hi, i’m craig. i’ve been building stuff on the internet since the days of dial-up and geocities. my time in software engineering has taught me two things i keep coming back to in life: experience matters as much as method, and complexity can always be made simple if you zoom out far enough. this website is my little patch of the web, a garden to plant ideas, experiments & the odd ramble.

i wrote my first website when i was still in school, hacking away at html and css (ok - tables and spacer gifs) occasionally blocking the phone-line. that early spark grew into a career across front-end, back-end, mobile, cloud, and everything in between. fixated on solving problems, making things people enjoy using. i always want the experience to feel good or have some element of delight.

as my career grew, i found myself drawn to the gnarlier problems: sprawling legacy systems, messy architectures, the places where complexity lived. i loved zooming out of the chaos & seeing the system from above, trying to find the spot to improve that would have the most positive ripple effect.

i’ve always believed software should simplify life, not add friction.

in recent years i’ve turned as many have with an eye toward ai engineering and how to incorporate these new capabilities into a well established world view. with equal parts fear & excitement ai feels like the biggest shift i’ve ever seen. it’s been a while since the intensity of learning has felt so high. it’s energizing.

here i get to combine what i know with what i’m learning, to plant some seeds in public, and to see what grows out of it.

i live in amsterdam with my fiancé and our french bulldog - because a house without a dog is just a building. we moved here from the uk in 2018 thanks to brexit, and while i’ve made peace with it, i don’t think we’ll stay here forever. we’re free spirits, and i like to think of home as wherever we decide to plant ourselves next.

beyond engineering, i’m learning who i am outside the code. a late adhd diagnosis, therapy, and burnout cracked things open for me. i’ve discovered a love of painting and photography. i’ve also learned that my creativity isn’t confined to a terminal.

life is messy, but messiness is fertile ground.

🫡