Derek Dunagan

Member-Owner

Derek writes, designs, overthinks, (re)architects, stratifies, and deletes software. And aims to simply do tech plumb and level.


Favorite places

  • The Mind
  • Le France, especially Paris et la Côte d'Azur
  • On/in/adjacent the water
  • On/in/adjacent the mountains
  • New-to-me places with old-to-me friends
  • Wherever my nieces happen to be

1st album

That I can remember? I'm pretty sure it's either a cassette of New Kids on the Block - Hangin' Tough or of Vanilla Ice - To The Extreme


Really good at

  • Of or relating to music(k)
  • [Pre-COVID] Traversing the globe
  • [Peri-COVID] Staying in one apartment. all. the. fucking. time
  • [Post-COVID] The Re-Roaring 20s (hopefully not followed by the Re-Great Depression and the Re-Great War)
  • Keeping it sequitur
  • Ungineering
  • Generally overdoing it

Been coding for

 years for shits and giggles,  years for stress and bread


Started coding because

Computers were fascinating to me as a child. I started using DOS at an early age and just tinkered on it all the time. When ISPs started popping up I hammered on the Internet a laut. Then on the Web. Then on the codes. Then on the towers. Because my computer compulsion led kid-me to get learnt on programming, it was pretty natural to keep on ridin the train I was already on.


Part of the work that makes you come alive

I feel like this is a pretty moving target. But it's gonna be somewhere near challenging problems with a counterintuitive-for-good-reasons temperature to them. I do like to get my head out of the clouds/abstractions/microdetails and to simply create concrete things for real people. Or better yet, with people. So basically making things with people, for people, that solve problems. Is there a part of the work that isn't that? Maybe working alone? Which I also like. Which begs the question, "am I coming alive at all?" Maybe I'm not. Or maybe I'm not "dead" enough to come alive. Tangential. Why you still readin?


Favorite projects


Duties

  • Architecturing and troublesuturing JavaScripts and Nodes
  • Doing Ruby weird
  • Making apps glide, transmute, and do useful things when you touch them (or click them)
  • Fashioning dense information into interactives that help normal-ass humans do wisdomful shit
  • Cybercartography
  • Accidentally fucking up the social vibe by putting on music that's bizarrer-/heavier-than-I-remembered-it-being
  • Editing the Dojo4 website at the oddest times for the oddest reasons
  • Discomfort
  • 𝔐𝔢𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔲𝔯𝔤𝔶

Expertise

Because this is what you probably wanna know, a reward for scrolling this far:

  • The bowels of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
  • React
  • Node / Express
  • Ruby / Rails
  • Webpack / Babel / PostCSS / and otherwise (com|trans)pilating
  • Mapbox / Leaflet
  • D3 / JS charting frameworks (awl of em)
  • Ava / Mocha
  • Open API / JSON Schema / schema'ed design & dev
  • Anything that ends with "Viz"
  • UX / DX / CX / and the other initialisms that end with "X" (besides those ones)

Hope it was worth it.


Been with the company how long?

Since just before co-oping, so like years


Hometown

A-town down yall