About

A brief description of who I am, what I do, and how this site works

Personal bio

I am a software engineer by trade, with a formal background in computer science & mathematics.

My preference for software development roles leans towards backend development with Java. While Java is often considered old and outdated (especially by people of my generation), it remains an extremely popular, versatile, and stable choice for applications. Modern versions of Java have reduced a lot of the boilerplate and cruft that made the language famous in developer social circles, while incorporating many groundbreaking improvements to the garbage collectors & JIT compilers. (Case in point: the relatively new Z Garbage Collector operates with extremely low pause times that do not scale with heap size.)

While my primary focus nowadays is on Java, I have also worked extensively with several other software ecosystems & languages, and continue to do so today when the need arises. I enjoy getting my hands dirty and learning new tech stacks to solve new problems.

From late 2018 to 2020 I was contracted to build a significant number of basic HTML5 games to replace legacy Flash content which would no longer be accessible to modern browsers. Following that, I built a basic self-hosted alternative to Quizlet using React (TypeScript) for the frontend and Python (Django) for the backend.

During the COVID pandemic I found myself with a significant amount of free time, and my friends introduced to the video game Minecraft as well as its modding ecosystem. After a few years I started building my own mods, several of which reached popular acclaim. My most popular mod, ModernFix, recently surpassed 150 million downloads. Though I am significantly less active than I used to be due to growing life obligations, I still maintain & make occasional updates to my mods.

When I am not coding, I can usually be found teaching math, reading blog posts/forums, socializing with friends, or listening to music.

The site

P.S. for the technically curious: my site is built using the Astro framework, which provides me with modern frontend development features while statically rendering my content to basic HTML/CSS. At the time of writing, many (if not all) modern websites and blogging platforms involve some form of client-side rendering, which makes them a pain to use (if not completely inaccessible) on weaker devices. It is also often difficult to keep links working if shifting to a new platform. Using a static framework like Astro provides the developer with complete control over the layout, URLs, and behavior of the site without the "bloat" often associated with a classic solution like WordPress. I started with the default blog template, but tweaked it to suit my preferences.