My first program wasn't something I wrote — it was something I typed. Page by page, line by line, from the back of Compute! Magazine into a TI-99/4A. I had no idea what the code meant. I just knew that if I got every character right, something magical happened on screen. And when it didn't work, I'd go back and hunt for the typo. That was my first taste of debugging. I was hooked.
Around the same time, I discovered Scott Adams text adventures — loaded from cassette tape, no less. There's something about typing "GO NORTH" into a blinking cursor and having a whole world respond that permanently rewires a kid's brain. Mine never recovered.
I graduated to a Commodore 64, which felt like going from a bicycle to a motorcycle. BASIC gave way to poking around in memory addresses and swapping floppy disks. By high school, I was running a BBS — my own little corner of the pre-internet world, complete with message boards, door games, and the satisfying screech of a modem handshake.
I studied Management Information Systems in college, which was the closest thing to a "build stuff with computers" degree at the time. From there, I've spent my entire career in software — with a deep focus on web development across industries you've heard of and some you haven't. I've done long stints in product roles at B2B2C SaaS companies, where I learned that building good software is only half the job. The other half is understanding the people who use it.
Now I'm in Austin, Texas, building my own thing. ByteJelly is the name — a nod to the technical (byte) and the homemade (jelly). I build software the way I think it should be built: thoughtfully, with care, and without a committee. Web apps, macOS apps, iOS apps — whatever shape the idea needs to take.
I'm not an agency. I don't take clients. I just make things I think should exist, and then I put them out into the world. If that sounds like your kind of thing, poke around. And if you want to say hi, you know where to find me.