Hi. I’m Bill.

I like to make things.

I’m good at product design and software engineering.

My current interests include machine learning, automation, and startups.

My skills include ideation, user research, analytics, front and backend design and development. I have experience with Ruby (Rails), Javascript, C, Objective-C, CSS, HTML, SQL, Perl, and PHP. I’m also familiar with Angular, React, Elixir and Go.

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My story:

I started coding when I was eight years old. My first programs were written in BASIC on a TI-99/4A. I won my school’s science fair with a computer science project in 6th grade. Later I started making games on a PC running MSDOS.

In college I began using Apple computers and studied visual design and anthropology. I also spent hours and hours in the math department’s Sun lab where I used the UNIX command line to browse Usenet, Gopher, play muds and Netrek. I also stumbled upon this thing called the World Wide Web.

I started programming websites in 1995. At my first job, I learned to write Macromedia’s Lingo language for creating interactive CD-ROMs, kiosks, and presentations. I also built early websites using HTML, CSS, Javascript and Perl. I built and managed servers my own servers, co-located servers, and then moved to the cloud with Engine Yard, Heroku and AWS.

I have focused much of my career on human-computer interaction and the psychology of designing for people. But while my focus was on design, I learned the C programming language, began writing PHP, and shortly afterwards discovered Ruby on Rails. I also learned Cocoa, Objctive-C and iOS programming after the iPhone launch.

I continue to learn new languages like Elixir and Go, as well as established languages like Java. I have studied the history of computing, programming and the field of human-computer interaction.