I started programming back in middle school. I was big into Minecraft and ran a few servers over many years. To support my Minecraft community, I created a custom web forum in PHP, running on a LAMP stack on Hostgator. From this experience, I learned how to secure my application from SQL injection attacks, to hash and salt user passwords, and in general, what making a full end-to-end web application involved. My web forum, kapip.com, had around 20 DAUs at its peak. Not many users, but I enjoyed building a community and positively impacting my community's players, which is a goal that keeps me going even today.

As time went on, I learned how to modify my Minecraft server using the Bukkit API, which taught me Java. This was my first introduction to systems administration. I made many custom game modes, including Hunger Games, Prison, Riot, and Team Deathmatch mods. One fateful night, my server was getting a lot of attention on a Twitch stream, and the server, which was running from my parents' basement, was DDoS'd! That taught me about site reliability and security early on, as well as the benefits of cloud computing providers.

In college, I gave up Minecraft and decided to pursue The Next Big Thing. Despite my lack of experience, I was determined to make something.

None of my projects ever took off, but I did make a weightlifting tracker Android app, which has since been removed from the Play store, and a dry-cleaning delivery service. Neither ever gained any traction. These projects honed my full-stack skills, but as I became a professional, I focused more on backend and infrastructure.

I worked at a few companies typically in backend and infrastructure, and I did go to the start-up, Capsule, to try my hand as an SRE. I eventually ended up at Duolingo, where I currently work on the LLM application, Video Call with Lily. If you haven't checked out Video Call, definitely do! It is an amazing feature, and I have definitely improved my Spanish skills just by having to debug the experience!

I am a mission-driven engineer, so there is nothing that I won't work on. My personal experience in web and mobile application development, along with my infrastructure/SRE professional experience, means that I can solve any problem. Although I am a backend engineer by trade, my understanding is rooted in the web and mobile apps. I have dealt with attacks, recovered from data breaches (R.I.P. Capsule), ran user-impacting incidents, but I have also prototyped new technology (Video Call) and built out awesome user experiences. Really, the only thing I don't know at this point is iOS, but I'm willing to learn anything!