My résumé has the short version. This page is the long version. Why? Because even the best résumés leave a lot to be desired: they lack context and narrative. If you’d like a better idea of how I work, I think you’ll find the rest of this page a lot more helpful.
Interested in working with me? Feel free to say hello!
- About Me
- Work — not just where I’ve worked and the tech I used, but what I brought to the table and the difference I made:
- Projects:
About Me
I am senior software engineering leader, lately focused on programming language adoption, web framework development, and developer productivity and experience. Other long-running professional interests include UI, typography, functional programming, and ethical software development.
Prior to my recent focus on developer experience, I have a long history with full-stack web development, spent a half decade doing systems-level programming (including avionics software and computational physics models), and earned an undergraduate degree in physics and a master’s degree in theology. That combo has led me to care — very deeply — about the impact of software on the people who use it.
Philosophy: Ratchets, Not Levers
Software is incredibly important to the world as it is — whether you like it or not. I think often of Marc Andreessen’s line that “software is eating the world”: for so it is. Where a venture capitalist sees that primarily in terms of the enormous piles of money it represents, though, I see it in terms of the many people who use software not by choice but necessity. For every person like me who really enjoys digital technologies and puts them at the center of their work, there are many others for whom computing is at best ancillary to their actual work, indeed for whom it might just be in the way of doing their real work.
Think of the person cutting your hair: the software in the point-of-sale system. Think of a single parent wrangling school activity schedules through Facebook. Think of the Uber driver. Think of people making a living selling craft-work on Etsy. Think of the small businesses who have to advertise on Instagram. Think of the people just trying to pay for parking on the way to do something else.
Those of us who practice software engineering owe it to all of those people to make software which works well, which works for them. Period.
“Solving” the problem of poor software craft is an impossible problem. I mean that: impossible. Poor craft is the result of massive systemic problems as well as many individual failures. It will always exist, because people will remain people: sometimes lazy or unmotivated or just stressed out by other things going on in their lives, sometimes greedy and short-sighted and foolish.
We can make it better, though.
I increasingly value tools and processes which do one of two things:
- “Raise the floor”: cutting down both the number and severity of bugs we ship.
- “Raise the ceiling” by making it possible to deliver more interesting features.
There are many such: processes like code review, techniques like TDD and DDD, and correct-by-construction API designs; tools like formal modeling; improvements in our programming languages; formal verification; and so on.
Unfortunately, many of these techniques enable and sustain progress only so long as everyone can operate like a very senior engineer on her best days. All of us should strive for that kind of excellence — but not one of us is always at our best. What is more, many of us have a long way to go before we are even able to operate that way. Every one of us started out as a junior engineer, after all.
The real wins, then, are tools which do not require everyone to be at their best at every moment: ratchets, not levers. Levers let you move things, but if you are holding something up with a lever, you have to keep holding it — forever. A ratchet lets you drive forward motion without slipping back as soon as you let up on the pressure.
This is why I care so much about Rust. This is why I spent so much of the past decade working on TypeScript adoption. This is even why I invested in the work I did on Ember Octane and produced so much material about it. Each of those was (and is!) just such a ratchet, albeit to varying degrees and in various contexts. Rust is a particularly good example: it lets us ship faster software with fewer bugs in areas that really matter, and it enables a lot more people to do that kind of work than were able to do so (especially: to do so safely for their users) with C and C++. You can trust a junior to ship high-performance “close-to-the-metal” code written in Rust without worrying about memory safety; your team can focus more on architecture than on running valgrind. Rust is a ratchet.
Ratchets are incremental improvements, not silver bullets. So was structured programming, though. A change does not have to be a silver bullet to be valuable. It just has to make for better software — and critically, better software that does not require you to be always at your best. Fewer SEGFAULTs and fewer vulnerabilities as a result of memory safety is good. Fewer cases of “undefined is not a function” is good. Faster cycle times on identifying and fixing bugs is good.
Education
I earned a Master of Divinity with honors from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in May 2017, after 4½ years simultaneously pursuing the degree and working as a software developer. I am not a pastor by profession, but I care deeply about the ethical, social and, yes, spiritual implications of the software I build.
I graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Physics from The University of Oklahoma in May 2009, having been a regular departmental award winner. My senior thesis, a project in computational neurophysics (in Fortran 90!), led me into programming — but/and I still miss doing physics and math on a regular basis.
Work
2019 – 2023: LinkedIn
From January
2021.09 – 2023.10: Senior Staff Software Engineer
TypeScript domain expert and Flagship web app tech lead.
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As the primary TypeScript subject-matter expert at LinkedIn:
- I solved the most challenging technical challenges, e.g. enabling type-safe event tracking.
- I coached LinkedIn’s TypeScript track leads.
- I authored a spec for Semantic Versioning for TypeScript types.
- I forged consensus in the Ember.js open source community on key TypeScript gaps and blockers:
- A novel, backwards-compatible strategy to migrate away from DefinitelyTyped, which I also implemented.
