Things I've worked on

I'm a big fan of Go. Do you remember the slightly awkward Go programming language promo from 2009? Russ Cox compiles the Go source code and times it. That video hooked me. A few months later, I used Go to demonstrate a concurrency concept in a college paper. Before this, I wrote C for toy robots and school projects — and had picked up Python for work. Go offered a fresh breath of air. It provided the right abstractions and felt lightweight and easy.

I built an open-source database client for Redis as one of my first larger Go projects. Redis uses a fun text-based protocol. You send a command to a socket, and Redis returns the contents of some data or mutates its state. This project taught me to write performance-conscious code and to use Go's profiling analysis tools.

I've written Go professionally since 2012. At a gaming startup, I wrote our performance-critical and standalone services in Go. Together with Michael, Christian, and Jacob, we grew the business to millions of users with peak traffic on weekends and holidays. This experience reinforced my belief in simple, solid, and performant solutions. Our monetization model created many users with low conversion rates. I built solutions to reduce operating costs — scaling on commoditized hardware and building our own content delivery system.

With Oliver and Niels, I worked for a few years on GameClub. We focused on homogeneous solutions and automation to scale with a small team. Eli maintained a back catalog of over one hundred iOS and Android titles. We updated these games to run on modern iPhone and Android devices. I built network servers in Go and automation tooling to support developing and publishing such a breadth of mobile apps.

I currently work at a small logistics company, leading a Postgres-backed project we've built over the past couple of years. This project has grown into a substantial codebase. I've enjoyed the challenges of designing a system that balances performance needs while helping the company move toward more sustainable freight solutions. This work has allowed me to dive deep into relational databases.

Technical focus areas

I explore database internals, B+trees, and storage engines to better understand the core systems that power modern applications. My notes on database systems document this ongoing research.

Performance optimization drives another key interest, from debugging regressions to designing systems that scale efficiently. I work extensively with Go's profiling tools and apply these insights to build more resilient systems.

AI and software development has become a key interest of mine. I explore how these tools can enhance programming productivity without replacing core engineering skills. The optimal approach uses AI as a thoughtful assistant. This augments human judgment with AI's speed and breadth of knowledge while maintaining the critical thinking that leads to high-quality software design and implementation.

Tinkering and projects

I explore technologies that challenge expectations of how we build software today. My current focus targets databases to better understand possibilities with the tools at the core of most businesses.

• Tiger Style: A website that outlines the core principles of Tiger Style, a coding philosophy focused on safety, performance, and developer experience. 2024
• Color system: A web app to build color systems, inspired by Lyft's ColorBox.io project. Implemented in Vue.js. 2019
• Chat: A prototype chat system with support for member channels and direct messages. Implemented with NATS.io streaming server, Go, and JavaScript. 2018
• Redis client for Go: Open-source database client for Redis in Go. 2011
• Self-balancing robot: A two-wheeled autonomous self-balancing robot. 2009

Specialties

I have worked directly with senior executives across multiple sectors on product development and launch. I have helped grow businesses from a few hundred customers to millions.

• Backend development: Go, Python, microservices, and API design
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, SQLite
• Infrastructure: Linux, containers, CI/CD, cloud services
• Architecture: Event-driven systems, distributed applications
• Performance: Optimization, profiling, scaling

I focus on sustainability for the software I build and teams I join.