Hein Bekker

What I do

I am a front-end and back-end web developer with over 20 years of experience and a passion for building an equitable, inclusive and sustainable society through education in the arts and sciences.

Would you like to work with me? Email hein@netbek.co.za or read my CV.

2016⁠–2023: Siyavula Education

I helped to create educational software for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, and monitoring and evaluation tools for teachers.

As front-end lead, I was a bridge between designers and developers:

  • Set the technical direction of the front-end stack.
  • Created and maintained the colour palette, icon sets, UI components (both SSR and CSR), style guide, SSG for static pages, build scripts, and configurations of code quality tools.
  • Unified 3 legacy themes and migrated page templates in parallel with new feature development.
  • Worked with the product manager on software requirements and solution design.
  • Created low-fidelity wireframes and high-fidelity mockups for mobile and desktop devices.
  • Guided front-end implementation by the full-stack team.
  • Conducted functional, non-functional and cross-browser testing.
  • Provided engineering perspective in high-level product meetings.
  • Explored new approaches and technologies that improved productivity and modernised the stack.

I also branched out into back-end development and data reporting:

  • Created and maintained API endpoints for the front-end.
  • Integrated third-party libraries and services.
  • Wrote unit tests for and refactored parts of the application.
  • Peer-reviewed the full-stack team's code.
  • Created and maintained reports and dashboards for classroom and in-house use.
  • Reviewed and optimised data models and queries.
  • Set up and maintained the data analysis stack.
  • Worked with the data analysis team on integrating their code into the back-end.

2002⁠–2015: Freelance

I worked both independently and within agency teams, and often took on multiple roles as designer, front-end developer, back-end developer and technical support person.

  • Built 18 websites for small businesses, including broadcast media consultancies, guest houses, an architecture firm, an art gallery, an event agency and a radio station.
  • Built 12 marketing websites for renowned brands, such as PUMA, BlackBerry, Standard Bank, Castrol, Spur, 5FM and Metro FM.
  • Built 8 websites for magazines and online communities that ranged from creative writing and visual arts to music and urbanism.
  • Built a web framework and content management system, and provided maintenance and support to clients for 8 years. Subsequently, switched to Drupal for 5 years.

2002⁠–2014: Liquid Fridge

I was a co-founder and an organiser of a community that sought to develop South African arts through fostering interaction and mutual support.

Our work included a blog, a forum, newsletters, workshops, film screenings, radio music programmes and club nights, and featured musicians, artists and technologists from South Africa and abroad.

Open source

My profiles on GitHub and Drupal.org list a few side projects that anyone is free to use or improve upon.

Tools

  • Languages: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Jinja, Nunjucks, PHP, Python, SCSS, SQL, TypeScript, XML
  • Frameworks: Flask, Ionic React, Pyramid, React, Tailwind CSS
  • Libraries: jQuery, Lodash, MathJax, React Hook Form, React Redux, React Router
  • Automation: Babel, Black, esbuild, ESLint, Flake8, Gulp, Husky, PostCSS, Prettier, SQLFluff, Vite, Webpack
  • Testing: BrowserStack, CircleCI, Mocha, nose
  • Data storage: PostgreSQL
  • Data handling: Alembic, dbt, pandas, SQLAlchemy
  • Data visualisation: Vega-Altair, Vega-Lite, Victory
  • Platforms: Docker, JupyterHub, Linux, Node.js
  • Version control: Git
  • UI design & vector graphics: Adobe Illustrator, Balsamiq, Figma
  • Design systems: Material Design

Listening list

Reading list