Test, test is this thing on 🎤? Please bear 🐻 with me as I try my best not to blabber too much in this intro text and promptly fail miserably. 🙈

About me

Hey there, friends from the interwebs! 👋 I code as maninak but my IRL name is Kostis (stressed like "unleash"). I'm a software engineer from Greece 🇬🇷 that got fed up with the eternally sunny weather and is now living in still-pretty-sunny Vienna, Austria 🇦🇹 . When I was not old I used to sail ⛵ and bike 🚴‍♂️ a pretty lot, but nowadays I spend most of my free time training Shaolin martial arts like tai chi and kung fu 🥋, fascinated with the humbling teachings they keep unveiling to me.

Growing along as an engineer, it's been almost a fantasy of mine to someday become a full-time "open-sourceror". That is despite fully knowing how improbable that eventuality is and that being poor, hated, and overworked as an OSS developer is a meme as timeless as afterlife. It still boggles my mind that a few people can produce software that helps so many and that my few contributions to the OSS community thus far have been received as positively as they have. Seriously, what's wrong with you, guys?? Even those contributions that aren't as impactful give me so much joy to work on for the few who appreciate it! 🤗

I love all things Web, bet all-in on TypeScript since I first used it in 2016, deeply admire the Vue/Nuxt tech and ecosystem contributors, and have been developing an affinity for Developer eXperience (DX) and related tooling, culminating in my recent involvement with the Radicle project.

What do I work on?

I love working on developer tooling as much as I love building bespoke UIs and pleasing user experiences. But if I had to choose, I can’t think of a higher motivation than to work on stuff that makes your life as a developer better and your productivity higher. This often involves work with build tooling/bundlers, pipelines, linters, CI, configs, software architecture, and unhealthy amounts of tech debt. Generally, if you are running away from it, I probably love working on it. Now if I can combine all those with a hint of performance goals and great UX, then :chef's-kiss:.

I am for hire for freelance jobs, preferably on open-source projects and with long-term partners. Currently, Radworks is graciously sponsoring my work on the Radicle VS Code extension and Radicle Planning Boards, which is nothing short of a dream-come-true for me 🙏. In parallel, I'm working on other OSS projects like ts-xor which has accumulated a humbling 5M+ downloads generated with paid bots, contribute on StackOverflow where I never ask questions because I already know everything, and will rarely publish some borderline coherent thoughts on Medium. I also maintain one of the largest Radicle public seed nodes at radicle.at.

Support

I code open-source software because it's damn cool, but any form of appreciation makes it all worth it twice as much! This could be starring ✨ my GitHub projects or seeding them on Radicle (see aforementioned repo links), sharing them with your colleagues, kind messages, or even sponsorships. Please only sponsor if you can spare the money.

If you decide to sponsor me, it will be well spent on quality tea, healthy protein-and-fat-rich meals, ADHD meds and therapy, bike parts, and Shaolin martial arts training fees. If you’re interested and ever in the vicinity of Vienna or Athens when I'm there, we could also grab some drinks together and talk shop 🍻 :).