Braxton Salyer

Background

About Braxton Salyer

Highly driven, team-oriented software engineer with significant experience in low level and high performance software development. Skilled in cross-platform library and application development in C and C++, including the latest C++20 and C++23 features, with an emphasis on systems-level and real-time software, including 3D graphics, and signal processing. I put a heavy emphasis on sticking to best-practices, known idioms, and, wherever possible, writing code in a way that ensures it is "correct by construction", while incorporating the newest ideas and techniques from the great minds in our industry. One of my favorite expressions in regard to software engineering is "strong opinions, loosely held". It's critical to learn from the mistakes of yourself and others, and commit to approaches that ensure those mistakes aren't repeated, but it is just as vital to be open minded and willing to take a different approach when presented with one: at its core, software engineering is about innovation and creativity; if you're not willing to learn, adapt, and embrace new ideas, then you've lost both of those. Two of my goals as an engineer are empowering my colleagues and setting the bar for what great, systems-level software should look like. It's widely regarded that writing quality, correct software, especially systems-level software is difficult. I don't believe that _has_ to be true in all circumstances, though, and one of the best ways to prevent that from becoming true, while also achieving both of those goals, is to make sure everyone has the best tools available for writing that software. As such, in my past roles I've written many of the core libraries we used to create a solid, ergonomic foundation throughout each respective codebase, both making developers' lives easier and simpler, and improving code quality throughout each codebase in the process. I hope to continue that approach throughout my career, because writing great systems-level software doesn't have to be hard, you just need the right tools.