About me

Hi, I’m Peter! ☝️

Was born in Johannesburg, lived in Chiang Mai for several (awesome+sunny) years, have most recently settled in Berlin with my partner Laura.

My original background is in mathematics.
I’ve worked as a software engineer, consultant, CTO, and founder.

Particular interests include mathematics (especially statistics), engineering, economics, business, and psychology. Disclaimer: an interest doesn’t imply an aptitude (especially for statistics).

Hobbies include film, computer & board games (especially Go), and German bureaucracy.

Folks that make things inspire me.
And folks working from first principles.
Or trying to make the world a little better.
Or are just contrarian, and don’t litter.

Some particular inspirations include: Derek Sivers, Jonathan Blow, Rich Hickey, Salvatore Sanfilippo, Beryl Markham, John Carmack, Richard Feynman, Joe Sutter, Paul Graham, Lex Fridman, …

If anyone internet-knows me, it’s probably for my open source work.

When writing software, I’ve worked mostly with Clojure since 2008 (before Clojure 1.0). Have well over 800k lines of Clojure committed to production since then between my own projects and work for clients/partners/etc.

I enjoy big-picture work: defining problems through to living with one’s inevitably imperfect choices. I see engineering and the world in terms of tradeoffs. And sometimes ducks.

I enjoy working with founders, and building (preferably small) companies and engineering teams. Relatedly, Clojure can be a great development tool for small teams in the right circumstances.

See here for some things I’m working on at the moment.

Cheers :-)

- Peter