I'm Zack! A 2x 1st place hackathon winning Computer Science Junior at Wilkes University. My primary focus is in full-stack web development with a focus on cloud technologies and backend systems.

A little bit of (techy) history:

In high school I started as a hobbyist Python programmer, getting my start from YouTube tutorials, and ESPECIALLY sentdex, developer of pythonprogramming.net, where I learned my fundamentals in Python. I went on to follow his Game Developemnt tutorial and learned how to code simple games in PyGame. While attending school, I participated in the STEM FTC Robotics club, where I trained a TensorFlow vision model to recognize patterns and respond autonomously.

After coming into Wilkes as a Computer Science Major (a stark contrast from my original plans of being a music teacher, a decision defined by my time in Robotics), I was able to explore many subfields of Computer Science. I kept returning to web development for two main reasons:

• Diversity of technology
• Flexibility in application

So what does this mean? I could talk all day about this sorta stuff, but I'll save it as a reason to populate my blog. The tldr is: web development ended up being a great fit for my work-style, and cloud technology is even MORE AWESOME for how accessible it makes the entire process of deploying a full stack application for anyone getting into web and/or platform development.

In my time at university, I've attended and won 1st place on 2 separeate hackathons with small teams of 3 and 4 by learning and growing in exciting and enlightening ways. I enjoy collaborating with other developers on projects and likewise the experiences gained from teaching and learning development techniques or habits from collaborative developers. I've also taken up the Math and Computer Science (Math/CS club) at Wilkes as President and have grown club involvement with events and collaborations with other clubs including the Chemistry club and IEEE Club.

The non-techy details:

Outside of the tech world, I'm also a musician and a multi-instrumentalist! My primary instruments are clarinet for 11 years, and Tenor Saxophone for 7 years. I've also played with many of the other woodwind instruments including Bass Clarinet, Eb Clarinet (Eefer), Alto Sax, Soprano Sax, Flute, and Piccolo. I've also played acoustic guitar, upright bass, piano, and plenty of ethnic instruments including the Dizi, and Ocarina. Now I'm a performing bass vocalist for the Wilkes Chamber Singers, the Choral Society of Northest Pennsylvania, and St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. I also recently have gotten into Windsynths.