Simon Katz's CV

Last modified: 2026-07-02

What I know, what I've done, and what I want to do

Personal Details

Simon Katz, London, UK	Email:
Blog: blogish.nomistech.com	GitHub: github.com/simon-katz

Objective

I'm interested in:

development work using Clojure and/or ClojureScript
passing on knowledge of Clojure and development in general to others
continuing to learn; a particular area of interest is highly interactive user interfaces.

Overview

I'm an intelligent, personable, self-motivated software developer with excellent written and spoken communication skills. I use incremental and iterative approaches supported by automated tests and DevOps.

I have a track record of producing well-engineered software that meets customers' needs and of communicating and collaborating effectively with colleagues, management and customers.

I do my best work in Clojure; I've used it since 2011 and before that I used Common Lisp for many years. (It may be worth saying that Clojure is a modern Lisp.) I've also done many things that aren't Lisp.

I have extensive experience of the whole software development lifecycle from business analysis through to delivery to users and subsequent support and maintenance.

I've worked on web, desktop and command-line-driven applications, in application areas including telecommunications, publishing, sports data, software tools that support design processes and software for software people (eg application generators and compilers).

I'm calm, well-organised, fair-minded and a natural teacher.

Knowledge and Skills

Key:

● ○ ○	Beginner
● ◐ ○	More than beginner
● ● ○	Middling
● ● ◐	More than middling
● ● ●	Good

	Theoretical Computer Science
● ● ●	Data structures & algorithms
● ● ●	Discrete mathematics
● ● ●	Complexity theory	eg Big-O notation.
● ● ●	Theory of computation

	Programming Languages Ranging from assembler through to very high-level languages, including functional languages.
● ● ●	Clojure and ClojureScript	For details, see below.
● ● ●	Common Lisp and CLOS	13 years.
● ● ●	Emacs Lisp	Off and on since 2011.
● ● ○	Bash	Off and on for as long as I can remember.
● ● ○	Java	6 months, plus what I've picked up from using Clojure.
● ○ ○	C	3 years; was ● ● ● a long time ago.
● ○ ○	C++	4 years; was ● ● ● a long time ago.
● ○ ○	Scala	6 months.
● ○ ○	Prolog	6 months.

	Clojure and ClojureScript I've been using Clojure professionally since 2013 and in my spare time since 2011. I have a good knowledge of functional programming principles and of Clojure's take on functional programming. I'm familiar with Clojure libraries including tools.namespace, Component, Integrant, Mount, Midje, clojure.spec, Schema, Malli, Compojure, Ring, clj-http, HTTP Kit, Hiccup, Cheshire, core.async, Yesql and HugSQL. For ClojureScript, I've used Reagent, Figwheel, and shadow-cljs. Most recentlly I've been using Electric Clojure, a language that's reactive at the expression level and which greatly simplies communication between client and server.

	Software Design
● ● ●	General design principles	Modularity, coupling, cohesion, DRY, KISS.
● ● ●	Design for functional programming	eg Use of purely functional code, separation of purely functional code from side-effecting code, functions as first-class values, higher-order functions.
● ● ○	Domain-driven design (DDD)	eg Emphasis on domain modelling, clear separation of domain code and other code, common language for all stakeholders.
● ● ◐	Object-oriented design (OOD)	I've used OOD when programming in C++ and in CLOS. I understand the building-blocks of object orientation and I understand SOLID design principles. I also have a rusty knowledge of OO design patterns.
	For TDD and BDD, see the 'Process — Agile Development' section.

	Back-End Development
● ● ○	HTTP
● ● ○	Microservices
● ● ○	Relational databases and SQL	Mostly Postgres.
● ● ○	AWS Infrastructure	eg EC2, ECS, RDS, S3, Athena, DynamoDB, SQS, Kinesis.
● ◐ ○	Kafka and Kafka Streams	Good theoretical understanding, but limited practical use.
● ○ ○	Redis

	Front-End Development
● ● ●	ClojureScript	See above for details.
● ● ◐	HTML
● ● ◐	CSS
● ○ ○	JavaScript

	User Interface Design and UX
● ● ◐	UI and UX principles	eg Consistent look & feel, use of mental models to guide the structure, typography to reflect structure, providing feedback on actions and status, error tolerance.

	Operating Systems
● ● ●	Various Unix & Linux systems	20+ years.
● ○ ○	Windows	~10 years, not recent.

	Process — Programming-Related
● ● ●	REPL-based development	REPL-based development backed by automatic tests for fast feedback at a micro level.
● ● ●	An Emacs/CIDER setup for Clojure and REPL-based development
● ● ●	Git

	Process — Agile Development
● ● ●	Pair programming
● ● ◐	Automated testing
● ● ●	Test-driven development (TDD)
● ● ○	Behaviour-driven development (BDD)	(By which I mean TDD with tests at the level of externally-visible functionality.) This is a 2 rather than a 3 because I haven't used any specific BDD tools.
● ● ●	Incremental and iterative development
● ● ●	Close collaboration with the customer

	Process — Build Pipelines, Deployment, Devops I've been using DevOps approaches since 2011. I'm not an expert, and I am keen to improve my skills in this area.
● ◐ ○	Cloud Infrastructure & Databases	Compute & Containers: AWS EC2, AWS ECS, Docker. Storage & Databases: AWS S3, AWS RDS, AWS DynamoDB. Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation.
● ◐ ○	CI/CD & Observability	CI/CD Platforms: GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Jenkins. Metrics & Collection: Telegraf, InfluxDB. Dashboards & Monitoring: Grafana, SignalFx, AWS CloudWatch.

	Soft Skills
● ● ●	Communication	Good oral and written communication skills. I produce clear and concise technical documentation.
● ● ●	Organisation	Prioritising, multitasking, working to deadlines and managing expectations. Balancing my own work with other people's work and with the needs of clients.
● ● ●	Teamwork	Communicating with other people and teams, discussing problems, collaborating, active listening, compromising. Sharing knowledge and ideas. My approach is empathic, patient, respectful, tolerant and (when appropriate) lighthearted.
● ● ●	Teaching	I regard teaching as part of my job. This has mostly been through day-to-day things such as answering miscellaneous questions as and when they occur, pairing, code reviews and producing wiki-based documentation, but I have also done more formal teaching with classroom-like lessons and training courses.