About Me

Hey there 👋 I'm Dillon Lomnitzer, a seasoned full stack software engineer with years of experience building big projects with a track record of success

I have a fairly interesting back story that's led me down the path I'm on. And one thing that I've learned over the years is that above all things I love to learn, and secondly, I enjoy teaching what I learn. If you've spoken to me you'll know I do a pretty good job of explaining things using fun analogies in a simple to understand way.

Background

If you’re looking for an education section I greatly apologize but you’re out of luck. This is also not some AI generated garbage as you’d get with most people nowadays. This is my story.

As a young kid I was fairly rambunctious and free-spirited. I enjoyed three simple things: life, computers, and skateboarding. I was raised by an amazing single-mother who barely scraped by to get my younger brother and I through early life. I started work at 12 years old with a farmers work license at a local apple orchard to help as much as I could.

At 18 I attended SUNY Orange in hopes of getting my B.S in Computer Science. I loved every second of being in school, and did quite well in all of my classes ( even math ). That dream was crushed when I lost my job at a local restaurant and my financial aid was pulled. I could no longer afford standard education.

I was stranded as a 19 year old living away from home and feeling defeated.

Ever since then I’ve been working diligently and educating myself along the way. I persevered through online bootcamps, odd-jobs, stack overflow, and even worked as a licenesed nurse! I tried my hardest to pull myself up to where I am today. I am now a father, and a homeowner with years of experience under my belt. Least to say, I couldn't be more proud.

This of course is a summary of my experience and can best be described by Bukowski's: What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Technologies

Over the years I've built a pretty great arsenal of languages and technologies. Everything from embedded software in C, and operating a full scale ProxMox webserver from my house to building websites like this one in React. The technologies that stand out to me the most are:

Go

Go is hands down my favorite language to use currently. The combination of excellently simple syntax, verbose type system and ease of deployment make it an awesome choice for rapid fire projects and strong networking builds.

Rust

I personally don't believe Rust is as hard as people say it is. There of course is a steep learning curve to things like Macros, the Borrow Checker, and the Crate based dependency system, but the benefit you get from the safety and speed is unmatched currently.

Python

Python is my go-to scripting language. I've had some great success building with Django and Flask, but the strength for me comes from the ability to quickly put together document parsers, web scrapers or background tools.

Postgres

What can I say.. Postgres is fast, open source, ACID Compliant and verbose. It's been my choice of data storage for a long time. I of course believe in the 'right tool for the job' so it has it's limits. If you need full scale indexed search go ElasticSearch, schema-less document store? Go Mongo. Enterprise level pain? Oracle.

Cloud

I'm impartial to most cloud providers. I currently hold a pre-cert for AWS and it's my current use for most mid/high tier projects as it has everything you need for small to large scale. I use GCP for varying clients depending on their required constraints and existing ecosystem. Digital Ocean is currently my favorite for low/mid tier projects as it's the most cost effective option for smaller businesses and growing start-ups. The Kubernetes insallation is easy and gets things up and running quickly.

Docker/Kubernetes

Docker/OCI and Kubernetes are my favorite deployment strategies. I've come across many cases of both needing to move infrastructure and needing to break monoliths into smaller services. Docker and K8s solve an insane amount of problems for both on top of being great platforms to share local development stages.

Where to go from here?