Hi, I'm Thomas


I'm a software developer from Portland

A picture of me with my dog Dulcita

About Me

Hello, I'm a software developer from Portland, Oregon, and a Portland State University Alumnus. I studied Computer Science there, and I love to program computers. In my personal life, along with programming hobby projects I like to play video games, clean/repair electronics, and work on mechanical keyboards. I've dabbled with QMK (software that lets you program buttons on a supported keyboard) in the past and got into soldering due to my interest in keyboards.

Along with studying Computer Science at Portland State, I also took multiple history classes covering a wide range of topics, from indigenous history in the Americas, to medieval European history, to African history before the 19th century. If I wasn't a Computer Scientist, I think I would've been a history major. These classes are very important to me, as I think they've helped me understand the world better, and they helped me do better academically. I became a better writer, learned to really pay attention to details like the authors and their background, dates and era a piece was written in. They also helped me with citing sources, which has translated over to my work in CS by making notes on where I got solutions or ideas from if I looked something up online.

Skills

  • Programming Languages and Frameworks
    • C/C++
    • HTML/CSS
    • Javascript/TypeScript
    • React
    • TailwindCSS
    • PostgreSQL
    • Rust
    • Haskell
  • Technical Writing/Documentation
  • Familiar with Networking Concepts
  • Software
    • OSes: Linux, Windows
    • Coding tools: Vim, VSCode, Gdb, Git
    • Office Software: MS Office, Google Docs, LaTeX
    • Design: Figma, Spline
    • Network tools: Wireshark

Education

  • Degree: BS Computer Science
    • School: Portland State University
    • Attendance: Sep 2017 - Mar 2023
    • GPA: 3.45
  • Capstone: Blurp webapp
    • Project Duration: Sep. 2022 - Mar. 2023
    • Worked as a Frontend developer on a team of 10 people and 2 team leads
    • Developed a frontend using React.js and Vite
    • Used the SigmaJS and Graphology libraries to draw nodes and edges
    • Users can create, delete, and edit nodes/edges on the graph
  • Important Classes
    • Internetworking Protocols
    • Functional Programming
    • Unit Testing/Branching Strategies
    • Operating Systems
    • Algorithms
    • Databases
    • Programming Languages
    • Code Reading & Review
    • Software Engineering

Work History

  • Office Assistant @ Upward Bound ETS: Sep 2019 - Mar 2023
    • Managed student database, and brought up errors with student applications, and returned apps that were missing vital info
    • Marked students that participated in events hosted by staff so they could keep track of student participation and ensure they were meeting with the counselors regularly
    • Managed technological inventory (laptops, cameras, etc.) and handled logistics of lending equipment
  • Tutor @ Upward Bound ETS: Sep 2017 - Jun 2019
    • Tutored high school students in mathematics and history
    • Proofread essays for students writing for both their classes and for scholarships

Projects Ive worked on

  • Blurp

    Blurp was a capstone project I worked on with a team of 10, with two team leads. It was a project for building an app that allows for users to map out their relationships to people, places, and ideas. This was meant as a tool for therapists to send to their patients before a session to help understand patients better. For this project, we went for a simplistic design, as the tools that already existed for this were specialized and inaccessible to most users, both being in terms of cost, and in terms of usability. I worked on the frontend portion of this app, which we used React, SigmaJS, and Graphology to make the app work. I worked on sending and retrieving data from the database, worked on different GUI components like the modal that appears upon loading in, and worked on getting the data associated with a node or relationship to be loaded into a form in the app that the user could edit and then save back to the node. Overall, the project was very interesting to work with, as it had me think about how users were going to be interacting with our software, and it had me learn a lot of new skills while working on it.

  • Haskell Webserver

    This was a simple key/value webserver that I wrote for a final project for my functional programming class. The server can only handle plaintext and html formatted data, and it only implements get and put http requests. It allows for users using software like netcat put data on the server, and allows for users to use a web browser to access that data and have it display properly in the browser. While not technically impressive, it was more meant as an exercise in abstracting different components of a webserver into small functions, and for me to write an application using a functional language.

  • IRC Client/Server

    This was a chat client/server written in python meant to work in a similar way to an IRC chat client/server. However it isn’t compatible with the IRC protocol, as I wrote my own protocol for this client and server. This was written to get a chance to work with networking, and to be able to write software that uses te TDP protocol. The software I wrote for this allows for multiple users to connect and create chatrooms, send messages to one or more chatrooms, and be able to disconnect on their own. Users who joined a room after could join and receive the message history as they’re joining in. It was cool to work with networking, and to be able to send a message on one computer and see the result on another, and it was interesting working through the problems I ran into while programming this.

  • Civlike

    Civlike is a prototype of a 4X strategy game written in Rust. The game was written using the Bracket-lib library, which is mainly meant for creating terminal based roguelike games. I’m not too into roguelikes, so I decided to try and work on a 4X stratgy game in the style of a terminal game as I’m a fan of games like Sid Meier’s Civilization.

  • Personal Website

    This website was a project for my intro to web development class. It was meant to have us showcase what we learned during the course, which includes HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, and jQuery. We had to have a navbar, and have a section dedicated to talking about ourselves, a previous work section which would include work experience and possibly a resume, a section for projects we wanted to showcase, and a contact section. We also had to deploy the website using some hosting service like what github offers, and we had to keep a journal about the development process. For the contact section, we weren’t required to set up a system for sending the data entered by users, but we could if we wanted to.

  • Xv6

    I worked on Xv6 as part of my Operating Systems class at PSU. Xv6 is an OS thats mainly focused on teaching students about the in’s and out’s of OS development, and how they function internally without giving them an OS thats too complex. For Xv6, I worked on creating new programs for the OS that could be run from it’s command line, worked on how processes were handled, implemented a round-robin scheduler, and implemented a multilevel feedback queue algorithm (MLFQ) into the scheduler. For the round-robin scheduler and MLFQ, the primary purpose of implementing those was to teach about how OSes avoid programs being unable to run due to other processes using up all of the resources, which was done by implementing states that the processes would run through to ensure that they would pause at some point and let others run, hence the name round robin. And the MLFQ algorithm adds to that by making it utilize multiple cores, and be able to prioritize what runs even better than a basic round-robin scheduler would. One of the ways it does this is by adding priority levels and a process promotion and demotion system to help determine what processes get to run and when.

Contact me

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You can also find me on Github and LinkedIn!