This episode is a My Angular Story with Gil Fink. Listen to learn more about Gil and his story!

[00:02:16] Introduction to Gil

Gil is the CEO of Sparxys, a consulting company he created. wrote a book called the Pro Single Page Application Development. He was a co-organizer of Angular App, which is a conference in Israel, which was held just last month.

[00:04:39] How did you get into programming?

Gil first owned a computer at ten years old. It was an IBM compatible computer with an MS-DOS operating system. He used it to play games like Pac Man, which he would attempt to edit and claims was the first time he tried to program anything. Gil wanted to learn computer science in high school. In grades tenth through twelfth, he learned Turbo Pascal and Excel. During this time he wrote unprofessional programs. He went to college for computer science. His first job as a web developer was helping to write a government portal for the Israeli government.

What ultimately led him to computer science is the curiosity to know how things that operate hardware work. “If you’re curious about something, go and learn it.” 

[00:12:12] How did you go from government to working with Angular?

Gil describes his story to Angular as one of progression and “moving on with everybody else.” He worked with the government project from 2005-2007. He was then involved with a web app project using jQuery and Backbone. The VP while he was at the job asked why he was using backbone, so Gil researched Angular. It looked like it included everything he needed. After reading more on it, he began using it and created an Angular JS course for his employer. He learned it through creating that course.

[00:15:35] What was it about Angular that made you decide you wanted to be doing it?

Gil thinks the community is one of the best things about Angular. The team is approachable. Gil had issues with other libraries and did not get the same vibe from people. They were not as welcoming and eager to help as they are in the Angular community. There is a lot of collaboration. The tools and frameworks around Angular are developing and people help each other as they develop.

[00:23:30] Contributions

Gil has made several contributions to the Angular community. Most recently he has created the Angular 2-indexeddb service. It is a library that can be found GitHub. He has written directives in the past that people use and is amazed that people use things that he wrote. He wrote Story.js, another library that wrapped all storages in one browser, which he does recommend anyone use. He has published several online videos and was featured on an Angular Connect workshop recently.

Gil is always willing to help mentor other developers. He has started writing blog posts in order to help junior freelancers. Currently he is involved with two start up accelerators. They are Google Launchpad Accelerator and University Accelerator. Both are where people come with ideas and they help make their ideas startups.

 Gil:

Charles: