Olaf Alders

olafalders.com | olaf@wundersolutions.com | Toronto(ish), ON, CA

Full stack developer, with focus on back end development in Perl and Golang. Coder #1 on MetaCPAN. Fluent in German. Graduate degrees in Classical Philology and Medieval Studies. I speak and write on technical topics. In my spare time I swim, bike and run.

Elevator Pitch 🛗

I have many years of experience in architecting well designed, high availability web applications from the ground up. I value finding the right tool for the right job. Test coverage and code quality are important to me. I enjoy civil debates about code changes. I’m happy to pair program with colleagues and exchange knowledge with them. I’m involved in many Open Source projects. I’m constantly shipping Open Source software. I can lead projects. I can turn business requirements into carefully scoped project criteria. I value being in an environment where I can affect change. I’m constantly looking for ways to reduce friction in software development processes. I’m always learning.

My Libraries 📚

• GitHub
• MetaCPAN

Skills 🔨

Programming: Mainly Perl, Go, TypeScript and Bash, but I have also worked with Lua, JavaScript, Vimscript, Applescript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Java, Objective-C, ColdFusion and even ASP

Databases: Postgres, SQLite, MySQL, Sqitch

Containers: Docker, Vagrant

OS: macOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Raspbian, Alpine

DevOps: Ansible, Cloudflare, Digital Ocean, Let’s Encrypt

CI: GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Travis CI, CodeCov, Coveralls

Project Management: MetaCPAN, meta::hack conference organizer

Testing: prove, Playwright, bats

Web Scraping: WWW::Mechanize, Colly

Other: Git, (Neo)vim, tmux, nginx, Twitter Bootstrap, PayPal, Authorize.NET, PayflowPro, have published 2 iOS aps

Experience 💼

Senior Software Engineer, MaxMind Inc

Sep 2012 to present (remote)

I joined MaxMind at quite an early stage and helped one small development team grow into several teams. I introduced the use of Vagrant, database fixtures, code quality tools and helped to shape best practice coding standards.

• Full stack development, with emphasis on back end
• Payment integrations, forms and validation
• Custom dependency management tools to automate removing unused Perl dependencies
• Job candidate interviews
• Homework evaluation for Java, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP and TypeScript submissions

Technologies used: Perl, Go, bash, Typescript, Lua, Python, Ruby, PHP, Java, Playwright, PostgreSQL, Ansible, Docker, MySQL

Software Developer, Raybec Communications

Apr 2008 to Sep 2012, Toronto, ON

I helped architect, implement and deploy a transactional email system. I also worked on a white label CRM product.

• System architecture and design
• Hiring process
• Full stack development
• Payment integrations, reporting, forms and validation
• Introduced version control and unit tests

Technologies used: Perl, Javascript, Apache, Git, Subversion

Owner, wundersolutions.com

July 2000 to present

This business was run (literally) out of a dorm room in the early stages. I developed a web analytics service which had 10k+ users. I learned early on to deal with scale, concurrency and high availability. I implemented the full stack, including recurring and one-time payments.

I expanded into web hosting, where I learned how to configure and administer web servers, mail servers and DNS servers.

I have done custom work for many clients over the years, from building applications from the ground up to customizing 3rd party software.

I provide virtual server hosting at Digital Ocean for select clients. The servers run nginx, are deployed via Ansible and use Let’s Encrypt for TLS.

Projects 📋

is: an inspector for your environment (beta) (2023)

• Shell scripting that looks more like English and feels more enjoyable

Technologies used: Go, GoReleaser, GitHub Actions, CodeCov

PrettyGoodPing (beta) (2023)

• Configurable dashboard to track TSL cert expirations, domain name expirations, pings and HTTP HEAD requests

Technologies used: Perl, Mojo, Minion (queue), nginx, esbuild, Sqitch, Let’s Encrypt, Docker, docker-compose, GitHub Actions, CodeCov, GitHub/GitLab/Google OAuth2

perlimports (2021)

• Port of goimports to Perl
• See my 2021 Conference in the Cloud talk about perlimports

Technologies used: Perl, GitHub Actions

MetaCPAN (2010 - present)

• The de facto search engine for Perl libraries
• Started as an evening and weekend project, but is now used by thousands of developers worldwide, every day
• Receives over $20,000 in in-kind and monetary donations every year

If you’re interested in sponsoring this important Open Source project, please be in touch.

Technologies used: Perl, Elasticsearch, Docker, Ansible, Puppet, Argo CD

libwww-perl (2017 - present)

I have been entrusted to be the primary maintainer of this piece of Internet history. Being a custodian of legacy software has helped me to understand that even seemingly innocuous changes to code that someone else relies on can have far-reaching effects.

• Thousands of other packages depend on this software
• The code dates back to at least 1995. It’s based on Roy Fielding’s work, which was based on the work of Tim Berners-Lee

Technologies used: Perl, GitHub Actions

olafalders.com

I write about Git, Vim, Perl, Go, conferences and general programming. See my July 2023 Perl and Raku Conference talk on the past, current and future of Perl.

Technologies used: Hugo, render.com

Conferences ❤️

I generally I spend 1 week per year in Europe, where I am sponsored to hack on Open Source software at the Perl Toolchain Summit. Some years I also attend a second hacking summit (meta::hack) in North America.

• Perl Toolchain Summit (9x)
• YAPC::NA / TPRC (9x)
• meta::hack (3x)

Mentoring 🧑‍🏫

I have acted as a mentor in various programs as part of the MetaCPAN project.

• Google Summer of Code
• Google Code-in
• Outreachy

Education 🎓

• M.A. Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
• M.A. Classical Philology, McMaster University
• B.A. Hons. Classics and Modern Languages, McMaster University & Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Awards & Recognition 🏆

• Ontario Graduate Scholarship
• A.G. McKay Prize In Classical Studies
• The Greek Community Of Burlington and District Scholarship

Trivia (because you made it this far) 😁

• Taught high school Latin at Appleby College for one year after finishing grad school
• Toured Maritime Canada several times as performing musician
• Performed live on TV and radio in Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax
• My music has been played by “Whispering” Bob Harris on BBC Radio 📻