What I'm Doing Now1

Art

I've been a draftsman/painter for decades, but in the past few years I have been lucky enough to be able to work every day on my art.

I tend to post studies and works in progress here and on Instagram every couple of weeks. Right now I am working mostly on small figurative compositions in graphite or gouache, and also on a large oil painting that I started at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Day Job

I'm currently a staff software engineer at OppFi, where I write software (mostly in Clojure), mentor and teach other engineers, and attempt to improve process, code quality, and architecture however I can.

Study

Things I'm learning now:

  • The Go programming language. I've written a few modestly useful things and am really enjoying the experience after years of focusing primarily on Lisps and functional programming. Go emphasizes a different kind of simplicity than Clojure does, and it seems to occupy a sweet spot on the speed vs. power spectrum. I'm regularly stunned by how fast Go programs are, including the code used to build this site.
  • Mandarin (reading, mostly). I'm up to about four hundred words. It's a beautiful language, and a slog to learn, but thanks to technology it is definitely possible!
  • This Web site.

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