About Me

Who are you?

I’m Jonathan. I’m a writer, software developer, and video game enthusiast. English major in a CompSci world.

Software, huh? Haven’t heard that one a million times already

Yeah, I know. Every nerd’s gotta have their own little corner on the internet, though. I’m a flexible software developer; so far I’ve worked in desktop development, web development, and tooling/QA Automation. In terms of languages, I mostly work in the .NET space with C#, with Python right beside it in usage. I’m warming up to TypeScript and eventually I’ll take a deeper dive into Golang and Kotlin, just have to find time for them. I started out with Java and have most of my higher education experience with software in its realm; I’ll happily work with it if an employer needs it or if it’s the right tool for the job, but I’ve grown to really enjoy the legibility of C# and the .NET ecosystem.

What I like to think sets me apart from most software developer types is that I’m a decent writer. Well, I have a piece of paper that says I am, anyway. I place a lot of importance on documentation, to the point where I believe that its maintenance and updating should be 1:1 with code and that it’s inexcusable to half-ass it, be it just copypasting docstrings or exerting useless effort infodumping as much technical information as possible assuming that the end user can see into the author’s mind. I don’t believe that “there’s no time” is a valid excuse for skimping, either; if there’s no time, make time, and there are plenty of ways to make that kind of time but that could be a post in and of itself.

This should give you a bit of an idea of what kind of an eye I have.

Video games too? Typical

I guess. What’s different about me in contrast to most people is that in my youth, I found myself caught up in competitive matches in various video games. Many people have heard the term “esports” at this point; what I participated in were far-less funded progenitors, done almost entirely for the fun of it all. I don’t really like esports but that’s the the way the world is now. I’m nostalgic for what I experienced and disappointed that future generations won’t get what I did.

I played the first-person shooter (FPS) Team Fortress 2 competitively for several years, making a lot of friends and memories along the way. I never won anything big and I’m not famous or anything, but I don’t think I would have become a software developer without interacting with the people I befriended and doing various things like renting and managing servers for practice games. I developed a fair bit of IT savvy doing this. As of 2019-ish, I stepped out of my usual lane of FPS and Real Time Strategy (RTS) games to explore the surprisingly tight-knit world of fighting games.

I really enjoy all kinds of games. I still like the games from my youth but as I get older, I’m getting more into esoteric and interesting games. To date this “about me” page, I recently discovered the game moon, also stylized as moon: Remix RPG Adventure - it’s a one of a kind game that’s found its way into my favorite games of all time. It was re-released for the Nintedo Switch in 2020, making its first-time debut in the west.

Anything else?

I’m not a huge open-source contributor, but I like helping out if/when I can. You’ll mostly find me puttering around the Microsoft repos on GitHub. I eventually want to also have some time carved out to be a “maker” type and run through a few projects; would love to make a custom arcade stick, for example.

I don’t want to go through the hassle of adding comments sections to my posts, and a lot of other nerds who write words have already done away with them on their own blogs. I’m not really “good” at Twitter, but you can contact me either there or by email if you’d like to chip in on something. Email will give me the least amount of surprise/I’ll be more likely to check it, but getting used to Twitter communication might not hurt.