Stephen Leisy

Background

About Stephen Leisy

Hi there! Welcome to my small corner of the World Wide Web. I'm Front-End Software Engineer with 3+ years of professional experience. I believe web development is creative at its core and enjoy utilizing my technical skill and artistic background to build practical applications with elegant, clean code. Some of my favorite things are- Breaking functional code down into tested, reusable pieces, that can be implemented all over an application without fear of bugs or slight inconsistencies- Working to create or maintain a strong company-wide 'Programming Style Guide'(If only there were a Chicago Manual of Style for such things.) to keep code consistent, and prevent context-switching, even when multiple developers are contributing to a code base- Investigating and implementing style libraries. Chakra has been in constant rotation because of the repos I've been working in and different designer preferences, but recently I've dabbled with a tailwind/headless UI combo that is quickly emerging as a new fave- Working closely with UX designers to bring gorgeous designs to life in ways that are performant and all pull from a shared component library- Same thing as above but with Product Managers. I love meeting product expectations for new features or improvements in a way that also makes sense in the existing code base. Technical planning is probably one of my favorite steps in this whole development dance- Providing documentation on ALL function components/utility functions/hooks etcetera. Just because I know what it is and what it does, does not mean I should expect others to know as well. In addition, any logic that increases the cognitive load (like excessive munging because data is queried in the wrong shape) should include annotation on what's happening so it isn't removed in another developer's refactor session and functionality is lost. These instances often highlight a bigger issue to be addressed, but I'm going to stop myself here before I create a manifesto on this topic- I love working with a team! It's a great feeling to show up to work every day to write quality code and build things with a team of developers who are not just 'coworkers' but 'buddies'. I've been fortunate to maintain this feeling in my professional career. Outside of work, I played in an indie-rock band for a decade + toured all over the US, and love talking about professional basketball (Go Blazers!).