This is a picture of me, smoking a cigarette, in front of a newspaper stand ad for the magazine “Les Cahiers du Cinéma”, featuring a portrait of Jean-Luc Godard—smoking as well. The picture is in black and white, and was taken by a street photographer I didn’t know.

I’m Nicolas Goutay, and I build stuff for the web.

I’m Nicolas, a Staff Software Engineer. I’m French, originally from Carcassonne (a small-ish town in Southern France)—I bounced back and forth between France, Sweden and the UK for a bit then settled in Paris about ten years ago.

I’ve been building for the web for about fifteen years (ten of those professionally), in a variety of languages and contexts. My main language for the past three years has been Ruby on Rails, for which I have a deep appreciation.

I’m interested in performance, accessibility, maintainability, product design, and the interplay between those. In other words, I try to build enjoyable products—for all the parties involved.

The picture on this page was taken serendipitously in Paris by a street photographer. I like it. Credits:@ajapictures.