About me

I'm an open-source software developer, reformed academic, software peer-review lead for rOpenSci, and developer of the UrbanAnalyst platform. All of my software is open-source, free to see and use on many platforms and systems, including GitHub, Codeberg, Codefloe, SourceHut, and tangled.

That also means that everything I have done is sucked up as training data for large language models, whether I want that or not. And I have opinions about that, as you can read about in my blog pages.

Work with me

I am available for hire. I have a PhD and years of experience developing software, designing and leading academic research projects, and teaching. I speak English (natively) and German (fluently). You can reach me publicly via the Mastodon link above, or via email at mark.padgham<at>email<dot>com.

Software development

I have been a professional software developer for over 15 years, primarily in C++, R, JavaScript, and Rust. I know good code when I see it, and can use my experience and abilities to guide generative AI tools in powerful and efficient ways.

Process automation

I developed most of the tools for rOpenSci's automated peer-review system, notably including automated analyses of the structure and function of all software submitted for peer-review. I have a deep understanding of where and how automation can best be directed, and use that understanding to appreciate how best to guide non-determinstic processes of AI-based automation.

Urban analyses

The entire Urban Analyst platform is powered by my open-source software. The heart of that are my own highly efficient dodgr and m4ra routing engines. These engines, and any of the kinds of outputs displayed on Urban Analyst, can be adapted for any urban analytical needs.

Teaching

I have professional educational qualifications, and years of experience teaching software development and geographical analyses across ranges of abilities up to experienced post-graduate students.

About this site and AI usage

The site is build with Foundation for Sites, with source code available at codeberg.org/mpadge/mpadge. All text is entirely hand-typed, every single letter one-by-one by me. There is no AI involvement in generating any written words here. There has been some AI involvement in styling the new blog pages, including CSS tweaks -- my least favourite part of programming -- and SVG decorations. The dropcaps are also at least partially AI generated, although by gwern.net. This site uses Gwern's Deutsche Zierrschrift dropcaps.

All recent AI-assisted updates are only visible on blog pages from 2026 onwards. The styling of all blog pages prior to 2026 reflects my original design, entirely devoid of AI influences.