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At work for the past 5+ years I have been doing mostly React.js (v16-18) and TypeScript, with GraphQL APIs, working on SaaS products on the Frontend as a Senior / Staff Frontend Engineer. I have been programming for 15+ years, since 2008 or so (in the Flash/ActionScript days!). I was lucky enough to be an early employee at @segmentio back in the day when component.js was the new hotness and React had barely come onto the scene. I have avoided becoming a manager up through today because I like focusing purely on code and implementations, and getting things done in that regard. Maybe one day I'll try management, I just fear it to some degree for some reason. I like to be a part of groups of people who are self motivated, and management is just to aid in unblocking you. Segment was like that (though we had managers for purity's sake). But I like working with managers as well, they make life easier in many ways when part of such an intrinsically motivated team, and it is very nice to have someone there for you to talk to you about whatever, life or work.

I love working at startups or large companies with a freeing sort of startup vibe (working in smallish teams) because you can build powerful things quickly, even if the deployment cycle isn't necessarily "deploy every 5 minutes", that's okay. I focus mainly on the Frontend, working closely with Product managers and Design leads, as well as the frontend and backend teams, and for sure the Customer Success team. I like the frontend so I can learn better to think like a designer, without going design full-time (I mockup ideas in React.js and Tailwind these days, creating mockups in Figma is still too much a transition for me haha, though I like implementing Figmas). I have some backend experience from a while back, but wouldn't be your go-to guy for a backend/infra-heavy project these days. That said! I can learn/relearn backend and other technologies quickly, so reach out if you have any ideas.

On the side over the years I have made a few simple side projects, mostly in Node.js or Next.js hosted on Vercel, though I am tinkering with one that needs to go lower-level than Vercel and use Google Cloud Platform, specifically the serverless Google Cloud Run. I want to get more backend/full-stack experience (again, it's been a while, 2010-era-ish), so hacking on side projects which use some of that more, alongside the nice and clean and simple Vercel/Next.js frontend app.

I also spent a few years during 2017-2018 focusing full time on Computer Science, Algorithms, Data Structures, Math, Type Theory, Compilers, Operating System fundamentals, and Programming Languages, so I could try and create my ideal programming language. I experimented a lot with C, Assembly (x86), Rust, and Swift, but am by no means good at any of them (C probably I'm the best out of those). Working at startups is a place to use the machete and hack through the weeds in uncharted but profitable new territory, like the old explorers. Side projects such as these, on the other hand, provide me a place to explore the more "research and development" side of me, and spend a bit more time studying theory and absorbing the beauty rather than just plowing through the forest with the machete.

Side note: The "machete" metaphor is basically, get what needs to be done done while working on a startup idea, so you can get product market fit, or if you have that, so you can ship fast and often. You use existing tools and don't waste time perfecting things, just do what needs to be done and do it nicely, balancing speed with perfection. I like this metaphor because when in the zone in these two forms (theory vs. practice), you can really feel how it would have been "back in the day" haha. Studying theory is more like, we've already hacked several paths through the forest, and are starting to construct a full-blown city. So take your time and plan it out so it doesn't become a mess. When working on your own time, sometimes indulge in the perfection, so it stays back when we are on a new startup mission.

But anyways, here's some things I've hacked on over the years.

Site	Description
tone.surf	The Tone Writing System
	A simplified and uniform writing system for all the languages of Earth.
tune.surf	The Tune Spoken Language
	A natural language of a minimal memorizable set of concepts, used to model and play with reality in a deeper way.
tree.surf	The TreeCode Data Modeling Language Docs
	A "modeling language" where you write in concise and minimalistic trees of text.
base.surf	The TreeCode Programming Framework BaseTree
	A "programming framework" built on top of TreeCode, transforming it into something like code.
task	An abstraction over commmon CLI tasks
	A framework for building abstractions around CLI tools for Node.js and the Browser.

Also, one of my main goals in life is to understand and explain all of Cellular Automata in Hyperbolic Spaces. I made some progress at one point in porting royce3's honeycomb project to TypeScript, but have a long ways to go! Every now and then when inspiration strikes, but I believe this holds some sort of key to understanding the inner structure of the universe.

Finally, follow @VictorTaelin if you're not already, on GitHub and Twitter. After digging into programming languages years ago I ran into his full-fleged theorem-proving-capable functional language Kind, which now has a massively parallel functional runtime in Rust to back it up, HVM. Those two projects, built upon the ideas of Interaction Nets, seem to perfectly solve the problem of building an optimal programmiing language (even though I would prefer imperative over functional designs haha!). So I'm watching that like a hawk 🦅, waiting for the day it takes over the web :). You should too!