A Decade of Mac + iOS Experience

I mastered Cocoa/Objective-C almost 10 years ago through passionate self-teaching and experience with a very large and professional open-source project, merely because I loved developing on this platform; Now, with the emergence of iOS, I've been lucky enough to also earn a living with this skill.

My long and extensive experience working on this platform makes for a rich understanding of framework conventions, best practices, memory management, and development tools; I'm passionate about quality and maintainability when it comes to code and application architecture.

I currently work both independently on my own projects and contractually to engineer iOS apps for high-profile clients. I contribute to open-source projects in my free time for fun.

I'm as much a designer as I am a developer, crafting every UI pixel for my work. I'm also fluent in standards-based web design.

My Professional Experience

Independent iPhone, iPad Developer

• Developed and designed Harvest & Repeats.
• Harvest was featured by Apple in nationwide television advertising, on the front page of the App Store, and ranked as high as the #2 paid reference application.
• Harvest's wide user base has never yielded a single crash report.

Freelance, Contract iOS Developer

[2007-present]

• I've worked for many high-profile clients developing popular iPhone and iPad apps.
• A few examples include: Rue La La, OnTheShow Gear Guide, and State Farm MoveTools.

Camino Web Browser - Leading Developer

(caminobrowser.org) [Practically full time 2005-2009 (Free time basis now)]

• Camino is a very professional open source project with strict code review, source management, bug reporting/workflow, and a large code and user base.
• I designed and developed many highly promoted features for our application.
• Regularly reviewed my peers’ source code.
• Constantly submitted new bug reports.
• Pinpointed and solved several of our most widespread crashing bugs.
• View some of my source code contributions.

Standards-Based Web Designer

Freelance [2001-present]

• I'm passionate about, and fluent in, standards-based front-end web design.
• I'm most proud of my work on MurphyJewelers.com. I wrote and organized all copy there as well.
• I design and develop web sites for all of my own iOS apps (Harvest-App.com, RepeatsApp.com) and occasionally freelance in this area (CoverMeWithLove.org, Equine Veterinary Services of Leelenau.

Murphy Jewelers - Visual Design, Technology Support

Pottsville and Hamburg, PA [1999-present]

• On the side of my full-time software engineering business, I take care of anything related to technology for my family's multi-store jewelry operation.
• Lead designer of print, billboard, and web advertisements. View my ad portfolio: http://seanmurph.com/advertising-portfolio/.

Schuylkill Women in Crisis - Digital Video Editor

Pottsville, PA [August 2007-present]

• Produced two commercials and two 30+ minute educational videos for a local non-profit organization.

Pottsville Housing Authority - SUMMER CAMP Counselor


Pottsville, PA [june-august, 2004 and 2005]

• Taught underprivileged children various computer skills as part of a summer recreation program.
• Coordinated games and other activities for the kids.

Other Experience

• Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, 2006.
• C4 Independent Mac Developer Conference, 2007.
• iDev 360 iPhone Developer Conference, 2009.
• Voices the Matter iPhone Developer Conference, 2009.
• I was extremely active on Apple's Cocoa-Dev Mailing List and now occasionally answer questions on StackOverflow.
• Wrote a few technical articles on my website. I'm passionate about writing and have big plans to do more.
• Lead Adobe Photoshop designer on my high school’s nationally recognized and award winning yearbook team.

What I Know Best

• My true strength and passion is developing iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X applications using Cocoa and Objective-C. I have almost a decade worth of experience with this platform.
• Strict practitioner of Cocoa coding conventions and style.
• Complete comprehension of memory management in Objective-C.
• Use of Xcode with very complex projects (Camino).
• Extensive knowledge of C. and lower-level programming aspects such as machine structure, linking, and loading.
• Object Oriented Design Patterns and how to apply them to Objective-C.
• I'm strong with overall application architecture design, in my opinion one of the least taught and most important aspects of engineering great software.
• I'm an expert at finding and fixing crashing bugs.
• The importance of readable code, by using clear, explicit method and variable names and effective commenting.
• How to design cohesive objects, incorporate abstractions, and rely on encapsulation to isolate and guard against change.
• Daily interaction with version control software. (Git aficionado; familiarity with Mercurial and Subversion.)
• Web standards, including XHTML and CSS.
• I also live in Photoshop and do all of my own design work. I'm as much a designer as I am developer.

By the way, this simple design is my work too.