About me

Hi there, I’m Mark Lawrence.

I’ve recently rebuilt my site and added a blog. So as both a way to introduce myself and as an excuse to write a first entry, here is a bit about me.

As mentioned, my name is Mark. I’m originally from New Zealand, but live in the United States now. In the south bay area of Los Angeles, California to be more precise.

I work as a software engineer and architect, and spend my time evenly between both back end and front end (web sites).

I have over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, working for organisations ranging in size from multinational enterprises to a small start-up. I’m a senior developer with a wide range of experience and technical expertise in developing .Net framework based software and websites. I have worked on projects ranging in size and complexity, in a variety of different industries.

The bulk of my experience is with C# and .net (including the latest versions of these) and in particular I build websites using the Blazor Web Assembly framework, and ASP.Net WebApi for back end services.

Obviously there are a wide range of tools and languages that a developer needs to know in order to get the job done, however, and I have knowledge of many of these also. I’m experienced with HTML and CSS, JavaScript/Typescript (I’ve used Angular in the past for web development) and I have current experience with development and hosting using docker images, in Kubernetes, as well as on the Azure platform.

During my time in software development, I’ve become a strong advocate of DevOps practices, particularly automated build and deployment processes. To that end, I have strong experience in this area with Microsoft’s Azure DevOps toolset, and using both Azure DevOps Version Control and GitHub for source control.

Having said all this, one thing I feel is important in software development is to never stop learning. Therefore I make it a point to never assume I know everything, and to always be prepared to learn new languages, tools, and technologies.

Well, that’s a bit about me, and my philosophy with respect to software development. I hope to write more here but we’ll see how frequently I can manage to escape from the real world to post things I learn, in the hope that I’ll have a place to refer back to them if I need it. With luck, someone else might find what I’ve written useful also.

Take care!