Developer Spotlight: Eugene Mutai

Each month, we’ll feature our developers in Lagos and Nairobi to share their unique stories and highlight their contributions to the community.

What is REST, and why does it matter?

People tend to get a little heated when discussing what REST is and what it isn’t. (Hint: never claim that it’s a protocol, under penalty of internet flaming.)If you look to the internet for help, you’ll finda lotofconfusion surrounding the topic since it was introduced as a computer science Ph.D. dissertation. So what do you do if you want a firm understanding of this fundamental concept of the web, but you don’t have time to read 168 pages?Eugene Mutai has an answer for you. Hailing from Nairobi, Kenya, Eugene is a full-stack developer at Andela and is also aGoogle Developer Expert.Eugene has been teaching himself programming since 2011, initially using a feature phone to painstakingly write code for low-bandwidth WAP sites. After relocating to Nairobi City, 600 kilometers from his hometown, he gained limitless access to a computer, taught himself Javascript and landed his first job as a web developer.

Today, Eugene runs the Nairobi Javascript community of over 400 members and regularly speaks at a variety of programming and tech meetups. Two weeks ago, he gave a talk on progressive web apps at Nairobi Tech Week, the largest tech event in Sub-Saharan Africa.In the video above, taken at a recent After Hours event at co-working space Nairobi Garage, Eugene presents a deep dive into the tricky topic of REST. He demystifies the architectural style by walking us through a little bit of its history and demonstrates how it makes his life as a developer easier. As with most technological debates, Eugene explains, the question of whether or not to make your system RESTful has just as much to do with individual preferences as it does with the technology itself.Check out the video and let Eugene know what you think! You can also catch him on Github.Want to learn more about extending your current engineering team with full-stack developers like Eugene? Get in touch!