About Me

Hi, I'm Andrew Lilley. I am a Full Stack Developer who is interesting in broadening my development knowledge. I have been a Developer for over 16 years. However, in all that time, I have not made a website for myself. Now I have some time.

In late April, 2020, I was informed that I would be furloughed as part of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. This allows a company to claim a percentage of a salary which they then use to pay their employee. However, a condition of the scheme is that you cannot do any work for that company.

What to do whilst on Furlough?

For me the simple answer is training courses. For quite some time now, I have been developing in Drupal and associated tech. Furthermore, the majority of that work has been in sub Drupal 8 versions. Drupal 9 has now been released. Therefore, this is a great opportunity to up skill. I have decided to create this website to document my journey as I try out different training courses and gain new skills.

At Drupalcon Amsterdam 2019, I went to a presentation by the Gatsby Team. I was intrigued by the offering. Therefore, that seemed like a good place to start my journey. I have built this website using Gatsby as a way of learning about it with the help of Gatsby JS - The Great Gatsby Bootcamp on YouTube.

Since beginning this journey, I have moved on to doing React courses. I also now have a backlog of courses to tackle. I have courses lined up for GraphQL, Typescript, Node.js, Vue.js and Deno. My thoughts and links to the demo applications are all available on the training courses section.

Moving Forward

I was recalled back into work in November 2020. Since then I have been putting into practise what I learned from the various training courses. It was definitely worthwhile doing them.

In terms of React, I have moved onto much more advanced features that are not really covered in the courses that I did. I have worked on and delivered commercial projects in React and there are more to come.

I will now retain and keep up to date this website as a means of tracking my continuous professional development.

Getting in Touch

If you would like to reach out to me or would like to know some more, you can visit my LinkedIn profile.

Created by Andrew Lilley © 2022