Jade Michael Thornton

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

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

Projects

What I cannot create, I do not understand
— Richard Feynman

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

Emacs tools and configuration

I use Emacs every day and love it, 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 serve the author of packages such as the Aero themes, Pomp, el2md, Rivet mode, Formfeeder and several more.
http-server and its dependencies

I serve as 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 maintain and have made minor contributions 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 authored Zpico (a tiny Zsh plugin manager) and also maintainer several tools, including Gitsh and Makecoffee.
Education

I enjoy teaching and mentoring new developers, and I contribute 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. Enjoy 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 right now, but I'm still interested to hear about new opportunities. I'm especially excited about:

Companies with a mission to combat human suffering and/or climate change
The aerospace field and related industries, especially UAS and spaceflight
Working with Lisps, especially Clojure. I'm also intrigued by working with interesting languages like Rust, Haskell, OCaml and related technologies

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 a new experimental feature for our PiAware ADS-B receivers. I previously worked to completely overhaul FlightAware Global into the streamlined product you see today. Prior experience includes developing internal financial systems for Thomson Reuters as a software engineering consultant, and developing custom software and tech support for the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

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 proudly volunteered 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, serves 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.