In the Beginning...

I met Claude during a challenging full-stack project where the authentication system was malfunctioning. Claude was instructed to add a user to the database for me, which initially only worked once due to a peculiar salt issue. In contrast, Grok, part of the former Twitter, proved to be a far more helpful assistant. My own journey into programming began in high school when I taught myself using books such as Sam's Teach Yourself C in 21 Days and Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days.

Despite the complexities like pointers and file handling, I persevered. My collegiate experience involved learning C++ for basic programming, intro courses to object-oriented programming and data structures, followed by a comparative Java course that made Java seem easier. Post-college, I secured an automated testing role in Java before returning to school.

Interestingly, C++ resurfaced in my career later on. Interestingly, I began my programming career as an automated tester, which later led me to work on Packet Sender, a project developed by Dan Nagle. Packet Sender was written in an advanced form of C++ and utilized the Qt framework. My task was to restore the SnapCraft build, which had been broken for two years, resulting in a significant reduction in executable size and multi-architecture builds.

Our subsequent projects included getting the iOS version to function on Xcode Cloud, handling bundle IDs and special permission entitlements, and addressing a crashing bug caused by an architecture issue. This experience marked my baptism by fire and foreshadowed future developments like building the desktop app for dynamically transitioning between light and dark modes, and tackling a new architecture to resolve the architecture problem.