Perspective: Technologies
My relationship with technology spans four distinct phases, each informing how I think and what I can do today.
As a Technical Support Specialist at Microsoft UK
I learned how technology actually fails. I supported Visual Studio, SQL Server, and COM at the product level, debugging customer issues under pressure with real production impact. That taught me something foundational: the happy path isn't where you learn about systems.
It's the edge cases, the failure modes, the threading issues in COM interop that reveal how things actually work. It built knowledge of Windows platform internals and taught me to think deeply about enterprise software constraints.
As an Engineer
I progressed through decades of hands-on work across multiple eras. The Microsoft stack was my primary home, VB through VB.NET to C#. But I've written serious code in JavaScript, Python, C++, Cobol, Delphi, Pascal, and Assembler.
Early languages like Cobol and Assembler taught me systems-level thinking. Modern languages like C# and JavaScript built my web and enterprise application skills. I've designed and built SOAP and XML web service architectures, REST APIs, and distributed systems. That progression means I can talk depth with engineers, understand architectural tradeoffs, and still code to learn when needed.
As a CTO
I hold strategic relationships with hyperscalers and technology platforms. Azure and AWS are my primary partners, with experience managing multi-hyperscaler environments when companies merged. I've made significant architectural decisions around databases, Snowflake, MongoDB, Postgres, SQL Server.
I've championed observability platforms, Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Labs, and incident response tooling like PagerDuty and API management like Kong. These aren't vendor relationships. These are partnerships where I've led migrations, shaped platform strategy, and maintained executive relationships that continue to inform how I think about technology selection and scale.
As a Researcher
I'm actively learning what's next. My current toolkit is oriented toward AI and agentic systems. I'm experimenting with Claude and ChatGPT, exploring local models with LM Studio and Ollama, using Perplexity for research.
I'm building with the Microsoft C# MCP SDK, learning Model Context Protocol implementations. I'm tracking experiments with Comet, managing data with TablePlus and SQLite, thinking through everything in Obsidian.
This is all about staying curious, hands-on, learning what's actually changing in the field.
What these four lenses show is that I don't rely on past expertise alone. I have deep history, broad language and platform knowledge, real production experience at every level from support through CTO. But I'm also actively building knowledge in emerging areas through experimentation and learning.
That combination, history plus active curiosity, is what shapes how I advise on technology and how I approach new challenges.
There is a downloadable markdown file for technologies available on the Resources page. This markdown files can be used as a template for you to adopt and edit for you own uses and with the agents available on the same page.