How I got started

Ever since I was a child, one thing was clear: IT was my future.

Despite having studied in an IT related direction, most of my knowledge has been self taught. The endless possibilities of learning new things is what attracts me the most in IT. It's safe to say that sites like Udemy and StackOverflow are important resources in my journey as a developer.

While I do love full stack work, I think it's safe to say that my strongest point lies in back end development. My CSS skills are acceptable, but design is the area in which I have the biggest margin for improvement.

My current skillset mainly revolves around PHP, JavaScript, and the big frameworks within these languages. I also have some basic Java knowledge from back when I was interested in Android app development, but so far that knowledge is pretty basic.

Languages and frameworks I have worked with

Over the years I have worked with a few different languages and frameworks. A short list of those can be found below. Click an image for more information about the language or framework.

What is PatientManager?

PatientManager is by far the biggest project I had the pleasure of working on. Patientmanager is owned by a small one man company named Red Beaver Media, for which I worked for 9 months.

It is a SaaS Software as a Service platform that was originally aimed at midwives, but now it is expanding towards other care givers like dietists, speech therapists, ... . The core concept behind the software is helping it's users do more, for less.

A few things that help with the "do more for less" concept are the following:

• Centralize all patient files and data in a single online platform
• Support for group practices (assign patient to a specific health professional, share patient files, ... )
• Calendar to schedule meetings, both with patients and colleagues
• Patients can book their appointments in predefined timeslots
• Users can send mailing lists to patients, and use predefined tags to personalize the email
• And many more!

What was my job?

I joined PatientManager as a full stack intern. During this period I mainly got to know the frameworks behind the software through small unrelated projects.

Towards the end of my internship, I got to work on assignments related to PatientManager. The biggest of which was implementing the multilingual support. After my internship ended, I got hired under an IBO contract and worked on PatientManager until the end of March 2020.

While working on PatientManager, I was assigned to things like bugfixes, reworking existing code to make it more scaleable, expanding existing features, and also some new features.

Some of these new features include:

• Adding multilingual support (replace all static text by references to language files, and create these language files)
• Automating the process of customers signing up to PatientManager (generate and email them a contract based on the options they selected, and allowing digital signatures)
• Adding a notification system for system wide announcements
• Add custom tags to existing email templating system, allowing emails to be personalized
• Create a system where patients could plan their appointments
• Add video chat support so customers could see their patients safely during CoVid-19
• ...

Long story short: working on PatientManager was a perfect introduction to professional web / software development. My biggest takeaway from this period is that my true love lies in using my development skills for projects that truly help the users, something I'd love to build further onto by working the FOD.