About

My name is Craig Bridges, I’m software engineer at Code Change, which is based in Bradford-on-Avon, UK.

I code mostly in C# and my specialty is software architecture, but I’m interested in machine learning and IoT. I’m also a father, husband, middle-distance runner, photographer and philosopher.

Many of my photos are published on Flickr. My favourite philosopher is Alan Watts and my preferred racing distance is 800m.

Background

I started learning to code using VB6 back in 2002 when I was at sixth form. At this time I built various applications and websites in my spare time, helping me fine tune my programming skills. At the time, I also became a part time classroom teaching assistance for the lower year computing students. I then studied BSc Hons Computing part time at University of the West of England (UWE) and graduated in 2010 with first-class honours.

While studying at university, I worked at Schools Mailing as an IT Consultant, but my job mostly revolved around software development, creating and maintaining VB6, VBA and classic ASP based web applications. One of the highlights from this job was creating a fully integrated email marketing desktop software package which was used for distributing hundreds of thousands of emails on behalf of customers.

In 2011, after nearly 7 years at Schools Mailing, I decided it was time for a career break, so I resigned and took a gap year, travelling around Mexico and South America. While travelling, I was working freelance for my current boss at Code Change. I worked on various projects, including an e-commerce platform that I built from scratch using VB.NET and MVC.

Since 2012, I have been working full time for Code Change as the lead software engineer. I have since worked on various projects, including e-commerce, e-learning, asset and probate management and more recently compliant insurance and finance within the automotive industry.

Bridge The Gap?

The name Bridge The Gap is a sort of play on my surname. The idea is to bridge the learning and understanding gap between technology (mostly .NET related) and developers. There will always be challenges in the tech world, so the goal of this blog is to provide a little help towards bridging that gap.