I'm a Ruby on Rails / jQuery web developer. Follow me at @sikachu

About Me

Prem Sichanugrist is a web developer and programmer specialized in create web application using Ruby on Rails framework. He was formerly a 5 years experienced PHP web developer, but later found out the goodness of Ruby on Rails when he’s in University. After that, he never look back to PHP again.

Prem got his first Bachelor degree in Computer Science in 2009, with Second Class Horner. He had an accumulated GPA of 3.48. He started learning HTML while he was in grade 8 before created his first website. After that, he realized that he loves coding, and becoming a web programmer is what he wanted.

While he was in sophomore, he was hanging around a gaming website named Thaigaming.com and met his inspirational friend with the nickname of Alcaros. Alcaros was a talented PHP programmer, and did a lot of works in PHP. He gave Prem an advice to study PHP and become web programmer, and that really was a starting point for Prem to become a web developer.

One year later, Prem started a website named BeEZonE Ragnarok. It was a fan site for Ragnarok Online MMORPG game. His first website was a success, and led him to create another sub-project named GetCode+ (pronounced Get-Code-Plus), which was an aggregator collecting URL of medias, especially music, from various website. That project was targeted at members of DiaryHub.com, an online diary platform, so that those members can embed those songs easily on their diary. It was really huge success compared to BeEZonE Ragnarok. However, later he decided to shut it down because of changes in license for streaming music in Thailand and those sites starting to remove medias from their sites.

However, because of that sub project, Prem got to know the former programmer of DiaryHub.com, Sira Sujjinanont. He later then started working with Sira under the name of Desi2n Production, doing projects for clients. One of the notable client is Storythai.com, which is also an online diary platform. He and Sira have used all of their skills to rewrite a new diary platform, and migrate all of members data to the new platform. At the end, he left Desi2n Production and Storist Group (The owner of Storythai.com) to concentrate on his study for Bachelor degree in Computer Science.

During his study, his performance in the class was excellent. He learned how to coding various application in Java including web application and mobile devices. It gave him a strong background on understanding object-oriented programming methodology, and software engineering process. However, He felt that there were too much overhead when developing in Java, so he decided to study more on PHP to become his profession.

Although his decision was solid, it was destroyed on the day that he surfed the web and found out about Ruby on Rails. He watched the well-known screencast, “Creating a Blog in 15 minutes“, played with ‘Try Ruby in your web browser“, and those things just blew his mind off. He knew that Ruby is the language that he wanted, so he started learning it. He went to get a copy of “Agile Development with Rails, 2nd edition“, went though it, and suddenly he knew how to write an application on Ruby on Rails.

Despite his knowledge about Ruby on Rails was good enough, Prem couldn’t find a decent job to helped him exercise his skill. However, when he was an organizer for Barcamp Bangkok #1, he met Luke Hubbard, Technical Director of Codegent Bangkok. He then realized that Codegent Bangkok was specialized in creating web application using Ruby on Rails, and so he applied for an internship with them. During his internship period, he had a chance to built some real web applications using Ruby on Rails and Merb, and he had learned a lot from that internship. Later, he also got a job as Ruby Programmer there, and working with Codegent Bangkok, until he decided that he need to quit to concentrate more on his study and his thesis. It was a tough decision, but he didn’t want the company to be affected by his absences because of study.

There’s also notable to mentioned that Prem was also an organizer for Thailand Next Web Apps 2008 during his work with Codegent Bangkok. It was his original idea that he wanted people who were working in the web development industries to meet and share the idea on building web applications. There were a lot of people who wanted to participate, and the registration had to be closed after reached 160 participants in a week due to venue limitation. The event was a success, and there were a lot of feedbacks. He intended to make the event to be yearly, but he couldn’t make it in 2009 because he was too busy with his work.

After Prem left Codegent Bangkok, he came back and join Sira in a new company named 7republic. During this time, he have exercised a lot of his Ruby on Rails knowledge on building several Ruby on Rails web application, including DiaryIS.com, Amazon Affiliate Tools, and iUrl. During this time, he realized that it is the time that he need to give back to the Ruby on Rails community, so he started working on tickets in Ruby on Rails Lighthouse, and usually you can find him in #rails-contrib when he’s online.

Apart from coding, he loves to read Japanese Mangas, listen to music, and watching technology and science shows. He also loves to eat, especially Japanese and Italian food. He’s currently in the process of loosing his weight, and get better in shape for his health.

On-line Screen Name: Sikachu!, Sikandsak
Off-line Nick Name: Bee

Education:

  • Elementary: Prachaniwet School
  • JH, HS: Samsen Wittayalai School
  • HS (2003-2004): Cross Roads High School, Malakoff, TX (AFS Exchange Student)
  • Bachelor: B.Sc Computer Science (International Program),
    King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL),
    Second class honer

Researches and Interest:

  • Web Development
  • Web Services
  • Computer Networking
  • Wireless and Mobile Computing
  • Apple devices

Programming Languages:

  • Ruby, Ruby on Rails
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Python
  • C++

Projects:

  • GetCode+ (Discontinued)
  • Thailand Next Web Apps
  • Localmapia

Find me: