Gerard O'Neill

Student and hacker

I am a student at Rutgers University, a hackNY Fellow, and a blogger whose main interests are computer science and software engineering.

About

My name is Gerard O'Neill. I created my first website when I was ten years old in the fifth grade. Within two years, I grew tired of the limitations of GeoCities and picked up an HTML book. I am now a 21-year-old senior at Rutgers University—New Brunswick, studying computer science. There is honestly nothing that I enjoy more than building applications.

Education

Rutgers University, New Brunswick

B.S. Computer Science, 2009-2013

Relevant courses:

  • CS111 Intro to Computer Science
  • CS112 Data Structures
  • CS211 Computer Architecture
  • CS214 Systems Programming
  • CS336 Principles of Info. & Data Management
  • CS415 Compilers
  • CS416 Operating Systems Design
  • CS428 Intro to Computer Graphics
  • CS344 Design & Analysis of Computer Algorithms
  • IT320 Web Design

Extracurricular:

  • Hackathon club
  • Educational director/former webmaster of USACS
  • Peer leader for CS111

Udacity

Completed courses:

  • CS212 Design of Computer Programs
  • CS215 Algorithms
  • CS253 Web Applications Engineering
  • CS258 Software Testing
  • CS262 Programming Languages

Coursera

Completed courses:

  • CS Software Engineering for SaaS
  • CS Algorithms: Design & Analysis I
  • CS Algorithms, Part I
  • CS Functional Programming Principles in Scala
  • CS Algorithms: Design & Analysis II (in progress)

Experience

Thrillist / JackThreads

Junior Web Applications Developer July 2012 - Present

  • Ruby
  • Sinatra
  • PHP
  • CakePHP
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB

Currently working on the same type of stuff that I did during my internship, as well as working on the main products!


Thrillist / JackThreads

Web Applications Developer Intern May 2012 - July 2012

  • Ruby
  • Sinatra
  • PHP
  • CakePHP
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MySQL
  • MongoDB

I built beautiful internal web applications and automated scripts that Thrillist and JackThreads developers (including myself) used to make their lives easier. I also wrote automated tests to make sure our websites and APIs didn't crap out on us, as well as anything else they needed from me!


Rutgers University Social Media Information Lab

Research Assistant April 2012 - Present

  • PHP
  • CodeIgniter
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MySQL

I build web applications for researchers to help them do research.


Passion River Films

Lead Developer July 2011 - January 2012

  • PHP
  • CodeIgniter
  • FuelPHP
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MySQL

Jack of all trades, master of web development. I handled anything that involved touching a computer, whether it was setting up email and payroll accounts or removing viruses. My main focus, however, was building websites and maintaining existing ones for the company. Most things I built were used as internal tools to help the company run more efficiently.


MadCreek Design & Creative

Web Developer June 2011 - August 2011

  • PHP
  • WordPress
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

I turned designs into code, skinned WordPress, wrote a WordPress plugin, and Photoshopped to my heart's content.

Projects

Your Guess is Wrong

Battle of the Braces: PHP Hackathon Winner! July 2012

  • PHP
  • CoffeeScript
  • jQuery
  • Backbone.js

A simple game where the player tries to guess the price of a product, which is randomly pulled from Etsy. After each guess, the game will tell you how correct your guess was!

AdCity

2012 TechCrunch Disrupt NYC hackathon project May 2012

  • Python
  • Django
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

Diverge from typical advertising by providing users with ads for nearby locations, rather than websites. Simply copy/paste the widget script onto your website and our context analysis takes care of the rest.


gQuery

Final project for CS336 April 2012

  • PHP
  • FuelPHP
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MySQL

How do you get an A in your databases class? Just build a beautiful website that analyzes the accuracy of stock recommendations from a plethora of stock pick websites. This helps people gamble more successfully.


Flixxit

Spring 2012 hackNY hackathon project March 2012

  • PHP
  • CodeIgniter
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MongoDB

A Reddit-like approach to movie suggestions. Create "theatres" for movies, add movies to them, and others will vote the movies up and down based on how good they are and whether or not they belong in the theatre.


Change of Plans

Spring 2012 PennApps hackathon project January 2012

  • PHP
  • CodeIgniter
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

Not sure what do to in your area? Yelp asks you to filter too much, right? Everyone else just tells you where to eat, right? Just tell me how many people you're with and whether or not you want to eat. I'll tell you where to go.


TrendTV

Fall 2011 PennApps hackathon project September 2012

  • Python
  • Django
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • MongoDB

What's trending, you ask? This app pulled trending content from numerous websites, such as New York Times, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit, and then let you view the content in an animated stream. If you found something interesting, you could hover over the stream to pause it.


Facebook Time Machine

2011 TechCrunch Disrupt NYC hackathon project May 2011

  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

This app allowed Facebook users to see what their wall looked like in the past. Interestingly enough, when my partner asked the Facebook evangelist if this was possible with the Facebook API, he said it wasn't. Shortly after we proved him wrong, the API changed and broke our application. Several months later, Timeline is announced. Coincidence...?