About
I’m Carlos. I’ve spent my whole life in front of a computer, and I started programming because I wanted to make my own tools instead of settling for the ones that existed.
What drives me
I’m drawn to low-level work: understanding how things work underneath and digging into complex topics. And I love simulation. It all started with Dwarf Fortress, which to me is one of the best-made simulations out there. That’s where VenRad comes from, and the urge to build worlds that run on their own. I also play a lot of MMORPGs, mostly WoW and RuneScape.
On the web side
What I enjoy most is the backend: Java, designing and optimising APIs, managing databases, and the systems side, with shell scripts and scheduled jobs. And deployment: taking things into real production. My applications and this site run on my own server, with Docker and Nginx.
How I learn
I’m self-taught in C++ and graphics. I learn by reading (LearnOpenGL, documentation, other people’s code) and, above all, by building: every piece of VenRad started as something I didn’t know how to do.
Alongside that I study the foundations underneath, mostly maths: linear algebra, vectors, matrices and transformations, which is what drives everything in a graphics engine.
I use AI every day, the way people used to use Stack Overflow: to search, ask questions, get a concept explained or check an idea before I write it. The code is mine.