DWA15 Portfolio

Curtis Wilcox
Curtis Wilcox

Who I am, what I do

I'm a husband, uncle, and cat owner. I like SF books / movies / TV, "prestige television," theater, spicy food, and international travel. I'm interested in copyright reform and the maker movement.

I work at Harvard, I'm the IT Manager for Instructional Media Services (IMS) and the manager of the Adaptive Technology Lab (ATL). I manage the IT staff and budget in IMS, administer departmental servers, provide support to the IMS staff, and provide IT support in FAS classrooms. I also manage the ATL staff and budget, use my IT skills to advise on and support assistive technologies, and am involved with the work to advance Harvard's web accessibility.

Why I'm taking this course

I'm taking this course to learn about and practice:

  • version control (git & GitHub)
  • using backend frameworks (Laravel)
  • the MVC software design pattern
  • ORM in program and database design

I'm also using it as an opportunity to try out front-end frameworks (Bootstrap), Sass, and I'm sure other tools and ideas.

My previous programming experience

I made my first web site in 1995. In my MS in IT program at RIT, my coursework involved using C++, HTML & CSS, shell & batch (Windows) scripting, Lingo (Macromedia Director), and Perl. I've taken a number of classes at DCE in which I've written code in ColdFusion, C (including Arduino sketches), PHP, JavaScript, SQL, Scratch, Processing, and Java. In my IT career, not a lot of my time is spent programming but has included using many of the scripting languages I've used in school, particularly Perl and PHP, plus some AppleScript and FileMaker.

My system platforms

I'm using a Mac in this class. At home, I've always used Macs, starting with a Mac Plus, and since coming to Harvard I use a Mac for work as well. However, previously I used a PC at work and still work with and support people using PCs. I also have experience using and administering Unix-based operating systems other than OS X, primarily from the command line.