Hello, my name is Vlad Faust.
I am a jack of anything IT, master of some; see my CV.
You can contact me via 𝕏, GitHub or Telegram, or e-mail me directly at hey at vladfaust.com.
Curriculum vitae
Throughout my 10+ years of experience in Information Technology, I've tried everything from compiling COFF after LLIR lowering to designing a resilient ultra-scalable fleet of FAAS workers, from Substrate and IPFS to event-driven stock price prediction.
Comprehending a technology is like surfing on the waves of technology trends, on the surface of the greatest whirlpool of singularity. Comprehension means fundamental, decomposed knowledge enough to build a solution at any scale.
For me, it is not about thoroughly learning API of yet another web framework, it is instead getting hands on the set of tooling a technology offers, so that I may choose the best framework suitable for the problem . If I were to compile my 10+ years of experience into one line, that would be the following:
Right tooling is paramount.Here is an incomplete list of technologies I've had experience with, in the order of encounter, starting back in 2013: Pascal, vJass, cJass, C, C++, Java, git, LibGDX, PHP, Unity, C#, Ruby, Telegram, Heroku, Dokku, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, JavaScript, Gulp, Grunt, Ruby On Rails, Hanami, Roda, Sequel, Crystal, LLVM, Kubernetes, Firecracker, Tiny Core Linux, buildpacks.io, compiler development, machine learning, Tensorflow, VueJS, TypeScript, Deno, Zig, PEG, Rust, EVM, Solidity, Substrate, IPFS, ZKP, ChatGPT, llama.cpp, Godot, tRPC, Zod, Tanstack...
- 2013: It all began with Warcraft®️ III™️ maps, such as UFS Arena. I did all the coding (cJass, a C-like domain-specific language) and design, and my maps gained some popularity in the Russian-speaking community.
- 2014: First steps in commercial product development: Anogram, a social anonymous service project. I did the design and backend coding in PHP. Unfortunately, the trend had quickly detoriated.
- 2015:
- In 2015, I released an Android game called Jumpin Sweeties, written with LibGDX. My family and friends liked it, but it didn't gain much traction.
- With Ruby on Rails, I created a Bitcoin service for SMS number confirmations based on Google Voice, and after a couple of months sold it to a foreign customer for a good price. This marked the beginning of my journey as a solo entrepreneur.
- 2016:
- This was the year of Telegram bots for me. First, I created @profitrobot, which climbed pretty hign in the bot store rating. The bot allowed users to earn lunch money by completing CPA tasks and watching advertisements. Profitrobot became quite popular, and I managed to sell it to another entrepreneur.
- In parallel I worked on @soundememesbot, which allowed its users to post sound memes in chats. Long story short, the bot became massively popular all around the world, but I did struggle to monetize it. Required moderation efforts made me shut it down.
- 2017: Not all the projects are destined to become viable, such that was CashbackBot, a Telegram bot for cashback services. I've spent a lot of time building it, but the project was never launched, nor it was sold.
- 2018: This year marked the beggining of my two-years journey in the Crystal programming language ecosystem. I loved being a part of open-source (check out my GitHub!). I created many libraries, including web framework and ORM, and even contributed into the language itself. Also check out my article comparing Crystal to Stripe's Sorbet.
- 2020: By 2020, I was fed with all the imperfections of the Crystal ecosystem, and decided to move and build my own programming language, Onyx. Oh, that was a ride. Long story short, too much for a single person. Yet, an enormous amount of computer science experience gained. Just look at the plethora of Onyx compilers I was working on: C++, Rust and even TypeScript with Zig! The System Programming in 2k20 article is still one of the best I've written.
- 2021: Senior Crystal developer at NeuraLegion, an Israeli web security company. Nothing fancy, just some good old JSON APIs.
- 2022: I was employed by Byzantine.Solutions on the role of a Technical Due Diligence Officer . I inspected and contributed to some of the biggest crypto projects of that time. I also did some crypto-related projects of my own (see below).
- 2023: The epiphany of AI had occured, my mind has cracked, and I've lost the sense of what is past and what is future. Yet I managed to work on some private AI projects at the role of a full-stack+prompt engineer.
Check out my profile at Wakatime; since I've began tracking my time in 2018, I've coded over 6000 hours, resulting in 1000 hours a year average. Take a look at this glorious chart of my favorite languages:
Currently I'm working on private AI character simulation projects. My best stack is prompt engineering, custom AI model deployment, Rust, C++, Typescript, VueJS, NodeJS, tRPC, Zod and Tanstack. I extensively use GitHub Copilot for code generation.
See my blog posts (especially the personal introduction) and projects below, check my GitHub profile, find my contacts in the header, and feel free to reach out if you want to work with me.
Sincerely,
Vlad.
