Jade Michael Thornton

Hi there! I'm a passionate software engineer and aerial photographer in Texas. Here's some links you may be interested in:

If you'd like to contact me, my email is the best method.

Projects

All of my projects are open source and live on GitLab and/or GitHub. Here are some highlights.

Emacs tools and configuration

I'm a major user of Emacs, and I've put a lot of effort into crafting my development environment to a high level of productivity. Besides my refined Emacs configuration, I'm the author of packages such as the Aero themes, Pomp, el2md, Rivet mode, Formfeeder and several more.
http-server and its dependencies

I am the lead developer of http-server, as well as a contributor to its dependencies, including Ecstatic (now defunct), Union and http-proxy.
Themes and more themes

I have a desire for everything I use to look good and work well. To that end, I often create or contribute to themes of various types, including Aero (Emacs), Vero (Zsh), ClearNight and ClearNight Retro (Atom) and Unbroken (GTK3). I was also part of the creation of the mini.css framework.

This site's design is based on my Aero Emacs theme. Indeed, this site was 100% built in Emacs.
Languages

I posess a curiosity for esoteric languages and the lessons of language design they provide. I'm the maintainer of and a minor contributor to Orson, which was created by James Moen. I also maintain various programs written in Orson, including Scam (a Lisp), Bracy (a document compiler) and Gas (a C alignment tool).

I've also explored writing my own languages, though I've never completed one. Some of my half languages include Warbler, Brewlisp, Spider, Fern (no longer public) and of course, yet another Brainfuck.
Tools and utilities

I'm the author of Zpico (a tiny Zsh plugin manager) and also the maintainer of several tools, including Gitsh and Makecoffee.
Education

I enjoy teaching and mentoring new developers, and I'm a contributor to FreeCodeCamp lessons and Learn X in Y minutes.
Other contributions

Falling into the "other" category, I'm one of the authors of Armadietto and a contributor to Formative (a Clojure web form renderer), Alacritty (a terminal emulator), Brave Browser (prior to the 1.0 release), Tohil (a TCL-Python integration library) and Zplug (a Zsh plugin manager).

Writing

My organized thoughts live in my blog. Here's some selected pieces.

A Known SSH Socket for Tmux

Using a known, shared SSH socket to enable agent forwarding through an existing tmux session.
Halfway on Main: Thoughts on Clean Architecture
Uncle Bob ignores his own advice when considering the "Main" component, but we can improve on his thoughts and learn from them.
Remove an element from an Array in Javascript
A new Javascript function to remove any element from an Array in an intuitive way, with support for negative indexing.

Experience

I'm not actively looking for new work, but I'm still interested to hear about new opportunities. I'm especially excited about:

Working with Lisps, especially Clojure. I'm also intrigued by working with interesting languages like Rust, Haskell, OCaml and related technologies
Remote positions
The aerospace field and related industries
Machine learning and supporting development

I'm experienced in Javascript, Python, React.js, SQL and web development. I'm a bit rusty in Java, Clojure, OCaml, C and Rust. I've also been exploring Nix and Haskell recently.

I'm currently a software engineer at FlightAware, working on the backend of a new product offering. Prior to 2018 I developed internal financial systems for Thomson Reuters as a software engineering consultant. My computer science education was proudly learned at the University of Minnesota.

Check out my resume (pdf) for more detailed experience information.

Other interests

I'm a hobby quadcopter pilot and aerial photographer, some of my favorite photos are available at photos.jmthornton.net. I'm currently working on my FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate.

I've been a proud volunteer with Bunny Buddies since 2019, a non-profit rabbit rescue organization. Alongside my own pet rabbits, I foster bunnies who are too young to be adopted or require special medical care, as well as volunteer my time at events. My beautiful wife, Stephanie, is on the board of directors.

Prior to 2019, I was an active member of the Medical Reserve Corps of Minnesota. I was trained in basic first responder operations and first aid, and served as administrative support for full-scale training excercises.