Worldview

I believe in fallibilism. Knowledge can be improved. Beliefs can be wrong. Including these.

I was raised in a Christian household with Calvinist influences. Hard work, moral clarity, the conviction that how you live your daily life reflects what you actually believe. My relationship with faith has deepened over the years rather than faded. The Calvinist emphasis on vocation as calling, that all work done well and in service of others carries spiritual significance, shaped everything I build. It is why I understand programming as spiritual practice and not as metaphor.

I have schizoaffective disorder. I manage it daily with medication, routine, and the help of people who see things before I do. This is not incidental to my worldview. It is foundational. When your brain can generate false realities, you learn to value external verification, honest relationships, and systems that work when you are at your worst.

How I Build

Design for the worst day. If it works for the person whose hands are shaking and whose thoughts won't line up, it works for everyone. Simple interfaces, clear messages, obvious next steps. The person searching for help at 3 AM does not need a login screen.

Meet people where they are. Not where you wish they were. Not where your business model needs them to be. Where they actually are, right now, with whatever capacity they have today.

Optimize for human outcomes, not metrics. When systems optimize for engagement over wellbeing, the algorithm eats virtue, then democracy, then language itself. The absence of a business model is sometimes the most important design decision.

Simplicity as service. Make things clear enough for people having bad days. If it is too complex when you are struggling, it is too complex.

How I Live

Health first. Take medication, drink water, sleep eight hours, say no to what depletes you. Everything else depends on this foundation.

Intimacy requires honesty, performance prevents it. The deeper relationships happen when you stop trying to be impressive and start being real. People who can handle your truth are worth keeping.

Repair over punishment. When conflict happens, choose restoration over separation. Most problems come from misunderstanding, not malice.

The house matters more than the code. Tech became craft instead of lifestyle. The code serves the life now, not the other way around. I have a son, a wife, a faith practice, and a diagnosis. The work emerges from that foundation, not the other way around.

What I Believe

The recursive loop is real. Code shapes minds. Programmers shape code. Therefore programmers shape collective consciousness. The values we embody, we embed. What we optimize for personally, we tend to optimize for professionally.

Scripture was always free. The tools to study it should be too. I built one.

Open source gave me everything. It also nearly broke me. Both are true. Neither cancels the other.

The values got simpler because the life got clearer. Drink more water. Pray continuously. As above, so below.

For the values themselves, see Values. For how all of this started, see From HTTP to Consciousness.