About Me

Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Ever since Melissa Joan Hart made video games about her annoying little brother on Clarissa Explains It All, I knew I wanted to be a software developer. I love that I get the chance to do that all week. Software development, not making games about Melissa Joan Hart’s brother.

Experience

I’ve worked as a developer since 2004 and have written applications across backend, frontend, and native mobile platforms. My passion is creating maintainable systems via testing, refactoring, and evolutionary design. I like to share what I learn via writing blog posts, tutorials, and my book; speaking at meetups, webinars, and conferences; and coding together with people on live streams and via workshops. I currently serve as a Principal Architect and the Web Platform Lead at Big Nerd Ranch, a web and mobile development shop in Atlanta, Georgia.

My Passions

  • Engineering: Taking the craft of building software seriously by applying principles that have been discovered over the decades, focusing on meeting needs, and writing code that will flex under the changes that come over time.
  • Visibility: Helping all team members (developers, project managers, and clients) see at all times how a project is intended to proceed, how it’s actually proceeding, and what can be done to adjust to meet client goals.
  • Tooling: Finding or creating solutions to boilerplate problems so teams can focus on solving the problems that add value for their clients, instead of reinventing the wheel.
  • Sharing: Writing reusable code, externalizing it in packages, and open-sourcing it whenever possible.
  • Training: Helping development teams better learn their craft, and helping them decide together how they want to operate as a team to increase effectiveness.
  • Responsibility: Taking ownership for what I commit to, doing whatever I can to meet that commitment, and letting people know as soon as possible if I can’t.

Open-Source

You can see a number of open-source projects I’ve created on my projects page.

Personal Life

I live in Atlanta, GA with my wife Jen and children Emily, Katherine, and James.

My biggest hobby is video gaming. You can often find me opening vaults on Pandora and throwing blue shells at Bowser.