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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

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GeneralIs Silicon Valley a force for good? Pin
Dominic Burford27-Nov-18 21:57
professionalDominic Burford27-Nov-18 21:57 
GeneralUsing Javascript to retrieve values from a Xamarin Forms WebView Pin
Dominic Burford27-Nov-18 5:01
professionalDominic Burford27-Nov-18 5:01 
GeneralUsing the MVVM pattern with a Xamarin Forms mobile app Pin
Dominic Burford21-Nov-18 1:13
professionalDominic Burford21-Nov-18 1:13 
GeneralConsuming a private nuget feed in an Azure DevOps build pipeline Pin
Dominic Burford2-Nov-18 6:55
professionalDominic Burford2-Nov-18 6:55 
GeneralBuild a Xamarin.Forms iOS mobile app using Azure DevOps Pin
Dominic Burford8-Oct-18 23:38
professionalDominic Burford8-Oct-18 23:38 
GeneralDeploy a Mobile app to Azure using Azure DevOps Pin
Dominic Burford21-Sep-18 5:30
professionalDominic Burford21-Sep-18 5:30 
GeneralSetting up my first build pipeline with Azure DevOps Pin
Dominic Burford19-Sep-18 4:06
professionalDominic Burford19-Sep-18 4:06 
GeneralChoosing a mobile application development platform Pin
Dominic Burford4-Sep-18 1:36
professionalDominic Burford4-Sep-18 1:36 
Having developed several mobile apps and deployed them to both the Google Play and Apple Store, we have been forced to re-write the apps. The reason we have to re-write our apps is due to the fact that our development platform - Telerik Platform - has been retired. The reasons are probably so that they can focus their development efforts on their other cross-platform mobile technology - Nativescript.

That leaves us in the position of having our app in the app stores, but with no means by which to update them. We can update the RESTful services used by the apps as these are completely separate to the apps (thank goodness for good architecture), but we can't make any changes to the apps themselves. That puts us in a slightly vulnerable position, as we can't respond to customer suggestions or changes in market forces (or even change the branding / look and feel).

We have therefore been forced to re-evaluate the technologies that are available to us for developing the mobile apps. We have looked at several technologies. I have previously written why I think Building native enterprise apps is (probably) the wrong approach[^]. In relation to enterprise apps, there is very little (if any) benefit to going native (longer development cycles, greater expense, bigger teams with bigger skill sets, little overall benefit). Cross-platform therefore is the only approach on the table.

We firstly looked at NativeScript (the natural successor of Telerik Platform) as both are owned by Progress. This looked like a great development platform. Progress have made big strides in trying to ease the migration path of existing Telerik Platform users to their newer NativeScript platform. You can choose from Javascript, Angular or Typescript as the language in which to build your apps. It comes with a companion application called Sidekick to simplify many of the development processes. Has the support of a large community and backed by Progress (giving peace of mind). Also, it rendered native components on the device making it a truly cross-platform development environment.

The only other alternative that I considered seriously was Xamarin. I have used this previously (before the Microsoft acquisition) and so was already familiar with it. I was intrigued as to how it may have changed since the Microsoft acquisition. The first thing I noticed when looking through the documentation and examples was the tight integration with Azure. We already make substantial use of Azure with our other mobile and web apps, so it great to see the same design philosophy applied to Xamarin. In fact, the overall architecture used by Xamarin is not too dissimilar to the one I developed for our existing apps and current web app. This was a huge benefit to us right out the box, as I was already familar with the architecture and the key moving parts to building a mobile app with Xamarin. Like NativesScript, Xamarin also renders truly native components on the device.

I spent considerable time looking at both offerings, as well as taking into consideration the skill set of the team. In the end we have decided to go with Xamarin. I am far more familiar with C# and Azure (as well as the architecture of their apps) and this played a part in the final decision. Nativescript would have required us to learn Typescript. Although this is not necessarily a barrier on its own, the reality is that I will be up and running far quicker with Xamarin than compared to NativeScript.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

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GeneralExecuting an AJAX request from an ASP.NET Core querystring parameter Pin
Dominic Burford20-Aug-18 5:05
professionalDominic Burford20-Aug-18 5:05 
GeneralBuilding a Document Manager with ASP.NET Core 2.1 Pin
Dominic Burford19-Aug-18 22:38
professionalDominic Burford19-Aug-18 22:38 
GeneralReducing the surface area of the client Pin
Dominic Burford26-Jul-18 21:32
professionalDominic Burford26-Jul-18 21:32 
GeneralUnderstanding what you're doing Pin
Dominic Burford26-Jul-18 3:24
professionalDominic Burford26-Jul-18 3:24 
GeneralSetting environments in ASP.NET Core Pin
Dominic Burford16-Jul-18 21:29
professionalDominic Burford16-Jul-18 21:29 
GeneralCreating a zipped deployment for an ASP.NET Core web application Pin
Dominic Burford28-Jun-18 23:59
professionalDominic Burford28-Jun-18 23:59 
GeneralI’m turning into a Microsoft fanboy Pin
Dominic Burford8-Jun-18 5:45
professionalDominic Burford8-Jun-18 5:45 
GeneralAdding a confirmation dialog to an ASP.NET Core 2.0 form page handler Pin
Dominic Burford7-Jun-18 4:34
professionalDominic Burford7-Jun-18 4:34 
GeneralUploading a file in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford1-Jun-18 4:07
professionalDominic Burford1-Jun-18 4:07 
GeneralASP.NET Core 2.0 Razor Page Handlers Pin
Dominic Burford15-May-18 0:01
professionalDominic Burford15-May-18 0:01 
GeneralMocking the HttpContext Session object in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford30-Apr-18 4:31
professionalDominic Burford30-Apr-18 4:31 
GeneralUsing ViewComponents in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford16-Apr-18 22:49
professionalDominic Burford16-Apr-18 22:49 
GeneralWeb application metrics with Application Insight Part 2 Pin
Dominic Burford10-Apr-18 22:50
professionalDominic Burford10-Apr-18 22:50 
GeneralWriting flexible code in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Razor Pages Pin
Dominic Burford3-Apr-18 5:06
professionalDominic Burford3-Apr-18 5:06 
GeneralPerforming Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Dominic Burford23-Mar-18 4:54
professionalDominic Burford23-Mar-18 4:54 
GeneralRe: Performing Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Slacker00723-Mar-18 5:12
professionalSlacker00723-Mar-18 5:12 
GeneralRe: Performing Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Dominic Burford23-Mar-18 5:15
professionalDominic Burford23-Mar-18 5:15 

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