My name’s Matt Olson. I’m a nerd; currently that’s pronounced “engineering manager”. I didn’t get to pick the title.

I have a Ph.D. in computer graphics, where I focused on doing neat things with silhouette curves on surface models. I don’t do that for work, which I used to think was a shame. It sure taught me to learn well in a hurry, though.

I’ve spent about twenty years writing in C-like languages, and about ten wishing I could use something a lot more functional instead. These days I’m getting paid to write C# on the back end, working patiently to get more F# into my professional diet, and thinking more and more about how tools and culture at the team level and above make work awesome, or make it suck.

I think continuous testing, vi key bindings, tmux, and Hindley-Milner type inference are life-changing tools. Given the opportunity, I use 1TBS over Allman in curly-brace languages and characters over tiles in Nethack.

A short sturdy creature, fond of drink and industry.