Stephen Villee
Software Developer
Location
Dover, NH, United States
Toptal Member Since
January 8, 2016
Stephen has been a software engineer for over 30 years. From developing software for the Unix platform in the 1980's to producing enterprise-level financial and eCommerce software on PHP, JS, and the C language family, he prides himself on being meticulous and developing high quality software. He is a dedicated, efficient individual and a great communicator, and looks forward to contributing valuable skills to your project!
Stephen is available for hire
Hire StephenPortfolio
Plymouth Design Group
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Microsoft Excel, JavaScript, PHP
Atlas Learning (via Toptal)
Google Native Client (NaCl), C
UTStarcom
Real-time Operating System (RTOS), C
Experience
Assembler x86 - 20 yearsC - 20 yearsVisual Basic - 10 yearsMySQL - 10 yearsPHP - 10 yearsDrupal - 5 yearsJavaScript - 5 yearsjQuery - 3 yearsLocation
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Git, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux
The most amazing...
...software I've written is a marketplace for software development that ties developer income to performance, including penalties for bugs.
Work Experience
2006 - PRESENT
Software Engineer
Plymouth Design Group
- Upgraded a client's online store from X-Cart 3 to X-Cart 5. This involved writing X-Cart 5 modules to implement custom functionality that had previously been implemented as hacks to the X-Cart 3 core.
- Worked with a team to redesign the user interface for an online shipping marketplace. I acted as lead developer for the back-end software.
- Developed a utility to allow an Excel application on the Macintosh to generate several reports and combine them into a single PDF.
- Created a system to allow several Excel software products to be licensed for 30 days at a time. This included code on the server to calculate the expiration date, along with Excel macros to enforce it.
- Added a "what if" sheet to an investment analysis spreadsheet to let the customer make incremental changes to key assumptions, and immediately see the effect on various metrics.
- Developed a system to add a banner to each eBay listing for a given seller, encouraging buyers to use a particular company for shipping.
- Developed a web application to show market value for wet shaving gear, based on data from eBay sales, obtained through Terapeak.
- Enhanced the partnership section of an investment analysis spreadsheet to show the effects of waterfall tiers in partner distributions.
- Added macros to an Excel application to allow data to be imported from an earlier version of the application.
- Modified the admin section of a shipping marketplace to show a variety of sales analytics, and to download this information in CSV form.
Technologies: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Microsoft Excel, JavaScript, PHP
2016 - 2016
PNACL Chrome Extension Developer
Atlas Learning (via Toptal)
- Created a Google Native Client application to make a voice recording, encode it as MP3, and upload it to Google Drive.
Technologies: Google Native Client (NaCl), C
2000 - 2003
Software Engineer
UTStarcom
- Developed a call control module to allow an analog phone to be connected to an H.323 network.
- Tracked down and fixed several bugs in a vendor's H.323 protocol stack.
Technologies: Real-time Operating System (RTOS), C
1993 - 2000
Systems Analyst
Ticketmaster
- Developed firmware for a portable device to read barcodes on concert tickets, allowing venues to collect statistics about attendance.
- Developed an ODBC driver to allow direct access to a ticketing database from applications such as Microsoft Excel. This consisted of over 10000 lines of C++ written in about three months.
- Wrote a version of the Kermit file transfer program in Pascal, for use under a proprietary operating system used for ticketing.
- Rewrote some accounting reports to use a Microsoft Access database to store sales data.
- Wrote numerous utilities to import data about sold and reserved seats into a proprietary ticketing system.
Technologies: Assembler, ODBC, C++, Microsoft Access, Pascal
1988 - 1993
Software Engineer
Viasoft
- Sped up several Viasoft product components by rewriting some database access modules. The performance of the analyzer improved by about 30%.
- Wrote a utility to take the JCL for a COBOL compile and convert it into JCL to run the Viasoft analyzer. This was important because customers had such varied ways of running the COBOL compiler.
- Developed a system to allow Viasoft products to be split into packages that would be dynamically loaded as needed.
- Integrated the Viasoft editor into the regular ISPF editor so that there would be no performance penalty until one of the special Viasoft commands was invoked.
- Found a bug in another vendor's product that was manifesting itself as a failure in a Viasoft product. Suggested a fix.
Technologies: Assembler, Mainframe, COBOL, Pascal
1987 - 1988
Software Engineer
Vidnetics
- Helped port an interactive cable video system for hotels and cruise ships to Unix System V.
- Completely rewrote some firmware that served as a gateway between the in-room video board and the Unix System V head end. This was several thousand lines of Z80 assembler code.
Technologies: Assembler, C, Unix
1984 - 1987
Software Engineer
Anasazi
- Developed general purpose network software for Unix.
Technologies: Assembly, Assembler x86, C, Unix
1980 - 1984
Software Engineer
Honeywell
- Developed and maintained components of the GCOS 8 operating system.
Technologies: Assembler
Experience
Fun Facts About 59
https://www.scribd.com/document/387545449/Fun-Facts-About-59Explains how the number 59 is mathematically interesting. Includes case studies of a number field, a Hilbert class field, and an elliptic curve.
Publication
Persisting Data Across Page Reloads: Cookies, IndexedDB and Everything In-Between
https://www.toptal.com/web/persisting-data-page-reloads-cookies-indexeddb
Skills
Languages
PHP, C++, Assembler x86, Pascal, Visual Basic, C, JavaScript, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Assembler, Assembly, COBOL, Java, Ada
Storage
MySQL
Other
Back-end Development, Mainframe, Real-time Operating System (RTOS), Google Native Client (NaCl), Google N
Frameworks
CodeIgniter, Bootstrap, ZURB Foundation, Loopback, AngularJS
Libraries/APIs
jQuery, ODBC, eBay API, Facebook API, Node.js
Platforms
Drupal, Linux, Unix, WordPress
Tools
Apache, Git, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access
Education
1977 - 1980
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mathematics
Harvard University - Massachusetts