- A new component authoring format, resolving a years-long stalemate in the community.
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I led a team to fix site-down memory leaks in our SSR stack, and identified and resolved major resiliency gaps in internal Node.js infrastructure.
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I designed a migration strategy away from Ember. (We did not use it — ask me!)
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I mentored a half dozen engineers, ranging from Apprentice to Staff.
2019.01 – 2021.09: Staff Software Engineer
Transforming a multi-million line-of-code app… without disrupting product velocity.
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I developed a business case for TypeScript adoption which was key to the company’s choice to fully support TypeScript for our JavaScript libraries and applications.
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I dramatically improved developer experience and productivity across the organization as the tech lead for the adoption of Ember Octane across the application. Additionally, as one of a handful of primary technical experts on Octane — at LinkedIn or anywhere else — I support many other teams rewriting existing code into Octane idioms and teams building brand new experiences Octane-first.
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I led efforts to update the app to the current versions of Ember.js, unblocking adoption of Octane.
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I helped build, and continue to support, Volta, an open-source, cross-platform tool (written in Rust!) for managing Node.js environments in a reproducible, reliable way.
2016 – 2018: Olo
From individual contributor to a project lead with organization-wide influence.
From January
As a Software Engineer (January
- I led the adoption of a test-driven development approach in a greenfield Ember.js rewrite of the mobile web UI.
- I introduced JavaScript type systems to the application (landing on TypeScript after an initial experiment with Flow)
- I helped the team achieve full AA WCAG accessibility.
As a Senior Software Engineer (May
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I led a team effort to expand the mobile web UI into a responsive web UI to reduce our maintenance burden, improve overall UX, and decrease the cost of launching new features.
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I designed a new technical strategy for white-labeling (including the adoption of CSS Modules), enabling the business to support more brands by way of better tooling.
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I pioneered Olo’s use of Requests for Comments (RFCs), modeled on the RFC processes from the Rust and Ember communities, as a tool for architecture design and documentation. I began by using RFCs for several important initiatives in my own team. The success of those initiatives validated RFCs’ utility when I later introduced them to the broader engineering organization. They are now Olo’s standard tool for documenting architectural changes and a prerequisite for all new internal services.
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I finished the app’s conversion to a fully strictly-type-checked TypeScript application.
Throughout my time at Olo, I:
- led the community effort to integrate TypeScript with Ember.js
- helped launch a shared component library for future rich client projects
- delivered over a dozen internal tech talks on subjects including managing technical costs, Ember.js basics, functional programming techniques, and introductions to Rust and Elm
- substantially reshaped front-end engineering practices and tooling choices as an informal leader among our front-end engineering group
I matured significantly as both an individual contributor and a leader in my time at Olo. For the first time, I was able to make a substantial difference at the team level, at the organizational level, and at the level of the broader technical community.
2014 – 2015: HolyBible.com
A formative experience: a technical success but a product design failure.
HolyBible.com is a beautiful interface for reading the King James Version of the Bible and the Reformation Heritage Study Bible materials online, built for Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. The MVP launched in December 2014, with approximately 30 months of small bug fixes and feature enhancements following.
I worked closely with a designer to create the visual language for the app before diving into the implementation. The app uses AngularJS, Express/Node.js, and PostgreSQL; I also did a great deal of XML-mashing in Python for the Bible source text and study Bible integration.
The project was a substantial technical success: it has rarely crashed and had no bugs reported since spring 2017. I’m doubly proud of the project because it was only the second time in my career I’d built an entire non-trivial web application from scratch, and the first time I did so solo.
On the other hand, the project was a product design failure. The site is beautiful and functional, but it failed to meet the seminary’s goals for driving more traffic to the seminary landing page. My failure to establish what “success” meant to the seminary led me to deliver a technically-solid piece of software… that solved the wrong problem.
2012 – 2015: Quest Consultants
Collaborating across disciplines; transitioning to remote work.
From May
- I improved the performance of one existing computational hazard model by a factor of 7.
- I rewrote another computational model in C (from Fortran 77).
- I supported another rewrite effort (again from Fortran 77) to Python 3.
- I helped the team adopt Mercurial for version control and JIRA for bug tracking software.
Those efforts taught me a great deal about communicating effectively with domain experts, working remotely (as I did beginning in January 2013), testing effectively, refactoring legacy codebases safely, and wrangling large software development efforts over time.
2010 – 2015 Miscellaneous Consulting
Teaching myself web development.
Beginning in January 2010, I taught myself web programming, beginning with PHP and jQuery and the LAMP stack. Having a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS from designing my own blog in college, I decided to learn web development. I began by building church websites and blogs for friends in WordPress. Later, while working as a subcontracting consultant for Innova Computing, I developed a custom CMS for the Oklahoma Board of Medical Licensure.
My goal throughout was not merely to make some extra money, nice though that was. Rather, I aimed to transition from the world of C and Fortran where I began my career to working full time in UI-focused web development.
