HOQU Development Update. Part 1: The Team

Dear HOQU community, we would like to turn your attention to the fact that this month, 5 new members joined to the HOQU Development Team.

In the first part of this cycle of articles, we will introduce them and tell you about their professional experience and hobbies.

To begin with, we want to remind you that the development of decentralized applications on the HOQU platform is in progress and moves in a fast pace. Currently, more than 39 releases were made and plentiful sprint is scheduled to end by the end of the month. We are most certainly planning to update you on the most significant events and achievements of May; however, today we will start by introducing the creators of the platform. As we all know, both, our team and our community, found HOQU to be an interesting idea that has a great potential. Therefore, please meet those who are working hard every day and trying to bring our platform to existence — our developers.

Developers

Currently, HOQU development team consist of 10 people but this number doubled just this month. For the period between April and May, we had 5 developers who joined our team: Skorobogatykh Andrey, Novikov Artem, Balakov Dmitry, Antonov Anton and Dmitry Morrison. The reason for the recruitment of 5 more members in the team of developers was that we wanted a diverse squad with rich experience and different backgrounds. Also, we thrive to keep up with the Roadmap and deliver results in a timely manner; therefore, we thought that dividing responsibilities between 10 bright minds rather than 5, will take off some pressure and lead to the better results. You may had a chance to read about the developers who have been with us from the beginning. All members of our initial HOQU team were mentioned in the White Paper. These developers are: Sergey Bakhmet, Vladimir Kamensky (Head of the Development Department), Alexander Krivtsun, Denis Degterin and Oleg Ignatuk (Project Manager). However, now we want to begin with introducing the developers who joined us most recently.

Balakov Dmitry

Dmitry has 15 years of experience in programming and 10 years of experience in web development. He started creating SPA in 2008 and worked with most modern JavaScript frameworks, such as jquery, angular, emberJS, reactJS and etc. Now he mostly uses React in a combination with Redux and Saga. Interesting fact is that he actually started using React in commercial applications shortly after its release in 2013 and has a great experience by now. For the last 3 years he held the position of CTO and Senior Front-End Developer in the large social network which serves as a system of ordering drugs for pharmacies and clinics. Formerly Dmitry was engaged in the creation of “smart houses” on the EIB / KNX.

When Dmitry joined HOQU, he started creating architecture using a single code base (reused components) for building a dapp for merchant affiliate network and containerization using Docker. He is responsible for building a script for interaction with the blockchain via “Web3l” from a web browser (authorization, authentication, creating a wallet and interaction with metamasc). Also, he implemented front architecture for Multi Wallets Assign System and dWAS. On top of that, Dmitry is a co-author of HOQU Network Protocol, HOQU Offer Protocol and HOQU Tools Protocol.

Novikov Artem

Artem is an experienced professional with 26 years of experience in programming and 15 years of experience in web development. In the second grade he programmed a game in Pascal and developed an analogue of Castles at 10 years old. Artem took part in the development of large social networks as a Senior Back-End Developer. Also, he took a role of CTO in several projects, which gave Artem a valuable experience. For the past 4 years he has been actively involved in projects related to building affiliate programs and cashback services.

In HOQU, Artem developed the microService architecture of the application. We use this architecture to implement fault tolerance and for the opportunity to scale up a Back-End. Artem uses Lua and C++ languages for parallel execution of various tasks which helps to effectively use server resources and increase interaction speed between client and server. He was responsible for building a flexible data mart for fast and efficient work of client applications and implementation of the instant synchronization of the blockchain data with the display data of the application. Artem created Multi Wallets Assign System which helped to realize REST FULL API for interaction with CU in the framework of the implementation of this system. Like Dmitry, Artem is also a co-author of HOQU Network Protocol, HOQU Offer Protocol and HOQU Tools Protocol. In our office, he takes care of the architecture and functionality of all the systems. Here is the list of microservices that Artem is responsible for:

ads
blockchain
categories
cdn
companies
events
geo
leads
networks
offers
promotions
reports
sendgrid
trackers
users

Skorobogatykh Andrey

Andrey is a diverse individual as he earned a degree of piano composer. Despite his chosen specialization he has 3 years of experience in programming and he adds a great value to our team of developers as he is knowledgeable about the following stack of technologies: NodeJS, PHP, DB, mysql, redis, postgresql and Lua. For the capstone project in the university, Andrey created algorithmic music on Haskell. Also, he is really interested in various database architectures and issues of scalability, replication and data sharing.

When Andrey joined HOQU, he took the responsibility for integration with external services. One of his main tasks in the team is testing. Andrey does integration testing, benchmarking and will be responsible for stress testing in the future. Moreover, he is in charge of project documentation. Finally, Andrey created the architecture of Leads System and participates in the development of other services and microservices.

Anton Antonov

Anton has 2 years of experience in programming and takes a role of energizer in our team of developers. Since 2017, Anton develops for commercial purposes on the following stack: React, Redux and Saga. At the beginning of the career he was engaged in making websites of any complexity.

Upon joining HOQU, Anton took responsibility for the development of reused re-components for the increased testability, productivity and flexibility in the development process. Also, his duties include automation of Front-End testing of mocha, jest and integration testing using cucumber JavaScript.

Dmitry Morrison

Senior front-end

Dmitry has more then 10 years of experience in a front-end development and participated in a big amount of large projects.

We all wish Dmitry could switch from remote employee and start working in our office so we had a chance to know him better; however, his residency in a different city makes it hard for him to experience our corporate culture and makes us miss his character in the office. For now he is responsible for layout of components such as profile, wallets and etc.