Hi, I'm Aaron

I was 15 when I heard that magical dial-up screech for the first time and discovered the Web. I was instantly hooked, and a few weeks later I had taught myself the basics of HTML and built my first website. A true masterpiece, replete with obligatory “under construction” GIFs.

After leaving school I got busy being young. I dreamt of being a superstar DJ, worked various jobs and coded as a hobby. Eventually, I traded the turntables for textbooks and studied Multimedia Design, setting the stage for everything that followed.

Newly qualified I landed my first job in tech at a SMS startup. Hired as a designer, within two weeks they had me hacking PHP in Joomla (shudders). I began using WordPress, launched a few plugins and themes, and then joined a marketing agency Inbox Digital - hired not as a designer, but a developer.

The Web was growing up, with better standards, better browsers, and the mobile web. In 2008 I took the leap and went out on my own as a freelance developer. I taught myself Ruby and by the end of the 00s I was shipping my first Rails apps.

In 2012 I founded Push Code and was busy working for startups like ClubBuzz and Campinmygarden.com. I was doing everything - backends, frontends, payments, servers, cloud deployments - all the full-stack fun that defines this era of my career. On top of that I bought a house and became a Dad.

Meanwhile, JavaScript began its world domination, with new frameworks and build tools to learn seemingly every week. Discovering Elixir in 2016 was a breath of fresh air, introducing me to functional programming and the Phoenix framework - the perfect antidote to all that JavaScript.

Curiosity pulled me into the world of Bitcoin. I began creating developer tools that made blockchain complexity more accessible, shipping dozens of open source packages including TxForge and Operate — a framework for storing functions in Bitcoin transactions (weird, but wonderful).

I co-founded Chronos Labs to build micropayments app Nanopay, then joined Run Interactive where we created the Aldea Computer, a new blockchain focused on developer experience. I discovered a knack for creating simple abstractions over complex systems, and more importantly, I loved doing it.

AI has come along and changed everything about what it means to be a developer. After wrapping up Aldea, I took some time away from projects to take stock of this new landscape. I started the blog 2point0.ai, and created Agentflow, an open source framework for creating agents with Markdown files.

AI gives me the same energy I felt when I first saw the Web. The future is being built and everything is up for grabs. As much as that is terrifying, it’s also exciting. I’m looking for my part in it - whether the right full time role, interesting contract work or building something new.