2009 – 2012: Northrop Grumman
Learning the basics of software engineering.
From July
Over those three years I acquired a good dose of humility and basic knowledge of software engineering, including the use of bug trackers and source control, strategies for testing, and patterns for writing maintainable code.
Projects
I am also a prolific writer, podcaster, and open source software contributor.
Podcasts
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Winning Slowly (January
2014 – November 2021): cohosted with Stephen Carradini, a show about taking the long view on technology, religion, ethics and art. Stephen described it (accurately) as a show focused on tech, but from the angles of religion, ethics, and art. I described it (also accurately) as our excuse to talk about whatever we want, since “technology, religion, ethics and art” pretty much touches on all of human existence. For a good sample of the way I approach software and ethics, check out 6.06: A Kind of Blindness, on smart cities, “big data”, and the meaninglessness of mere information. -
New Rustacean (September
2015 – May 2019): a show about the Rust programming language — dedicated primarily to teaching people Rust. Initially a way of helping myself stay motivated to keep up with learning the language, New Rustacean became one of the most popular resources for people learning Rust and inspired a few other teaching-programming-languages podcasts.
Open Source Software
TypeScript and Ember.js
I founded the Ember.js TypeScript team in 2017 and led it until I resigned in September 2023. I was part of the Ember.js Framework team February
Volta
As part of my work at LinkedIn, I helped develop and continue to maintain Volta, an open-source, cross-platform tool (written in Rust!) for managing Node.js environments in a reproducible, reliable way.
True Myth
In the fall of 2017, a friend and I developed True Myth: a TypeScript-targeted library with Maybe and Result types. Several existing libraries in the space work excellently but had a number of downsides, including second-class support for TypeScript, runtime overhead, and an API designed to mirror Haskell or Scala rather than idiomatic JavaScript. True Myth was our attempt to fill that gap. It takes advantage of TypeScript to supply an idiomatic JavaScript API with zero runtime overhead (beyond the inherent cost of the container types themselves).
True Myth is largely complete, with a full set of features and extensive documentation, though we continue to maintain and expand the library with additional helpers and tooling as TypeScript has supported more capabilities.
Speaking
- The Road to TypeScript
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EmberConf, March 2022 — video
- Keep It Local: Or (part of) what “reasoning about your code” really means
- Don’t Go Bankrupt: Managing Technical Costs
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All Things Open, October 2019
- Supercharging Ember Octane with TypeScript
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EmberConf Workshop, March 2019
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Abstract:
You’ve heard about the benefits of TypeScript. But what is it? How hard is it to get started? How can you use it with Ember? What does it have to do with Ember Octane? This training will give you the tools you need to start using TypeScript effectively in your Ember app or addon — and show you how it can supercharge your developer experience with Ember Octane.
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Materials: although the workshop was not recorded, the teaching materials are all available online:
- slides for the introduction to TypeScript and overview of using it in Ember
- sample code repository, where each commit is a discrete step in the process of the conversion
- CSS Modules lightning talk
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Denver Ember.js Meetup, December 2018
- Rust and WebAssembly
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Denver/Boulder Rust Meetup, May 2018
- TypeScript and Ember.js: Why And How
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Ember ATX Meetup, April 2018 — video
I also delivered a slightly shorter version of this same material at the Denver Ember.js Meetup in June 2018.)
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Abstract:
A three-part look at Ember.js and TypeScript today: What are the benefits to me as an Ember developer for using TypeScript? What are the tradeoffs if I adopt TypeScript? Where are things going from here?
- TypeScript Up Your Ember.js App
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EmberConf Workshop, March 2018
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Abstract:
An introduction to TypeScript and how to use it with Ember.js, with a worked example of converting part of the Ember.js TODO MVC app from JavaScript to TypeScript.
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The workshop was not recorded, but the teaching materials are all available online:
- slides and script for the introduction to TypeScript and overview of using it in Ember
- sample code repository, where each commit is a discrete step in the process of the conversion
- Becoming a Contributor
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Rust Belt Rust 2017, October 2017 – video
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Abstract:
So, you’re new to the Rust community. (Or any community, really!) And you want to help, but, well, you’re new. So how exactly do you start contributing? What kinds of contributions are valuable? We’ll talk about everything from asking questions to writing documentation, from pitching in on forums and chat to writing blog posts, and from starting your own projects to contributing to other open-source projects.
- Tolle Lege! Designing Readable Bibles With Digital Typography
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BibleTech 2015, May 2015 – video
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Abstract:
The Bible has always been a challenging text to display, whether copied by hand or printed on a Gutenberg press, and the task has only grown more complicated in the era of digital text. The challenges are not insurmountable, though. We have the tools to solve them: the principles of good typography, especially careful page design and the deliberate choice and skillful use of appropriate typefaces (fonts). When we apply those principles to the Scriptures — whether in an app or on the web — we can provide people with digital Bibles that are both readable and beautiful.
Notes
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems Vol. 36, No. 3 July 2000 ↩︎