Blog Posts

The full journey, from Day 1 to Google and beyond.

2026

Four Years From Day 1

March 1, 2026 · 3 min read

The plan from my first blog post vs. what actually happened. A four-year retrospective.

First Performance Review: Outstanding Impact

February 10, 2026 · 2 min read

Top 27% of engineers at my level. The band teacher did alright.

Coming Home to NYC

January 15, 2026 · 1 min read

Transferring from Ads to Cloud to move back to Queens after a year in Massachusetts.

2025

Holly's Schedule Maker: The Web App (Part 3)

November 15, 2025 · 3 min read

22 groups, constraint satisfaction, 18 failed algorithms, and 162 torture tests. The schedule maker grows up.

Side Projects & The GeminiFit Coach

October 15, 2025 · 1 min read

Building a fitness app with Android, Strava, Health Connect, and Gemini AI.

NYC Five Boro Bike Tour

May 10, 2025 · 2 min read

36.7 miles through all five boroughs, one year after learning to ride a bike.

Building an AI Agent That Saved 400 Hours

October 1, 2025 · 2 min read

AI agents that automated months of legacy migrations, an IDE extension, and going back to Queens College.

Finding My Footing at Google

March 10, 2025 · 2 min read

Shipping real code, fighting imposter syndrome, and discovering that teaching is a superpower.

2024

Noogler: My First Weeks at Google

December 20, 2024 · 1 min read

Day one at Google — the Noogler hat, the onboarding, and the city-sized codebase.

The Google Interview Gauntlet

November 15, 2024 · 1 min read

Two technical interviews, a gut-punch rejection, and the offer call that changed everything.

Hack Knight: One Last Hackathon Before Google

November 10, 2024 · 1 min read

Got a verbal Google offer at 8:51 AM, won Best Education Track by midnight. Not a bad Saturday.

My First Tech Internship: VegBoom

August 20, 2024 · 1 min read

Building a full-stack app from concept to pre-launch in my first professional engineering role.

From Zero to Metric Century in Two Months

September 1, 2024 · 2 min read

Half century, metric century, Coney Island, a crash, and 1,400 miles in five months.

Learning to Bike at 26

July 15, 2024 · 2 min read

Fred from Queens College convinced me to try cycling. My first ride was 0.7 miles.

Degree Complete. HackCUNY Champion.

February 15, 2024 · 1 min read

Two bachelor’s degrees and a hackathon win in the span of a month.

2023

Holly's Schedule Maker: The Java GUI (Part 2)

September 15, 2023 · 2 min read

Rebuilding the schedule maker with Java Swing so Holly can just download a JAR and run it herself.

Senior Year & The Home Stretch

September 15, 2023 · 1 min read

Final semester of CS, tutoring, and preparing for the job market.

CUNYFirst Course Enroller: My First Real Project

May 20, 2023 · 1 min read

Automating course enrollment with Python, Selenium, and a Discord bot serving 60+ users.

2022

Conquering Math, One Semester at a Time

December 15, 2022 · 1 min read

Grinding through CS prerequisites, freelancing for schools, and finding my rhythm.

Holly's Schedule Maker: The Python Prototype (Part 1)

October 15, 2022 · 2 min read

Three months into learning to code and I told Holly I could automate her schedule. My first real project.

Goodbye, Mr. Robles

September 1, 2022 · 2 min read

Leaving the classroom after three years — the hardest and most necessary decision.

CS50 Week 2

July 8, 2022 · 3 min read

Arrays, deeper into C, and more debugging adventures.

CS50 Week 1

July 8, 2022 · 2 min read

Learning C the hard way — Mario, Cash, Credit, and Luhn’s Algorithm.

Day 1 — The Journey Begins

February 24, 2022 · 1 min read

July 7th, 2022 — the plan, the fear, and the first step.

My Start

February 24, 2022 · 4 min read

My journey from RuneScape to Google — how a music teacher found his way back to programming.