My Resume on Google Docs






arnold csisztai

web developer since 2002

arnold csisztai web developer since 2002

profile

I was born in Subotica, Serbia. I am currently 41 years old and living in Szeged, Hungary. I am working as a (backend) web developer (since 2002).

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I don’t have formal education in IT, as in 2002 I discontinued my attendance on the mechanics/informatics faculty of the Subotica Tech University after two years. I have a high school level degree as a technician of desktop publishing and typography.

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I speak Hungarian and Serbian natively, and English on a relatively high, technical level.

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I have a B type driving licence.

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I'm open to new tech and I constantly try to learn and be informed, but I'm not a magpie developer, I don't get easily distracted by shiny things. I tend to focus on easily adaptable, well-documented, entrenched, lightweight and clear-cut foundations when I build applications, and keep complexity to a minimum where possible. I am a strong proponent of the KISS, the YAGNI, and the DRY principles.

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In my free time I am/was usually busy with the demoscene, pixel art, drawing/painting, cycling, brewing beer, running, dragon boating, travelling/hiking, books, or movies…

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The main values I try to live by in all aspects of my life are rationality, openness, sincere communication, modesty, purity, patience, resourcefulness and humble dignity towards traditions, institutions and established practices.

areas
of
expertise

★ Essential software development

⋆ Backend

During my career I have met with Python, Perl, ASP, ActionScript and Rails for shorter or longer periods, but I work most quickly and efficiently with PHP (16+ years of active, continuous practice starting from purely procedural PHP 4 up to object oriented PHP 7).

⋆ Databases

I am mainly familiar with SQL-based relational databases (mostly MySQL, but SQLite and PostgreSQL too), but used non-relational databases (mainly MongoDB) too. I use databases on a daily basis, and I think I have a bit of sense for query optimizations, but I’m not a Db expert.

⋆ Frontend

My knowledge (especially JavaScript) is on a casual level but if I have to do frontend development, I try to take care of speed-optimization, browser-compatibility and accessibility as much as possible. I have made a Commodore 64 pixel editor in JS.
I usually take advantage of Bootstrap, SASS/LESS and jQuery when building sites. I am familiar with Blade, Twig and Smarty templating engines.
Lately for my own recreation, I’m trying to catch up with JS, ES6 and Typescript, but professionally, I prefer to work together with frontend developers who are much knowledgeable in this field than I am.

★ Frameworks

⋆ CodeIgniter

My first dive into PHP frameworks started with CodeIgniter almost from its initial release, and I have kept using it till 2012-2013. Made a lot of custom solutions and a CMS/E-commerce engine with the help of it (the engine is still used as a Central European webshop base by OfficeShoes with 600.000-1.000.000 daily requests, and also by one of the biggest Serbian gadget shops, Pokloni with 35.000-50.000k requests per day).

⋆ Laravel/Lumen

After CodeIgniter has become out-of-date and archaic, I have moved forward to the absolutely lovely Laravel (4.0 at the time when I first encountered with it), and it remained my base web framework of choice. Accordingly, if I’m in a need for a microframework, I prefer Lumen.

⋆ Other frameworks

Had slight contacts with Symfony, CakePHP, Yii, Yii2 and Phalcon as well. Mainly in a form of fixing bugs or refactoring old code.

★ Other development related practices and proficiency

⋆ Content Management Systems

I have worked with ExpressionEngine, Joomla, Textpattern, a little bit with Drupal. During the past years, I’ve got quite familiar with Drupal’s inner working.

⋆ Version Control

Git of course, but worked a lot with Subversion in the past as well. I never got familiar with Git’s CLI (apart from some basic commands), so I’m using GitKraken as a client.

⋆ Linux

I am using Linux both as a professional and everyday operating system, particularly a Debian 9/Cinnamon based build. I am not an expert by any means, but I know my way around it, and use both the GUI and the CLI with ease and confidence.

