Vasudev Ram

4.8

(19 reviews)

US$15.00

For every 15 mins

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ABOUT ME

15+ years experience as employee/consultant for US/Indian firms; Python, C, Linux, SQL, Web, REST, open source. Made a PDF creation toolkit

15+ years experience as employee/consultant for US/Indian firms; Python, C, Linux, SQL, Web, REST, open source. Made a PDF creation toolkit for Python; Fellow at Python Software Foundation; tech article writer.

Long time software developer, consultant and trainer. Published author of technical articles. Fellow at Python Software Foundation. Also once nearly swam from India to Burma. Ask me about that :)

Web site: https://vasudevram.github.io

Profile: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/p/about-vasudev-ram.html

Read the advice at the link below; apply it when you contact me, and take it in a positive way :-) I believe in win-win situations. Life is too short for anything else.

https://www.codementor.io/tips/0643378271/how-to-ask-smart-questions

Skilled software developer, consultant and trainer, with 15+ years experience in many tech areas. Published author of technical articles on Python, C, Linux, on IBM, Packt Publishing, and other sites/magazines. Creator of a popular Python open source library for PDF creation. Contributor to Python ecosystem via open source projects, articles and many blog posts. Current skills: Python, Flask, SQL databases, C, Linux / Unix shell scripting, REST, open source tools and libraries, software and database design, software testing, PDF generation, PDF text extraction. Have worked for large US and Indian enterprises as well as for startups, in roles of employee (developer, team leader, project manager) and consultant.

I like teaching and mentoring. At various times from the start of my career to the present, have taught software subjects formally / informally, as a high school computer teacher, private computer institute instructor, given training to corporate clients of companies I worked for, and to my own corporate / individual clients as an independent consultant.

My blog http://jugad2.blogspot.com (from 2008) has many posts on software topics, including frequent Python posts - see http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python , which are regularly syndicated on Planet Python - http://planet.python.org .
Business web site: https://vasudevram.github.io (see Home, Products, Services, About, and Contact pages there).
Email: vasudevram@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasudevram
Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/vasudevram
Skype: vasudevram

Fellow of the Python Software Foundation: https://www.python.org/psf/members/ . Fellows are elected based on their contributions to the Python community / ecosystem.

Creator of xtopdf, a Python toolkit for PDF creation, used by Packt Publishing (UK), Software Freedom Law Center (US), and ESRI (NL), among others. xtopdf can convert many input formats to PDF, e.g. for business reports, and can also create PDF e-books from text or XML. I add features and support for more input formats to it once in a while.
Good online overview of xtopdf: http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf
xtopdf project on Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf

Independent developer, consultant, trainer with many years experience in a variety of technologies. Worked for leading American and Indian product and project software companies, both big and small, earlier - Veritas Software (now Symantec) and Infosys Technologies among them.

Python, C, SQL, Ruby (not recent), databases, Linux and open source technologies are some key strengths, built over many years of real-life projects. Working on D (DLang) too.

PDF generation in Python is an area of specialization; I wrote a product for it, xtopdf, which is used by some organizations in the US, UK and NL ,among others. Can help with automated PDF generation and PDF text extraction, having done some work on both areas.

Published author of technical articles on IBM developerWorks, Packt Publishing site, and Linux For You magazine. Article for IBM developerWorks, "Developing a Linux command-line utility" (in C), got an average 4-star rating (out of max. 5) over many reviews. Some companies (e.g. Tellytopia, one of my clients, acquired by Concurrent Systems) have used it as a guide to create production Linux command-line utilities. See:
http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html - about the artlcie, and a link to it, and:
http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-to-pdf-with.html - example of using the utility with my xtopdf toolkit to perform a real-life task.
I can help with command-line utility development in C / D / Python / Ruby (on UNIX / Linux / Windows).

My open source software projects on Bitbucket (xtopdf, PDFXMLRPC, PySiteCreator, pipe_controller, etc.): https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram

Hindi, English

Mumbai (+05:30)

Joined February 2014

EXPERTISE

Python

5 years experience | 3 endorsements

Elected member of Python Software Foundation (members are elected based on contribution to Python ecosystem). I work on real-life Python ...

Elected member of Python Software Foundation (members are elected based on contribution to Python ecosystem). I work on real-life Python projects for clients. Creator of xtopdf, a Python toolkit for PDF creation, which is used by Packt Publishing (UK), the Software Freedom Law Center (US), and ESRI (NL), among others: http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf Published article about xtopdf on Packt site: http://www.packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf Many Python recipes on ActiveState Code: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/users/4173351/ Run a blog at http://jugad2.blogspot.com ; regularly post there about Python programming topics: http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python ; the blog is included in the Planet Python aggregator: http://planet.python.org . Have multiple open source Python projects on Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram . Have some experience with Flask, Bottle and CherryPy web frameworks for Python; have worked on a few Flask projects for clients. Conduct Python training programs for clients in India and abroad, both in person or online.

