I love building web apps and communities. Software engineering, consulting, freelance, with a side project habit and a camera.
Professionally, I worked both in small startups and tech giants like Cisco. Started as Frontend engineer with strong opinions and a knack for sharing knowledge. Started to lead small to big teams and being responsible for product goals and coordinated execution.
I'm a freelance consultant and engineer. Working with fund tax compliance, intelligent traffic start-ups and robotics companies.
Nowadays I primarily code in Typescript. Depending on the task I also use Python and Rust. Always choose the right tool for the job. Most of the time that involves spinning up Tanstack and self-hosting it on one of my Hetzner VPS.
I self-host as much as I can to avoid serverless horrors (serverlesshorrors.com). Hetzner Cloud is the best compromise between cost, performance and value. What's running on it?
For some services I still rely on cloud software:
When I spin up a new web apps, I usually build it with Tanstack Start, Tailwind and Convex.
I love coding in my free time. Usually I use Claude Code to build my side projects. The pre-AI era feels so far away already, it's difficult to imagine to ever write everything by hand again. That also means that I'm constantly on the verge to optimize my agentic coding workflow.
I open sourced my Claude Code setup as a plugin because I genuinely think it has some unique qualities. First of all, it automatically classifies each task by complexity: S, M, L or XL. It then spawns an appropriate number of subagents to do research, planning, execution and reviewing.
Check it out:
Assumptions are not allowed, therefore every sessions starts with confirming my intent and interviewing me to actually understand the task at hand. Ideally, every goal is programmatically verifiable to guarantee success once it's done.
Claude Code is my main driver and it costs me $200 per month. It's well worth it because it gets so much done for me. I created a page to share more details about their AI stack (aistack.to). It grows into a nice community of like-minded builders.
I started 2016 with investing in stocks, ETF's and crypto. A very bumpy road, and I learned a lot in the process about trading psychology and strategies to cope with FOMO and FUD. I'm much more Zen than I was before.
Even held a presentation about this topic, but beware - it's in German.
family. love my wife and three kids. they are the reason I stay motivated to grow as a person. i'm proud of our relationship. trust, friendship and closeness is what I experienced as a kid from my parents and I'm trying to offer the same to my family.
Exploring other countries and cultures is an absolute joy to me. We love to visit places with different culture, history and climate. We went to Thailand, Isreal, Mexico, Grenada and all over Europe. There is so much more to see.
My favorite moments are when we witness the raw reality of what a place is about. Touristic attractions can be fun, but I mean the actual land and people. Geocaching is a great tool to find the best local spots - even in your home town.
I watched more than a thousand movies and shows, at least those that I can remember. I love intricate stories, unique visuals and immersive worlds. Kind of similar of what I value in a good game.
My all time favorites are The Matrix (too bad they never made any sequels - xkcd.com/566), Fight Club and Breaking Bad. I like dark humor, epicness and unexpected twists.
I built GoodWatch because I didn't want to go to IMDB, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch every single time when I was contemplating what to watch next. It became my biggest side project and is now a personalized recommendation engine for each user's personal taste.
I played many games. Spent countless hours with simulations, arcade, jump'n'run, shooters, RTS and indie games. If you like Duke Nukem, Gordon Freeman, Jade, Kerrigan, Guybrush Threepwood or Scorpion, we can be friends.
The THPS 2 soundtrack is still on my rotation.
If any of this resonated — a project, a passion, a way of thinking — drop a line.
alportac@gmail.com
