all the changes in Ruby on Rails 7 (really nice to have TailwindCSS integrated as I ❤️ Tailwind!)
• 🛠 Maintaining Flexirest a really flexible Ruby library for accessing Rest APIs in an ActiveModel like style.
• 🤝 Mentoring those more junior in the industry to achieve their goals in tech and development (reach out via Twitter if you are interested)
• 😄 My pronouns are he/him
• ⚡ Fun fact: Aside from being a techie, I'm also a 7th Dan black belt in Taekwondo and instructor of a successful club in my hometown.

💬 Let's collaborate

I'm always open to conversations about collaboration if it helps give value to both sides.

• Backend development: Ruby on Rails, Golang
• Databases: MySQL, Redis (and PostgreSQL if I have to)
• Hosting: Kubernetes, Docker containers, PaaS
• Business: Tech leadership, SaaS launches, entrepreneurship

💁🏻‍♂️ About me

I'm not looking for a new role at the moment (so if you just want to get in touch about that, thanks anyway, but no thanks). However I do keep my CV online so if you want to know more about my experience... https://cv.andyjeffries.co.uk

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjeffries
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyjeffries/
• Personal blog: https://www.andyjeffries.co.uk (mostly Taekwondo related)
• I have a bunch of other social media too, but they are mostly just used by friends and family

💻 Uses

Inspired by UsesThis and Uses.tech I like to keep track of my current developer/entrepreneur setup.

Hardware

14" MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD (2021) I had an absolute beast of an Intel Macbook Pro before this one, upgrades to the Apple Silicon version and it was like night and day. I don't think I'd go back to an Intel chipset, and definitely wouldn't move away from MacOS back to Windows or Linux - I just love the awesome user experience combined with high level of customisability, and don't think either of those competitors comes close.

Iiyama G-Master G4380UHSU Red Eagle My favourite monitor I've ever had - 43" 4K 144Hz. Previously I used a 43" Super-ultrawide monitor which was great, but towards the end I felt like it wasn't good for consuming content, whereas a traditional 4:3 (4K) monitor would be great for both screen real estate for developing, and for consuming content. I debated with myself for a while about getting one of the larger brands, but my first ever PC monitor was an Iiyama and I always felt at the time like they punched above their price point. I've had this monitor since about March (it's July at the time of this update) and I love it.

Keychron K1 My mechanical keyboard is wireless/wired, but I always leave it plugged in. I spent so much of my life developing on Apple keyboards that it was strange when I first started using a mechanical keyboard again, like the days of old. But I really like the clicky sound and this keyboard has been awesome since I got it!

Apple Magic Trackpad 2 I think for a lot of developers using Macs the Apple Trackpad is just the standard for cursor control. I use a mouse on my gaming PC, but for developing a trackpad always just feels more natural to me.

Elgato Camera Having tried a bunch of different cameras, the Logitech C920 most recently, this is finally the one that I'm most happy with the quality on. And in today post-Covid world with 100% remote work, a decent camera setup is quite important.

Logi Z407 These speakers sound great, but there are some weirdness/bugs to them. I'm running MacOS Ventura at the moment and the main two issues are 1) Sometimes the normal on-screen volume controls won't adjust the sound unless I'm using YouTube on Chrome and 2) Sometimes during a video call (Google Meet, Zoom or Skype) I'll just suddenly lose audio unless I switch back round to YouTube on chrome and hit play on a video. So I'm looking for a replacement...

Apple Airpods Pro & Bose QC35s For audio on the move I tend to switch between those two. If it's for a quick "I'm waiting for my car to be serviced" the Airpods are the goto choice. But if it's a long flight to USA or Asia, then the QC35s come out. To be fair I love both for their own benefits, but the QC35s are probably my top choice (because of great battery life and noise cancelling).

Gaming PC As this is is just for fun, I'll put it in a single line. I use the same monitor for my Mac setup, same keyboard but a Roccat Kova mouse (I need all the extra buttons for gaming). The internals are an Intel i7 8700K, 16GB of RAM, GeForce 1080Ti 11GB of RAM. I tend to play Apex Legends the most (although I'm not very good), but occasionally also MS Flight Simulator or Age of Empires 4.

Apple iPhone 12 256GB I love iPhones (and am looking forward to iOS 17 coming out in a month or so), but although I'm overdue for an upgrade, this phone does all I need. The battery life is "OK", but not bad enough for me to want to replace it (it generally lasts from morning to night without needing a recharge unless I'm using it more than normal).

Apple iPad Pro 11" 2018 256GB My wife and I have had iPads since the very first version and when we upgraded to the Pros in 2018 I worried that we'd be on just a more expensive upgrade cycle. However, it turned out that the Pro simply resists the need to upgrade for much longer (i.e. we haven't bothered and both still feel it's fine). Most commonly used apps are GoodNotes 5 (for general notes, brainstorming, learning), Concepts (for wireframes as it's an infinite canvas and better than Apple's recent effort in that space) and Books (I only read electronic books now, although I still have a couple of bookshelves full of dead tree classics)

Software

Visual Studio Code In the past I've used Sublime Text, TextMate and Atom, but I'm finding it really hard to replace VS Code at the moment. I've considered RubyMine, but it's just not as comfortable with the workflows I've got used to over many years (e.g. ⌘+1-9 to switch to the Nth tab). I use the XCode Light theme - I know, Boooooo, but dark themes tend to look blurry to me - see the example at https://medium.com/geekculture/dark-mode-has-worsened-my-sight-de54b8fe0455).

Safari Lots of people prefer Chrome, Firefox or (dare I say it) Edge, but for me Safari is quick as hell, synchronises nicely with my other Apple ecosystem devices and is great on battery life (for the rare time I'm not developing at my desk).

1Password All my passwords are synced between devices using 1Password (I've been a happy customer of them since 2008!). I'm looking forward to making more use of Passkeys going forward as they become ready.

Figma I'm not a great designer, but for times when I have to design a graphic, Figma is my app of choice. I also have Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Pixelmator Pro, but I'll often just use Figma or Apple's Preview (if it's simple crops/resizes).

Bear I used to be a heavy Evernote user, then I switched to Bear. I'd love to say I don't look back, but I really do! I can't remember why I switched (maybe cost) but if there was an easy migration path back, I'd go in a heart beat! Bear just always feels slower than Evernote was (maybe because I have 5,025 notes) and the sync never seems to work properly on all three devices at one time.

Fantastical I love how it integrates my reminders and calendars to show them all in a single unified interface. I tend to use Siri a lot for creating reminders, but don't want to have to check them in a Reminders app.

Spark I just dislike the UI of Apple's Mail. There. I said it. Spark feels nicer and the signatures work much more consistently. The search isn't as good as Apple Mail, so hopefully one day either Apple will refresh their Mail UI or Spark will improve their search or a new competitor will come out.

Raycast I used to be a heavy Alfred user, then tried Raycast one day and never went back. This is my goto app launcher, script runener and window manager all rolled up in to one. I love the keyboard shortcuts for moving/placing windows so that removes the need a separate app for that.