About Me

My name is Nickolas Stacey. I've been a professional, full-stack Web Developer since 2003, working primarily in PHP and JavaScript for that time.

Since 2009, I've been using PHP frameworks and have since used Symfony 1.x, 2, and 3, Zend Framework 2, Kohana, Laravel 4 and 5, and Slim on large-scale projects.

Over time I'm come to focus on delivering fast, scalable, low-maintenance, and intelligent solutions to meet both the client and user's requirements for a modern website.

These include projects such as high-traffic news and sports sites, NFL UK's fantasy football site, high-value e-commerce sites, and high-security financial applications.

Starting with Amazon Web Service's (AWS's) EC2 beta program, I've been an avid user of AWS's toolset and have now used a large proportion of the offerings in live and successful websites.

I've been using AWS Lambda for the past few months using Node JS. Lambda has great power to change web development for the better and save companies a lot of money so plan to continue this learning.

After 12 years of permanent employment, I've shifted paths to become a contractor. My previous roles have included team leadership, line management, recruiting (average retention time is over 2 years for developers I've interviewed and recommended), and as a technical team lead managing multiple teams simultaneously. This gives me the flexibility to work either individually, as part of a team, or lead a team with equal ability.

For the past couple of years, I've been using Unity 3D and C# to dabble in games development and have decided to start exploring what can be achieved with this.

This blog will cover both my interested in games development as well as my experience in web application development and AWS Lambda.