narnach / ants

2011 AI Challenge: Ants!

Hi, Wes here! 👋

I've been a self-taught programmer since the 90s, a professional since 2006, and a consultant/freelancer since 2009. Ruby has been my main language for 16+ years, and I still love it. I've done some Elixir projects as well. Like every web developer I speak Javascript, Typescript, HTML, CSS, etc. As a fullstack developer who strongly focused on the backend, it's my preference to stay away from them when possible. 🙃

Most of my code is hidden away in (clients') private repositories, but when possible I make open source contributions.

I'm available as consultant via my website and offer Ruby on Rails maintenance services via RoRMaaS.

Things I'm interested in (as a person, so a mix of personal and professional):

• Software quality, testing, maintenance/maintainability, stability, documentation
• Gaming, Artificial Intelligence, simulations, system dynamics
• Entrepreneurship, ethical business principles, work/life balance, sustainability, pragmatic ethics

You can reach me by email or in context in other places.

Open Source

Recent contributions I've made:

• Barcodevalidation Ruby gem to handle barcode parsing and validation:
  • v2.6.0: Support for custom GTINs + Rubocop fixes
  • v2.5.0: Fix: re-expose GTIN#check_digit as public method

My own active projects:

• Groupie Ruby gem to handle Bayesian classification of text:
  • v0.6.0 Improve tokenization support, drop support for very old Ruby versions.
  • v0.5.0 Add smart weights, remove deprecated code.
  • v0.4.0 Revive the gem after 10 years, make it compatible with 2022 Rubys stack. Deprecate some old anti-patterns.