Welcome to my personal website_{jamiebalfour.scot}

I was born in Scotland in 1991 (30 years old). From about age 5, I was very interested in video games and I became really interested in computers and technology when I got my first computer at age 7. By the time I was finishing primary school at age 11 and was set on my path for the future working with computers. I began developing software in 2004 when I turned 13 and I now know over 15 different computer programming languages.

When I turned 14 I began distributing my software and sharing it with friends. By age 16 I had written a bitmap editing program with hundreds of effects, a word processor and a web browser. In 2010, when I was 18 years old, I decided to get myself a personal website. As my skills improved in web development - a new area of interest to me at the time - my website improved. In 2013 I rebuilt my website from the ground up and later again in 2017 with huge performance improvements. I often prefer to redevelop things with my own take on it as opposed to using other people's work, so my website is completely hard-coded from nothing rather than relying upon libraries or precoded designs. I have developed my own libraries and tools that power my website including BalfBar, BalfComment, BalfPick, BalfRibbon, BalfSlider and Dash. The only libraries used across the whole site are the jQuery library and the D3 library. Since 2019, parts of my website are now also powered by my own ZPE too. My website has remained pretty much the same since 2013 in terms of its design, and that's how I plan to keep it. For my design skills, take a look at Jambour Digital.

I went on to study Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University in 2012 (you can read my dissertation here). In 2016, I graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Computer Science. In 2019, I graduated with a Professional Graduate Diploma of Education (PGDE) from the University of Strathclyde and became a Fully Qualified Teacher (FQT) teaching Computing Science in 2020.

My first job outside after university was as a support web developer. This gave me a lot of practical experience in web development in the real world. After that, my next job was as a software and web developer as well as a mentor to a junior developer at another digital agency. This job taught me even more, particularly some of the tools used in the industry to host websites. When I left that job I went ahead and began to plan out and start my own company, which I still run to date. After that, I went down the route of teaching, something I'd always wanted to do.