What's your current role, and what do you like about it? I am an “Adaptive Systems Architect.” A nice little term that can also be translated into “I work for myself.” I got here because, after my stroke 3 years ago, nobody at Walmart or T-Mobile wants to hire me. After I went blind, it was tough to get work, so I had to adapt and find a new way. I couldn’t stay in university at Portland State because it was dreadful, and I learn better on my own anyway. All I know about code is self-taught. Initially, with lesson plans made by Gemini. Now, whenever I even start touching a piece of code, I know what the errors mean. Accelerated hands-on learning is how I perform best. Oh yeah, I am supposed to say what I like about it. I love the freedom. I get to keep my dignity and my integrity. How did you get into Programming? Well, first, I got mad that I couldn’t get investors for my AI Film Pipeline. I made them a rap track using my musical skills (I release music on Spotify as 'Bossman Blind') as a one-pager and sent them an itemized capital plan, but I didn’t get any replies. So I figured like Thanos at the end of one of the bajillion Marvel movies in one of those bonus things: “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” So I did, eventually it turned into Flatopia, which I have an article on here for. Eventually, though, as I did more and more lesson plans, I realized I really like this. I love getting into the zone and making awesome stuff. So I have stuck with it. How did you get into writing about Programming? Well, I realized I needed to document my work. Making it and putting it on GitHub with a README.md file is cool and all, but I wanted more. So I started making Medium articles on it. Eventually, my Web3 articles got picked up by CoinsBench on Medium and, as love stories go, I found HackerNoon. As my Quantum Gavel article got denied and I was displeased, I turned to a more open-minded lover, so to speak. What's your earliest memory of learning to code? I was 16, hadn’t gone blind yet, taking a programming class. I convinced the nerds in front of the computer lab to make my Visual Basic code for me because I wanted to play Minecraft. Eventually, though, I did make my own game, it was called “Red Bread Redemption.” I read a lot of political books as a kid, i.e., the Communist Manifesto, The Wealth of Nations, etc. So I made a Galactica (Battlestar Galactica) style game where you were fighting Nazis with communist propaganda. Yes, the soviet anthem was playing, and it was hilarious when my teacher opened it to test i,t and it started blaring. When Elon Musk achieves his dream of getting us to Mars, what technology do you think would be important on Mars and why? We would have to have computers. I imagine Mars would be the perfect location for a metric ton of data centers where we can all rent space from. If he allows us to set up huge server rooms, think of how cool it would be to say I made an API call to Mars. What's a programming language that you would build EVERYTHING and ANYTHING in, and why? Python, it’s universal really. For hardware like Raspberry Pi. I also use it for AI and quantum computing. The only thing I couldn’t use it on would be Web3, which is a bummer to me. The reason is that it is so versatile and easy to learn. The libraries are awesome as well. I love secrets, requests, and my very first library I got familiar with Streamlit. What's something you think Software developers do not do enough of? Diversify your mind. I make music, I make books that I then publish, and I use code for creative ideas, not just for professional ones. You have no idea how much I rely on those little side projects to elevate my professional ones. I even dabble a little in the sciences; I like to put my theory papers, no matter how many times people tell me I’m not a “real scientist,” on Zenodo. Contributing to human knowledge is important; my ideas might have holes in them, but the point is, they inspire someone else to fill those holes. Sometimes, the greatest discoveries and advancements in human history started from a really smart, academic person reading some normal dude’s weird, almost sci-fi story. They just need to know the concept, at the very least, can work. Just one spark. What is your least favorite thing about programming? Well, since I use my coined Centaur Model, I architect with ideas and fixes, and AI lays bricks, my least favorite part is telling the AI over and over again it is doing it wrong. I always have to tell Gemini that no, we don’t use 1.5 flash anymore because it was discontinued in September 2025, and we have to use 2.5 flash now. It argues sometimes that I am not firm enough.  In quantum computing, it’s awful, things change so fas,t and I am always having to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it because the AI gets stuck. What’s a technology you’re currently learning or excited to learn? Well I want a Raspberry PI for Christmas, once I have that I can start doing all kinds of crazy projects on it. It is just a variant of Python but I don’t care. My only wish is that I could have more. I like software a lot more because if I don’t want just one project, I click add project and now I have 2. Hardware is very different. What’s your favorite Programming story of all-time on HackerNoon? That’s a great question. It’s so great that I really have to think about it hard. I just read Code Smell 09: What Should You Do With Dead Code? It was awesome, the best article I have ever read. Code Smell 09: What Should You Do With Dead Code? Time travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? What does technology look like? Give reasons for your answer. Well 10 years in the future people have taken my quantum computing research and experiments to implement commercially. It is so advanced that they use quantum vacuum entropy to generate a blockchain-wide seed forever fixing the randomness problem that plagues Web3. I never have to use ChainLink again. I am rich because I pulled all my money out of banking as they have fully adopted DeFi but totally ruined it by taking out the De. We are already moving there slowly, quantum is really slow right now but so was AI and Web3.

Between Two Computer Monitors: This story includes an interview between the writer and guest/interviewee. 

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Meet the Programmer Who Taught Himself to Code After Losing His Sight

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