⋆ DevOps

I am acquainted with a part of the devops stack, but I’m far from calling myself certain or self-reliant. I have the most experience with building Docker/Vagrant containers, setting up basic Kubernetes clusters on GCP, and using Jenkins. Also, currently I’m running and maintaining a LEMP-based virtual server for my hobby projects (and I am versant with LAMP too).

⋆ Software Development Methodologies

I am the most familiar with Waterfall (who isn't?), Agile/Scrum, Kanban and a bit of XP.

⋆ Development Environment

The development environment I’m the most comfortable with is based on Debian, and consist of PHPStorm (with Code Sniffer, Mess Detector, Xdebug), GitKraken for a Git client, and Docker for application containers.

⋆ Testing

I do automated unit testing with PHPUnit, and lately I’m trying to get into Codeception.

⋆ SEO

I am quite knowledgeable about different search engine optimization techniques and constantly experiment with them as a hobby.

2002
to
2003
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★ Industry Entertainment, Serbia

Handheld game development. Responsible for graphics, testing and web development.

2004
to
2006
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★ Arteska International, Serbia

One of the biggest beverage production companies in Serbia at the time. Responsible for development and maintenance of web-based platforms.

2006
to
2008
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★ Leading Edge Creative, Australia

My first freelance employer. Cooperated in different periods of time.

2008
to
2012
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★ HocuTo Gadget Shop, Serbia

Rather freelance than fulltime, since I was working for the company remotely from Hungary. Cooperated in different periods of time.

2014
to
2016
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★ Evista Creative Agency, Hungary

A quite versatile working environment. I was mostly engaged in backend programming, but I also did frontend tasks whenever it was needed.

2017
to
2017
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★ Nexum, Hungary

For a while I was part of a team which is responsible for the development of Profession, Hungary's leading job search website. During my stay, I was mainly fixing bugs and learning about the gargantuan system.

2017
to
2018
⇢

★ CAS Software

Responsible for development and maintenance of web-based platforms. Also mostly in charge of not too critical DevOps

2018
to
now

★ Pronovix

Responsible for backend and frontend development.

career

Notable and/or interesting projects

⋆ OfficeShoes e-commerce platform

Based on my custom CMS/e-commerce solution which I have started to build in 2006, the engine is distributing and serving about 600.000-1.000.000 daily requests for the Central-European OfficeShoes webshops. I left the project couple of years ago, but as far as I’m aware, the engine is still actively updated and developed. The features we had the main focus on while we were developing were: multisites (ability to serve unlimited number of domains from the same base engine), versatile/dynamic filtering, high level of search engine optimization, and a robust but flexible administration area.
The same engine is running Pokloni, one of the biggest gadget webshops in Serbia.

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⋆ A web-based PDF reader

Made about a decade ago, but still very proud of it, as it was a really challenging and extremely complicated project. I’ve had to clone the features of the Sumatra PDF Reader to HTML4/CSS2/JS, while optimizing it for Internet Explorer 6 (Windows XP was still widely used those days). It’s numerous features included: PDF2web converter, asynchronous page loading, keyboard shortcuts, various view modes, search, bookmarking, and zoom.
It included backend work as well (for the PDF conversions), but it mainly relied on old-school frontend work.
Unfortunately, since I don’t own the project, there’s only a video preview of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XolTsoFPrQ

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⋆ Pixelite - a web-based pixel-graphics editor for Commodore 64 and Plus/4

Still in the making. The code itself is quite rough, as it was basically a playground for upgrading my JS knowledge and learning about some of its quirks, but I really enjoy working on it as some of the problems I face are puzzling and stimulating. I’m especially happy about the custom and really fast undo buffer feature and the all-in-all low memory consumption (which is one of the main factors I keep my eye on during the development).
https://github.com/csisztaiarnold/pixelite

freelance
work

Rate: $25/h

Generally available for consultation/work:

17:00-21:00 CET (UTC +1)
08:00-21:00 CET (UTC +1) on weekends

Send an E-mail:
csisztai.arnold@gmail.com

Contact me on Telegram:
https://t.me/arnoldc

Or just write a quick message here, and I'll get back to you ASAP: