About Me

Hi, I am Jeff!

Here I'll tell you some things about me.

First, I am a software engineer from the Philippines. I am actually a licensed electronics engineer and electronics technician but I love coding or programming in general so much that I am now in the software industry.

My desire for programming began when I started working with microcontrollers during my college days. The joy of making a piece of hardware work according to the code that I've written is just incomparable that I was pulled into exploring more about coding. During my college days, I've studied and built lots of circuits but my (with my team mates) undergraduate thesis was not just composed of pure hardware. We've integrated a desktop application that is used to remotely monitor and control the appliances' states using ZigBee protocol. That was just so cool!

After I graduated and passed the Board Exam, I explored more in the software land. One summer I built a web app that is used to control the appliances in my room. I used ReactJS to create the UI and I leveraged the MQTT protocol to establish a real-time connection to my customized controller board. In fact, you can watch a video here to have an idea.

Here I am now - a passionate software engineer and my passion for this field just grows deeper as I indulge myself to different technologies particularly to web development. I still love circuits and microcontrollers and I don't think I'll ever forget such awesome stuffs. 😊

What techs do I use?

The range of technologies I use everyday at work and in my personal projects are the following:

  1. ReactJs

    with some of the constituents of its large ecosystem

  • NextJs

    this site and Abide in the Vine is built with NextJs!

  • React Router

  • React Hook Form

  • Redux Toolkit

  • React Query & React Table from Tanstack

  • Material UI

    I am also comfortable creating my own custom components and hooks! 🪝

  1. Typescript

    I love Typescript! ❤️

  2. ExpressJs

    This is my go-to framework when building APIs.

  3. Databases

  • MongoDB

    I have used this as the database for the management web app that I've built for our local church.

  • Couchbase

    Couchbase is a NoSQL database for enterprise applications. This is what I use at work. In fact I am a Couchbase Certified Associate Node.js Developer. You can view my credential here .

  • Firebase

    I only use Firebase for my personal projects.

  1. Styling (CSS)

    I am comfortable working with vanilla CSS3 but I can also work well with virtually any CSS framework:

    • TailwindCSS
    • CSS-in-JS like Emotion and Styled Components
    • Bootstrap

  2. CMS

    I also know how to work with popular CMS such as the ff:

    • Sanity.io
    • Strapi

What I am currently exploring?

Here are the technologies that I am currently exploring:

  1. NestJs - A progressive NodeJs framework
  2. Graphql
  3. AWS

Some Practice Projects 😅

Here are some practice projects that I did in the past to further hone my skills:

  • Movuex Movie Site

    This is a wesbite for finding movies. This is just a toy app that I did to explore MUI with NextJs.

  • Calculator

    A frontend project that I did as part of a technical interview. This can be a great resource for exploring React hooks and context API.

  • Guava Electronics Web Site

    This is a static website for my online store. Built with HTML5 and Sass.

  • A CRUD App

    A simple CRUD application built with ReactJs and Boostrap. This uses actual API calls to a mock server.

  • URL Shortener App

    This is a practice project from Frontendmentor. I have tried this to review my VueJs skills.

  • Grace City Church CG Viewer

    This is a project that I made for our church to simplify the monitoring of small groups and church services and seminars attendance. This is being used by our church these days. This one is built with NextJs and its data is stored in a CMS called Sanity.io

Now, enough for the tech talk.

So, what do I do when I am not working or coding?

I am a Christian

Since I am a proud believer and follower of Jesus Christ, I also make sure that, being empowered by the Lord's grace, I am doing the work of ministry. During Saturdays and some days within the week, I teach young people about the Gospel and the Word of God in general. I also maintain a Facebook page called Abide in the Vine. My motto is this:

Having Christ as joy and finding joy in Christ.

I truly believe that only Christ can satisfy the soul, not anything in this world. Having said that, though work might be busy, I am still compelled to prioritize my faith above all else.

And yes! That is who am I in a nutshell.

Happy coding!