About me

I’m John — a software engineer from Livingstone, Zambia.

I’ve been writing code since 2014, starting out self-taught. Over the past decade I’ve worked independently: backend systems in Go and Node.js, cloud infrastructure across GCP, AWS, and Azure, CI/CD pipelines, and web development. Most of that work is under NDA, but you can get a sense of how I think through the blog and the Craters project — an open-source TypeScript game framework I’ve been building for a few years.

I’m currently finishing a Bachelor’s in Software Engineering at the Zambia University College of Technology (ZUCT). The coursework is useful, but honestly most of what I know came from building things and breaking them.

Outside of work: I spend time on the Zambezi when I can — photography, the wildlife around Livingstone, the occasional off-road drive into places that probably shouldn’t have a car in them.

I take contract work. Reach me at john@swana.dev.