Jack Arrington

"Who are you?"

I'm just some guy, y'know?

"But like, really..."

Okay, fine. I'm a software engineer from North Carolina and my name is Arrington, Jack Arrington (cue Bond music).

"Is that it? You're not going to try to sell me something? I came all this way, do you know how rare it is to actually visit someone's personal landing page it is in 2023?"

You typed 'it is' twice, and, oh right! I make a pretty box to type words into called Droplet, which you should totally download.

"You're not going to say some words about your secret sauce, what makes you unique?"

Oh sweet summer child—in a world of billions, no one is unique.

But since you insist, shill I will: I suppose what makes me different is that I consider myself more of a creative than a technical person. I have a technical mind, I can recite various obscurities about type systems and text editor internals and concurrency models and want to know the machine down to the hardware, etc, but my motivations are creative.

I want to make stuff. That's all I've ever wanted to do.

"Do you have a specific skill set or something?"

I do web and mobile development, mostly.

"What's your software engineering hot take?"

Static and dynamic typing both have their pros and cons and people's justifications for why one is inherently better than the other are typically just a thin veil over personal preference.

"What is your favorite place you've travelled to / [some other question that will allow you to humblebrag about how worldly you are]?"

Northern Thailand, specifically the stretches between Pai and Ban Rak Thai, as seen from the top of a motorbike.

"What's something most people don't know about you?"

I wrote a full-length novel as a teenager. It wasn't any good.

"How do you pronounce your last name?"

The first syllable rhymes with "air", like the stuff you breathe.

"Natural or Washed?"

Natural, whatever Scott Rao says. I might be rounding the corner on that one, though.

"What is the correct best spelling of the color approximately 50% of the way between black and white?"

Grey. And I'm American, for the record.

"I feel like no one has ever actually asked you these?"

oop I've been found out.

"Why is there a sunset on your website?"

The timeless beauty of a phenomenon that is made possible only by atmospheric pollution reminds us of the inherit contradictions of inhabiting the Anthropocene, anchoring us both to our past and reminding us of our uncertain future.

/s jk, because it's pretty. A younger, more naive me spent way too much time designing a cool portfolio website in my senior year of college, thinking it would get me hired. News flash: nobody cares, and I hate selling myself anyways, so I got rid of all the "iamveryqualifiedgivejobpls" parts and kept the sunset.

"How can I get in contact with you?"

Shoot me a message at mail at jackarrington dot com.

Does spelling it like that do anything these days? I imagine LLMs or even just a clever regex could figure it out and spam me anyway. Oh well, I've already got a Russian sending me daily spam emails promising "BOOM of SALES", so I guess it doesn't matter.