squishySlug

Behind the slug

LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-roche-5974a0123/
Github : https://github.com/Lunacie
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/squishyslug.dev
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/squishyslug/

Curious about who's hiding behind the slug ?
My name is Leslie.
I am a France based Freelance Software Engineer (UTC+1) with a passion for independant work and programming ever since childhood.
I have worked in Australia for multiple local companies/startup as well as independently on dozens of web projects. I also have a few interesting personal projects. I am currently working part-time as a mentor for the online programming school OpenClassrooms.

How is all started
It all started in 2001, back when I was 9 years old and I first started experimenting with web dev, playing around with markup languages such as html but also vrml, the markup language for virtual reality. I learned about vrmlScript to add dynamism to the 3d cells I built. The scenes were browser based and would run usign the Blaxxun Contact plugin.

Those worlds I created were my introduction into programming, and I wanted to know more. I started by learning css/html and soon enough, got frustrated by the fact that the web content I built was always so static and I was no closer to figuring out how to build the worlds I had in mind.

The beginning of my freelance career
However, I used the newly aquired knowledge to start building and selling web templates by the time I was 13. I would design them and then integrate the assets using css/html. I would then upload the packaged archive to websites such as kitgraphique.net, which works as an affiliation based program.

Autodidactism during my teenage years
I got curious, and decided to learn php, then quickly moved on to learning actionScript. I started building my own flash games, galavnized by the realization that I could finally put those ideas into code and share them with the world. By the time I was 16, I started learning the C programming language and built a Sokoban clone.

I began taking on freelacing, building web projects while continuing selling web templates. I built and designed the first version of my portfolio for my web activity, which at the time, was called shaaDesign. No slug yet, just an elephant I designed.

Academic Trainning
Once I graduated highschool, I went on to study Software engineering at the Paris Graduate School of Digital Innovation (Epitech). I worked on many projects, all more interesting than the others and I became a technical assitant during my 3rd year. If not for the strong aversion to group work I quickly developed due to my having Asperger's, as someone who has spent most of her life centered around code since childhood, I was in software engineering heaven... For the most part.

I took a gap year between my 1st and 2nd year, and used it to work on contract job as well as my own projects. I decided to build my own web template selling platform from scratch, and would use it to sell the templates I made. It also had a registration/admin panel as well as an upload form for other designers to sell their content. I also added an affiliation system. It was called kit-graphique-area.
Talk about closure...

Personnal projects
When I left in 2014, I moved on to work full time as a self-employed developer. I built dozens of web projects from scratch as contract work, and went on to build the 2nd version of my portfolio for the activity which was then called SpectrumWebDevelopment. No sign of a slug yet, just a long paralax page on which the background images would scroll slower than the foreground, creating an impression of depth.

When I was not working on contract jobs, I was building my own projects. Obsessed with the idea to “learn it all”, I decided to build a unix C http server which doubled as a web framework. At one point, DumboServer was simultaneously running a coding blog, a vape e-commerce, a food recipe webpage dynamically showing results for data-scrapped content from all other the web, and the backend for a bar/pub lookup mobile app. The other major project I was on during that period was linux based openGl voxel engine code-named “Worlds”.

Fullstack Engineer then Lead Programmer in Sydney, Australia
In 2016, I left France to work in Australia for a year and a half. During that period, I dropped most of my projects started working fulltime in local startups and companies, among which was the brand design and communication company Ebrands. During that time, I worked on various web projects including an API portal for the Australian isp Telstra.

Returning to France
When I returned to France in 2017, I started laying the stones for what would become squishySlug. In 2018, I started working part-time as a mentor, assisting student in their path to learning programming for the online school OpenClassrooms.