A lifelong sole breadwinner and hobbyist programmer who finally has time to turn his passion into a career

I will prove my skills in 2021-2022 by completing programming boot camps, challenges on sites such as CodeWars, plus at least one of three other options described later herein. I originally learned by choosing languages and projects of interest to match.

For example, I learned C++ skills, including the standard library and template meta programming to try and defeat strong typing (just for fun). I learned to create generic data structures at runtime by casting pointers to void* and storing them with types as keys. The only limitation was that type keys had to be known at compile time. I didn’t really defeat strong typing, but got as close as the language allows.

I also learned that the C++ community is uniquely knowsy. “Why do you want to do that?” — on every thread ever that asks about more than reproducing past work.

I learned C to experiment with profiling the performance of different memory management models, and found principles of contiguous allocation that I would later rediscover using ECS.

With only 30 minutes available over each of three days, I learned Python to attempt Google’s, “You’re speaking our language,” challenges and made it several events in.

I learned C# to play with Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack, and got as far as manipulating vertex buffers in parallel to further maximize performance in procedural content generation.

I’ve reviewed Java skills several times, as the language has an odd tendency to come up at random.

As of this writing, I’m torn between cleaning up my Unity work to make it available as a repo, learning Rust, or helping out true beginners in a free boot camp. If you’d more like to see a candidate who has prioritized one these, messages are welcome!

I don’t claim to presently know every language I’ve ever touched, but I have at some time and can again.

This will be updated as the time for my candidacy draws nearer, and will likely be quite shorter once I’m officially seeking. For now, this is just my hello.

For me, the joy in programming is twofold: solving puzzles and the act of creation. Solving puzzles satisfies the drive to defeat adversity, and creation satisfies an ineffable impulse that I think is fundamental to human nature: part self-actualization and part aesthetic.