Kevin Farst

5.0

(47 reviews)

US$25.00

For every 15 mins

Sessions/Jobs

ABOUT ME

Full-Stack, Front-End, and iOS mentor

Hey there! I've been a Ruby on Rails developer since 2010 involved with many different configurations and setups including Ruby 1.8.7-2.2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DataMapper, Rails 2.3-4.1, jQuery/CoffeeScript, CSS/SCSS/Bootstrap/Foundation, and Sinatra. From there, I made a shift from that and for the past two years I've been an AngularJS developer as well, recently switching to Angular 2. In that time I've simultaneously been building my mobile skills with iOS using both Swift and Objective-C. I remember how tough it was getting started in the web dev and mobile scenes and always appreciated those who guided me to becoming the developer I am today. Now, I would love to do the same for you as I help you learn best practices and "get over the hump" of difficult concepts, or move forward with that feature or bug you're stuck on. At the same time I would love to empower you with resources and debugging techniques so I not only "give a man (or woman) a fish", but more importantly teach you to fish also. I look forward to getting to know you and helping you become the developer you want to be. Heck, we might even have some fun doing it!

English

Pacific Time (US & Canada) (-08:00)

Joined February 2016

EXPERTISE

Ruby

5 years experience

Handling over 7 large production Rails applications and a production level Sinatra application has given me a lot of great experience wit...

Handling over 7 large production Rails applications and a production level Sinatra application has given me a lot of great experience with not only different Rails configurations, but also helped my pure Ruby skills as well, as I've worked with Ruby 1.87 and above. Fervent testing with RSpec and Cucumber have helped to enforce just a couple of the many important best practices I look forward to helping others with.

Rails 4 MongoDB Datamapper Sinatra PostgreSQL MySQL RSpec Ruby on Rails Ruby on rails3

JavaScript

5 years experience | 2 endorsements

As JavaScript is integral to almost all modern web applications, my experience with JS and jQuery has spanned my entire web dev career, l...

As JavaScript is integral to almost all modern web applications, my experience with JS and jQuery has spanned my entire web dev career, learning best practices from my many talented co-workers throughout the years.

jQuery CoffeeScript

HTML/CSS

5 years experience

As part of what comes with the territory of being a web developer, I've built my HTML and CSS skills in tandem with my other web developm...

As part of what comes with the territory of being a web developer, I've built my HTML and CSS skills in tandem with my other web development skills. In keeping with current trends, learning HAML and SCSS has also come with the territory, furthering my skills and making development easier on a day to day basis. I would like to make that development easier for you as well if you are interested in learning these HTML/CSS enhancements, or if you would just like to get your feet wet or improve your basic HTML/CSS skills, I'm more that happy to help build your foundation!

Haml

Ruby on Rails

5 years experience | 2 endorsements

As mentioned in my Ruby skills, I've worked on over 7 large production level Rails applications, ranging from Rails 2.3 to Rails 4, handl...

As mentioned in my Ruby skills, I've worked on over 7 large production level Rails applications, ranging from Rails 2.3 to Rails 4, handling a variety of differing Gem configurations/database configurations, and development patterns. I can help with your current endeavors, or get you started on the right foot with new, green field development if you need suggestions on how and what to get started with.

Cache Rails 4 MySQL

Cache Rails 4 MySQL PostgreSQL DatamapperStrong parametersAsset Pipeline I18n Redis Ruby on Rails

jQuery

8 years experience

As mentioned in my JavaScript skills, JS is integral to almost all modern web applications, and that has been manifested in recent years ...

As mentioned in my JavaScript skills, JS is integral to almost all modern web applications, and that has been manifested in recent years though jQuery. Therefore I've been exposed to a wide variety of structuring jQuery in a way that is best suited for the respective application, especially with the newer asset pipeline available in Rails.

jQuery jQuery UI

Git

5 years experience

With the explosion of Git as the dominant and ideal choice for version control, I've had extensive experience with Git and GitHub in ever...

