My journey into the world of technology wasn't a single "aha!" moment, but more of a gradual captivation that started with text-based web games in my childhood. That early curiosity led me to dabble in PHP with a friend, trying to create our own online game. While my initial attempts to learn PHP from a book didn't quite stick, the spark was ignited. It was in high school, when I formally took a computing class, that everything clicked. I fell in love with the subject and knew, without a doubt, that this was what I wanted to pursue at University.

University was an incredibly stimulating period, exposing me to a vast array of concepts. It was here I encountered Machine Learning – a field I find immensely fascinating, albeit challenging. My dissertation on Reinforcement Learning bots for games, and even the deterministic AI agents I built during my studies, were highlights of this exploration. This passion for AI continues today, extending beyond the current LLM hype to the core principles of creating intelligent systems.

One of my proudest professional moments was successfully navigating the technical interviews for Hopper. Being able to articulate solutions to complex, LeetCode-style problems and then joining the team was a significant achievement. At Hopper, I was immersed in a high-caliber environment, learning an incredible amount about observability, scalability, and distributed systems from some truly brilliant minds. It was my first real taste of "big tech," an experience that, while incredibly valuable, also came with challenges in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, as the pressure to deliver features often overshadowed personal time.

In my current work and personal projects, I'm always on the lookout for tools and technologies that streamline development. I'm particularly excited by platforms like SST (Serverless Stack) v3, which dramatically simplifies deploying AWS stacks. The live lambda debug functionality is something I believe could bring immense value to any development team.

Through this blog, I aim to share my tech stories, interesting discoveries, and insights that I believe could be valuable or simply engaging for others in our field. Whether it's a deep dive into a technical concept, a reflection on industry trends, or a new tool I'm excited about, I hope to create content that resonates with fellow developers and perhaps offers a glimpse into my thinking for potential employers.

Outside of the tech world, a significant personal interest of mine is the concept of Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE). I've been actively planning for this since graduating in 2018 and have managed to reach "Coast FIRE." It's a topic I'm deeply passionate about, to the point where I find a certain elegance in the mathematics behind it, like the geometric series formula for calculating savings growth. I might even share some thoughts on this journey in a future blog post.

If you'd like to connect, discuss any of my posts, or explore potential collaborations, please feel free to reach out via email or connect with me on LinkedIn. I keep a close eye on my inbox and will get back to you.