Sven-Hendrik Haase
software consultant and open-source developer

About me

I love working on open-source projects! I've held many different roles in the open-source ecosystem. I started my own projects, sent in patches to other people's projects, packaged software for Linux distributions and Windows, created useful bug reports.

Software development is exciting for me. I like solving interesting problems and doing cool projects. I also enjoy tinkering around with new features in experimental git branches and discussing the course of projects on mailing lists. I love the social and collaborative open-source experience on platforms such as GitHub.

I'm a hobbyist game developer who regularly participates in game jams. I loved doing game jams so much that I even started up my own game jam platform! Game development allows for lots of creativity and holds many very interesting problems on every level of the stack.

I'm a Developer and Trusted User on Arch Linux, a Linux distribution for advanced users. I maintain lots of packages on that project. Often times, packages break and need patches in order to build. Due to Arch's philosophy, I usually speak to the affected software's projects directly and send in helpful patches and bug descriptions.

I graduated from the University of Hamburg with a Bachelor of Computer Science. For my Bachelor's thesis, I wrote a path tracer called trac0r in an attempt to evaluate the performance and feasibility of real-time path tracing.

I'm a knowledgeable system administrator for Linux systems. I've been diligently running web servers, mail systems and various minor services for years.

You can sometimes find me on various software conventions.

I occasionally create 3D art and models in Blender and 2D sprites with Inkscape.

Skills

• Natural languages: English, German
• Programming languages I like using for serious work: C, C++, Rust, Python, Shell, JavaScript, SQL (yes, not technically programming)
• Programming languages for hobby work: Lua, D, Dart, CoffeeScript, Racket
• Other programming languages I know: PHP, Java

You can expect me to pick up any additional languages reasonably quickly.

Along with those languages, I use a bunch of tools to accomplish different tasks. My favorite tools in no particular order: git, vim, valgrind, gdb, ansible, cmake, ssh, qtcreator

I'm also familiar with some of the popular libraries and frameworks in every language's ecosystem such as Boost, Qt, Django, Flask, Bootstrap, jQuery, AngularJS, React/Redux, Rocket, Diesel.

I have experience with high-performance computing using distributed memory (using MPI) and shared memory (using pthreads) as well as intermediate-level server operation.

Due to my activity in past projects, I have a firm understanding of how a Linux userland fits together at every level. I've made my own Linux distribution.

Additionally, I'm well-versed in automating and orchestrating servers. I can create deployment workflows for all kinds of applications, be it web, mobile or desktop. I know how and when to use cloud-based deployment platforms such as AWS.

I'm good at team communication, knowledge management and keep a consistent, dogmatic coding style. I value good documentation and tests. I'm no stranger to reading other peoples' code.

I can design APIs (both RESTful and not) as well as UIs and reason about UX. I program with security in mind.

I can reason about cache performance and data/cache coherency in regards to modern processors. I program in a performance-oriented manner while not over-thinking performance where it doesn't matter.

Projects

Freelance (2016-today)

Consulting work for various clients.

MyMUN (2013-2016)

This is a management application for Model United Nations conferences.

game jam games (2008-today)

A collection of games made within 48 hours.

flamejam (2011-today)

A game jam web application. I work on this project with a bunch of contributors.

Arch Linux (2009-today)

A Linux distribution for advanced users. I'm a Developer and Trusted User maintaining many packages for this project.

live.linux-gamers.net (2009-today)

This is a live distribution specialized for gaming and showing off the current state of the art open-source games.

Pseudoform (2009-2011)

Pseudoform was a technical demo for various modern graphics technologies.

FirstStrike Mod (2006-2008)

This is a science fiction game modification of Battlefield 2142 for which I contributed 3D models and provided server hosting.

RayFire Studios (2008)

I made a customer management backend for this client.

Note: This list only contains either commercial projects or open-source projects I founded or contributed to by a significant amount. I don't list projects for which I only provided minor contributions.

ISL-Hamburg (2007)

I developed the current web site of this client.