About

What I do #

I have been shipping code for well over two decades now, and I still really love my work. I am a huge fan of the React framework and have decades worth of experience with the .NET ecosystem which is why I tend to gravitate towards front-end heavy full stack roles. I have entirely embraced TypeScript for anything I would normally have written in JavaScript - such as a React front-end, NodeJS middle tier code, or even personal experiments with React Native . Lately I have been focusing on automating my code quality through the use of good static analysis tools like ESLint and Prettier paired with an extensive test suite - usually leveraging Kent C. Dodd’s excellent Testing Library to enhance the Jest testing framework (example) .

How I got here #

I was bitten by the programming bug after seeing the Disney movie Tron as a young teenager - afterwards ceaselessly bugging my parents until they gave in and purchased a top-of-the line Apple //c for me. That computer introduced me to the world of Apple Basic and 6502 Assembler and still sits in a corner of my office (pic) .

After years of developing in mainframe languages and Visual Basic 6 I finally slid into web development with the first release of ASP.NET. Fast forward a bit and I land at a startup as a “C# Cloud Developer”, but since I proved to be really handy with jQuery, HTML5 and this new-fangled thing called Sass I was tasked with being the “front-end guy”. I very quickly learned that I loved the bleeding edge of 2013 front-end development - evaluating frameworks like early AngularJS , Backbone , and Knockout tooling like the Grunt and Gulp task runners and an early bundler called Almond . The rest, as they say, is history as the frameworks, tooling, and discipline of front-end development have only grown more refined since then.

Where I am #

I live in Omaha, NE with my wife, daughter and three very random rescue dogs. Even though I am not wild about winters here in the Midwest, I cannot seem to talk my wife into moving anywhere else so I am stuck here for the time being. In my spare time I like experimenting with different programming languages and frameworks. When my family manages to get me out of the house I enjoy walking our local botanical gardens , world class zoo , or one of our many - sometimes eclectic - museums .

My Apple //c #