Faith Led Development
I write software for a living, often as a freelancer/consultant. My faith doesn’t make me louder; it makes me clearer. It’s the thing that nudges me toward honesty, courage, and high‑quality work when nobody is watching.
Software Development
Announcing Regex Battle
I built a small app called Regex Battle. It lives at https://regexbattle.com and it turns regular expressions into a head to head game. You get a prompt, a timer starts, and your goal is to write a regex that meets the challenge before the clock hits zero. You can play against another person or against a bot if you want to practice solo. Regex Battle is a PvP regular expression battle game with a bot and PvP mode. Each round gives you an objective and a set of example strings. Your job is to write a pattern that matches what it should and rejects what it should not. When you submit, the app checks your regex against the round tests and shows the result. Fast and correct beats slow and almost. Simple as that.
Growing As A Developer Means More Than 9 to 5
I learned early that a day job will keep you busy, but it will not always stretch you. If you want to move forward, you have to put in reps outside the clock. Not forever, not at the cost of your life, but long enough and often enough to build range. I started in an agency. Fast pace, many clients, constant context switching. I worked late nights and some weekends because I wanted to get better. That is not a long term lifestyle and I do not recommend burning yourself out, but those seasons taught me how to ship, how to debug under pressure, and how to own the result. They also taught me to set better boundaries later. You can hold both truths: growth often requires extra effort, and health requires rest.
Networking Is Everything For Developers
For the past ten years, every good opportunity in my career has come through people. Former clients who referred me. Colleagues who remembered a job I did well. Friends of friends who needed help and trusted the recommendation. In Australia especially, the circles in tech are smaller than you think and the degree of separation is tiny. If you build real connections, you can often sidestep the mess that is interviewing and get hired for the work you actually do, not for how fast you can solve an algorithm on a whiteboard. I am genuinely grateful for that.
How I Write Good Docs
I have spent a lot of years writing documentation, first for Aurelia 1 and more recently for Aurelia 2 at docs.aurelia.io. The scale taught me a few things that travel beyond any framework. Good docs are not marketing. Good docs help someone ship. That is the bar I write to.
Announcing Hive Ships
I built a new thing: Hive Ships. It lives at https://hive-ships.com and it turns the classic Battleship idea into a turn based, competitive game on the Hive blockchain. You place your fleet, you face another player, and the winner earns HIVE. Simple rules, quick rounds, real stakes.
WordPress Is An Underrated Path To High Quality Websites/Apps
WordPress is underrated. If you only hang out in framework circles you would think it is old, clunky, or not serious enough for modern work. I keep finding the opposite. For many projects it is the most practical path to a high quality site that real people can edit, host and keep running without drama.
The Future of Programming Is Systems Thinking
I write code for a living, but more and more I feel like my job is designing systems. Some of those systems include code I type. Some include services, models and tools that I orchestrate. The biggest shift is mental: stop thinking in files and start thinking in flows, boundaries, feedback and failure. If you have solid fundamentals, this moment can multiply your impact. If you treat every new tool like magic, it will waste your time and your client’s money.
Building With Boring Tech
I like boring technology. Not because I am against progress, but because most projects are not auditions for a conference talk. Clients want results they can afford, host, edit and keep running when I am not around. That means choosing tools for outcomes, not for hype.