About

Who are you?

Hi! I’m Kaylie. You can probably tell by the title of the site (..i hope.) that this is my personal website. I’m a long-time contributor to open-source software with experience in Rust, C#, and assorted other languages (like C, C++, Raku, etc.) with an interest in game development and electrical engineering. I have a strong interest in simulation-heavy topics, whether it be games, emulation, physics, etc.

What have you worked on?

I think the biggest project i’ve worked on as of now is Space Station 14, an open-source multiplayer simulation roleplaying game with a strong focus on depth and cohesive simulation. I’ve also contributed to OpenDream, a clean-room reimplementation of the aging BYOND platform, to improve VM performance and generally just make it run DreamMaker Language (BYOND’s scripting language) faster.

I’m also learning to make music on the side, with some small things like a short album of my learning process on Bandcamp. I’m not particularly good at it yet, and absolutely not formally trained, but I’m certainly learning as I experiment!

I’ve also done some more experimental things, for example modding Resonite VR to introduce WebAssembly execution support in an effort to prototype what that may look like for the platform in the future (which was, in my opinion, a successful experiment!). I’ve worked on improving the bootstrapping experience for RobustToolbox (Space Station 14’s game engine) as to enable new games to be created, implementing multiple features into the engine to assist with this and writing some small games in the process like RobustSand.

Some much more dated, and less finished projects include my early-COVID effort to create a DEC VAX emulator, a process that taught me a significant amount about emulation, DEC hardware, and Rust (it was one of my first major Rust projects). While these aren’t particularly relevant anymore, they functioned as stepping stones in learning some frankly pretty cool things like CPU architecture design basics.

What do you consider yourself experienced in?

Rust

Rust is an amazing productivity language, allowing me to move most of my mistakes closer to the compiler and as such catch them earlier (as compiler errors!), alongside a healthy sprinkling of modern functional programming principles, performance-oriented standard library design, and a now well established core ecosystem of common libraries that are used near universally (serde comes to mind!) among all projects.

C#

While I don’t think C# is quite as good as Rust when it comes down to personal productivity, it’s a very close second, and the language’s approachability for newcomers makes it never-the-less a great pick for large projects, especially if many different people will ultimately be getting their hands dirty in the codebase. It also has an extremely expansive standard library, which helps a lot with bootstrapping new projects and generally just getting things done.