Hello, I am Lucas Merritt. I'm a nearly fully self-taught software developer, with skills and experience in a variety of fields and tools.
I'm looking for interships or opportunities to challenge and apply my knowledge and gain real-world experience.
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Blog link(merrittlj.github.io)
I write on my blog about various topics, such as the philosophy of open source and openness in technology, reverse engineering, and more! This blog mainly serves as a record of some projects and ideas, but I also hope this can be used to inform and educate others.
I would highly recommend this post: "An argument for openness". It discusses by general thoughts on proprietary software and tech "ecosystems", and why solutions such as open source will play a large role in the future.
I have done varied work in many categories, interests, languages, etc. I mainly try to specialize in a few topics, but I do have expansive general knowledge.
Below is a simple breakdown of my experience with various technologies, on various levels. This list is not all-inclusive, it is simply to give a general idea of my experience in a visual way. I am able to adapt, learn, and effectively utilize new technologies and topics, so I am not limited to these.
I most likely have multiple years of experience with them, and am generally well-versed and ready to utilize them immediately.
I can use these technologies generally, but do not know them well enough for many intricacies and have not fully dived deep into them.
I have used many other technologies, languages, and such throughout my time, but they are not as notable as those mentioned above. While these may not exactly fit what you are looking for, as I have mentioned earlier, I am adaptable to your scenario and your requirements.
Below are some of my most notable projects, which include summaries and further details:
This is a highly-developed 3D real-time renderer, based in Vulkan and C++.
On a simple level, this project utilizes Vulkan, a low-level graphics library for high performance real-time graphics applications, commonly used throughout the game engine industry and for other graphics related software.
While this project may be inherently graphics oriented, this put into practice crucial technologies and skills, such as C++ and build systems(CMake), library integration, data parsing and modeling, and proper project management.
This is one of my largest projects, which I have been working on for around a year at the time of writing. Due to the large scale of the project(110 commits at the time of writing, ~5-10k lines), a key focus has been maintainability, implementation of features, and project-wide standards and coding practices.
Practically, this is a standalone renderer, which I have not attempted to integrate with other projects yet. This is not intended to do such, however, as this is mainly a learning and portfolio project.
This is an automation "bot" for the game Brawlhalla, based in Python.
This is one of my most recent endeavors, with an emphasis on object-oriented design and ease of implementation for features. In practice, this uses pixel-matching and other factors to determine what state in the game the "bot" is, and act accordingly. This does not utilize any memory-related procedures.
This is a more advanced project graphics and code-wise in comparison to my raytracer project, utilizing rasterization techniques found commonly in real-time rendering.
This mainly incorporates key graphics-related techniques in a very fundamental matter, from scratch without any external libraries.
This is a very old project(4 years ago, as of writing), tracked within git and developed for multiple months somewhere around 2020. This may not be entirely accurate, however, as I am not sure how early on I started utilizing version control.
Despite being an ancient project, this incorporated time-based items and inventory systems, upgrade paths, and more. The code found here is not exactly a true representation of my abilities in the present, but it is worth mentioning.
I have contributed extensively to an open source Linux project, bemenu. This was a real-world experience with managing code within an external project design, workflow, etc. Some of my pull request contributions can be found here.
In addition, I have developed a considerable web-oriented application from scratch in JavaScript recently, which uses a "serverless"(in the sense of client-side oriented) method for data transfer and building. This was work done for a client, so out of respect for them, the code and further details will not be shared.
These projects are nearly all abandoned and are no longer being developed, but do serve some practical purpose.
- NotEnoughBazaar: A simple Minecraft mod that tracks good economic "flips" or deals for money-making in the game Hypixel Skyblock. Written in Java with Forge interaction.
- CubeTimer: A very low-level embedded program intended to track Rubik's cube times via a segmented display. Written in C.
- Sharpshooter: A Minecraft "name sniper", which essentially resulted in simply sending a name change request at a certain time(to "snipe"/get a name before everyone else).
- emacs.d, scripts, and dotfiles: Includes various scripts, configuration files, etc. for my system.
As of currently, please contact me through my email, [email protected](also displayed on my GitHub profile). I am open to all inquiries or thoughts.