David Murray

Background

About David Murray

I first started coding at 8 when I accidentally ended up in the BASIC interpreter while rebooting an Apple IIe. I didn’t know what I’d done, but by typing random commands and reverse engineering other programs I eventually taught myself how to code.When the web became a thing, I sold everything I had to buy a 28.8kbps modem, then spent my teenage years throwing together websites in HTML, fledgling JavaScript and Flash, and coded other esoteric things via mIRC scripting, Visual Basic and Java. I wrote an open-source blogging client in XUL for fun that had around 120k users at its peak. I also wrote a freeware bit of software to speed up l10n efforts for Mozilla extension developers.In my early 20s I travelled around the state installing EFTPOS machines, worked Desktop Support at Foster’s for a few years, and worked at a computer store manually removing viruses and malware. I also ran my own business for several years doing PC troubleshooting and network installations for local schools, and don’t miss hand-crimping Cat5e cables at all.I dropped out of a computer science degree due to frustration at it not teaching anything practical, then was eventually hired at CAPA to keep their Macs running. Once that had been “solved”, I slowly took over all the network infrastructure and automated as much of the company as possible, unlocking tonnes of productivity gains along the way.Over the years I have designed and written many, many systems from scratch - APIs, billing and subscription systems, transactional email systems, content management systems, customer relationship managers, backup systems, document storage and retrieval systems, mobile apps (in React Native) and many complex databases.At the same time, I also managed a team of developers while constantly upgrading our infrastructure; by the time Informa took over we were running a hybrid Mac/PC network, with Samba AD on Ubuntu for authentication, and Jamf for Mac management. Email over the years moved from POP3/Courier to IMAP/Dovecot, then finally a staggered migration to Office 365. The offices were connected via a split-site VPN over fibre optic running on Ubiquiti routers with IP phones.These days I run and code alongside a team of talented developers, coordinate and balance demands between departments, design and develop new products, process large data sets, manage budgets, squeeze maximum performance from hardware, sort the practical from the latest buzzword grift, and fight with corporate bureaucracy on a daily basis.