
Alexander is available for hire
Hire AlexanderAlexander Karelas
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Location
Athens, Central Athens, Greece
Toptal Member Since
July 14, 2014
Alexander is an experienced Perl programmer and web developer who is comfortable with both back-end and front-end technologies. He has been working on large-scale high-traffic websites for the past 4 years and is active in the Perl community, developing modules and a website for programmers.
Portfolio
Zoo Bytes & LazyLand
Memcached, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Git, Moose, jQuery, AngularJS...
Various clients
MySQL, Perl
Personal projects
Mason, MySQL, Perl
Experience
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
Git, Vim Text Editor, VMware
The most amazing...
...thing I've created is a service allowing users to track changes in their favorite Perl modules.
Work Experience
Software Engineer
2010 - PRESENT
Zoo Bytes & LazyLand
- Created pages for the back-end administration site using AngularJS.
- Coded the service end-points requested by the Flash clients.
- Wrote tests in Perl for most of my code.
- Wrote POD documentation for the majority of my work.
- Created database schema and made sure all database requests were optimized.
- Developed a website collecting and presenting periodical usage and payment statistics for our partners' games.
- Integrated our portal services with the SSO mechanisms of many other portals.
- Searched for most-appropriate algorithms to solve a couple of the company's combinatorial problems, and implemented them.
Technologies: Memcached, Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Git, Moose, jQuery, AngularJS, Template Toolkit, MySQL, Perl
Perl Developer
2002 - 2009
Various clients
- Created a very simple CMS using Perl/Mason for two NGOs.
- Created an FTP-to-S3 gateway using Perl for a client.
- Devised and wrote simple command-line tools using Perl to help a telecom company's operations staff with the deployment of its portal.
- Created a web app running on telecom equipment to allow its remote configuration, using Perl/Mason.
- Helped write a custom web framework for the high-traffic automoto.gr classified ads portal, using Perl and Template::Toolkit.
- Created a multiple-server Load Tester script, that tests websites' ability to handle traffic by throwing a lot of traffic to it, using Perl and httperf.
- Created a lot web scrapers for Watchmouse, a company that needed the data.
Technologies: MySQL, Perl
Perl Developer
2003 - 2007
Personal projects
- Built and administered akrovatis.gr, a very active forum website, using Perl/Mason and Class::DBI.
- Built the first greek digg.com clone, using Perl/Mason.
- Set-up and administered my family's mail server, using Debian, Exim and an IMAP server.
- Invented and built MyPerl.eu, a site that builds and serves RSS feeds for each of the 11,000 Perl modules in existence. The pre-cursor of PerlModules.net.
Technologies: Mason, MySQL, Perl
Perl Developer
2000 - 2001
e2B
- Read through and customized a large open source eCommerce platform, written in Perl, to localize it for Greece.
- Wrote CGI scripts for websites.
- Read "Programming Perl" from cover to cover.
Technologies: CGI, Apache, Perl
Experience
PerlModules.net
A service I created in Mojolicious and AngularJS that tracks the changes of users' favorite Perl modules. Users can create lists of modules they want to follow and it will generate RSS feeds of changes in those modules.
XML::MyXML
https://metacpan.org/pod/XML::MyXMLAn easy-to-use Perl module for parsing and creating XML documents.
KJabberd
A work in progress. This is a Jabber server that I started programming to allow the users of one of my websites to talk to each other from their browsers. This Jabber server is already functional (although quite simple at the moment) and supports XMPP over WebSocket to allow browsers to connect.
Skills
Languages
SQL-99, Perl, JavaScript
Other
Ajax, CGI, Mason
Frameworks
AngularJS, Mojolicious
Libraries/APIs
Underscore.js, jQuery
Tools
Vim Text Editor, Template Toolkit, Git, VMware, Apache
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Object-relational Mapping (ORM), Functional Programming
Platforms
Linux, Ubuntu, Moose, MacOS
Storage
JSON, MySQL, Memcached
Education
1992 - 1998
B.A. and Master's Degree in Mathematics
University of Cambridge - Cambridge, UK