Ryan Hirst

Professional programmer, UX enthusiast, terrible carpenter, amatueur cook.

dark mode

I like to make things, and I've got 8 years of web development experience, a degree from Michigan State University, and a love for all things computers and internet to help me make them well.

Drupal

Open-source development at it's finest. It was about seven years ago that I was introduced to Drupal, doing a site build for Ford's Drive for Your School program. The robust CMS provided plenty of challenges for me to cut my teeth on, but once I tackled the steep learning curve and realized what it was capable of, there was no looking back. Since then, I've worked with a multitude of Drupal 7, 8 and 9 sites, kickstarting research with Mcubed 3.0 at the University of Michgan, protecting the Great Lakes through Blue Accounting, and creating a more secure world with RF Ideas.

JAMstack

Back to the basics. Static site generators have evolved rapidly in the past few years, allowing developers like myself to spend less time buildling the backend and more time to focus on looks, functionality, and accessibility. Building with these is a blast, and I've spent endless hours exploring the variety of frameworks, and engaging with the community through JAMstack_conf and local meetups.

ReactJS

The latest of my tech-obsessions, this framework has made managing larger code-bases, such as Comcast's prepaid dashboard application, a much more pleasant experience. Building with a focus on modularity and using typscript to improve readability has allowed our bigger teams of engineers to hand off code and work together in a more satisfying way.