programming

I write a lot of code.

Whether I'm at Situation or working on one of my bajillion crazy ideas, I'm usually jamming away on my MacBook. I can almost always be found writing Rails apps, which are typically internal ones (CMSes, APIs, and other tools we use every day). If Rails isn't right for the project or environment, I will generally use CakePHP, since it's a bit lighter.

If I don't opt to use a typical stack, I've found using Pound to backend proxy to Apache (including mod_rails) or mongrel clusters alongside lighttpd works well. Litespeed is another favorite (particularly for development), since the LSAPI is pretty powerful. I used to believe in nginx until I saw the benchmarks.

I do a lot of work with OOP, ORM, design patterns, Javascript (especially jQuery), and language semantics in general. I've come to realize that having a design sense and a knack for great XHTML/CSS is a rare thing, and I pride myself on pixel-perfect attention to detail (some call it being anal, doctors call it OCD; you call it what you want).

Things like abstraction, polymorphism, factories, and a blank screen waiting for new code really float my boat. I am always learning new things (currently Python/Django - I know, a little late on that one), trying new techniques, and refining old ones. I also do a lot of work with common APIs (Facebook, Google/YouTube, AWS (S3/EC2), and Twitter).