Michael S. Mikowski

Shameless self-promotion page

• Linux client and server administration and integration expert.
• Web application expert, author, and speaker in Silicon Valley. Check out the cool switches at the top right corner.
• Designer and contributor to many appealing, long-lived, and profitable products. Two of these had consistently > 100m end-users per day.
• Author and maintainer of many open source libraries.
• Designer and primary contributor on web-based management software used for over 12 years.
• Awarded Industrial Designer with extensive go-to-market experience in high-volume automotive and consumer products. Tools include kinematics, NLFEA, CFD, class-A surface, RPT, materials & tooling.
• Pro Inkscape, Gimp, sound design, and music composition.

Guiding principles

• Minimize like Bauhaus. Form follows function.
• Fail fast. Fast and cheap design iterations encourage innovation and deliver better products sooner.
• Design front-first. The product is the UX.
• Collaborate. Use shared standards, pair programming, and code reviews.
• Do real engineering. Use proven practices such as DFMEAs, personas, and use-cases to identify KPC and balance cost versus benefit. Require peer review, linting, TDD, SCMS, CI/CD, and change-control to manage development.
• Reject bad code. Run linting and regression tests as a commit hook. Require integration testing before release.

Kubuntu Focus Project, System Architect

Reliable, stable, and easy-to-use Linux client computers designed for people and companies who deploy to Linux. Areas of optimization include packaging, file systems, systemd, polkit, dbus, xdg, custom user tools, and guided system administration.

hi_score, Creator

A full-life-cycle SPA starter project installed with four commands. Supported stages include install, setup, test, coverage, build, and deployment. It features a consistent code style, best-in-class libraries, comprehensive tests and coverage reports, an installed commit-hook, typecasting, advanced compression, and other best practices.

PowerCSS, Creator

An MIT licenced JS library which creates and manages dynamic CSS for a web application at run-time. Capabilities included mix-ins, merging, caching, compression, and double-buffering. This solution was more flexible and often out-performed static CSS. A video presentation of the concepts is available on Youtube. PowerCSS is used to style this site. Click at the top right corner to change the palette or cascade.

Since PowerCSS was released in 2016, the major browser vendors have recognized the need for app-controlled CSS and now provide many capabilities of PowerCSS with CSS Properties and the JavaScript Values API. I now recommend using these tools instead of PowerCSS for most sites.

TypeBomb

A typing game created with my young son to teach him VIM, development principles, and, of course, typing. Many techniques used at Qualaroo are used here. Pick a level and start typing!

Single Page Web Applications — JavaScript End-to-End

Published by Manning in September 2013. Also available on Amazon where it has been a frequent best-seller across multiple categories. Named one of the best books of 2014 by Dr. Dobb's journal. Listings and other reference material are available online.

SnapLogic

The SnapLogic Designer was challenging and fun to design and implement. I coordinated the input of all the senior architects and wrote vision and use-case documents for the next-gen product. These were used for years to guide the development of the product.

Qualaroo

The survey client was often downloaded > 100 million times per day on phones, tablets, and desktop computers. I devised a plan to create a new mobile-only product first and then migrated all customers to this new client within 18 months. This process eliminated technical debt and provided a highly reliable, capable, and attractive product.

• Unified mobile and desktop client
• Model events and handlers
• JS-powered application styling
• ESLint and other pre-commit code checks
• Regression test coverage > 95%
• SuperPack compression
• One-touch build system
• Cross-browser testing
• Streamlined and fully documented API
• Staged deployment with reversion option

• Kubuntu Focus Suite with optimizations for hardware, configurations, stability, and ease-of-use.
• Custom user tools for Kubuntu desktop and system management
• hi_score Full-life-cycle SPA starter
• PowerCSS JavaScript run-time CSS
• TypeBomb A typing game
• event.ue Unified desktop and touch events
• event.gevent Normalize event type across apps
• uriAnchor State management in the URI
• event.dragscroll Inertia scrolling
• tscroll Custom scrollbars
• TaffyDB SQL-like in-memory data manager
• Others

Demonstrated concepts to thousands of innovators, potential employees, investors, and customers over the last ten years. Venues include Chris Titus Tech, FOSDEM 2022, HTML5 Developer Conferences (five), Powered by JavaScript, Developer Week, University of San Francisco, Trendulate, and many others.

• Interview and Pro Bash Chris Titus Tech, 2022
• How Much is Your Time Worth? Manning Developer Conference, 2021
• Kubuntu Focus Goals BigDaddy Linux, 2020
• JS in 30 Minutes, San Francisco Women's SIG, 2014 slides
• Make your SPA Rock SPA Design for TDD, 2013 slides
• Dump {less} and Sass..2014 JS powered CSS, HTML5DevConf, 2014 slides
• The Fog of SPA, HTML5DevConf, 2013 slides
• SPAs, the Hard Stuff, best practice for SPAs, 2012 >slides

LinkedIn GitHub Twitter Focus

mike.mikowski@gmail.com