Recent blog posts
- Tue Nov 07 2023ffmpeg.ai
- Tue Apr 12 2022The game of life
- Thu Aug 20 2020The Onyx Programming Language
- Sun Aug 16 2020System Programming in 2k20
- Fri Aug 07 2020Hello, World!
Project list
Singularity tech (2022-present)
Behold, the Deus ex Machina blooms, like a lotus from the murky depths.- AIStories
The original source-available AI character simulation platform.
Open sourceCommercialAICryptoNFTsTypeScriptVueJSNodeJStrpczodSolidityethers - Offchain Café EVM
A self-hosted indexing service for Ethereum blockchain, exposing a GraphQL API.
Open sourceCryptoEVMSolidityTypeScriptGraphQL - IPNFT
An on-chain, digital proof of authorship for an IPFS CID, tailored to existing NFT standards.
Open sourceCryptoIPFSEVMSolidity - Fancy Contracts
A collection of EVM smart contracts for the Fancy Software apps ecosystem.
Open sourceCryptoEVMSolidity
Onyx, the language (2020-2022)
Onyx is a novel programming language I'was working on.- NXSF.org
The Onyx Software Foundation website (source).
Open source - Onyx standard
An attempt to standardize the Onyx language (source).
Open source - Phoenix
An attempt to implement an Onyx language compiler in C++.
Open sourceC++ - Onyx in Rust
An attempt to implement an Onyx language compiler in Rust.
Open sourceRust - Onyx in Typescript
An attempt to implement an Onyx language compiler in TypeScript + Zig.
Open sourceZigTypeScript
Crystal-related projects (2018-2020)
Crystal is a Ruby-inspired programming language, but compiled.- Onyx framework (2020)
A web framework with HTTP, SQL ORM and EDA modules, fancy website and rich documentation.
Open sourceProduct designCrystalSQLHTTPEvent-driven architectureVueJSSASS - Crystal Jobs (2018)
A now defunct Crystal jobs board (frontend preview).
Open sourceProduct designCrystalVueJSSASS - CrystalWorld (2019)
A RealWorld implementation in Crystal and Onyx the web framework.
Open sourceCrystalSQLite
Crystal shards (2018-2020)
A shard is a Crystal code package.- TimeFormat
Time spans formatting made simple.
Open sourceCrystal - I18n
Internationalization shard.
Open sourceCrystal - HTTP::Multiserver
Mount multiple web applications.
Open sourceCrystalHTTP - Tarantool
A Tarantool database driver.
Open sourceCrystalTCP - Cake-Bake
Bake Cakefile into native Crystal code.
Open sourceCrystal - Callbacks
Expressive callbacks module.
Open sourceCrystal - Validations
Validations module.
Open sourceCrystal - MiniRedis
A light-weight low-level Redis client.
Open sourceCrystalTCP - HTTP::Params::Serializable
The HTTP params parsing module.
Open sourceCrystal - Migrate
A database migration solution.
Open sourceCrystalSQL - Stripe
Stripe API wrapper.
Open sourceCrystalAPI wrapper - Tele
A convenient Telegram Bot framework.
Open sourceCrystalTelegram bot - Tele::Broadcast
Broadcasting for Tele.
Open sourceCrystalTelegram botRedis
Ruby gems (2015-2017)
- Jbuilder::JsonApi
Jbuilder meets jsonapi.org specifications.
Open sourceRuby - AssetPipeline
Add Sprockets based Asset Pipeline to your Ruby applications.
Open sourceRuby on Rails - Bitcoinpay
Bitcoinpay.com API client for Ruby.
Open sourceRubyAPI wrapperCrypto - Blockchain::Api
A blockchain.info API wrapper.
Open sourceRubyAPI wrapperCrypto
Other projects
- Jumpin Sweeties (2015)
A casual mobile game.
GameDevJavaLibGDX - Parrot Farm (2016)
A showcase project to demonstrate my skills at those times, hosted on Heroku.
Open sourceRuby on RailsAngularJS - Coinpricebet (2018)
A Stellar-based betting on crypto coin prices, also this version.
Product designCryptoVueJS - AssetFD (2018)
An unfinished decentralized exchange interface based on Stellar.
CryptoVueJS - Soundmemes Bot (2016-2018)
A now defunct Telegram bot to post sound memes in chats.
Open sourceProduct designTelegram botRubyCrystalPostgreSQLRedis - Cashback Bot (2017)
A now defunct Telegram bot to earn cashback from purchases.
Product designTelegram botRubyGraphQLAPI wrapperPostgreSQLRedis - Expense Manager 2 (2015)
A collaborative attempt to improve an existing app.
Product designJavaAndroid - Cycler (2014)
An attempt to create a sleep cycle Android application.
Product designJavaAndroid - Anogram (2014)
A naive attempt to create an anonymous social network.
Product designiOSPHP - UFS Arena (2012)
A Warcraft III™ custom map (source).
Product designGameDevcJASS