Hi, there! My name's Rafael de Figueiredo Alves. I'm a 39-year-old father of two children: my daughter Rafaela and my son Davi. I was an English teacher for about 15 years, 13 of them at CCAA. Now I've become a software developer and I've been working at Rz Sistemas remotely. I've been studying really hard to learn even more about developing. I've been learning and working with Delphi since I was 12 years old. Recently, I've been studying a lot of stuff related to HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript and C#b> and I'm really into React.JS now.
My wife and kids are the secret of my success because they are the reason to keep me going and learning everything about computer programming.
I've developed a lot of kinds of softwares on my own and I also developed some solutions to the place (CCAA) where I worked for almost 13 years. I developed spreadsheets to help my workplace, as I did by developing some pieces of software using Delphi. The goal of all the softwares and solutions I developed was to help automate the processes at my workplace.
Here are some of the operating systems I develop or I have plans to develop for:
Here are some platforms I develop or I'd like to develop for:
Here are some of the programming languages I've been learning and I've also been working with:
I've been learning Delphi and working with it since I was 12 years old. At that time, my brother brought home a CD with Delphi 2 and I immediatelly fell in love with the language. Easy and powerful, I've developed a lot of kinds of solutions on it: from a mobile to-do like app to a sofisticated software to evaluate teachers that presents questions randomly and collects voice from the candidates and lets the people from the teaching department have a sample of their English skills. I developed solutions for Windows and Android, but I can develop stuff for iOS and MacOS too. The only reason I didn't do it was because I don't have an Apple computer and I don't have an iPhone either.
I want to learn Lazarus and I plan to work with it as well as with Delphi. It's a powerful language that can make apps for a lot of platforms, just like Delphi. In addition to Lazarus, I really have plans to learn Python and integrate it to Delphi to make a great solution.
Recently, I've been studying HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript and I got really into React.JS. I can see how powerful this knowledge can be to my future. I'm investing time making stuff with these technologies and I plan to use them as much as I can.
I've used and learned a really huge set of tools that I used at my work as an English teacher and a digital marketing agent. I surely have plans to use them now that I'll be a software developer. Let me show them in categories.
I simply love working with Excel, Word and PowerPoint. I made a lot of great spreadsheets on Excel while I worked at CCAA. Some were to help me and other teachers keep track on students grades and performance, and others were to help my coordinators and directors manage the school more effectively. I have a repository called Excel-VBA where I've got some of the spreadsheets and other stuff I made for the school I worked for.
My experience with databases includes SQL and no-SQL databases. I worked with SQL Server for a long time. The school I worked for used to use a program to manage the students and other stuff that took advantage of this powerful database and I learned the structure of this database really well. I developed a lot of scripts (some running on Excel and some on my own apps) to work with this database. Recently, I've been really interested in no-SQL databases like MongoDB and Firebase. Concerning Firebase, I'm making a framework to let Delphi and Lazarus take advantage of it.
When it comes to designing, I love using Lunacy from Icons8. It's a great app, very simple and powerful. I developed posts for social networking sites and I develop the prototypes of my apps (eTasks prototype was entirely developed on Lunacy). I have watched some viodeos on Figma, I think it's interesting, but I really prefer Lunacy (even though I don't mind using any other design tool). To work with images, besides PowerPoint, I like to work with Gimp. It's free and it has really good resources.
Since I've been developing in Delphi for a long time, I only knew the IDE of Rad Studio and its code editor. But recently I found out about Visual Studio Code. It's an amazing editor and makes my job more interesting and simpler.
To version my software, I started using Git and Github and I really like both. For me, Github is an incredible source of inspiration and an amazing tool to manage all my source code. However, I'll take some time learning about Gitlab and Bitbucket.
NPM is now one of my favorite tools since I started to learn React.JS and I plan to work with it to make my web apps.
I've been a software developer since February 14, 2022 at RZ Sistemas remotely. I've done a lot of developing while I was working as an English teacher too, and also as a hobby.
Well, I've been an English teacher for about 15 years. The last 13 years, I worked for CCAA, a major English school here in Brazil. I probably taught hundreds of students, some have become teachers as well. I also became the proctor at a TOEFL exam. In 2021, I worked as a coordinator and helped the teachers who were working online providing information and make it easy for them to manage the information through online spreadsheets on Onedrive.
As I said, I didn't work as a developer officially, but I developed at least 15 pieces of software for my workplace. Besides, I wrote scripts for SQL Server and developed many spreadsheets to help manage the school information. Additionally, I worked with their social networking marketing, creating posts and managing their Ads online.
The apps that I created helped the school a lot, and I have two of them here in my Github (eRAMs and eAtasOrais). Unfortunately, for some of these apps, I don't have their source codes anymore, and I don't have screenshots either. One of the most admirable apps I've built for CCAA was an app that helps the school's teachers hiring. It had a questionaire of randomic questions, some with audio like international exams and a last exercise that asked to record the candidate's voice answering a question presented on the screen. Later, the employers could download all the information and check it out and also filter for the kind of candidates they wanted.
Another app I created for them was called Desk. It was a set of some extra functions that were not available on the application they used to manage all the information of the students and classes.
At RZ Sistemas, on-a-daily-basis, I've been working on all kids of softwares we have, from COBs for all banks, the company's ERP and also a CAD system for Fabric industry with an intelligent system to put pieces of clothes together to be cut.
eTasks is my latest project. It's a to-do app focused on managing tasks in a funny way. Besides, it lets you register your personal goals and keep track on supermarket lists in a easy and funny way. I used Delphi to make it. I built it for Windows (32x and 64x) and for Android. It was a great learning experience. Some of the things I learned are:
- MVC
- Clean code
- Interfaces on Delphi
- Android permissions
- Firebase
- Keyboard tricks
- Android development
- Building components
Desk is one of my first big projects. It was an application focused on providing some extra functions to the main software my workplace used to use. It helped reduce the amount of paper my workplace used. Some of the things I learned are:
- Using Paradox and SQL Server
- CRUD
- SQL scripts
- Making stunning interfaces (UI and UX experience)
eAtasOrais is one of my best projects. Built on Delphi and taking advantage of VBA, it helped my workplace make the document to register students' performance on oral tests in a very simple and quick way. Some of the things I learned are:
- MVC
- Clean code
- Interfaces on Delphi
- VBA integration
- FireDac
- Excel
- Styling in Delphi
- SQL Server
- SQL scripts
- Design patterns
eRAMs is another good example of an app that integrates Delphi and VBA. It made the creation of reports for students faster and simpler. Some of the things I learned are:
- MVC
- Clean code
- Interfaces on Delphi
- VBA integration
- FireDac
- Excel
- Styling in Delphi
- SQL Server
- SQL scripts
- Design patterns
Here comes some interesting numbers from my Github account and all the repositories I have. I hope you enjoy checking it out and it gives you a brief view of what I've been doing.
Check out how much I've been working (writing) in each of the languages I support.
If you want to contact me to hire my services as a software developer or even give me a remote job, here are my most valuable channels of communication.
https://github.com/rafael-figueiredo-alves
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-de-figueiredo-alves
https://rafael-figueiredo-alves.github.io/
Thank you very much for reading my profile
Rafael de Figueiredo Alves