With the explosion of Git as the dominant and ideal choice for version control, I've had extensive experience with Git and GitHub in every job. Combined with an almost completely agile work history, the "agile flow" has been integrated into my daily work routine resulting in clean and happy repositories :)

Branching and mergingRebasing Bisect

Branching and mergingRebasing Bisect Agile

Angular

2 years experience | 2 endorsements

For the past few years I've worked with AngularJS on a daily basis, including keeping up with Angular 2+. I've previously taught both an ...

For the past few years I've worked with AngularJS on a daily basis, including keeping up with Angular 2+. I've previously taught both an Angular 1 and Angular 2 class on Codementor, each a four week deep dive into both framework versions. Getting up to speed with not only how to structure a large production level app, but also advanced topics such as directive controllers, transclusion, the template cache, and the use of ui-router have been my priorities, along with extensive testing through Jasmine and Protractor. If you're trying to transition away from jQuery, or just want to learn the new hottness in JS MVC frameworks, I'm your guy!

Angular 2 Es5 Grunt

Angular 2 Es5 Grunt Jasmine Protractor Angular JavaScript Angularjs ui bootstrap

REVIEWS FROM CLIENTS

5.0

(47 reviews)

Micheal W. Wells

October 2019

Kevin very quickly helped me fill gaps in my understanding that were holding me back from writing swift viewcontroller tests, would definitely ask him for help again!

Ryan Johnson

June 2016

Best mentor I've ever worked with. Rails/Angular guru.

Ryan Johnson

May 2016

Kevin rocks!

Christopher Pollock

May 2016

Thanks. I know we got bogged down debugging. Will keep at it. Thanks.

Krista

May 2016

Kevin's instruction was so helpful! I've been stuck on a problem and some Ruby concepts for almost a week and in one session Kevin explained the problem's solution and concepts in a way that I could completely understand. Thank you!

Chris Tryens

May 2016

I was really impressed by Kevin's generosity. I posted a question and rather than attempt to set up a session right away, Kevin researched my question and suggested that I take a look at a StackOverflow question that he found. The SO post solved my problem, saving me the cost of the session. I realize that this is a means for mentors to make money so I was really blown away by the fact that Kevin put solving my problem over making money. This kind of generosity and selflessness is extremely refreshing. In the future I will definitely reach out to Kevin with any questions, not because I expect a free ride, but because I know that he will attempt to resolve my problem as efficiently as possible. Thank you so much, Kevin!

Tony Castiglione

April 2016

Kevin was awesome to work with! He brainstormed some solutions and walked me through the execution of our solution.

Cory

March 2016

Extremely helpful guidance on a new course for solving my problem. Easygoing and knowledgeable. Highly recommend.

Justin Eder

March 2016

Kevin answered my question clearly. Very helpful.

Li Z

March 2016

Excellent!!!!!!!

SOCIAL PRESENCE

GitHub

angular-2-class

codementor.io's Angular 2 Class for Intermediate Developers

ng2-movie-app

TypeScript

Community Posts

Putting Your View Controllers on a Diet Using the Clean Swift (VIP) Architecture, Part 3

Welcome back! Let's wrap up this series on Clean Swift by implementing unit tests against the components in a scene. When I was first becoming familiar with the architecture by building sample apps...

Putting Your View Controllers on a Diet Using the Clean Swift (VIP) Architecture, Part 2

Welcome back! Last time I talked about massive view controllers and some of the root causes. I also introduced one way of mitigating that using the Clean Swift architecture. I introduced the concept of a scene* and how the interactor receives events from the view controller such as API requests, button taps and other event notifications. I also covered data passing with *request*, *response*, and *view model* objects between classes in the VIP cycle, and how these model objects decouple that communication.

Putting Your View Controllers on a Diet Using the Clean Swift (VIP) Architecture, Part 1