SQL

8 years experience

Used SQL via various RDBMS's - Sybase, MySQL, Postgres, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, MS Access, SQLite, in most of the projects in my...

Used SQL via various RDBMS's - Sybase, MySQL, Postgres, MS SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, MS Access, SQLite, in most of the projects in my career. I have some skills in mapping project entities/classes to tables, i.e. database design, normalization, etc. as well.

5 years experience

Used C a lot for 6 to 8 years in projects earlier. Used it on both Unix/Linux and DOS, more on the former, but also worked as team leader...

Used C a lot for 6 to 8 years in projects earlier. Used it on both Unix/Linux and DOS, more on the former, but also worked as team leader on a successful and widely used database middleware software product written in C using the Win32 SDK. Trained a group of developers (at a large public sector company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) who had 10-15 years of experience (in other areas) on C programming (and Unix). They appreciated the course and gave me a gift - a wall clock which I still have :-)

Unix

10 years experience

I've been working on/with Unix (various versions) from some time before Linux (a Unix variant) was first created. Have done both developm...

I've been working on/with Unix (various versions) from some time before Linux (a Unix variant) was first created. Have done both development and system administration (and troubleshooting) work on Unix. Wrote an article about "Developing a Linux command-line utility" (in C) for IBM developerWorks. The article was on the site for a long time and got many 4-star ratings. Some organizations have used the article as the basis for creating production utilities. The utility used as a case study in the article, was originally developed by me, for production use by the IT department of one of the world's largest motorcycle manufacturers. https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html Trained a group of developers (at a large public sector company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) who had 10-15 years of experience (in other areas) on Unix shell programming (sh, awk, sed, etc.). They appreciated the course and gave me a gift - a wall clock which I still have :-)

Linux

5 years experience | 1 endorsement

I've been working on Unix, which Linux is a variant of, from before Linux was created. Wrote an article about "Developing a Linux comm...

I've been working on Unix, which Linux is a variant of, from before Linux was created. Wrote an article about "Developing a Linux command-line utility" (in C) for IBM developerWorks. The article was on the site for a long time and got many 4-star ratings. Some organizations have used the article as the basis for creating production utilities. The utility used as a case study in the article, was originally developed by me, for production use by the IT department of one of the world's largest motorcycle manufacturers. https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html

Pdf generation

7 years experience

I've worked on programmatic PDF generation for some years. Not an expert on the PDF format internals, but have done a good amount of prog...

I've worked on programmatic PDF generation for some years. Not an expert on the PDF format internals, but have done a good amount of programmed PDF creation. Created xtopdf, a Python toolkit for PDF creation, which is in production use by Packt Publishing (UK), the Software Freedom Law Center (USA), and ESRI (NL), among others. xtopdf is both a Python PDF library and a set of end-user tools built using the library. There are tools for command-line, GUI (wxPython), and Web (Flask, Bottle, CherryPy). xtopdf runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It can be used to create both business reports and simple PDF ebooks. Good overview of xtopdf: http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf

MySQL

1 year experience | 1 endorsement

Worked on 2 dot-com web projects (which were products, not custom apps for one customer) for 2 US startups that used MySQL with Ruby and ...

Worked on 2 dot-com web projects (which were products, not custom apps for one customer) for 2 US startups that used MySQL with Ruby and Rails. Was server team lead on the 1st product (MangoTasks, for first version) and senior engineer on the 2nd. 2nd product also involved REST calls from Ruby to Yahoo REST Search/Shopping APIs, which I worked on. Mentored junior team members on SQL, Ruby language and Rails model design on both projects.

REVIEWS FROM CLIENTS

4.8

(19 reviews)

Noam Harel

January 2017

very informative, helped me out with a lot of areas

Kevin Russell

May 2016

Vasudev pointed me in the right direction and gave me the kickstart I needed.

Zev

May 2016

Vasudev set me on the right path to resolve a newb problem I was having.

Troi Winfield

March 2015

Had a great session with Vasudev. He was able to understand and help me solve my issue quickly. He is very knowledgeable, patient and is a good communicator.

rob

March 2015

EXCELLENT SOLUTION

rob

March 2015

great!

Ross Curzon-Butler

November 2014

Very friendly and patient

Enrique Benitez

November 2014

Didn't solve my problem, just kept repeating and explaining concepts but no working code shown. [**VASUDEV'S RESPONSE**] This client, a novice, could not solve a random number problem though there are random number functions in the standard C library that do part of what he needed; also, his English was not fluent. That's why I had to explain the solution to him in some detail.. Contrary to what he says about no working code being shown, I had worked out most of the solution in code. He actually compiled and ran it at his end. Only a small part remained to be written. But then his credit card ran out of funds - which he did not inform me of, at first. He then said he can figure out the rest of the solution based on my guidance and what I had written so far, and that my mentoring was of help. But he has written differently in his review.

miguel sanchez

October 2014

Very smart and a good teacher.

Akinbode Akinkunmi

June 2014

Impressive as usual, will highly recommend him

SOCIAL PRESENCE

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